Oh, you wanted details. I'm 66, have been a computer programmer since 1972 and have worked at fortune 500 firms (ATT Bell Labs, Intel) and startups (5 people firms you've never heard of through VA Linux - the dot com bubble, good memories). Sorry but whether I've been the youngest or the oldest person in the department I've always been treated as an engineer, age has had no impact.
Admittedly, I work in a relatively small niche (Unix/Linux kernel programmer) that might have some small part in why this hadn't been an issue.
a conviction resulting in a prison term can prohibit you from ever getting a job...
Close, but not exactly. This is where the distinction between misdemeanor vs. felony comes into play. Misdemeanors (jail time up to 1 year) typically do not result in forfeiture of civil rights (you still get to vote) but may result in loss of privileges (as in losing your taxi license from a misdemeanor recless driving conviction). Felonies (any jail time over 1 year), on the other hand, you are absolutely right, these result in significant penalties (loss of job opportunities, can't vote,...) long after the sentence has been served.
This explains old TV shows where I didn't understand why the judged sentenced someone to `a year plus a day'. That extra day turned the punishment into a felony.
Do I understand this `feature` correctly? If I enable it then all of my contacts now have access to my wifi credentials. I can imagine that I might want this feature for my wife and kids but there is no way in hell I would want to do this for every contact in my list. My wife I trust but the friend of a friend that I just added to my contact list - not so much (although thinking about it maybe that should be reversed).
If that is truly the way this thing works then this is one of the more brain dead ideas some clueless program manager came up with (ranks right up there with the idiot that decided that email messages should be HTML formatted and should contain active content).
Much as we dislike the NSA I don't think anyone would argue that they are stupid. Morally bankrupt, ethically challenged, constitutionally wrong - yes, but stupid - no. Therefore the NSA clearly knows that this is a stupid idea and will never work and will never be implemented. I have to believe this is a negotiating ploy (ask for something totally outrageous so that you can be bargained down to something merely obnoxious - which is what you wanted all along).
That being the case then this must be their totally outrageous start. What do they really want that they will `settle` for?
Guys, calm down. This is the Wall Street Journal, the most schizophrenic company in the world. Read a couple of issues of the newspaper and you'll see what I mean.
Articles - 99% of the paper, well written, fact based pieces on current issues of the day. Not balanced since it's understandably tilted toward the business aspects of those issues but an extremely reliable source of information.
Editorials - 2 pages, far right diatribes with the basic premise that big business & capitalism == good, everything else bad.
I don't know how the feature reporters survive in that environment but I applaud them for living in a harsh environment and doing an excellent job.
Personally, if I could afford solar panels, I'd be interested in what uses it could provide during power outages
Where I live, Colorado, solar provides nothing during a power outage (thank you very much Excel, the local supplier). My system is explicitly installed such that it does not provide power if the grid is off. I think the stated reason is safety, this way linemen don't have to worry about unexpected power when they are working on things. (I'm sure the cynical answer that this is just yet another impediment to solar is completely wrong:-)
Let me check my dictionary for the defintion of idiot:
1. n: A user, especially super user, who uses * as an agument without first checking to see what * expands into. 2. n: A user who leaves his directories world writeable so others can put random garbage in them.
The one line summary for this story is bad things happen to people who use a command without knowing what the command does.
I started in 1968 at Michigan State with punch cards on a CDC 6000 mainframe, a big one, all of 65K words of memory (60 bits per word but still, that was considered big back then). As a student I was guaranteed 1 run per day and yes, even after eyeballing my programs carefully I lost many days of work due to missplaced punctuation. It's amazing what you can get used to when you have no choice.
I remember my excitement when I was able to move to a research account from a student one. Research accounts could get as many runs as the system could turn around, typically around 4-5 per day - nirvanna! Of course, the research runs weren't guranteed so when the system got backed up (some physics professor tying up the machine for hours or down time due to HW failures) the student jobs got priority and your research job came back whenever they could get to it. I waited 2-3 days for a job more than once.
Back to punch cards, my favorite technique was something I saw one of the FORTRAN programmers do. The technique used the fact that you could put a line number on any card and it was possible to put multiple statements on the same card. This guy ended every single card with a goto statement to the next card in the deck. As he said, the operators could drop his deck, shuffle the cards and his program would still work properly. (We really didn't like or trust the operators back then.)
When did this story get written, the worst is pretty much past. At 11:30AM local time I'm looking at blue sky, the streams around Boulder crested last night, we're now in restoration mode (I'm lucky, my basement flooded out such that the hallway carpeting is soaked but there's no standing water, unlike my neighbors who share a wall with me and had about 2 inches of standing water throughout their basement).
Things are bad but, at least in Boulder, they're not catastrophic. Some of the surrounding communities, especially up toward the mountains, got it worse, there are some serious evacuations going on up there, but Boulder is fine.
What I find most troubling from the article is this:
"You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.
(Bold emphasis mine.) The casual way that a law enforcement agent advocated violating laws relating to probable cause is astonishing. Subconciously I know that they do this but to actually come out in print and admit it is really sad.
Obligatory Princess Bride quote - "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - I. Montoya.
The problem is we keep using the term health `insurance' when we are not buying insurance, we are buying health care coverage.
As you say, `insurance' is supposed to provide compensation when something unexpected happens - a rock breaking your windscreen is unexpected and auto insurance correctly pays for that event. Let's face it, if your `insurance' covers yearly health checkups and monthly prescriptions (e.g. insulin) then you are getting a benefit, not insurance.
Unfortunately, words have power and the terms we use to describe a thing winds up having a large impact on how we view that thing (abortion vs. choice anyone, why isn't that pro-abortion vs. anti-abortion)
You need to take a legal ethics class (go figure, lawyers are required to take an ethics class). A lawyer is not allowed to lie to the court, either in what they say or the documents they file. It makes it very hard for lawyers when they `know` that a client is guilty. Yes lawyers have to represent their clients as best they can but, at the same time, they cannot lie to the court. I believe that this is why there is an unwritten law that a lawyer never asks a client if he is guilty, there are some things it's just better not to know.
PS: IANAL but my wife is and I still remember when she took her ethics class.
You mean something like the Unix `file' command that has been available since, oh, forever? To quote from the man page:
There has been a file command in every UNIX since at least Research Version 4 (man page dated November, 1973). The System V version introduced one significant major change: the external list of magic number types. This slowed the program down slightly but made it a lot more flexible.
6. Pending IO cancellation - kill. kill -SIGHUP. kill -SIGTERM. kill-SIGKILL. 90% of things will die before you hit the fourth option. *Anything* will die when you do on the last one, no matter what. I don't know how I tolerated taskmanager "kills" for so long.
1) You do realize that `kill' with no explicit signal sends a SIGTERM? Your first and third `kill' commands are identical.
2) SIGKILL is not guaranteed to kill all processes. Anything sleeping at a priority below PZERO cannot be killed[*]. Admittedly, this should `never happen' since it represents a bug in the kernel/device driver but it happens. NFS is noted for having some `issues` will creating unkillable processes.
[*] If you want to be pedantic about it the `kill' command doesn't really kill a process. All it does is send a signal to the process and, typically, the process doesn't try to process the signal so it takes the default action, which is to kill the process. Processes sleeping below PZERO don't wake up for signals so, the kill signal is pending but the process never processes it and stays in the system.
Assuming that MS is truly giving away Windows for free then I have to believe that this is either an abuse of monopoly power or a case of illegal dumping. Selling a product at a loss in order to undercut a competitor has got to be illegal somehow, doesn't it?
What's your beef with Qwest? I use their DSL and, although they're not perfect, they are perfectly adequate for my needs. I work out of my home and run a server so I have static IP and 24/7 connectivity, no bandwidth limits and no hassles. It may not be as fast as Comcast (1 Mb down) but it's more that sufficient for my needs (and I don't have to deal with Comcast).
Actually, 2 lotteries, one for how long it will take before this system is first compromised and the second for how long after that until MicroSoft admits that the breakin occurred.
This is one of the reasons I bought this particular watch (Citizen C300). The rotating bezel is a slide rule, complete with set points for doing certain unit conversions (knots -> statute miles, liters -> gallons).
Take that you owners of 4-function calculator watches:-)
Slashdot Mirror
The Daily Show on Comedy Central did just that:
http://www.cc.com/shows/the-da...
send or receive classified materials over an unclassified network,
You mean like when he did exactly that: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/08/...
And no, just because this info originally came from a public news article doesn't allow an official from the government to then disclose it.
Seriously? You blame Obama for a court that was created in 1987 and legislation that was enacted during the Bush (the younger) administration.
Hate on Obama, that's fine (lots of people will join you) but please knock him for things he has some minimal responsibility for.
Oh, you wanted details. I'm 66, have been a computer programmer since 1972 and have worked at fortune 500 firms (ATT Bell Labs, Intel) and startups (5 people firms you've never heard of through VA Linux - the dot com bubble, good memories). Sorry but whether I've been the youngest or the oldest person in the department I've always been treated as an engineer, age has had no impact.
Admittedly, I work in a relatively small niche (Unix/Linux kernel programmer) that might have some small part in why this hadn't been an issue.
a conviction resulting in a prison term can prohibit you from ever getting a job...
Close, but not exactly. This is where the distinction between misdemeanor vs. felony comes into play. Misdemeanors (jail time up to 1 year) typically do not result in forfeiture of civil rights (you still get to vote) but may result in loss of privileges (as in losing your taxi license from a misdemeanor recless driving conviction). Felonies (any jail time over 1 year), on the other hand, you are absolutely right, these result in significant penalties (loss of job opportunities, can't vote, ...) long after the sentence has been served.
This explains old TV shows where I didn't understand why the judged sentenced someone to `a year plus a day'. That extra day turned the punishment into a felony.
alias python=gcc
Do I understand this `feature` correctly? If I enable it then all of my contacts now have access to my wifi credentials. I can imagine that I might want this feature for my wife and kids but there is no way in hell I would want to do this for every contact in my list. My wife I trust but the friend of a friend that I just added to my contact list - not so much (although thinking about it maybe that should be reversed).
If that is truly the way this thing works then this is one of the more brain dead ideas some clueless program manager came up with (ranks right up there with the idiot that decided that email messages should be HTML formatted and should contain active content).
Much as we dislike the NSA I don't think anyone would argue that they are stupid. Morally bankrupt, ethically challenged, constitutionally wrong - yes, but stupid - no. Therefore the NSA clearly knows that this is a stupid idea and will never work and will never be implemented. I have to believe this is a negotiating ploy (ask for something totally outrageous so that you can be bargained down to something merely obnoxious - which is what you wanted all along).
That being the case then this must be their totally outrageous start. What do they really want that they will `settle` for?
Guys, calm down. This is the Wall Street Journal, the most schizophrenic company in the world. Read a couple of issues of the newspaper and you'll see what I mean.
Articles - 99% of the paper, well written, fact based pieces on current issues of the day. Not balanced since it's understandably tilted toward the business aspects of those issues but an extremely reliable source of information.
Editorials - 2 pages, far right diatribes with the basic premise that big business & capitalism == good, everything else bad.
I don't know how the feature reporters survive in that environment but I applaud them for living in a harsh environment and doing an excellent job.
Personally, if I could afford solar panels, I'd be interested in what uses it could provide during power outages
Where I live, Colorado, solar provides nothing during a power outage (thank you very much Excel, the local supplier). My system is explicitly installed such that it does not provide power if the grid is off. I think the stated reason is safety, this way linemen don't have to worry about unexpected power when they are working on things. (I'm sure the cynical answer that this is just yet another impediment to solar is completely wrong :-)
Let me check my dictionary for the defintion of idiot:
1. n: A user, especially super user, who uses * as an agument without first checking to see what * expands into.
2. n: A user who leaves his directories world writeable so others can put random garbage in them.
The one line summary for this story is bad things happen to people who use a command without knowing what the command does.
including prioritization given by ISPs to their subsidiaries that make and stream content
Sigh. Comcast won't prioritize its subsidiary's traffic, it will de-prioritize its competitors traffic.
Please, just classify ISPs as a common carrier (like you should have done years ago) and be done with it.
I started in 1968 at Michigan State with punch cards on a CDC 6000 mainframe, a big one, all of 65K words of memory (60 bits per word but still, that was considered big back then). As a student I was guaranteed 1 run per day and yes, even after eyeballing my programs carefully I lost many days of work due to missplaced punctuation. It's amazing what you can get used to when you have no choice.
I remember my excitement when I was able to move to a research account from a student one. Research accounts could get as many runs as the system could turn around, typically around 4-5 per day - nirvanna! Of course, the research runs weren't guranteed so when the system got backed up (some physics professor tying up the machine for hours or down time due to HW failures) the student jobs got priority and your research job came back whenever they could get to it. I waited 2-3 days for a job more than once.
Back to punch cards, my favorite technique was something I saw one of the FORTRAN programmers do. The technique used the fact that you could put a line number on any card and it was possible to put multiple statements on the same card. This guy ended every single card with a goto statement to the next card in the deck. As he said, the operators could drop his deck, shuffle the cards and his program would still work properly. (We really didn't like or trust the operators back then.)
Colin Kinney said excessive use of technology damages concentration and causes behavioural problems such as irritability and a lack of control.
Seriously? These `behavioural problems` describe every pre-schooler I've ever met.
When did this story get written, the worst is pretty much past. At 11:30AM local time I'm looking at blue sky, the streams around Boulder crested last night, we're now in restoration mode (I'm lucky, my basement flooded out such that the hallway carpeting is soaked but there's no standing water, unlike my neighbors who share a wall with me and had about 2 inches of standing water throughout their basement).
Things are bad but, at least in Boulder, they're not catastrophic. Some of the surrounding communities, especially up toward the mountains, got it worse, there are some serious evacuations going on up there, but Boulder is fine.
What I find most troubling from the article is this:
"You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.
(Bold emphasis mine.) The casual way that a law enforcement agent advocated violating laws relating to probable cause is astonishing. Subconciously I know that they do this but to actually come out in print and admit it is really sad.
The problem is we keep using the term health `insurance' when we are not buying insurance, we are buying health care coverage.
As you say, `insurance' is supposed to provide compensation when something unexpected happens - a rock breaking your windscreen is unexpected and auto insurance correctly pays for that event. Let's face it, if your `insurance' covers yearly health checkups and monthly prescriptions (e.g. insulin) then you are getting a benefit, not insurance.
Unfortunately, words have power and the terms we use to describe a thing winds up having a large impact on how we view that thing (abortion vs. choice anyone, why isn't that pro-abortion vs. anti-abortion)
Sigh. Refer to the subject line.
--
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale.
In re: misrepresent the truth.
You need to take a legal ethics class (go figure, lawyers are required to take an ethics class). A lawyer is not allowed to lie to the court, either in what they say or the documents they file. It makes it very hard for lawyers when they `know` that a client is guilty. Yes lawyers have to represent their clients as best they can but, at the same time, they cannot lie to the court. I believe that this is why there is an unwritten law that a lawyer never asks a client if he is guilty, there are some things it's just better not to know.
PS: IANAL but my wife is and I still remember when she took her ethics class.
You mean something like the Unix `file' command that has been available since, oh, forever? To quote from the man page:
There has been a file command in every UNIX since at least Research Version 4 (man page dated November, 1973). The System V version introduced one significant major change: the external list of magic number types. This slowed the program down slightly but made it a lot more flexible.
6. Pending IO cancellation - kill. kill -SIGHUP. kill -SIGTERM. kill-SIGKILL. 90% of things will die before you hit the fourth option. *Anything* will die when you do on the last one, no matter what. I don't know how I tolerated taskmanager "kills" for so long.
1) You do realize that `kill' with no explicit signal sends a SIGTERM? Your first and third `kill' commands are identical.
2) SIGKILL is not guaranteed to kill all processes. Anything sleeping at a priority below PZERO cannot be killed[*]. Admittedly, this should `never happen' since it represents a bug in the kernel/device driver but it happens. NFS is noted for having some `issues` will creating unkillable processes.
[*] If you want to be pedantic about it the `kill' command doesn't really kill a process. All it does is send a signal to the process and, typically, the process doesn't try to process the signal so it takes the default action, which is to kill the process. Processes sleeping below PZERO don't wake up for signals so, the kill signal is pending but the process never processes it and stays in the system.
Assuming that MS is truly giving away Windows for free then I have to believe that this is either an abuse of monopoly power or a case of illegal dumping. Selling a product at a loss in order to undercut a competitor has got to be illegal somehow, doesn't it?
What's your beef with Qwest? I use their DSL and, although they're not perfect, they are perfectly adequate for my needs. I work out of my home and run a server so I have static IP and 24/7 connectivity, no bandwidth limits and no hassles. It may not be as fast as Comcast (1 Mb down) but it's more that sufficient for my needs (and I don't have to deal with Comcast).
Actually, 2 lotteries, one for how long it will take before this system is first compromised and the second for how long after that until MicroSoft admits that the breakin occurred.
I pick 6 months & 7 months, respectively.
This is one of the reasons I bought this particular watch (Citizen C300). The rotating bezel is a slide rule, complete with set points for doing certain unit conversions (knots -> statute miles, liters -> gallons).
:-)
Take that you owners of 4-function calculator watches