Goodbye to all those who just wanted to get rich quick. I look forward to working with you brave students who are chosing your career based on a love of technology.
Me too. Working in IT will be much more fun when all the technical idiots who just went into IT for the money are gone. We should also be much more productive without carrying the dead-weight - people those of us who have the skills have had to baby-sit far too long, costing us more productive time.
If you are the example of 'their targeted audience', then i hope they go under.
A big difference between you an me is that at least I know that I am an A-grade arsehole.
But the bigger difference would be the 150 points by which my IQ exceeds yours.
Not every article on/. is directed at every reader. This one was directed at people who cared about Drupal. If that's not you, then newsflash, you don't have to bother going past the front page blurb. It's not anybody else's responsibility to dish out information to you on a silver platter. If you want more, seek it. If you don't, then go to the next article.
Billions of dollars will change hands based on the data entered into e-tax. Extremely strict testing is needed, and supporting multiple platforms would make this all the more difficult.
True, now if only they actually did the extremely strict testing. eTax has some serious bugs, particularly in the modules, that may be cheating many people out of money.
The only possible exceptions would be for applications which require unusually fast processing, and for games.
These are not exceptions any more either - Wine now runs many Windows games and in most cases a software company that is willing to spend a little time on it can get access to Linux and OSX via Wine relatively cheaply - certainly cheap enough to justify the expense in relation to the additional platform availablility.
If people don't take a stand towards such lazy developers, they will only continue to make single-platform software.
Part of the problem is no doubt the choice of developers. In the case of eTax, it's written in Delphi. Delphi developers aren't exactly known for their cross-platform awareness.
In Australia it's relatively simple unless you have extremely unusual income.
That's not true - the Tax Pack and eTax make it look simple, but the income tax laws are by far the most complex laws we have in the country. Nobody, and I mean nobody has a strong understanding of even a respectable fraction of the income tax laws in this country. If you were to print them out and put them in a single book, that book would be a couple of metres thick.
The Tax Pack and eTax also get things wrong a lot more than you probably realise.
The simple versions in Tax Pack and eTax are there not because they are an accurate reflection of the law. They are there because it is normally not worth it to either the taxpayer or the ATO to make sure each gets every cent they are entitled to. At some point the effort to identify the right rules, apply them and make the calculations will have a value exceeding the money that would change hands as a result.
Excuse me, they are asking for money. If I'm to donate MY money the damned project better benefit ME.
If you don't know about it, then it's not you they are asking for money. I was ready to get out my credit card and make a donation, then I found they already have what they need. They got the donations so quickly (in less than 12 hours, it seems) because there are more than enough people who use, depend on and value the software.
The court didn't have a lot of choice. WhenU was saying that the user authorized the software and it's the user's computer to do what they want.
I haven't been following this case, but from the limited information in TFA, the case was brought by the owner of a web site that had competitor's ads popped up over it. If so, then the question of whether the user authorised the software to do what it did is irrelevant - there does not appear to be any breach of the rights of the party bringing the suit.
If it had been a user bringing suit because the software was installed without their consent, then the outcome may have been different depending on exactly how the software was deployed to their system, who caused it to be deployed there, and who the user sued. Whether the outcome would be different in such circumstances depends on some ancient rules of law that would seem arcane and irrational to people who are not lawyers, and that are not even well understood by most lawyers these days.
As it turns out, Mansfield is no longer even making the claim that his list is opt-in. According to this article, he admits his list was scraped from web sites. He also claims to be taking in excess of $2million per year from his spam runs for his own services.
Once again, evidence that there should be criminal penalties for improper handling of personal information.
In this case I would be *very* surprised if this company isn't on the receiving end of a stack of negligence lawsuits from the companies that had to cover the loss from transactions affecting the compromised accounts. If they were wrongfully retaining the data in the first place (and the rules against retention would be in place specifically to prevent the type of damage that has arisen), the success of such actions would be a no-brainer.
FTL is more of a fantasy than most other science-based predictions one can make... It really is impossible, in the true definition of the word, if special relativity, a very well-tested theory, is correct.
When I was studying science one of the key things to recognise about any theory of physics was that the theory should be treated as a model which reflects our current understanding of the universe, not as the definition of the universe. The model gets used for as long as it matches all observable phenomena, and should be replaced when it disagrees with some observable phenomenon with some model that explains the new observable phenomenon and the old observable phenomena.
To say that the theory is well tested is merely to say that it adequately explains many observations it has been tested against already. That is not to say that no possible future observation will contradict it.
When you say that general relativity means FTL is impossible, you are using the model as the definition. It may well be that some future observation will reveal a flaw in the general relativity model (and the models derived from it) that leads to the discovery of a new, better model which does provide for the possibility of FTL.
It is impossible to say at any point in time that some outcome is entirely prevented by physics. All we can say is that given our understanding of physics at a particular point of time, there is no way for the outcome to occur that would fit the existing model. FTL may well be possible - but if it is it will need to be explained by some successor model to general relativity.
Because they (should) already have these docs to write the Microsoft driver ?
A lot of the hardware companies don't even write internal docs. They have hardware engineers write the device driver, and if you have ever reverse engineered a Windows device driver, you'd know that it shows. It is quite common to find serious and obvious bugs in the driver - mistakes of the kind even a mediocre professional software developer would never make. Sometimes the reverse engineering even reveals the use of algorithms that achieve things that are not even mathematically useful - although you can tell what they were trying to achieve, you can also tell that they have come up with an algorithm that has nothing whatsoever to do with achieving that goal.
This is one of the reasons Windows is so damned unreliable - they package drivers from these closed interface hardware shops, written by hardware engineers without the first clue about software development.
And yes, when the hardware engineers leave this all means the vendor isn't able to provide new drivers for that hardware - that's why you end up with 6 month old hardware that won't run on the operating system released today, and probably never will.
Do you not have any similar legislation in the US?
In the US they don't. I am in Australia, however, where we do. There are related laws in Australia, but they deal with merchantability (manufacturers and importers are liable for merchantability independently of contractual liability), which is a fuzzy line.
The limitation period here is 3 years from the cause of action, which normally begins at the time at which the damage arises.
My camcorder is already disposable. Its just really expensive to replace.
Damn it, you beat me to it. Seriously, I paid $900 for a major brand camcorder and a year and 3 months later it's kaput - repair price exceeds replacement price. The problem - a manufacturing defect in the processor. The warranty - 1 year. That's the last time I buy expensive crap from Sony.
Apparently I'm not alone in failing to see the humor in your post.
So there are two Americans without senses of humour. That hardly redeems you. The state of the American education system is very funny to the rest of the world.
Thanks to the wonderful US education system, a significant number of Americans believe the world ends at the borders with Canada and Mexico.
JudgeFurious replied:
I was educated in the US and I am aware of nations beyond the borders of Canada and Mexico? How do you explain that?
And there we have a perfect example of the US education system - an admitted product of it does not know the difference between the phase "a significant number" and the word "all"
But more disturbingly, this individual seems to have been born without the slightest trace of a sense of humour. Now that is a tragedy.
So 40% of the people in the US are arrogant enough to think that in an infinite universe they are alone?
Thanks to the wonderful US education system, a significant number of Americans believe the world ends at the borders with Canada and Mexico. If they aren't aware life exists in countries outside the United States, why would they believe it exists on other planets?
This applies to sales by people making a business of selling on Ebay. Flogging off the old TV you never use is still GST free.
This has no real implications for other countries. The ACCC position is that quoting prices to consumers without including GST misleads the consumer as to the total cost. This offends against the prohibition against misleading conduct in trade and commerce under the Trade Practices Act.
Yes, people making a business on Ebay will also offend if they don't provide postage information up front.
Really, nothing to see here. Your grandma won't have to worry about GST when she sells her old stuff.
We certainly would have violated the GPL in a second, given that one couldn't really prove damage to the other party
It's not just damages to the other party you have to worry about. In a copyright infringement suit the plaintiff can seek an account of profits. If awarded, the infringer has to pay up all profits they made from the infringement (and there can still be profits from the infringement for this purpose even if the company makes a loss). This is the most likely remedy in a suit for infringing the GPL.
Additionally, by doing this you may be in breach of other (criminal) laws, for which lack of a requirement to pay damages may be small comfort.
As if that weren't enough, customers may be entitled to sue you for breach of implied warranties of title. If they do, you may lost all the profits and have to pay back revenue received from customers.
Casually disregarding licenses like this is a dangerous game. If you don't get sued, you may well get away with it, but if it starts to come undone it can implode on you in the most spectacular way.
Having a 32 bit long gives rise to one type of error: Bits get lost transferring from a 64 bit value to a 32 bit value...
Yes, but this problem is easily detected by the compiler, and it throws a warning. It never even makes it to QA.
Only if there's no cast involved - when the 64 bit thing is a pointer and the 32 bit is an integer, there is likely to be a cast already to defeat warnings about incompatible types (C) or bypass type checking (C++).
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Me too. Working in IT will be much more fun when all the technical idiots who just went into IT for the money are gone. We should also be much more productive without carrying the dead-weight - people those of us who have the skills have had to baby-sit far too long, costing us more productive time.
A big difference between you an me is that at least I know that I am an A-grade arsehole.
But the bigger difference would be the 150 points by which my IQ exceeds yours.
Not every article on /. is directed at every reader. This one was directed at people who cared about Drupal. If that's not you, then newsflash, you don't have to bother going past the front page blurb. It's not anybody else's responsibility to dish out information to you on a silver platter. If you want more, seek it. If you don't, then go to the next article.
True, now if only they actually did the extremely strict testing. eTax has some serious bugs, particularly in the modules, that may be cheating many people out of money.
These are not exceptions any more either - Wine now runs many Windows games and in most cases a software company that is willing to spend a little time on it can get access to Linux and OSX via Wine relatively cheaply - certainly cheap enough to justify the expense in relation to the additional platform availablility.
If people don't take a stand towards such lazy developers, they will only continue to make single-platform software.
Part of the problem is no doubt the choice of developers. In the case of eTax, it's written in Delphi. Delphi developers aren't exactly known for their cross-platform awareness.
That's not true - the Tax Pack and eTax make it look simple, but the income tax laws are by far the most complex laws we have in the country. Nobody, and I mean nobody has a strong understanding of even a respectable fraction of the income tax laws in this country. If you were to print them out and put them in a single book, that book would be a couple of metres thick.
The Tax Pack and eTax also get things wrong a lot more than you probably realise.
The simple versions in Tax Pack and eTax are there not because they are an accurate reflection of the law. They are there because it is normally not worth it to either the taxpayer or the ATO to make sure each gets every cent they are entitled to. At some point the effort to identify the right rules, apply them and make the calculations will have a value exceeding the money that would change hands as a result.
If you don't know about it, then it's not you they are asking for money. I was ready to get out my credit card and make a donation, then I found they already have what they need. They got the donations so quickly (in less than 12 hours, it seems) because there are more than enough people who use, depend on and value the software.
I haven't been following this case, but from the limited information in TFA, the case was brought by the owner of a web site that had competitor's ads popped up over it. If so, then the question of whether the user authorised the software to do what it did is irrelevant - there does not appear to be any breach of the rights of the party bringing the suit.
If it had been a user bringing suit because the software was installed without their consent, then the outcome may have been different depending on exactly how the software was deployed to their system, who caused it to be deployed there, and who the user sued. Whether the outcome would be different in such circumstances depends on some ancient rules of law that would seem arcane and irrational to people who are not lawyers, and that are not even well understood by most lawyers these days.
As it turns out, Mansfield is no longer even making the claim that his list is opt-in. According to this article, he admits his list was scraped from web sites. He also claims to be taking in excess of $2million per year from his spam runs for his own services.
See rule #1.
Mansfield has never used an opt-in list. But he likes to claim he has.
In this case I would be *very* surprised if this company isn't on the receiving end of a stack of negligence lawsuits from the companies that had to cover the loss from transactions affecting the compromised accounts. If they were wrongfully retaining the data in the first place (and the rules against retention would be in place specifically to prevent the type of damage that has arisen), the success of such actions would be a no-brainer.
When I was studying science one of the key things to recognise about any theory of physics was that the theory should be treated as a model which reflects our current understanding of the universe, not as the definition of the universe. The model gets used for as long as it matches all observable phenomena, and should be replaced when it disagrees with some observable phenomenon with some model that explains the new observable phenomenon and the old observable phenomena.
To say that the theory is well tested is merely to say that it adequately explains many observations it has been tested against already. That is not to say that no possible future observation will contradict it.
When you say that general relativity means FTL is impossible, you are using the model as the definition. It may well be that some future observation will reveal a flaw in the general relativity model (and the models derived from it) that leads to the discovery of a new, better model which does provide for the possibility of FTL.
It is impossible to say at any point in time that some outcome is entirely prevented by physics. All we can say is that given our understanding of physics at a particular point of time, there is no way for the outcome to occur that would fit the existing model. FTL may well be possible - but if it is it will need to be explained by some successor model to general relativity.
A lot of the hardware companies don't even write internal docs. They have hardware engineers write the device driver, and if you have ever reverse engineered a Windows device driver, you'd know that it shows. It is quite common to find serious and obvious bugs in the driver - mistakes of the kind even a mediocre professional software developer would never make. Sometimes the reverse engineering even reveals the use of algorithms that achieve things that are not even mathematically useful - although you can tell what they were trying to achieve, you can also tell that they have come up with an algorithm that has nothing whatsoever to do with achieving that goal.
This is one of the reasons Windows is so damned unreliable - they package drivers from these closed interface hardware shops, written by hardware engineers without the first clue about software development.
And yes, when the hardware engineers leave this all means the vendor isn't able to provide new drivers for that hardware - that's why you end up with 6 month old hardware that won't run on the operating system released today, and probably never will.
In the US they don't. I am in Australia, however, where we do. There are related laws in Australia, but they deal with merchantability (manufacturers and importers are liable for merchantability independently of contractual liability), which is a fuzzy line.
The limitation period here is 3 years from the cause of action, which normally begins at the time at which the damage arises.
Damn it, you beat me to it. Seriously, I paid $900 for a major brand camcorder and a year and 3 months later it's kaput - repair price exceeds replacement price. The problem - a manufacturing defect in the processor. The warranty - 1 year. That's the last time I buy expensive crap from Sony.
Incidentally, you ought to know that posts that don't get in within the first 30 minutes or so are unlikely to be moderated at all. It happens.
So there are two Americans without senses of humour. That hardly redeems you. The state of the American education system is very funny to the rest of the world.
Here's a shovel. Since you seem to want to dig yourself deeper, you should at least have appropriate tools at hand.
Thanks to the wonderful US education system, a significant number of Americans believe the world ends at the borders with Canada and Mexico.
JudgeFurious replied:
I was educated in the US and I am aware of nations beyond the borders of Canada and Mexico? How do you explain that?
And there we have a perfect example of the US education system - an admitted product of it does not know the difference between the phase "a significant number" and the word "all"
But more disturbingly, this individual seems to have been born without the slightest trace of a sense of humour. Now that is a tragedy.
Now there's arrogance for you. Where most cult leaders claim to be the second coming of Christ, this one claims to be the Almighty himself.
Thanks to the wonderful US education system, a significant number of Americans believe the world ends at the borders with Canada and Mexico. If they aren't aware life exists in countries outside the United States, why would they believe it exists on other planets?
Really, nothing to see here. Your grandma won't have to worry about GST when she sells her old stuff.
Unfortunately 188,536,724 appear to be duplicate copies of GNU's bfd (Binary File Descriptions) embedded in other projects.
It's not just damages to the other party you have to worry about. In a copyright infringement suit the plaintiff can seek an account of profits. If awarded, the infringer has to pay up all profits they made from the infringement (and there can still be profits from the infringement for this purpose even if the company makes a loss). This is the most likely remedy in a suit for infringing the GPL.
Additionally, by doing this you may be in breach of other (criminal) laws, for which lack of a requirement to pay damages may be small comfort.
As if that weren't enough, customers may be entitled to sue you for breach of implied warranties of title. If they do, you may lost all the profits and have to pay back revenue received from customers.
Casually disregarding licenses like this is a dangerous game. If you don't get sued, you may well get away with it, but if it starts to come undone it can implode on you in the most spectacular way.
Name one (make sure you're building a 64 bit application not a 32 bit one).
Yes, but this problem is easily detected by the compiler, and it throws a warning. It never even makes it to QA.
Only if there's no cast involved - when the 64 bit thing is a pointer and the 32 bit is an integer, there is likely to be a cast already to defeat warnings about incompatible types (C) or bypass type checking (C++).