yes, I see where that could fall apart in a few spots, but I'm not a professional grifter, a variation of it should be achievable.
My brother-in-law IS a professional grifter, and he has spent more of his adult life in prison than as a free man. I assure you that the scheme you described will not last for very long at all (in the US).
TFA described exactly why you need some idiot "mule" to act as your middleman, and described exactly why that idiot "mule" is the one that ends up losing all the money (the original victim is always made whole). And TFA described why the real bottleneck in financial fraud is in recruiting idiot "mules" and not stealing passwords.
It stands to reason that making it harder to recruit idiot "mules" would have a far greater benefit than making it hard to compromise banking passwords.
I'm all for solar energy. But I'm not for throwing our money away
Yes indeed. Instead of slapping tariffs on the "dumped" Chinese solar panels, we should have been buying every single one they were willing to sell us at below-market prices.
Indeed. If Amazon can actually pull off same-day delivery with local warehouses close to everyone, I'd say that they deserve the market dominance. Right now the choice between online and retail a question of convenience vs getting your hands on the product faster. If I can have the former without sacrificing the latter, retail should damn well adapt or die.
Yeah, seriously. Each of those few hundred warehouses will need to stock a large variety of products or same-day delivery doesn't work so well. Once you go that route, you're basically just a brick-and-mortar business where you go to the customer instead of the other way around.
I'm pretty sure Amazon has just come to the conclusion that the benefits of having optimally-placed distribution locations far outweigh having to collect the taxes. Plus, I'm sure that most state governments are WAY more friendly (wink wink) if you are tossing a few million dollars in their direction every 3 months.
Everyone else will attempt to explain OO using OO terms to a non-OO programmer.
OK, with you so far...
Thats like trying to teach my dog to sail a boat by speaking Japanese. I'll try a different tack.
But you're still trying to teach your dog to sail using sailing terms!
Now if on the other hand your dog was Japanese...
Ah, but is he sailing on a starboard tack or a port tack? And should he tack or jibe the boat? And should he attach the sheets to the tack or the clew of the sail?
Oh, and by the way, you left color[0] and [1] undefined on both of your Buttons.
The C standard requires the compiler initialize all stack-allocated memory to zero. color[0] and color[1] are exactly as the OP specified. To be safe, they should indeed be initialized to zero. In professional practice, I always memset everything I allocate to 0 for the entire block of memory I have allocated, and then initialize individual members of structures to whatever their default value should be.
Say you're coding a graphical interface and you want two buttons for okay and cancel. They both need to be blue. The toolkit yours using will have an object called Button that has the basic characteristics of what a button its, e.g., a clickable icon that does something. You sub class this Button and give it the specifics.
Button okay = new Button;
Button cancel = new Button;
You now have two objects of type Button. Next you get specific.
okay.onClick(proceed());
cancel.onClick(abort());
okay.color("00f");
cancel.color("00f");
This is terrible pseudocode butyou get the idea. instead of having to code buttons from scratch, you sub class them and only add what you need. typing on a tablet so I hope I haven't been unclear.
OK:
typedef struct button {
long long color[3];
void (*onClick)(int); } Button;
No one can hire illegals, so its a valid question to ask *any* applicant.
"Are you legally allowed to work in the US, and do you have proof"
You do not have to be a citizen to work in the US. There are all sorts of visas that allow non-US citizens to work in the US, and then there is NAFTA - a lesser-known section of that treaty allows citizens of Mexico, Canada and the US to work in any of the three countries for any professional occupation on a multi-page list you can find on the State Department website.
This exact topic recently came up at a local Inn of Court, and after a bit of discussion, the consensus among the judges and attorneys present was that the company would be liable for all the stupid things the employee did with that social network account.
There is a real reason companies typically have one single spokesman and many have a PR department.
A peek into.iba files and a comparison with epub files evidences that Apple deliberately re-designed and implemented features in order to make the ibooks file format incompatible with industry standards.
It's pretty amazing that someone can come to this conclusion based on a comparison of the output files. Really?
The iPad 2 has outstanding graphics performance compared to other tablets despite the graphics chip having similar or less processing power. They control both the hardware and software, allowing them to optimize the hell out of it.
In this case, Apple controls the file format, the display software, AND the display hardware. And your conclusion is that Apple deliberately redesigned and implemented features to make sure it was incompatible with industry standards? How about a performance comparison? Until proven otherwise, this is just Apple optimizing the hell out of it to get maximum performance on the iPad.
You know, being the anti-fanboy is just as bad as being the fanboy.
Actually, customers largely refuse to buy based on service. Among the service-is-king tier, there's room in the market for Neiman Marcus and... uh... well, that's it. Everyone else that tries, regrets the move.
You completely forgot the one that actually does it the best - Nordstrom. And they do online sales right as well. If you order something online it is shipped from the closest B & M store that has it in stock. No separate supply chain or distribution system - it is one company. Free shipping, free returns, etc.
They also bring out exclusive products - during their half-yearly sale for whichever gender you are shopping for. Except again, they do it right. For example, during the men's sale, you can a pair of Allen Edmunds made-in-the-USA shoes for around $200 or so. They'll last forever, look good forever, and are designed to be resoled when the time comes. They're exclusive to Nordstrom but that's a benefit for Nordstrom AND the customer.
Amazon produces a Kindle app for almost every platform, which ensures that the Kindle eBook marketplace is dominant. But buying an actual Kindle device limits you to the Kindle eBook marketplace.
The Kindle App is the single app I use most on my iPad (but far from the most used app as I am not the only user), but it is far easier to get an epub or PDF onto an iPad (and into the Apple iBooks) than it is to do the same on a Kindle device. I can get on to Safari Books Online (O'Reilly's eBook website) through my employer's proxy server. My iPad is an amazing programming partner - the best reference source I have ever had. It is worth the extra money to have all of those extra book sources. (I think Android tables can do this as well, I'm arguing against the Kindle and not specifically FOR the iPad)
Windows 8 will be great - for the vast majority of people who use it.
Business users will take so long to migrate that Windows 9 will be out by the time they get there. My office hopes to complete the migration from XP to Windows 7 early next year.
Apple has seen steady sales growth for their Mac lineup. A large number of these sales go to people switching.
Tablet and other mobile devices continue to take market share, especially from low-end PCs. My sister barely touches her desktop computer now that she has an Android smartphone.
Linux on the desktop continues to grow - slowly, yes. But it is growing, anecdotally from people that want an OS upgrade but don't want to buy a retail copy of Windows (because of the cost, nothing else).
The vast majority of Windows 8 users will be new or inexperienced computer users. And it will be great for them. I think Microsoft is doing a very good job on this. The developer preview they put out needs a lot of refinement, but I believe it will get there.
As an aside, I think that the new application management concepts are going to end up being very successful. Mainstream developers got their first taste with Android and iOS, OS X Lion has them, and now Windows 8 will as well. Linux should not ignore this. The system knows far more about its current conditions than an application ever could and can really benefit from shutting down and restarting applications without the user realizing if the conditions are right for it.
It suggests that even politicians loath politicians and find their company insufferable.
Country A gets recognised by UNESCO, overwhelmingly and Country B is apoplectic, while its mate, Country C, claims this was a grave error and withdraws its tuppence of support for UNESCO. Country B strikes back by authorising even more settlements in occupied territories claimed by Country A.
The United States is prohibited by federal law from providing support to UN groups if that group has member states which are not recognized by the full United Nations body. President Obama warned Sarkozy and the Palestinians to knock it off before the United States is forced to stop providing funds to UN groups that really matter like the International Atomic Energy Agency. You know, the people trying to keep Iran from getting The Bomb.
To their credit, Sarkozy and the Palestinians now understand the implications and have agreed to stop.
Apps like Viber will seriously eat into their bottom line. Will they try and disable it or charge for Viber texts?
Even simpler is iOS 5. If you are sending a message to another person that has iOS 5, it is routed over a data connection through Apple's messaging servers and is free.
Now of course you now have to trust Apple instead of your phone company. But... It's free and has no advertising.
Hmm... to get rigorous medical tests, apply for job in Antarctica...
The University of Chicago has three job listings for the Amundsen-Scott research station at the South Pole - two for machinists and one for a telescope operator. Feel free to apply - I bet they get better treatment than the Raytheon employees.
50,000 pre-orders per day is very good, but comparing it to the iPad is just asking for trouble. Wait until we get closer to the actual release date. I highly doubt that daily iPad pre-orders were linear in the weeks leading up to the official release, just as I doubt daily Fire orders will be linear. There are six weeks to go. A lot can happen in six weeks!
If they modified the standard so that the system would give a confirmation popup saying
"You are about to load an unsigned operating system, do you want to do so? To continue may compromise the security of your system.
This way people could load Linux if they wanted but the "joe average" would know something is wrong if he was compromised by a boot virus. This would actually be more sensible than preventing other systems, otherwise they will have literally thousands of hackers trying to discover the boot signing keys and publish them online like they did for blue-ray.
That's great, but how is that Microsoft's problem? Seriously, if people want Linux to boot on this new generation of motherboard/firmware, then people need to do the work to make it happen. It's not Microsoft's job. Find an OEM to help and get to work.
Ghana is not nearly as bad off as many other sub-Saharan African countries, and yet still there is much poverty. People living in the region (their equiv. of a state/county) where I used to reside are finding themselves pushed out of their houses as rents rise from $25-40/month to $100 or more per month due to an influx of oil contractors (now that Ghana has offshore oil pumping as of 2011). The problem is not $100 rents, or even $1000 rents; the problem is that some can afford such rents, and some cannot. In short, the problem is inequality. I am not so naïve as to expect the world will be perfectly fair, but surely we can strive for some basic assurances for all humans — adequate food, water, medical care, social productivity, and basic economic security.
Excellent post. But I would like to point out that if I can build the $1000 house in Ghana for $5000 and rent it out for $40 a month, I am getting a 9.6% annual return on my investment. That is a great return these days. I wouldn't claim to know how to solve the problems of inequality, but a stable home at what appears to be an affordable rental rate is surely a good start. Why not start a benevolent landlord NGO that matches capital looking for a good home with residents looking for a good home?
LAW states you must have X outlets per room, and XX amp of electrical service in the house. Hell they even dictate the number of Cable TV outlets required nowdays.
A 500SQ foot pinwheel home is large enough for a family of 4 to live comfortably. If you are not the typical american slob you can get away with a pair of $200.00 Harbor Freight Solar panel kits and a couple of deep cycle batteries for electricity to give you lighting for the entire home and a couple of outside lights, and if you are lucky you can charge that OLPC laptop that is used for the rich kids. if your well is properly sized you can run it also off of the solar+battery system. a propane tank outside will supply cooking, heat for home and water.
Most of that is due to municipalities getting tired of responding to fires, people dieing, etc because of idiots with bad electrical systems, cords running across doorways and who knows how many other possible dangerous scenarios. You have a fairly low user ID, so obviously you could build a good and cheap and safe shack, but your neighbor is a different story altogether.
Regardless, these house designs are really quite modular so adding a conduit and a wall outlet to every panel (in the same place on each panel) is a minimal expense at the design/construction stage. Once everything is put together running the wire in the conduit is easy. It's probably going to be no more than $5000-$7500 on a home of this size even with an inspection by the most expensive licensed union electrician you can find. In the US, that's a trivial expense for a cheap house.
Slashdot Mirror
Google has finally come to the realization that my browsing history from 2004 isn't worth the disk it is stored on.
First, this requires that people are willing to sell
If nobody is willing to "sell" bitcoins then they are worthless as a currency.
yes, I see where that could fall apart in a few spots, but I'm not a professional grifter, a variation of it should be achievable.
My brother-in-law IS a professional grifter, and he has spent more of his adult life in prison than as a free man. I assure you that the scheme you described will not last for very long at all (in the US).
TFA described exactly why you need some idiot "mule" to act as your middleman, and described exactly why that idiot "mule" is the one that ends up losing all the money (the original victim is always made whole). And TFA described why the real bottleneck in financial fraud is in recruiting idiot "mules" and not stealing passwords.
It stands to reason that making it harder to recruit idiot "mules" would have a far greater benefit than making it hard to compromise banking passwords.
I'm all for solar energy. But I'm not for throwing our money away
Yes indeed. Instead of slapping tariffs on the "dumped" Chinese solar panels, we should have been buying every single one they were willing to sell us at below-market prices.
Indeed. If Amazon can actually pull off same-day delivery with local warehouses close to everyone, I'd say that they deserve the market dominance. Right now the choice between online and retail a question of convenience vs getting your hands on the product faster. If I can have the former without sacrificing the latter, retail should damn well adapt or die.
Yeah, seriously. Each of those few hundred warehouses will need to stock a large variety of products or same-day delivery doesn't work so well. Once you go that route, you're basically just a brick-and-mortar business where you go to the customer instead of the other way around.
I'm pretty sure Amazon has just come to the conclusion that the benefits of having optimally-placed distribution locations far outweigh having to collect the taxes. Plus, I'm sure that most state governments are WAY more friendly (wink wink) if you are tossing a few million dollars in their direction every 3 months.
OK, with you so far...
But you're still trying to teach your dog to sail using sailing terms!
Now if on the other hand your dog was Japanese...
Ah, but is he sailing on a starboard tack or a port tack? And should he tack or jibe the boat? And should he attach the sheets to the tack or the clew of the sail?
Oh, and by the way, you left color[0] and [1] undefined on both of your Buttons.
The C standard requires the compiler initialize all stack-allocated memory to zero. color[0] and color[1] are exactly as the OP specified. To be safe, they should indeed be initialized to zero. In professional practice, I always memset everything I allocate to 0 for the entire block of memory I have allocated, and then initialize individual members of structures to whatever their default value should be.
Well, that was embarrassing. Wait, no.
I intended this to be a challenge.
Fill in the blanks.
Stupid slash code.
Say you're coding a graphical interface and you want two buttons for okay and cancel. They both need to be blue. The toolkit yours using will have an object called Button that has the basic characteristics of what a button its, e.g., a clickable icon that does something. You sub class this Button and give it the specifics.
Button okay = new Button;
Button cancel = new Button;
You now have two objects of type Button. Next you get specific.
okay.onClick(proceed());
cancel.onClick(abort());
okay.color("00f");
cancel.color("00f");
This is terrible pseudocode butyou get the idea. instead of having to code buttons from scratch, you sub class them and only add what you need. typing on a tablet so I hope I haven't been unclear.
OK:
typedef struct button {
long long color[3];
void (*onClick)(int);
} Button;
Button okay;
Button cancel;
okay.onClick =
cancel.onClick =
okay.color[2] = 0xffffffff;
cancel.color[2] = 0xffffffff;
The C version is probably smaller and faster than your version.
No one can hire illegals, so its a valid question to ask *any* applicant.
"Are you legally allowed to work in the US, and do you have proof"
You do not have to be a citizen to work in the US. There are all sorts of visas that allow non-US citizens to work in the US, and then there is NAFTA - a lesser-known section of that treaty allows citizens of Mexico, Canada and the US to work in any of the three countries for any professional occupation on a multi-page list you can find on the State Department website.
This exact topic recently came up at a local Inn of Court, and after a bit of discussion, the consensus among the judges and attorneys present was that the company would be liable for all the stupid things the employee did with that social network account.
There is a real reason companies typically have one single spokesman and many have a PR department.
A peek into .iba files and a comparison with epub files evidences that Apple deliberately re-designed and implemented features in order to make the ibooks file format incompatible with industry standards.
It's pretty amazing that someone can come to this conclusion based on a comparison of the output files. Really?
The iPad 2 has outstanding graphics performance compared to other tablets despite the graphics chip having similar or less processing power. They control both the hardware and software, allowing them to optimize the hell out of it.
In this case, Apple controls the file format, the display software, AND the display hardware. And your conclusion is that Apple deliberately redesigned and implemented features to make sure it was incompatible with industry standards? How about a performance comparison? Until proven otherwise, this is just Apple optimizing the hell out of it to get maximum performance on the iPad.
You know, being the anti-fanboy is just as bad as being the fanboy.
Actually, customers largely refuse to buy based on service. Among the service-is-king tier, there's room in the market for Neiman Marcus and... uh... well, that's it. Everyone else that tries, regrets the move.
You completely forgot the one that actually does it the best - Nordstrom. And they do online sales right as well. If you order something online it is shipped from the closest B & M store that has it in stock. No separate supply chain or distribution system - it is one company. Free shipping, free returns, etc.
They also bring out exclusive products - during their half-yearly sale for whichever gender you are shopping for. Except again, they do it right. For example, during the men's sale, you can a pair of Allen Edmunds made-in-the-USA shoes for around $200 or so. They'll last forever, look good forever, and are designed to be resoled when the time comes. They're exclusive to Nordstrom but that's a benefit for Nordstrom AND the customer.
Amazon produces a Kindle app for almost every platform, which ensures that the Kindle eBook marketplace is dominant. But buying an actual Kindle device limits you to the Kindle eBook marketplace.
The Kindle App is the single app I use most on my iPad (but far from the most used app as I am not the only user), but it is far easier to get an epub or PDF onto an iPad (and into the Apple iBooks) than it is to do the same on a Kindle device. I can get on to Safari Books Online (O'Reilly's eBook website) through my employer's proxy server. My iPad is an amazing programming partner - the best reference source I have ever had. It is worth the extra money to have all of those extra book sources. (I think Android tables can do this as well, I'm arguing against the Kindle and not specifically FOR the iPad)
Just pay the extra money. It is worth it.
Because they could have hired 11,000 US workers and they wouldn't have had this problem.
Yes, they could hire 11,000 US workers to test every single part - if Congress would increase the defense budget.
Windows 8 will be great - for the vast majority of people who use it.
Business users will take so long to migrate that Windows 9 will be out by the time they get there. My office hopes to complete the migration from XP to Windows 7 early next year.
Apple has seen steady sales growth for their Mac lineup. A large number of these sales go to people switching.
Tablet and other mobile devices continue to take market share, especially from low-end PCs. My sister barely touches her desktop computer now that she has an Android smartphone.
Linux on the desktop continues to grow - slowly, yes. But it is growing, anecdotally from people that want an OS upgrade but don't want to buy a retail copy of Windows (because of the cost, nothing else).
The vast majority of Windows 8 users will be new or inexperienced computer users. And it will be great for them. I think Microsoft is doing a very good job on this. The developer preview they put out needs a lot of refinement, but I believe it will get there.
As an aside, I think that the new application management concepts are going to end up being very successful. Mainstream developers got their first taste with Android and iOS, OS X Lion has them, and now Windows 8 will as well. Linux should not ignore this. The system knows far more about its current conditions than an application ever could and can really benefit from shutting down and restarting applications without the user realizing if the conditions are right for it.
It suggests that even politicians loath politicians and find their company insufferable.
Country A gets recognised by UNESCO, overwhelmingly and Country B is apoplectic, while its mate, Country C, claims this was a grave error and withdraws its tuppence of support for UNESCO. Country B strikes back by authorising even more settlements in occupied territories claimed by Country A.
The United States is prohibited by federal law from providing support to UN groups if that group has member states which are not recognized by the full United Nations body. President Obama warned Sarkozy and the Palestinians to knock it off before the United States is forced to stop providing funds to UN groups that really matter like the International Atomic Energy Agency. You know, the people trying to keep Iran from getting The Bomb.
To their credit, Sarkozy and the Palestinians now understand the implications and have agreed to stop.
Apps like Viber will seriously eat into their bottom line. Will they try and disable it or charge for Viber texts?
Even simpler is iOS 5. If you are sending a message to another person that has iOS 5, it is routed over a data connection through Apple's messaging servers and is free.
Now of course you now have to trust Apple instead of your phone company. But... It's free and has no advertising.
Is your rocket safe for the environment?
Was the rocket outside the environment when the front fell off?
Hmm... to get rigorous medical tests, apply for job in Antarctica...
The University of Chicago has three job listings for the Amundsen-Scott research station at the South Pole - two for machinists and one for a telescope operator. Feel free to apply - I bet they get better treatment than the Raytheon employees.
50,000 pre-orders per day is very good, but comparing it to the iPad is just asking for trouble. Wait until we get closer to the actual release date. I highly doubt that daily iPad pre-orders were linear in the weeks leading up to the official release, just as I doubt daily Fire orders will be linear. There are six weeks to go. A lot can happen in six weeks!
If they modified the standard so that the system would give a confirmation popup saying
This way people could load Linux if they wanted but the "joe average" would know something is wrong if he was compromised by a boot virus. This would actually be more sensible than preventing other systems, otherwise they will have literally thousands of hackers trying to discover the boot signing keys and publish them online like they did for blue-ray.
That's great, but how is that Microsoft's problem? Seriously, if people want Linux to boot on this new generation of motherboard/firmware, then people need to do the work to make it happen. It's not Microsoft's job. Find an OEM to help and get to work.
Nice try. I've patented the act of being fucked by legislation. And since I'm first to file, you're kind of fucked. If I give you permission, that is.
In the old days, the patent office required you to send them a working example of your invention for analysis.
I'd say that legislation has certainly helped you out. Unless you are into that kind of thing. Which is cool. I've got nothing against it.
Ghana is not nearly as bad off as many other sub-Saharan African countries, and yet still there is much poverty. People living in the region (their equiv. of a state/county) where I used to reside are finding themselves pushed out of their houses as rents rise from $25-40/month to $100 or more per month due to an influx of oil contractors (now that Ghana has offshore oil pumping as of 2011). The problem is not $100 rents, or even $1000 rents; the problem is that some can afford such rents, and some cannot. In short, the problem is inequality. I am not so naïve as to expect the world will be perfectly fair, but surely we can strive for some basic assurances for all humans — adequate food, water, medical care, social productivity, and basic economic security.
Excellent post. But I would like to point out that if I can build the $1000 house in Ghana for $5000 and rent it out for $40 a month, I am getting a 9.6% annual return on my investment. That is a great return these days. I wouldn't claim to know how to solve the problems of inequality, but a stable home at what appears to be an affordable rental rate is surely a good start. Why not start a benevolent landlord NGO that matches capital looking for a good home with residents looking for a good home?
LAW states you must have X outlets per room, and XX amp of electrical service in the house. Hell they even dictate the number of Cable TV outlets required nowdays.
A 500SQ foot pinwheel home is large enough for a family of 4 to live comfortably. If you are not the typical american slob you can get away with a pair of $200.00 Harbor Freight Solar panel kits and a couple of deep cycle batteries for electricity to give you lighting for the entire home and a couple of outside lights, and if you are lucky you can charge that OLPC laptop that is used for the rich kids. if your well is properly sized you can run it also off of the solar+battery system. a propane tank outside will supply cooking, heat for home and water.
Most of that is due to municipalities getting tired of responding to fires, people dieing, etc because of idiots with bad electrical systems, cords running across doorways and who knows how many other possible dangerous scenarios. You have a fairly low user ID, so obviously you could build a good and cheap and safe shack, but your neighbor is a different story altogether.
Regardless, these house designs are really quite modular so adding a conduit and a wall outlet to every panel (in the same place on each panel) is a minimal expense at the design/construction stage. Once everything is put together running the wire in the conduit is easy. It's probably going to be no more than $5000-$7500 on a home of this size even with an inspection by the most expensive licensed union electrician you can find. In the US, that's a trivial expense for a cheap house.