You know, any time people talk about languages like Java and C# they always are quick to point out how it's "as fast as C or C++" and they have a pacel of tests to prove it. Similarly, C++ folks say "it's as fast as assembly" - some even go so far as to claim it's faster due to better optimizations.
Now I believe in science and tests and so forth, and I'm sure there's some validity to these claims, but why is it every java program *seems* to run like molasses and every C++ emulator is lucky to get half the speed of the equivalent assembly version?
Somehow I don't think people are being complete honest here. As video card buyers have known for years, something can get great results on carefully chooses benchmarks but still have crappy real world performance.
You're number four I disagree with. There's more than just the line itself. I'm sure the base would be fairly easy to spot and in a well-known location. After all this would be a major supply line into space.
Usually animations like that don't get me "in the door" (whatever the hell that means on a web page). That's usually what a search engine does for you. Once I'm at the site, useless Flash animations are one of the main things that'll make me turn around and go somewhere else though.
I'm still amazed that companies still think their site should be like some TV commercial - like people will willingly sit through crap like that just for it's own sake. Even among large corporate sites, too many are completely useless and provide no information about their product whatsoever. It's really an opportunity missed.
Hmm, last I checked DHTML had no vector graphics or multi-channel sound support. Maybe some of the other upcomming web standards may help, but flash is really pretty a powerful graphic language (just look at some of the flash games people make) and can do things DHTML can't even begin to. Try and do a site like Homestar Runner in pure DHTML and then maybe I'll but it, but anymore Flash is getting to where it's more akin to stuff like java than some scripting language.
It's true that 99% of what you see out there could easily be done in DHTML, but that 99% would probably be better left undone to begin with.:-)
Actually pure flash pages like Homestar could get around it pretty easily. Most the animations a full page and the minimal HTML is only a wrapper. All they have to do is change the linking a bit so the.swf file is called directly and not embedded in HTML (it's only embedded plug-ins covered by the patent).
Still, HR is the exception - most flash I'd be more than happy to see go bye-bye.
They are actually very hard to filter - they can come in all kinds of different formats, with all kinds of different text. There's no commonality to filter on.
The worst to detect are the bounces from auto/vacation replies and the like since they can contain anything. The crud sent out by AV products, at least usually includes the word "Sobig-f" somewhere in the mail (all the more reason they have no excuse for sending it to begin with)
Most of the hundreds of bounces I get a day *specifically* say they detected Sobig-F. Now, how could they know that if what you say is true? If they know enough to put the virus' name in the email, they should know enough not to send such a pointless message in the first place. Sobig-F never uses a valid from address.
I think it can all be summed up with "so where's out flying cars?"
The real problem isn't your readers - it's sci-fi authors who delude themselves into believing they're some kind of prophets. In truth most sci-fi *is* fantasy and the future they paint no more real or useful than any good sword and sorcery novel. If sci-fi authors really held as much of a key to the future as they love to proclaim, they'd be scientists - not writers - and actually help to make that future happen. Sure they sometimes may make a few hits and educated guesses here and there, but in reality not even "hard" sci-fi is any better at predicting the future than John Edwards is at calling up someone's dear departed granny.
In the end, sci-fi just couldn't deliver on it's promises. Anymore, when people read "classic" sci-fi, the power of the story can't help but be a little diminished by the often embarrassingly "retro" future they paint. Inevitably much of the science now seems hopelessly outmoded and archaic. Yes, the stories they tell are as good now as they ever were, but the reader must now read them as fantasy - a kind of "future that will never be".
Meanwhile why is it classic fantasy - even ancient Greek legends - can still seem fresh and poignant after thousands of years? They're timeless precisely because they don't pretend to be "reality" (speculative or otherwise). They're free to express their concepts and ideas in a world that's oddly all the more believable because it's disconnected from our own.
You see, the whole point of any story is in the situation - not the settings. The human condition really hasn't changed all that much. Even though the trappings may be different, the same sort of moral, social, ideological, or personal struggle can just as easily and accurately be expressed in fantasy as in sci-fi. This is the fundamental power the written word has always had. Regardless of when it's set, any story can add to our future by making us think about ourselves and our nature. Claiming this is the special province of sci-fi is just conceit.
Re:It's not the size. It's how you use it.
on
Goodbye, Galileo
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· Score: 4, Informative
Actually after looking at the link, that wasn't such a bad processor: 6.4 mhz, 16 bit addressing (even with an 8 bit data bus) and 16 general purpose registers. That's way ahead of the average 70's CPU - I was expecting it to be something far less powerful (more like a type of Z80).
This only proves that the drug companies are greedy and will always go for the juicer bit of the pie.
However, without patents they'd have no jucy choice except develop new drugs at a lower profit or go out of business. They'll have to take what they can get.
As a side benefit, those unpatentable treatments you mentioned would suddenly be on a level playing field with everything else.
The US government seems to think so (and so do most others). They routinely use tariffs, embargoes, or withhold aid from countries that abuse human rights. This hurts innocents too, but does that make every Western nation a terrorist nation?
Bandying about terms like "terrorist" is like calling people "nazis" - in most cases it's an extreme exaggeration. Indeed by placing a mailing blacklist in the same catagory as groups that wantonly kill people, you only serve to cheapen the memories of real terrorist victims.
Sobig uses the outlook address book for source addresses. Think of it as the computer version of bio-diversity. If so many people didn't all use the same email client, the virus' job would be quite a bit harder since it would have to understand different address book formats.
The difference is simple - users don't share their own files on BT. If you've ever used BitTorrent you'd know it's much more like a website - the torrent is hosted by a central "tracker" and the content is controlled by the tracker's operator.
Sure just like a web site you can post pirated material. However, unlike most P2P - with BT you can cease distribution by removing it from the tracker. Yes it's not perfect, and someone can always set it up on a new tracker - just as someone can always set up a new "warez" site on the web. However, you don't see people claming HTTP is a piracy tool.
Any medium can be used for piracy (even sending a video to a friend via snail-mail), but BT doesn't make it easy for priates - it's easy to trace who hosts a torrent and shut it down.
Instead BT is designed to make it easy for small sites to host large, popular files. Bandwidth isn't free after all. Take "Red vs Blue" for an example - BT is often the best way to get new episodes.
Heh heh, it's also possible his opponents are even *more* net savvy, and are sending spam in his name to make him look bad. If you think about it, it's an easy way to attack someone - if the spam is "promoting" you, it's almost impossible to prove you had nothing to do with it. With most spam the mailers used are unconnected to what's being "spamvertized", so anyone can send spam claiming to promote you.
Yeah, I agree about Pricewatch - I always follow up with a visit someplace like ResellerRatings.com to see what kind of reputation they have. I think even these sites can be spoofed by fake comments, but if you read through what people say, you can usually get a sense if they're legit. Too many very similar glowing replies can be as much of a red flag as too many negative comments.
Deregulation will be fine the day I have a choice which power company hooks to my house. Problem is they usually have a local monopoly - regulated, at least there's some control over pure profiteering.
Even something as trivial as giving focus to an element requires a quite lengthy string: document.formname.elementname.focus();
I've nothing against that syntax. What I hate is is stuff like having to stick that call into a timer because some browsers don't let you change focus in an onblur event. What's the point of even having onblur if when the validation fails you can't do something as simple as send the focus back to the original control without jumping through convoluted hoops? Also, ever need to do something as simple as find which element currently has focus? Writing JavaScript, even with new DOM compliant browsers, so much time is wasted finding complicated ways around silly limitations, that sometimes I wonder if its creators ever bothered to actually tryt and use it themselves.
The problem with this sort of thing is it can't always know the full context in how the program is using some code - it just sees a section of code that has the potential for problems (like a strcpy), but may not see that everything being fed to it has already been length checked beforehand. Unless the software can also confirm there's actually some way to feed the code something that could overflow it, I don't see how it proclaim it a bug.
I don't think they'd do that. Transplanted kidneys usually don't last too lost due to rejection and many patients will need several over their lifetime. I'd think even if the transplant was recent it would still be somewhat damaged.
PKZIP is perhaps the poster child for the idea of "de-facto" standards. The main reason the zip format is so universal is not only that is was open, but more importantly that it caught on. It's popularity is what mandated it's adoption by others.
However, how many people use the *actual* PKZIP anymore? In Windows most people use WinZIP (or one of its many clones) while most unix-ish systems use zip/unzip. I think what PK does to the format has long ago lost any relevance. If a major player like WinZIP announced an open encryption format of their own I'd expect now days more people would support that over PK's now proprietary stuff.
That's just insane. DVD-ram was never intended to be a DVD compatible format. It's like saying "Brand X's hammer is much better than brand Y's screwdriver at pounding in nails". The equivalent to DVD+RW is DVD-RW. Still, neither RW format works very well in stand-alone players. That's what DVD-R and DVD+R are best at.
As my pappy, one of the last great pencil makers, used to say: "I think you're missing the point there son".
Yes a name would probably be indexed, but that was just an example and not a guide to database design. Unless you index every field, at some point you're going pretty darn likely to have to go looking for something that's index-free.
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You know, any time people talk about languages like Java and C# they always are quick to point out how it's "as fast as C or C++" and they have a pacel of tests to prove it. Similarly, C++ folks say "it's as fast as assembly" - some even go so far as to claim it's faster due to better optimizations.
Now I believe in science and tests and so forth, and I'm sure there's some validity to these claims, but why is it every java program *seems* to run like molasses and every C++ emulator is lucky to get half the speed of the equivalent assembly version?
Somehow I don't think people are being complete honest here. As video card buyers have known for years, something can get great results on carefully chooses benchmarks but still have crappy real world performance.
You're number four I disagree with. There's more than just the line itself. I'm sure the base would be fairly easy to spot and in a well-known location. After all this would be a major supply line into space.
Usually animations like that don't get me "in the door" (whatever the hell that means on a web page). That's usually what a search engine does for you. Once I'm at the site, useless Flash animations are one of the main things that'll make me turn around and go somewhere else though.
I'm still amazed that companies still think their site should be like some TV commercial - like people will willingly sit through crap like that just for it's own sake. Even among large corporate sites, too many are completely useless and provide no information about their product whatsoever. It's really an opportunity missed.
Hmm, last I checked DHTML had no vector graphics or multi-channel sound support. Maybe some of the other upcomming web standards may help, but flash is really pretty a powerful graphic language (just look at some of the flash games people make) and can do things DHTML can't even begin to. Try and do a site like Homestar Runner in pure DHTML and then maybe I'll but it, but anymore Flash is getting to where it's more akin to stuff like java than some scripting language.
:-)
It's true that 99% of what you see out there could easily be done in DHTML, but that 99% would probably be better left undone to begin with.
Actually pure flash pages like Homestar could get around it pretty easily. Most the animations a full page and the minimal HTML is only a wrapper. All they have to do is change the linking a bit so the .swf file is called directly and not embedded in HTML (it's only embedded plug-ins covered by the patent).
Still, HR is the exception - most flash I'd be more than happy to see go bye-bye.
Of course they can justify it! The Mandarin is necessary to talk to with your fellow employees. :-)
It's worst of course if you have a public email address - stuff like software support, mailing lists and public contact addresses.
They are actually very hard to filter - they can come in all kinds of different formats, with all kinds of different text. There's no commonality to filter on.
The worst to detect are the bounces from auto/vacation replies and the like since they can contain anything. The crud sent out by AV products, at least usually includes the word "Sobig-f" somewhere in the mail (all the more reason they have no excuse for sending it to begin with)
Nice statement - if it weren't completely false.
Most of the hundreds of bounces I get a day *specifically* say they detected Sobig-F. Now, how could they know that if what you say is true? If they know enough to put the virus' name in the email, they should know enough not to send such a pointless message in the first place. Sobig-F never uses a valid from address.
I think it can all be summed up with "so where's out flying cars?"
The real problem isn't your readers - it's sci-fi authors who delude themselves into believing they're some kind of prophets. In truth most sci-fi *is* fantasy and the future they paint no more real or useful than any good sword and sorcery novel. If sci-fi authors really held as much of a key to the future as they love to proclaim, they'd be scientists - not writers - and actually help to make that future happen. Sure they sometimes may make a few hits and educated guesses here and there, but in reality not even "hard" sci-fi is any better at predicting the future than John Edwards is at calling up someone's dear departed granny.
In the end, sci-fi just couldn't deliver on it's promises. Anymore, when people read "classic" sci-fi, the power of the story can't help but be a little diminished by the often embarrassingly "retro" future they paint. Inevitably much of the science now seems hopelessly outmoded and archaic. Yes, the stories they tell are as good now as they ever were, but the reader must now read them as fantasy - a kind of "future that will never be".
Meanwhile why is it classic fantasy - even ancient Greek legends - can still seem fresh and poignant after thousands of years? They're timeless precisely because they don't pretend to be "reality" (speculative or otherwise). They're free to express their concepts and ideas in a world that's oddly all the more believable because it's disconnected from our own.
You see, the whole point of any story is in the situation - not the settings. The human condition really hasn't changed all that much. Even though the trappings may be different, the same sort of moral, social, ideological, or personal struggle can just as easily and accurately be expressed in fantasy as in sci-fi. This is the fundamental power the written word has always had. Regardless of when it's set, any story can add to our future by making us think about ourselves and our nature. Claiming this is the special province of sci-fi is just conceit.
Actually after looking at the link, that wasn't such a bad processor: 6.4 mhz, 16 bit addressing (even with an 8 bit data bus) and 16 general purpose registers. That's way ahead of the average 70's CPU - I was expecting it to be something far less powerful (more like a type of Z80).
This only proves that the drug companies are greedy and will always go for the juicer bit of the pie.
However, without patents they'd have no jucy choice except develop new drugs at a lower profit or go out of business. They'll have to take what they can get.
As a side benefit, those unpatentable treatments you mentioned would suddenly be on a level playing field with everything else.
The US government seems to think so (and so do most others). They routinely use tariffs, embargoes, or withhold aid from countries that abuse human rights. This hurts innocents too, but does that make every Western nation a terrorist nation?
Bandying about terms like "terrorist" is like calling people "nazis" - in most cases it's an extreme exaggeration. Indeed by placing a mailing blacklist in the same catagory as groups that wantonly kill people, you only serve to cheapen the memories of real terrorist victims.
Sobig uses the outlook address book for source addresses. Think of it as the computer version of bio-diversity. If so many people didn't all use the same email client, the virus' job would be quite a bit harder since it would have to understand different address book formats.
The difference is simple - users don't share their own files on BT. If you've ever used BitTorrent you'd know it's much more like a website - the torrent is hosted by a central "tracker" and the content is controlled by the tracker's operator.
Sure just like a web site you can post pirated material. However, unlike most P2P - with BT you can cease distribution by removing it from the tracker. Yes it's not perfect, and someone can always set it up on a new tracker - just as someone can always set up a new "warez" site on the web. However, you don't see people claming HTTP is a piracy tool.
Any medium can be used for piracy (even sending a video to a friend via snail-mail), but BT doesn't make it easy for priates - it's easy to trace who hosts a torrent and shut it down.
Instead BT is designed to make it easy for small sites to host large, popular files. Bandwidth isn't free after all. Take "Red vs Blue" for an example - BT is often the best way to get new episodes.
Heh heh, it's also possible his opponents are even *more* net savvy, and are sending spam in his name to make him look bad. If you think about it, it's an easy way to attack someone - if the spam is "promoting" you, it's almost impossible to prove you had nothing to do with it. With most spam the mailers used are unconnected to what's being "spamvertized", so anyone can send spam claiming to promote you.
Yeah, I agree about Pricewatch - I always follow up with a visit someplace like ResellerRatings.com to see what kind of reputation they have. I think even these sites can be spoofed by fake comments, but if you read through what people say, you can usually get a sense if they're legit. Too many very similar glowing replies can be as much of a red flag as too many negative comments.
Deregulation will be fine the day I have a choice which power company hooks to my house. Problem is they usually have a local monopoly - regulated, at least there's some control over pure profiteering.
Well no I can't, but I can make the sound of a duiker filled with ennui.
Even something as trivial as giving focus to an element requires a quite lengthy string: document.formname.elementname.focus();
I've nothing against that syntax. What I hate is is stuff like having to stick that call into a timer because some browsers don't let you change focus in an onblur event. What's the point of even having onblur if when the validation fails you can't do something as simple as send the focus back to the original control without jumping through convoluted hoops? Also, ever need to do something as simple as find which element currently has focus? Writing JavaScript, even with new DOM compliant browsers, so much time is wasted finding complicated ways around silly limitations, that sometimes I wonder if its creators ever bothered to actually tryt and use it themselves.
The problem with this sort of thing is it can't always know the full context in how the program is using some code - it just sees a section of code that has the potential for problems (like a strcpy), but may not see that everything being fed to it has already been length checked beforehand. Unless the software can also confirm there's actually some way to feed the code something that could overflow it, I don't see how it proclaim it a bug.
I don't think they'd do that. Transplanted kidneys usually don't last too lost due to rejection and many patients will need several over their lifetime. I'd think even if the transplant was recent it would still be somewhat damaged.
PKZIP is perhaps the poster child for the idea of "de-facto" standards. The main reason the zip format is so universal is not only that is was open, but more importantly that it caught on. It's popularity is what mandated it's adoption by others.
However, how many people use the *actual* PKZIP anymore? In Windows most people use WinZIP (or one of its many clones) while most unix-ish systems use zip/unzip. I think what PK does to the format has long ago lost any relevance. If a major player like WinZIP announced an open encryption format of their own I'd expect now days more people would support that over PK's now proprietary stuff.
That's just insane. DVD-ram was never intended to be a DVD compatible format. It's like saying "Brand X's hammer is much better than brand Y's screwdriver at pounding in nails". The equivalent to DVD+RW is DVD-RW. Still, neither RW format works very well in stand-alone players. That's what DVD-R and DVD+R are best at.
As my pappy, one of the last great pencil makers, used to say: "I think you're missing the point there son".
Yes a name would probably be indexed, but that was just an example and not a guide to database design. Unless you index every field, at some point you're going pretty darn likely to have to go looking for something that's index-free.