This is the only way developers and users will learn never to trust a closed platform.
As a developer, I like the enforcement of the "no private frameworks" rule. I don't want to have to compete against other developers who can implement things I can't implement, because they are willing to stay up for three weeks reverse-engineering some undocumented interface. It's kind of like doping in the Olympics. If everybody was allowed to do it, soon it would be impossible to be competitive UNLESS you were doing it, and the result would be an incredible mess where every application was doing things using undocumented interfaces. And on top of that, Apple would have to be extremely careful whenever they want to alter their "private" APIs because it would risk breaking a huge number of applications -- and guess who the end user is going to complain to? (Hint -- not the application developer.)
If you don't like the restrictions, fine. Jailbreak your phone. Or choose a different platform. I'd rather work with something stable where the playing field is somewhat level.
Apple has NEVER permitted the use of private frameworks in iPhone apps. My company had to rewrite an app we were trying to deploy because we were using some undocumented features for still frame capture from the camera device. We almost made it through the authorization process, then Apple shot us down at the last second because of it. We had to wait a few more minor releases before the functionality we needed was exposed through an approved interface. It had nothing to do with our application, but rather, the way it was implemented.
In general, the use of undocumented APIs is frowned upon throughout the industry, as it makes for flaky application and reverse-vendor-lockin, when an extremely popular application relies on undocumented APIs, the APIs change, then people come bitching to the platform manufacturer for "breaking" their applications. There's nothing weird about this, whatsoever. Chill out, folks.
Punishing them? For what? Malware is one thing, but as far as I know, opening a pop-up on a user's screen is not an illegal act. So I'm wondering what you mean by "punishment." Some kind of vigilante justice?
The unreasonable bit is that the "automatic update button" only affects windows updates. Other software handles the update process on its own, imo improperly, because application updates (except for MS applicatiosn) are not integrated into the auto updates.
Unless the automatic updates are fully integrated into the Windows Update process, vetted as being authentic, and cryptographically signed, then NO THANKS. Just say NO to software automatically downloading and installing god-knows-what kind of shit. Don't you realize that what you're describing is essentially a botnet?
In what kind of scenario would you have access to the PSU of the server you attacked?
I don't know, how about a world where you've arrested a political dissident and you want to obtain his/her private key, and he/she refuses to hand it over?
The reason we have such high-performance compression formats today isn't because we ignore pointless overhead. If you think these technical objections are bad, wait until you read the specs for JFIF, flate streams, etc. Every last bit is squeezed out that can possibly be squeezed out. Even data which only occurs in the header and could be argued to be "constant overhead" are optimized.
It's true that storage is cheap and always getting cheaper. But compressed formats (and I include their containers) are designed expressly to avoid wasting space. This is one of those cases where ridiculous optimization is the entire point. So, would you like to send an email to the creators of flate and let them know that they're retarded for caring about how many bits a flate header takes up?
Sublimation is not spontaneous. It's a phase change, which requires an energy input. No light is hitting this water, so where would the energy come from? Even if the ice WAS sublimating, in order to "vent" into space it would have to reach the escape velocity of the Moon. At a temperature of 30 kelvin, a water molecule's most probable speed is only 166 meters per second. The escape velocity is 2380 meters per second. That water isn't going anywhere.
One pint of water is only approximately one pound. See Google. In fact, the amount by which it is off is the same factor by which the fluid ounce and the weight ounce differ. Damn whoever made them different.
The rhyme I was taught is "A gallon of water's 8 pounds and a quarter," and even that isn't exactly right either.
Even though you can imagine some configuration of mass where the density remains the same does not mean that's what happens in an earthquake. Earthquakes most certainly change the density of the planet on a local level, and we can see these effects using orbiting gravimeters.
Earthquakes don't "move energy around".. they dissipate it as heat, just as clapping your hands or rubbing them together makes them warmer.
Heat is energy. Energy does not "dissipate." It is conserved. It is true that once potential energy is transformed to heat, it can radiate away and essentially be "lost," but the description of earthquakes as energy movers is completely valid.
Doubtful. Violent video games have been around for a while now, and VIOLENT CRIME CONTINUES TO DECREASE.
That doesn't really demonstrate anything. Violent crime has many influences. Some of these may be increasing, some decreasing. The overall trend is a decrease, but that single fact doesn't tell you anything about the distribution of influences.
For instance, I could eat 15 Twinkies a day, yet be losing weight. At first this would seem to indicate that Twinkies have no effect on weight gain. But then I tell you that I've been taking amphetamines. Now the picture is not as clear.
1) The fact that your software produces errors means that your software has a problem you need to fix. I distinguish between resource failures (file not found) and full on errors (attempted to access null object, for instance). Files not being found is normally outside your control. Dereferencing a null pointer is completely your fault. The fact that the user doesn't understand your message is not the user's fault. The user does not, nor should, give a shit what a "null pointer" is. By the time the error is displayed on the screen, you have already failed.
2) Depending on users to accurately report complex error conditions is an exercise in futility. Humans do not work that way. Assuming that they do, then accusing them of being stupid when they don't, makes you the moron. If you need to know error details, log them, and give the user a way to send you the report -- even better, send the report automatically.
You failed to elucidate how that's any different than a for-pay, single-player, online web game. Why is the web game not evil, but this is? Or are you asserting that all for-pay services which exist in the cloud are evil?
This doesn't sound like DRM, and I don't understand what's so horrible about it. Basically, it sounds like some critical game functionality is offloaded to a server. In a way, this is simply a half-way point between an entirely client-based game and a network-based game. A game which is purely network-based also stops functioning if your network connection goes away -- would that be equally upsetting?
If you object to this sort of model, then wouldn't you object to a purely network-based pay-to-play game? Say, for instance, a pay-to-play MUD? Or any sort of for-pay web activity? I guess I don't understand what is so upsetting about this. If the dependency on the net is a showstopper for you, this game is obviously not a good purchase. Beyond that, the complaining going on here just looks like whining because they've made it more difficult to use the game without paying for it.
No. It is your attempt to measure the system which has a random component. The uncertainty is not in what the system is doing but in your measurements of its parameters. The system is in some well-defined state, but in order to predict it, you need infinitely accurate measurements, and you can't have those.
Of course, any system operating in the real world will be subject to random variations, but chaos is not limited to noisy systems. Even a simple set of mathematically perfect differential equations can exhibit chaos.
The rate at which the system diverges is characterized by a set of numbers called Lyapunov exponents -- if the stock market is indeed a chaotic process, its short-term unpredictability could mean that it has particularly large exponents. Of course, there's no proof that the stock market is a chaotic system, but chaos is a good example of something which is both "non-random" and "unpredictable."
A chaotic system is one where arbitrarily small perturbations always lead to arbitrarily large divergence in phase space. What this means is that even though a system might be following a completely causal underlying law of behavior, it still cannot be predicted because it would require having infinitely accurate knowledge of the parameters.
Because measuring apparatus always involves noise, and noise is of some finite value, this means that the arbitrarily small (yet IMPORTANT) perturbations cannot be resolved against the noise background. This places a very limited time window on your ability to make predictions.
Basic examples of this are the Lorenz attractor, the chaotic pendulum, etc.
The truth is, reviewing the document left me a bit more comfortable. They clearly spelled out what they did and didn't track, and I actually found out that they track less than I thought they did.
Well, I'll try to explain it. Microsoft creates some feel-good document which makes it look like they aren't collecting personal information in terrifying quantities. This document somehow "leaks." Microsoft files a DMCA takedown. NetSol overreacts. Microsoft steps in and says "We didn't mean for THAT to happen, and by the way, you can keep the document."
End result? Microsoft makes another company look like an ass, makes itself look reasonable, and gets a document out there that paints a rosy picture of personal privacy. For all we know, the document is a fiction.
Well, that's really the whole point. The system might be 93% accurate, but how accurate is it in situations where an average person couldn't figure out a location by informed guessing? Is it better than a human with basic common sense, is the question. I suspect not.
If super-heavy elements are discovered which have longer half-lives (and this is suspected to be the case), these elements would be extremely valuable simply for their density if nothing else. Ion drives use heavy, inert atoms as their reaction material -- xenon, for instance. The efficiency of any propulsion system goes up as the per-particle mass of the propellant increases. So one application of stable, super-heavy elements would be as reaction material for ion thrusters. It doesn't even have to be stable for that long -- just long enough for the mission at hand.
Of course, we'd have to develop a way of creating the nuclei more than just a few at a time.
Uh... Copper isn't named after copper. It *is* copper. So we have one element named copper, and another element named after a person who was named after copper. I don't see the problem. The point is the person, not the copper.
Why would those marginalised to their bedrooms and basements for much of their formative years feel any obligation or urge to fight for so ethereal a concept as a nation?
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This is the only way developers and users will learn never to trust a closed platform.
As a developer, I like the enforcement of the "no private frameworks" rule. I don't want to have to compete against other developers who can implement things I can't implement, because they are willing to stay up for three weeks reverse-engineering some undocumented interface. It's kind of like doping in the Olympics. If everybody was allowed to do it, soon it would be impossible to be competitive UNLESS you were doing it, and the result would be an incredible mess where every application was doing things using undocumented interfaces. And on top of that, Apple would have to be extremely careful whenever they want to alter their "private" APIs because it would risk breaking a huge number of applications -- and guess who the end user is going to complain to? (Hint -- not the application developer.)
If you don't like the restrictions, fine. Jailbreak your phone. Or choose a different platform. I'd rather work with something stable where the playing field is somewhat level.
Apple has NEVER permitted the use of private frameworks in iPhone apps. My company had to rewrite an app we were trying to deploy because we were using some undocumented features for still frame capture from the camera device. We almost made it through the authorization process, then Apple shot us down at the last second because of it. We had to wait a few more minor releases before the functionality we needed was exposed through an approved interface. It had nothing to do with our application, but rather, the way it was implemented.
In general, the use of undocumented APIs is frowned upon throughout the industry, as it makes for flaky application and reverse-vendor-lockin, when an extremely popular application relies on undocumented APIs, the APIs change, then people come bitching to the platform manufacturer for "breaking" their applications. There's nothing weird about this, whatsoever. Chill out, folks.
Punishing them? For what? Malware is one thing, but as far as I know, opening a pop-up on a user's screen is not an illegal act. So I'm wondering what you mean by "punishment." Some kind of vigilante justice?
The unreasonable bit is that the "automatic update button" only affects windows updates. Other software handles the update process on its own, imo improperly, because application updates (except for MS applicatiosn) are not integrated into the auto updates.
Unless the automatic updates are fully integrated into the Windows Update process, vetted as being authentic, and cryptographically signed, then NO THANKS. Just say NO to software automatically downloading and installing god-knows-what kind of shit. Don't you realize that what you're describing is essentially a botnet?
In what kind of scenario would you have access to the PSU of the server you attacked?
I don't know, how about a world where you've arrested a political dissident and you want to obtain his/her private key, and he/she refuses to hand it over?
The reason we have such high-performance compression formats today isn't because we ignore pointless overhead. If you think these technical objections are bad, wait until you read the specs for JFIF, flate streams, etc. Every last bit is squeezed out that can possibly be squeezed out. Even data which only occurs in the header and could be argued to be "constant overhead" are optimized.
It's true that storage is cheap and always getting cheaper. But compressed formats (and I include their containers) are designed expressly to avoid wasting space. This is one of those cases where ridiculous optimization is the entire point. So, would you like to send an email to the creators of flate and let them know that they're retarded for caring about how many bits a flate header takes up?
Sublimation is not spontaneous. It's a phase change, which requires an energy input. No light is hitting this water, so where would the energy come from? Even if the ice WAS sublimating, in order to "vent" into space it would have to reach the escape velocity of the Moon. At a temperature of 30 kelvin, a water molecule's most probable speed is only 166 meters per second. The escape velocity is 2380 meters per second. That water isn't going anywhere.
One pint of water is only approximately one pound. See Google. In fact, the amount by which it is off is the same factor by which the fluid ounce and the weight ounce differ. Damn whoever made them different.
The rhyme I was taught is "A gallon of water's 8 pounds and a quarter," and even that isn't exactly right either.
Density doesn't have to change, nor the mass.
Even though you can imagine some configuration of mass where the density remains the same does not mean that's what happens in an earthquake. Earthquakes most certainly change the density of the planet on a local level, and we can see these effects using orbiting gravimeters.
Earthquakes don't "move energy around".. they dissipate it as heat, just as clapping your hands or rubbing them together makes them warmer.
Heat is energy. Energy does not "dissipate." It is conserved. It is true that once potential energy is transformed to heat, it can radiate away and essentially be "lost," but the description of earthquakes as energy movers is completely valid.
Doubtful. Violent video games have been around for a while now, and VIOLENT CRIME CONTINUES TO DECREASE.
That doesn't really demonstrate anything. Violent crime has many influences. Some of these may be increasing, some decreasing. The overall trend is a decrease, but that single fact doesn't tell you anything about the distribution of influences.
For instance, I could eat 15 Twinkies a day, yet be losing weight. At first this would seem to indicate that Twinkies have no effect on weight gain. But then I tell you that I've been taking amphetamines. Now the picture is not as clear.
What does it mean that when I read "DERP QUEST" the first thing I imagined was some sort of SQL injection attack?
1) The fact that your software produces errors means that your software has a problem you need to fix. I distinguish between resource failures (file not found) and full on errors (attempted to access null object, for instance). Files not being found is normally outside your control. Dereferencing a null pointer is completely your fault. The fact that the user doesn't understand your message is not the user's fault. The user does not, nor should, give a shit what a "null pointer" is. By the time the error is displayed on the screen, you have already failed.
2) Depending on users to accurately report complex error conditions is an exercise in futility. Humans do not work that way. Assuming that they do, then accusing them of being stupid when they don't, makes you the moron. If you need to know error details, log them, and give the user a way to send you the report -- even better, send the report automatically.
You failed to elucidate how that's any different than a for-pay, single-player, online web game. Why is the web game not evil, but this is? Or are you asserting that all for-pay services which exist in the cloud are evil?
This doesn't sound like DRM, and I don't understand what's so horrible about it. Basically, it sounds like some critical game functionality is offloaded to a server. In a way, this is simply a half-way point between an entirely client-based game and a network-based game. A game which is purely network-based also stops functioning if your network connection goes away -- would that be equally upsetting?
If you object to this sort of model, then wouldn't you object to a purely network-based pay-to-play game? Say, for instance, a pay-to-play MUD? Or any sort of for-pay web activity? I guess I don't understand what is so upsetting about this. If the dependency on the net is a showstopper for you, this game is obviously not a good purchase. Beyond that, the complaining going on here just looks like whining because they've made it more difficult to use the game without paying for it.
No. It is your attempt to measure the system which has a random component. The uncertainty is not in what the system is doing but in your measurements of its parameters. The system is in some well-defined state, but in order to predict it, you need infinitely accurate measurements, and you can't have those.
Of course, any system operating in the real world will be subject to random variations, but chaos is not limited to noisy systems. Even a simple set of mathematically perfect differential equations can exhibit chaos.
The rate at which the system diverges is characterized by a set of numbers called Lyapunov exponents -- if the stock market is indeed a chaotic process, its short-term unpredictability could mean that it has particularly large exponents. Of course, there's no proof that the stock market is a chaotic system, but chaos is a good example of something which is both "non-random" and "unpredictable."
A chaotic system is one where arbitrarily small perturbations always lead to arbitrarily large divergence in phase space. What this means is that even though a system might be following a completely causal underlying law of behavior, it still cannot be predicted because it would require having infinitely accurate knowledge of the parameters.
Because measuring apparatus always involves noise, and noise is of some finite value, this means that the arbitrarily small (yet IMPORTANT) perturbations cannot be resolved against the noise background. This places a very limited time window on your ability to make predictions.
Basic examples of this are the Lorenz attractor, the chaotic pendulum, etc.
So, because microwaves are not ionizing, you think it would be safe to stick your head in a microwave?
The truth is, reviewing the document left me a bit more comfortable. They clearly spelled out what they did and didn't track, and I actually found out that they track less than I thought they did.
Hah... hah... hah. Hook, line, sinker.
Well, I'll try to explain it. Microsoft creates some feel-good document which makes it look like they aren't collecting personal information in terrifying quantities. This document somehow "leaks." Microsoft files a DMCA takedown. NetSol overreacts. Microsoft steps in and says "We didn't mean for THAT to happen, and by the way, you can keep the document."
End result? Microsoft makes another company look like an ass, makes itself look reasonable, and gets a document out there that paints a rosy picture of personal privacy. For all we know, the document is a fiction.
Well, that's really the whole point. The system might be 93% accurate, but how accurate is it in situations where an average person couldn't figure out a location by informed guessing? Is it better than a human with basic common sense, is the question. I suspect not.
If super-heavy elements are discovered which have longer half-lives (and this is suspected to be the case), these elements would be extremely valuable simply for their density if nothing else. Ion drives use heavy, inert atoms as their reaction material -- xenon, for instance. The efficiency of any propulsion system goes up as the per-particle mass of the propellant increases. So one application of stable, super-heavy elements would be as reaction material for ion thrusters. It doesn't even have to be stable for that long -- just long enough for the mission at hand.
Of course, we'd have to develop a way of creating the nuclei more than just a few at a time.
Uh... Copper isn't named after copper. It *is* copper. So we have one element named copper, and another element named after a person who was named after copper. I don't see the problem. The point is the person, not the copper.
If there happen to be biological fragments floating around in space, they might land on Enceladus and take advantage of the short-term conditions.
Why would those marginalised to their bedrooms and basements for much of their formative years feel any obligation or urge to fight for so ethereal a concept as a nation?
Cash. Lots of it.