I know that restaurants have a love hate relationship with Yelp. They fear the petulant customer who will give them a bad yelp review because the restaurant didn’t kiss their feet. But I think that 99% of yelp reviewers know to ignore the occasional crap review knowing that it says more about the reviewer than the restaurant.
So now the actually bad restaurant does have even more to fear from yelp. Back when I read my local newspaper and I noticed that some doctor had lost their licence I would check the rate my doctor site and see that in all but for a single doctor the reviews were typically, “Where did they get their licence? A cracker jack box?” or “A complete quack, I went in with a horribly sore leg after a ski accident and the bozo diagnosed me with heavy metal poisoning. I went to emerge and they said my leg was broken.”
My only worry is that like slashdot, reddit, tripadvisor, and other voting sites that this will just be one more reason for evil companies to hire slimy PR firms to “manage” their reputations and the reputations of their competitors.
More information by and for the public is only a good thing.
I have seen many combo products in my life fall flat on their face. Basically if you try to be both you usually fail at being either. At this point people want their tablets for the consumption of things too big for their phones. So books, movies, slightly bigger games, and better web surfing. Few people want much more than basic consumption. With their laptop/desktops people want to create. This means a bigger screen, great input devices, and enough horsepower to handle the tools as most people are in a hurry to create content for school or work.
So people don't mind so much if their laptop is a bit big if it then doesn't get in their way of getting things done, such as hesitating, not being able to run some critical work related application, or running out of juice. And with this being a business/school tool cost is not a huge factor.
But with a tablet most people are doing one thing at a time so sheer horsepower is not needed, plus they are doing simplistic clicking and swiping so more than a touch screen isn't usually needed. So they want battery life, they want lightness, and generally not being work related it needs to be cheap.
So it looks like the new surface is the worst of both worlds, a compromised battery, compromised screen size, compromised input devices, compromised ability to run all applications, and a huge compromise on the price.
So I suspect that they are going to aim this at the "mobile professional" the reality being that the mobile professional who can afford a dataplan will not be doing much along the lines of content creation as they have people for that. So for the mobile professional they will want the lightest coolest tablet or large screened mobile phone around, with gobs of battery life.
This leaves the non-mobile professional who should just buy a laptop or desktop.
But I foresee a huge number of bought off news outlets blah blahing about how the surface will change the face of computing, and I also foresee a bunch of 2nd rate broadcast TV shows where they pull out their surface to show the crime photos or whatnot and one of the second rate stars will say, "Hey that is cool, I didn't know you could click the keyboard on like that, how very cool and available June15th."
What about when businesses do things like wreck people's lives through baseless lawsuits, blacklist people, baseless DMCA takedowns, etc? I don't see any 4 year sentences for those actions.
This seems to be another example of where some individual does wrong and the system comes down on him. But when corporate/government types do wrong the system comes to their defence.
Our government officials are just a bunch of predators anyway. Massive fine gathering is just another sign of how governments do not listen to us at all. In my city I doubt anyone is calling in and complaining about rolling stops. But they are complaining about the $134 tickets they get for them. Yet people are complaining about the motorcycles without mufflers, yet the city and province never do anything about it. The reason is simple. While the vast majority of people hate noisy motorcycles (and cars) there is no politically active group to lobby government. But there is a politically active group of motorcycle whiners who blah blah and cry the moment any law is aimed at them.
But seeing that government actions can be predicted by assuming they actively hate us the question is how can officials (using existing rules) extort and bully money out of us? That is quite simple. We are all still going to be pedestrians so they will crank up the pedestrian law enforcement; as a you can't punch a bully using a rule book in the face. So they will use the bureaucrats eternal law enforcement mantra, "If you don't break the law then you don't have anything to worry about."
I have always thought that robots will be like insects. You give them a logical set of rules to follow based upon a fallible set of inputs. Then you set them lose.
So I fully expect to see generation after generation of programming where slowly most of the edge cases are dealt with. So floor mopping robots will make mistakes like mopping the carpet, wandering out of the building and mopping the parking lot, mopping the lawn, etc. Then you will get things like the mopping robot that encounters a 5 gallon paint spill which will overwhelm its capacity so instead of cleaning it will basically paint the floor.
But the reality is that if it is mopping really well 99.999% of the time then the occasional mistake will still end up costing less and my guess is that robots will tend to be fairly OCD about their tasks so it will end up being as clean as if someone was on their hands and knees with a toothbrush.
Also people will learn to alter their environments to make them more robot friendly. If it won't stop mopping the carpet, them maybe get rid of the carpet.
I suspect that if you showed if you made a bet with the guys creating univac that an entire computer as powerful their monster could be put onto a tiny chip that they would have told you to go back to your science fiction comics. I suspect that if you then spent the next two weeks(with them at gunpoint) explaining the basic quantum nature of semi-conductors and how they could be lithographed on to extremely pure and then doped crystals of silicon and the way that transistors could be used to build interesting logic circuits, etc etc that they still wouldn't believe you. And I am talking about putting a univac on a chip, not something like a modern CPU.
If you tried telling them about a modern CPU you would have to tell them that it would contain more pathways than all the city streets in the world combined and that laying this all out was routine.
So when someone pronounces that something can't be done that other rational people are trying to do; then I think good luck to the rational people; but if those who say something can't be done actually start to whine about it; then I think wow the rational people must be close.
I would basically say, unless there is absolutely no alternative then no non Open Source software at all. Welcome to the 21st century, Microsoft, where we have choices.
It would also appear to be "Welcome to the 21st Century, Intel, where we have choices."
This would be a wonderful joke to play on ITER. All those bureaucrats would be so ticked to have to actually go back to science. What I love about FirstFusion is that not only does promise to be a small reactor, but that in all likelihood when it starts to work properly that people will figure out all kinds of improvements to make it smaller and more efficient.
People think about how this will change the world; but I suspect that it would result in all kinds of interesting and new things well beyond the usual More Energy, Cheap Energy effects. One would be the reminder that technology can change our lives. That being a scientist is cool, and funding science is smart.
Actually I wasn't thinking about the global warming debate but the predicting if this coming winter will even be cold or hot. Wet or dry. They blah blah about chaos theory but the reality is that things like La Nina and El Nino even seem to baffle them. These are monster movements of water.
I hope that the first thing these guys do is to figure out how to crack or remove Firefox's DRM, I liked Firefox but I will NOT use it if they implement DRM. All DRM says is "We hate, despise, and crap on our users." Full stop.
But maybe DRM in Firefox is a good thing. It has been a long time since a new browser player came into the market and with Firefox soon to crack single digits(post DRM) it might make room for some fresh blood. So maybe one of these students will learn the Firefox code and business model well enough to fork a successful non DRM product that will get the traction of MariaDB with the fools still using the old product(think AOL) and the people in the know using the new product.
I love when modest science take the air out of pompous science; I say this in that so many scientists act like they have all the answers; (I'm looking at you climate science.) When there are some first order bits of science that people don't understand: Things like why water freezes at the temperature it does, or what makes up the majority of the universe, and now static electricity.
I am not saying that they are a bunch of halfwits, not at all, just that I respect the scientists who are clear on the idea that there is so much that we don't know. I don't respect the scientists who ever even hint that we are "reaching the end of science".
If I were to have become a Physicist (my unrequited dream) this is all I would study, the little mysteries. I suspect that it would be harder to get a grant for static electricity than for something involving military devices, but based upon previous history, a discovery this fundamental would probably have huge technological repercussions. I have long thought that some of the biggest experiments such as the monster Fusion reactor in Europe (ITER) would find that money so much better spent on a zillion little plasma experiments. I think the budget blew well past $20 billion. I am 100% sure that if you gave 4000 of the world's top physicists $500,000 per year for the next decade that they would make leaps that would then make a fusion reactor a snap. My worry is that as they get the ITER turned on that they will find that they are having to wrap it in more and more duck tape to solve one problem after another. If this starts to happen during an economic crisis then the project will be shut down and all that time and effort will have been wasted. But think of the pomopsity of the scientists who are running that project. They will be able to preen themselves and go to all the best conferences where officials will swoon over them hoping to get a tiny piece of the budgetary pie. But they will go an entire career without ever turning the machine on so it doesn't matter if it works or not for them. A functioning machine would be a bonus. A functioning budget is all they care about; oh and good PR.
Again I am willing to bet that more good science could end up coming out of these grains of sand than the whole of ITER.
Bang on. I have looked at the OpenSSL code and what I saw was terrible. It was a laundry list of not just bad coding practices but bad coding so bad that people don't even have terms for it. But as for communications I would think that upper management would be better with bad communications than with lies and over billing.
The real problem is that truly great security is invisible. But it is easier to look cool with heroic security. It is like people believing that medicine has to taste bad and have nasty side effects to work.
One of my favorite complaints about fake good security is when IT department implement complicated password regimes. Basically H@v1ng C0mp1icAted passwords is not actually mathematically sound. Long passwords are the real key. So complicateddogpassword is a zillion times better than insisting upon upper/lower/special characters. And then insisting upon changing the password regularly is about the stupidest thing ever. For one this costs a lot of money. The time wasted across a large company can easily be massive and a business decision not a technical one. Also companies that have frequent password changes then have frequent password forgetting, this then opens up a huge social networking hole.
I made a bet with a relative who works for government where they recently implemented monthly password changes that I could socially hack his password with only the contents of his wallet and his last pay stub. First I looked around his desk, under his keyboard, etc, Then I phoned into IT and said that I was him and that I forgot my password. They then walked me through inputting a new one no questions asked. I asked how they knew I was him and they said, because of what number I was phoning from. I then asked but what if I called from home and they said, oh they would have asked maybe my birthdate or something.
Then we walked around the office (it was a Sunday) and found some passwords on post-it notes and written on the bottom of keyboards. BTW his office processes documents that would be financially worthwhile for unscrupulous parties to obtain.
I have met many security "Gurus" over the years who's primary skill is convincing Baby boomer management types that only they can save them. They then start spouting all the usual things like PKI infrastructure. Military grade encryption, Don't roll your own, industry standard, certified, obfuscation is not security, end to end encryption, and so on with little regard to properly implementing this stuff and generally no regard as to the business needs.
They will do an audit that will show that Russians and Chinese are trying to get into their servers hundreds of times a day and that it is only a matter of time before they do.
Often one of the first things these guys will do "after getting the billing spigot turned on" is to start pushing hardware that gives them the largest kickbacks and ideally require a certification they happen to hold and the IT people don't. So if the system uses switch A they will say switch A is vulnerable and prove it by showing the 10,000 security patches that company has been "forced" to release over the years. So they will install switch B. But if the company uses switch B then they will go with switch A.
The greatest part is that they effectively can deliver nothing but a pain in the ass and look like a hero. "I set up your IPTables to block a custom series of threats my company has identified (Boca Raton)" and if they are really good they will cut off access from root from the company's own administrators.
Often these Guru's entire credibility is based upon some nebulous activity in the past. I could see being an OpenSSL guy would be a huge one. I have long suspected that the main guys at OpenSSL have been spending most of their time giving keynote addresses and rounding up the consulting bucks. I am glad now that anyone who was associated with that project now basically has doggy doo doo on their faces and look like halfwits.
I have worked with these types of guys and they even tend to fall into 3 basic body types. There is the ex-cop looking guy, 50, 5 foot 6, white hair, moustache, round head, round body and talks like they are god's gift to security; these types will use obscure systems that nobody knows so nobody can easily call them on their BS; also these people came into their own in the Y2K days. Then there is the quasi hippy, Longer hair (still balding) not enough light, often thinks they are god's gift to women and security and will give endless advice on both. Usually have a Novell certification in some drawer and will defend Novell to this day. Then lastly there is the fat slob security guy. This one usually works with one of the other two. They are a half assed in nearly everything they do and only manage to keep the demons away by being in the server room 24/7. These people have built their credentials 100% by putting down other people and their technologies. The worst part about this last type is that sometimes they are actually quite skilled but do everything in as stupid way. "Oh I had to rewrite the Linux kernal using code from my wristwatch to make for a better time function for the random number generator. The only problem is that I have to manually reset it every 15 minutes.
The key is that not all feedback is directed at the author. As in the case of slashdot one of the biggest benefits of feedback is to clean out the cruft. Without this slashdot would be one big "make money fast, lose weight, and invest in Nigeria" forums.
Also the question isn't always one of looking at the authors as an average. I suspect that many authors are able to use any feedback quite nicely. If you read the comments on New Scientist (which I love) the comments are pretty much useless. But in some forums I learn great things. Slashdot has given me some real gems, an appreciation for Python, a better domain host, a better server host, and interesting product lines such as Arduino. But in obtaining these gems I have still had to wade through miles of religeous arguments of Java vs C++ and so on.
I have tried to teach a handful of people how to program. Generally it either takes or it doesn't. Some people would lose their minds at how hard it can be to get some new library to compile and I think they could see that coming. The whole concept that a single wrong letter could mean the difference between success and 200 error messages just made them ask, "You do this all day?"
I don't think that it is that these people can't learn but it is simply something that is completely not part of their brain's make-up. Many people like things like writing reports where you are making a generalize persuasive argument which will be backed up with meeting and maybe even some time on a golf course; things that generally drive most programmers insane.
Actually I think even worse. My guess is that while many people who go into office are ego-maniacal nitwits they aren't evil; they just discover (as they go into or arrive in office) that government is bought and paid for by big money.
But if someone is cheating their way into office then they are planning evil from day one. Also even though big money has bought government they still have to fight over it. But if you had a single rich party cheat someone into office then there won't even be competing interests.
Lastly while there are military related companies that like things like war most companies are just wanting money for themselves. So their purchase of government is somewhat evil (more pollution, less worker's rights) but someone cheating might be truly off the scale evil. A simple example (one of a zillion) is that there are quite a few fundamentalists who would like to bring about the end times so that they can experience the second coming of Christ. Who knows what fruitcake stuff they would get up to when in power. Then in other countries there is a secular majority with a close second of a religeous minority. But this minority would love to impose their religeous laws on everyone. So they would cheat in order to "do the right thing." which would probably be 1000x worse than a greedy corporation.
Quite simply it comes down to independent auditing. With my bank account, my email or even my Facebook; I can tell if I have been hacked or if these companies are playing fast and loose. I will look at my bank account and bloop I am $30,000 short. Where did it go? I will then begin an investigation and bring my previous bank statements as backup if needed. Worst case scenario the bank won't cooperate and I will take it to the courts where again my evidence will be brought to bare. Lastly I can switch banks. Quite simply it is because I have feedback as to what is happening.
The same with facebook. If suddenly my posts are all encouraging people to help out a Nigerian prince then I've been hacked. I will then be able to take some action.
The reason I mention the above technologies is that I think that we can all assume that our banks, facebook, and our email companies all are very good and work very hard at avoiding being hacked; yet they have all been hacked. Look at Target, they (to use the correct term) were PWNED.
But when I vote online it is fire and forget. I don't know what happened to my vote. There is no physical record for me to point to. I can't check up on my vote after the fact. At least with a paper ballot system I take my physical ballot and I give it to some vaguely trustworthy government person who is closely watched by as many representatives of the various parties as there are parties. Each watching with the interests of their official in mind. So if they see something they don't like then they can call police/election officials/newspapers etc. I like this system. It is not impossible to thwart but close enough.
In my city, Halifax, they added online to the municipal elections and I am truly scared. This should be illegal in 20 different ways. They justify it saying that it cuts costs and increases participation. Basically it didn't cut costs as they had to screw with the system so much, send out so many instructions, and answer so many questions. Plus in the end it basically didn't increase participation. I carefully looked at the votes and luckily none of the online voting was significant enough to have altered an outcome.
But let's say that someone had screwed with the results (as a programmer you can't tell me that it isn't going to be that hard) the only people who are going to cheat are going to be bad people. People who, once they are in, will ensure that only they can continue to cheat. So to me every online voting system is basically waiting for the first set of evil and smart people to come along. That is it. But once it happens, by the altered rules of the voting system, how do I fight the vote? How can it be contested? How can there be a recount?
Now I understand that some voting systems are complicated with many propositions, levels of government, etc being voted on in a single booth. So I have a very simple solution. You press your buttons which then produces a ballot on the screen, you then look at the ballot on the screen and see if you like it. Then you press print. It then produces a ballot that matches the one on the screen and you can compare. Then you say OK and then bring your ballot to the ballot box per normal. Then the computer tallies up the votes and announces a tentative winner. Then the humans can count the votes to see if the computer agrees with the paper ballots. But the key is that the paper ballots have the final say. The computer is only there to help. Then if there is a wild difference between the paper and the computer more interesting auditing mechanisms can come into play.
As a computer programmer I am 100% certain that any online election can easily be rigged. But I am by far not alone. 100% of the time that independent security researchers have gotten their hands on electronic voting systems they have hacked them and usually with ease. So the solution is that these companies don't allow independent auditors but ones of their own choosing and ones that they pay well.
This is a serious problem. Basically online voting is pretty much demanding that some evil person runs our government.
I have a bunch of thunderbolt ports and handful of USB 3 ports on my Mac. I would love to trade my thunderbolt ports for some more USB 3s and maybe 2 HDMIs.
I remember for years my fellow mac people blah blahed about how firewire was so much better than USB and how it was the future. Basically it was the future for about 3 minutes.
I am smelling the same thing with Thunderbolt.
Basically my experience with thunderbolt is summed up by my monthly search for a reasonably priced thunderbolt to USB 3 adapter.
Hard to measure. Yes. But that is where the fiction of the modern MBA comes from. They claim to have studied managerial accounting, etc. But the reality is that about the only thing they leave school with is a crass interpretation of the bottom line starting with their own bottom line.
If instead EA was using someone with an actual education, such as an economist then they would stand a better chance of someone who understands the difference between the micro(today's bottom line) and the macro(long term damage to the company and potentially the industry). But what I have seen in large organizations is the once you let one MBA slither in then they suddenly start replacing all the other management with MBAs (time to let the professional managers take over children) and poof you now have more TPS reports than you can shake a stick at while the company sinks into the swamp; but don't worry swamp sinking is an industry best practice.
Oh and when the company finally sinks who gets the multi million dollar retention bonuses? The engineers or whatever core employees the company must have to survive? Nope the MBAs feather their nests with any money they can get their hands on. But don't worry, that nest feathering can be supported by 8 excellent white papers.
I suspect that at this point much of the old game maintenance could be wrapped up into a single small working group (if they haven't already) so the cost should be very low. the demands upon the various servers and whatnot should also be greatly diminished along with the fact that with a combination of vastly more powerful servers available and the use of VMs should reduce the per user cost of running these servers to a tiny fraction of their original cost.
With enough squeezing they might even be able to maintain break even. But why would I suggest that this is important? On the surface it isn't probably a good business move. But dig down and I suspect that people will look at their newer online games and wonder how long they will live. This thus will reduce the value all their future products. No to mention, maintaining good will with the older product users will increase the chances of future purchases. Also I don't think that users of older games would terribly mind if in the loading screen there was an add for some similar game that came out; just as long as they didn't start playing other MBA games such as making the loading game longer to load so that you stare at the ad for longer.
But nope, some MBA twat fiddled with a spreadsheet and saw that the tiny amount of revenue lost by cutting the old games was dwarfed by their continued maintenance costs. This then made the bottom line look so much better and he dreamed about the bonus he would get for being so smart. But the problem for even this sleazy MBA was that how can he spreadsheet the lost goodwill? With the huge vagaries of the game market the reviewers, the economy, and the console climate at the time of release any goodwill factors would be very hard to measure. This does not mean they don't exist and these influences are a constant and a constant influence will trash the compound math of a company's growth. Plus they can show up at the worst times. If a company with poor relations with their customers comes out with a genuine blockbuster then it might only hurt sales a bit. But when they release a so so game it is at that point where the poor relations will be the tipping point for a huge percentage of their customers pushing that so so game into being a sales flop. As we have all seen many of the top companies have had a bad run of so so games and in many cases these bad runs have killed the companies.
Not to mention that would be the last day I would use Firefox; not merely out of protest but because as a web developer I would know that Firefox's market share would break into the single digits within 6 months.
This amazes me how companies can become so distorted in their thinking that it would make sense for them to think that this would fly. While I like and use Firefox they must understand that my intrinsic loyalty is nearly pure habit. I have switched browsers maybe 5 times and anticipate that I will switch again. I am willing to bet that in 10 years that whatever browser I am using then doesn't even exist right now. Or in 10 years something may completely supplant the browser.
I have no major investment into a browser and it would take me minutes to switch. This is not like a car, if a better car comes out tomorrow I won't just dump my existing car and buy the better one. I suspect there is an economics/business term for when people are capable of switching products and brands in a heartbeat.
Slashdot Mirror
I know that restaurants have a love hate relationship with Yelp. They fear the petulant customer who will give them a bad yelp review because the restaurant didn’t kiss their feet. But I think that 99% of yelp reviewers know to ignore the occasional crap review knowing that it says more about the reviewer than the restaurant. So now the actually bad restaurant does have even more to fear from yelp. Back when I read my local newspaper and I noticed that some doctor had lost their licence I would check the rate my doctor site and see that in all but for a single doctor the reviews were typically, “Where did they get their licence? A cracker jack box?” or “A complete quack, I went in with a horribly sore leg after a ski accident and the bozo diagnosed me with heavy metal poisoning. I went to emerge and they said my leg was broken.” My only worry is that like slashdot, reddit, tripadvisor, and other voting sites that this will just be one more reason for evil companies to hire slimy PR firms to “manage” their reputations and the reputations of their competitors. More information by and for the public is only a good thing.
I have seen many combo products in my life fall flat on their face. Basically if you try to be both you usually fail at being either. At this point people want their tablets for the consumption of things too big for their phones. So books, movies, slightly bigger games, and better web surfing. Few people want much more than basic consumption. With their laptop/desktops people want to create. This means a bigger screen, great input devices, and enough horsepower to handle the tools as most people are in a hurry to create content for school or work.
So people don't mind so much if their laptop is a bit big if it then doesn't get in their way of getting things done, such as hesitating, not being able to run some critical work related application, or running out of juice. And with this being a business/school tool cost is not a huge factor.
But with a tablet most people are doing one thing at a time so sheer horsepower is not needed, plus they are doing simplistic clicking and swiping so more than a touch screen isn't usually needed. So they want battery life, they want lightness, and generally not being work related it needs to be cheap.
So it looks like the new surface is the worst of both worlds, a compromised battery, compromised screen size, compromised input devices, compromised ability to run all applications, and a huge compromise on the price.
So I suspect that they are going to aim this at the "mobile professional" the reality being that the mobile professional who can afford a dataplan will not be doing much along the lines of content creation as they have people for that. So for the mobile professional they will want the lightest coolest tablet or large screened mobile phone around, with gobs of battery life.
This leaves the non-mobile professional who should just buy a laptop or desktop.
But I foresee a huge number of bought off news outlets blah blahing about how the surface will change the face of computing, and I also foresee a bunch of 2nd rate broadcast TV shows where they pull out their surface to show the crime photos or whatnot and one of the second rate stars will say, "Hey that is cool, I didn't know you could click the keyboard on like that, how very cool and available June15th."
What about when businesses do things like wreck people's lives through baseless lawsuits, blacklist people, baseless DMCA takedowns, etc? I don't see any 4 year sentences for those actions.
This seems to be another example of where some individual does wrong and the system comes down on him. But when corporate/government types do wrong the system comes to their defence.
Our government officials are just a bunch of predators anyway. Massive fine gathering is just another sign of how governments do not listen to us at all. In my city I doubt anyone is calling in and complaining about rolling stops. But they are complaining about the $134 tickets they get for them. Yet people are complaining about the motorcycles without mufflers, yet the city and province never do anything about it. The reason is simple. While the vast majority of people hate noisy motorcycles (and cars) there is no politically active group to lobby government. But there is a politically active group of motorcycle whiners who blah blah and cry the moment any law is aimed at them.
But seeing that government actions can be predicted by assuming they actively hate us the question is how can officials (using existing rules) extort and bully money out of us? That is quite simple. We are all still going to be pedestrians so they will crank up the pedestrian law enforcement; as a you can't punch a bully using a rule book in the face. So they will use the bureaucrats eternal law enforcement mantra, "If you don't break the law then you don't have anything to worry about."
I have always thought that robots will be like insects. You give them a logical set of rules to follow based upon a fallible set of inputs. Then you set them lose.
So I fully expect to see generation after generation of programming where slowly most of the edge cases are dealt with. So floor mopping robots will make mistakes like mopping the carpet, wandering out of the building and mopping the parking lot, mopping the lawn, etc. Then you will get things like the mopping robot that encounters a 5 gallon paint spill which will overwhelm its capacity so instead of cleaning it will basically paint the floor.
But the reality is that if it is mopping really well 99.999% of the time then the occasional mistake will still end up costing less and my guess is that robots will tend to be fairly OCD about their tasks so it will end up being as clean as if someone was on their hands and knees with a toothbrush.
Also people will learn to alter their environments to make them more robot friendly. If it won't stop mopping the carpet, them maybe get rid of the carpet.
I suspect that if you showed if you made a bet with the guys creating univac that an entire computer as powerful their monster could be put onto a tiny chip that they would have told you to go back to your science fiction comics. I suspect that if you then spent the next two weeks(with them at gunpoint) explaining the basic quantum nature of semi-conductors and how they could be lithographed on to extremely pure and then doped crystals of silicon and the way that transistors could be used to build interesting logic circuits, etc etc that they still wouldn't believe you. And I am talking about putting a univac on a chip, not something like a modern CPU.
If you tried telling them about a modern CPU you would have to tell them that it would contain more pathways than all the city streets in the world combined and that laying this all out was routine.
So when someone pronounces that something can't be done that other rational people are trying to do; then I think good luck to the rational people; but if those who say something can't be done actually start to whine about it; then I think wow the rational people must be close.
I would basically say, unless there is absolutely no alternative then no non Open Source software at all. Welcome to the 21st century, Microsoft, where we have choices.
It would also appear to be "Welcome to the 21st Century, Intel, where we have choices."
This would be a wonderful joke to play on ITER. All those bureaucrats would be so ticked to have to actually go back to science. What I love about FirstFusion is that not only does promise to be a small reactor, but that in all likelihood when it starts to work properly that people will figure out all kinds of improvements to make it smaller and more efficient.
People think about how this will change the world; but I suspect that it would result in all kinds of interesting and new things well beyond the usual More Energy, Cheap Energy effects. One would be the reminder that technology can change our lives. That being a scientist is cool, and funding science is smart.
Actually I wasn't thinking about the global warming debate but the predicting if this coming winter will even be cold or hot. Wet or dry. They blah blah about chaos theory but the reality is that things like La Nina and El Nino even seem to baffle them. These are monster movements of water.
I hope that the first thing these guys do is to figure out how to crack or remove Firefox's DRM, I liked Firefox but I will NOT use it if they implement DRM. All DRM says is "We hate, despise, and crap on our users." Full stop.
But maybe DRM in Firefox is a good thing. It has been a long time since a new browser player came into the market and with Firefox soon to crack single digits(post DRM) it might make room for some fresh blood. So maybe one of these students will learn the Firefox code and business model well enough to fork a successful non DRM product that will get the traction of MariaDB with the fools still using the old product(think AOL) and the people in the know using the new product.
I love when modest science take the air out of pompous science; I say this in that so many scientists act like they have all the answers; (I'm looking at you climate science.) When there are some first order bits of science that people don't understand: Things like why water freezes at the temperature it does, or what makes up the majority of the universe, and now static electricity.
I am not saying that they are a bunch of halfwits, not at all, just that I respect the scientists who are clear on the idea that there is so much that we don't know. I don't respect the scientists who ever even hint that we are "reaching the end of science".
If I were to have become a Physicist (my unrequited dream) this is all I would study, the little mysteries. I suspect that it would be harder to get a grant for static electricity than for something involving military devices, but based upon previous history, a discovery this fundamental would probably have huge technological repercussions. I have long thought that some of the biggest experiments such as the monster Fusion reactor in Europe (ITER) would find that money so much better spent on a zillion little plasma experiments. I think the budget blew well past $20 billion. I am 100% sure that if you gave 4000 of the world's top physicists $500,000 per year for the next decade that they would make leaps that would then make a fusion reactor a snap. My worry is that as they get the ITER turned on that they will find that they are having to wrap it in more and more duck tape to solve one problem after another. If this starts to happen during an economic crisis then the project will be shut down and all that time and effort will have been wasted. But think of the pomopsity of the scientists who are running that project. They will be able to preen themselves and go to all the best conferences where officials will swoon over them hoping to get a tiny piece of the budgetary pie. But they will go an entire career without ever turning the machine on so it doesn't matter if it works or not for them. A functioning machine would be a bonus. A functioning budget is all they care about; oh and good PR.
Again I am willing to bet that more good science could end up coming out of these grains of sand than the whole of ITER.
Bang on. I have looked at the OpenSSL code and what I saw was terrible. It was a laundry list of not just bad coding practices but bad coding so bad that people don't even have terms for it. But as for communications I would think that upper management would be better with bad communications than with lies and over billing.
The real problem is that truly great security is invisible. But it is easier to look cool with heroic security. It is like people believing that medicine has to taste bad and have nasty side effects to work.
One of my favorite complaints about fake good security is when IT department implement complicated password regimes. Basically H@v1ng C0mp1icAted passwords is not actually mathematically sound. Long passwords are the real key. So complicateddogpassword is a zillion times better than insisting upon upper/lower/special characters. And then insisting upon changing the password regularly is about the stupidest thing ever. For one this costs a lot of money. The time wasted across a large company can easily be massive and a business decision not a technical one. Also companies that have frequent password changes then have frequent password forgetting, this then opens up a huge social networking hole.
I made a bet with a relative who works for government where they recently implemented monthly password changes that I could socially hack his password with only the contents of his wallet and his last pay stub. First I looked around his desk, under his keyboard, etc, Then I phoned into IT and said that I was him and that I forgot my password. They then walked me through inputting a new one no questions asked. I asked how they knew I was him and they said, because of what number I was phoning from. I then asked but what if I called from home and they said, oh they would have asked maybe my birthdate or something.
Then we walked around the office (it was a Sunday) and found some passwords on post-it notes and written on the bottom of keyboards. BTW his office processes documents that would be financially worthwhile for unscrupulous parties to obtain.
I have met many security "Gurus" over the years who's primary skill is convincing Baby boomer management types that only they can save them. They then start spouting all the usual things like PKI infrastructure. Military grade encryption, Don't roll your own, industry standard, certified, obfuscation is not security, end to end encryption, and so on with little regard to properly implementing this stuff and generally no regard as to the business needs.
They will do an audit that will show that Russians and Chinese are trying to get into their servers hundreds of times a day and that it is only a matter of time before they do.
Often one of the first things these guys will do "after getting the billing spigot turned on" is to start pushing hardware that gives them the largest kickbacks and ideally require a certification they happen to hold and the IT people don't. So if the system uses switch A they will say switch A is vulnerable and prove it by showing the 10,000 security patches that company has been "forced" to release over the years. So they will install switch B. But if the company uses switch B then they will go with switch A.
The greatest part is that they effectively can deliver nothing but a pain in the ass and look like a hero. "I set up your IPTables to block a custom series of threats my company has identified (Boca Raton)" and if they are really good they will cut off access from root from the company's own administrators.
Often these Guru's entire credibility is based upon some nebulous activity in the past. I could see being an OpenSSL guy would be a huge one. I have long suspected that the main guys at OpenSSL have been spending most of their time giving keynote addresses and rounding up the consulting bucks. I am glad now that anyone who was associated with that project now basically has doggy doo doo on their faces and look like halfwits.
I have worked with these types of guys and they even tend to fall into 3 basic body types. There is the ex-cop looking guy, 50, 5 foot 6, white hair, moustache, round head, round body and talks like they are god's gift to security; these types will use obscure systems that nobody knows so nobody can easily call them on their BS; also these people came into their own in the Y2K days. Then there is the quasi hippy, Longer hair (still balding) not enough light, often thinks they are god's gift to women and security and will give endless advice on both. Usually have a Novell certification in some drawer and will defend Novell to this day. Then lastly there is the fat slob security guy. This one usually works with one of the other two. They are a half assed in nearly everything they do and only manage to keep the demons away by being in the server room 24/7. These people have built their credentials 100% by putting down other people and their technologies. The worst part about this last type is that sometimes they are actually quite skilled but do everything in as stupid way. "Oh I had to rewrite the Linux kernal using code from my wristwatch to make for a better time function for the random number generator. The only problem is that I have to manually reset it every 15 minutes.
The key is that not all feedback is directed at the author. As in the case of slashdot one of the biggest benefits of feedback is to clean out the cruft. Without this slashdot would be one big "make money fast, lose weight, and invest in Nigeria" forums.
Also the question isn't always one of looking at the authors as an average. I suspect that many authors are able to use any feedback quite nicely. If you read the comments on New Scientist (which I love) the comments are pretty much useless. But in some forums I learn great things. Slashdot has given me some real gems, an appreciation for Python, a better domain host, a better server host, and interesting product lines such as Arduino. But in obtaining these gems I have still had to wade through miles of religeous arguments of Java vs C++ and so on.
I have tried to teach a handful of people how to program. Generally it either takes or it doesn't. Some people would lose their minds at how hard it can be to get some new library to compile and I think they could see that coming. The whole concept that a single wrong letter could mean the difference between success and 200 error messages just made them ask, "You do this all day?"
I don't think that it is that these people can't learn but it is simply something that is completely not part of their brain's make-up. Many people like things like writing reports where you are making a generalize persuasive argument which will be backed up with meeting and maybe even some time on a golf course; things that generally drive most programmers insane.
Actually I think even worse. My guess is that while many people who go into office are ego-maniacal nitwits they aren't evil; they just discover (as they go into or arrive in office) that government is bought and paid for by big money.
But if someone is cheating their way into office then they are planning evil from day one. Also even though big money has bought government they still have to fight over it. But if you had a single rich party cheat someone into office then there won't even be competing interests.
Lastly while there are military related companies that like things like war most companies are just wanting money for themselves. So their purchase of government is somewhat evil (more pollution, less worker's rights) but someone cheating might be truly off the scale evil. A simple example (one of a zillion) is that there are quite a few fundamentalists who would like to bring about the end times so that they can experience the second coming of Christ. Who knows what fruitcake stuff they would get up to when in power. Then in other countries there is a secular majority with a close second of a religeous minority. But this minority would love to impose their religeous laws on everyone. So they would cheat in order to "do the right thing." which would probably be 1000x worse than a greedy corporation.
I would trade the thunderbolt connectors (1 used, 5 empty) for more USB 3 connectors. Then less clutter on my desk.
No a desktop with 6 thunderbolt ports one of which is presently feeding a thunderbolt to HTML adapter.
Quite simply it comes down to independent auditing. With my bank account, my email or even my Facebook; I can tell if I have been hacked or if these companies are playing fast and loose. I will look at my bank account and bloop I am $30,000 short. Where did it go? I will then begin an investigation and bring my previous bank statements as backup if needed. Worst case scenario the bank won't cooperate and I will take it to the courts where again my evidence will be brought to bare. Lastly I can switch banks. Quite simply it is because I have feedback as to what is happening.
The same with facebook. If suddenly my posts are all encouraging people to help out a Nigerian prince then I've been hacked. I will then be able to take some action.
The reason I mention the above technologies is that I think that we can all assume that our banks, facebook, and our email companies all are very good and work very hard at avoiding being hacked; yet they have all been hacked. Look at Target, they (to use the correct term) were PWNED.
But when I vote online it is fire and forget. I don't know what happened to my vote. There is no physical record for me to point to. I can't check up on my vote after the fact. At least with a paper ballot system I take my physical ballot and I give it to some vaguely trustworthy government person who is closely watched by as many representatives of the various parties as there are parties. Each watching with the interests of their official in mind. So if they see something they don't like then they can call police/election officials/newspapers etc. I like this system. It is not impossible to thwart but close enough.
In my city, Halifax, they added online to the municipal elections and I am truly scared. This should be illegal in 20 different ways. They justify it saying that it cuts costs and increases participation. Basically it didn't cut costs as they had to screw with the system so much, send out so many instructions, and answer so many questions. Plus in the end it basically didn't increase participation. I carefully looked at the votes and luckily none of the online voting was significant enough to have altered an outcome.
But let's say that someone had screwed with the results (as a programmer you can't tell me that it isn't going to be that hard) the only people who are going to cheat are going to be bad people. People who, once they are in, will ensure that only they can continue to cheat. So to me every online voting system is basically waiting for the first set of evil and smart people to come along. That is it. But once it happens, by the altered rules of the voting system, how do I fight the vote? How can it be contested? How can there be a recount?
Now I understand that some voting systems are complicated with many propositions, levels of government, etc being voted on in a single booth. So I have a very simple solution. You press your buttons which then produces a ballot on the screen, you then look at the ballot on the screen and see if you like it. Then you press print. It then produces a ballot that matches the one on the screen and you can compare. Then you say OK and then bring your ballot to the ballot box per normal. Then the computer tallies up the votes and announces a tentative winner. Then the humans can count the votes to see if the computer agrees with the paper ballots. But the key is that the paper ballots have the final say. The computer is only there to help. Then if there is a wild difference between the paper and the computer more interesting auditing mechanisms can come into play.
As a computer programmer I am 100% certain that any online election can easily be rigged. But I am by far not alone. 100% of the time that independent security researchers have gotten their hands on electronic voting systems they have hacked them and usually with ease. So the solution is that these companies don't allow independent auditors but ones of their own choosing and ones that they pay well.
This is a serious problem. Basically online voting is pretty much demanding that some evil person runs our government.
I have a bunch of thunderbolt ports and handful of USB 3 ports on my Mac. I would love to trade my thunderbolt ports for some more USB 3s and maybe 2 HDMIs.
I remember for years my fellow mac people blah blahed about how firewire was so much better than USB and how it was the future. Basically it was the future for about 3 minutes.
I am smelling the same thing with Thunderbolt.
Basically my experience with thunderbolt is summed up by my monthly search for a reasonably priced thunderbolt to USB 3 adapter.
Tell that to the spreadsheets of the investors who then compare the performance of their MBA run company shares to those companies not run by MBAs.
Where lost sales don't show up on spread sheets is that there is no line item called lost sales. There is a line item called executive bonuses though.
Hard to measure. Yes. But that is where the fiction of the modern MBA comes from. They claim to have studied managerial accounting, etc. But the reality is that about the only thing they leave school with is a crass interpretation of the bottom line starting with their own bottom line.
If instead EA was using someone with an actual education, such as an economist then they would stand a better chance of someone who understands the difference between the micro(today's bottom line) and the macro(long term damage to the company and potentially the industry). But what I have seen in large organizations is the once you let one MBA slither in then they suddenly start replacing all the other management with MBAs (time to let the professional managers take over children) and poof you now have more TPS reports than you can shake a stick at while the company sinks into the swamp; but don't worry swamp sinking is an industry best practice.
Oh and when the company finally sinks who gets the multi million dollar retention bonuses? The engineers or whatever core employees the company must have to survive? Nope the MBAs feather their nests with any money they can get their hands on. But don't worry, that nest feathering can be supported by 8 excellent white papers.
I suspect that at this point much of the old game maintenance could be wrapped up into a single small working group (if they haven't already) so the cost should be very low. the demands upon the various servers and whatnot should also be greatly diminished along with the fact that with a combination of vastly more powerful servers available and the use of VMs should reduce the per user cost of running these servers to a tiny fraction of their original cost.
With enough squeezing they might even be able to maintain break even. But why would I suggest that this is important? On the surface it isn't probably a good business move. But dig down and I suspect that people will look at their newer online games and wonder how long they will live. This thus will reduce the value all their future products. No to mention, maintaining good will with the older product users will increase the chances of future purchases. Also I don't think that users of older games would terribly mind if in the loading screen there was an add for some similar game that came out; just as long as they didn't start playing other MBA games such as making the loading game longer to load so that you stare at the ad for longer.
But nope, some MBA twat fiddled with a spreadsheet and saw that the tiny amount of revenue lost by cutting the old games was dwarfed by their continued maintenance costs. This then made the bottom line look so much better and he dreamed about the bonus he would get for being so smart. But the problem for even this sleazy MBA was that how can he spreadsheet the lost goodwill? With the huge vagaries of the game market the reviewers, the economy, and the console climate at the time of release any goodwill factors would be very hard to measure. This does not mean they don't exist and these influences are a constant and a constant influence will trash the compound math of a company's growth. Plus they can show up at the worst times. If a company with poor relations with their customers comes out with a genuine blockbuster then it might only hurt sales a bit. But when they release a so so game it is at that point where the poor relations will be the tipping point for a huge percentage of their customers pushing that so so game into being a sales flop. As we have all seen many of the top companies have had a bad run of so so games and in many cases these bad runs have killed the companies.
Not to mention that would be the last day I would use Firefox; not merely out of protest but because as a web developer I would know that Firefox's market share would break into the single digits within 6 months.
This amazes me how companies can become so distorted in their thinking that it would make sense for them to think that this would fly. While I like and use Firefox they must understand that my intrinsic loyalty is nearly pure habit. I have switched browsers maybe 5 times and anticipate that I will switch again. I am willing to bet that in 10 years that whatever browser I am using then doesn't even exist right now. Or in 10 years something may completely supplant the browser.
I have no major investment into a browser and it would take me minutes to switch. This is not like a car, if a better car comes out tomorrow I won't just dump my existing car and buy the better one. I suspect there is an economics/business term for when people are capable of switching products and brands in a heartbeat.
Hung up for a little bit; and after much huffing and puffing it passed right along through the system; just as big pharma wanted.