Everyone assumes someone is already out there testing all open-source software, which is why it never seems to get done. Also, deliberate bugs and backdoors simply wouldn't be checked back in.
TFA quote:
Ms Hamilton said that, by the time the figure reached £36,000, she lied to the Post Office - wrongly telling them the books were balancing just so that she could open the office the next day.
With closed-source, the choices Ms Hamilton has:
* keep covering the differences caused by the bug
* refuse to pay and instead sue the Post Office/Royal Mail with the hope they'll ask Horizon computer system to check. Not going to happen: the plaintiff carries the burden of proof, the Post Office has no incentive to do anything.
With OSS, Ms Hamilton has (alone or in by association with other sub-postmasters) the choice between:
* do the same as for close source. or * hire a QA team and, upon obtaining the proof, sue the Post Office for the unwarranted requests, cost of source audit and other unspecified damages. The Post Office has the choice between to keep losing such suits or pay their own source audit/QA process and release the fixes in OSS.
I wonder which of the two would minimize the total social cost of the package maintenance (in the very specific terms of the "unseen costs")?
I got an HP DeskJet 500 on the floor right here, ready to be taken apart for its smooth rods and stepper motors, parts that will be used to build a desktop CNC.
Save your time and hear my 3 words: "The office" movie.
At some point, with all of those design patterns floating around in cyber-space, isn't it going to just be a matter of a program assembling the pieces based on the parameters inputted by the user, not the programmer?
There's this anecdote about a mechanic which slightly adjusted a screw and thus repaired an expensive car many others failed before. Being asked why he charged thousands of dollars for a 3 mins job, he answered: "Look sonny, you ain't paying me for tightening that screw, you are paying for me knowing which screw to tighten" (those floating design pattern won't magically settle in the necessary form just by drag-dropping).
The state department's budget is about $50 billion annually. There is probably some waste in there, but shaving off $630k in Facebook marketing is not a very promising place to start (that'd be a savings of 0.00126%!).
Speaking of "it's relative": what would you do with $630K? Isn't it a pity they get wasted?
Besides which, various PR nonsense is a big part of what the state department does; it's sort of the marketing/sales department of the U.S. government.
Hell, yeah... like the citizens need more ads for bullsh... aren't they paying already even without campaigns? Or is anyone under any delusion the top 1% will get to click the "Like" and suddenly agree to pay more taxes?
Sad, because the EU may had imposed the ban for nothing: unless they also impose a quarantine against anything/anyone coming from outside, the drug-resistant staph will get into EU (directly from US or via other routes).
One wonders: would this staph strain they bred qualify to WMD?
There is a similar lack of recovery options for human stupidity. And let's be honest: It's more abundant in the universe than hydrogen, and infinitely harder to defend against, precisely because stupidity is far more cunning and unpredictable than intelligence could ever hope to be.
The last I knew, the stuff that's more abundant than hydrogen was called "dark matter/energy". You mean they lately discovered those are actually "stupidity in action"?
.... but unless they have the worlds top obfuscating coders working there (quite possible) , how long do you think it would be until someone spots the suspect code especially in something as well trodden as the Linux kernel or GNU utilities? I would guess not too long.
Would you like to give it a go and reduce the guesswork?
If I could, I would try to convince the Romans of the past to stop building roads. The reason for this is that I've discovered that since the advent of roads, there has been such a phenomenon as road-side bandits, highway robberies, and even standing armies using this newly found infrastructure to lay siege to our vast empire.
So after skimming that presentation, I wondered: would it also be accurate (by the same logic) to say that the Earth doesn't orbit the Sun; it orbits the galactic center (and is perturbed by the Sun)? Serious question; I'm curious as to whether there's a qualitative difference between the two that astrophysicists would identify, or if it's just a matter of scale.
Yes, there is a qualitative difference: the force exerted by the Sun on the Moon vs the force exerted by the Earth on the Moon - the former is greater.
As a consequence: the Moon's orbit around the Sun is convex (and it would be the same if the galaxy exerts on the Earth a greater force than the Sun).
For example: by contrast, the Jovian moons are "Jupiter bound" in respect with their respective Jupiter/Sun attraction force - (complete their orbit around Jupiter in a matter of days while the Jupiter orbits around the Sun in years - the jovian moons trajectory around the Sun resembles more an hypocycloid)
Yes, yes! And every time we use the Moon to slingshot spacecrafts, we cause an orbit decay that will ultimately result in a collision with the Earth!
No, no! Among other interesting facts about Moon's orbit: Moon does not orbit around the Earth, but around the Sun (and no, the distance between the Earth and the Moon is increasing in time).
Men (and women) need to grow up and learn to say "You go and see [insert girly flick here] with your friends, and I'll go see [insert action packed bloodbath here] with mine."
Oh, they learn it eventually. But until they learn, the partner that advances the idea of watching [insert girly flick here] will inflict [insert action packed bloodbath here] onto the other... at least the first times when receiving the suggested answer. If the other partner survives, there'll be chances of some learning over time.
(small voice: no dear, I don't keep posting on/.... only... no, I didn't mean that... yes, dear, I'm done if you say so...)
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone assumes someone is already out there testing all open-source software, which is why it never seems to get done.
Also, deliberate bugs and backdoors simply wouldn't be checked back in.
TFA quote:
Ms Hamilton said that, by the time the figure reached £36,000, she lied to the Post Office - wrongly telling them the books were balancing just so that she could open the office the next day.
With closed-source, the choices Ms Hamilton has:
* keep covering the differences caused by the bug
* refuse to pay and instead sue the Post Office/Royal Mail with the hope they'll ask Horizon computer system to check. Not going to happen: the plaintiff carries the burden of proof, the Post Office has no incentive to do anything.
With OSS, Ms Hamilton has (alone or in by association with other sub-postmasters) the choice between:
* do the same as for close source. or
* hire a QA team and, upon obtaining the proof, sue the Post Office for the unwarranted requests, cost of source audit and other unspecified damages. The Post Office has the choice between to keep losing such suits or pay their own source audit/QA process and release the fixes in OSS.
I wonder which of the two would minimize the total social cost of the package maintenance (in the very specific terms of the "unseen costs")?
Then, it wouldn't be paper, but shigawire.
Are you sure the aliens aren't actually breeding inside GCHQ?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/muscovy-duck-sex/
One wonders: was Todd Akin extrapolating from his experiences to the females of human species?
Let us not get ourselves fooled by Lincoln's twisted silver penmanship, let us ask ourselves what would Benjamin Franklin would have written?
The great thing about presidents and founding fathers is: there are so many of them, you can always find one that agrees with you.
Are you trying to somehow say: "with so many founding fathers, it's no wonder America is a properly fucked up nation"?
All the US has to do is keep all seven billion people in the world happy! I never realized it was so easy!
Not making them unhappy would be start. It's not like happiness is a zero-sum game.
I got an HP DeskJet 500 on the floor right here, ready to be taken apart for its smooth rods and stepper motors, parts that will be used to build a desktop CNC.
Save your time and hear my 3 words: "The office" movie.
As if the Europeans don't do the same thing to everyone else. Good grief.
Well, in retaliation, US can stop sending the Passenger Name Records to EU.
At some point, with all of those design patterns floating around in cyber-space, isn't it going to just be a matter of a program assembling the pieces based on the parameters inputted by the user, not the programmer?
There's this anecdote about a mechanic which slightly adjusted a screw and thus repaired an expensive car many others failed before. Being asked why he charged thousands of dollars for a 3 mins job, he answered: "Look sonny, you ain't paying me for tightening that screw, you are paying for me knowing which screw to tighten" (those floating design pattern won't magically settle in the necessary form just by drag-dropping).
The state department's budget is about $50 billion annually. There is probably some waste in there, but shaving off $630k in Facebook marketing is not a very promising place to start (that'd be a savings of 0.00126%!).
Speaking of "it's relative": what would you do with $630K? Isn't it a pity they get wasted?
Besides which, various PR nonsense is a big part of what the state department does; it's sort of the marketing/sales department of the U.S. government.
Hell, yeah... like the citizens need more ads for bullsh... aren't they paying already even without campaigns? Or is anyone under any delusion the top 1% will get to click the "Like" and suddenly agree to pay more taxes?
... it was a politician speaking and they are prone to use symbolic language?
Uh?.... Like what? LISP? Prologue?
I admit that the emails he sent were pretty funny, but, the people asking for help weren't the ones
...
*p.s. - the canada day one was the best.
M,E,H (then, of course, click 3 times)
I wonder what reaction one should expect from Zynga? Ummm... let try:
1. sues the hell out of Eric Mueller for identity theft?
2. "randomly" assigns Eric Mueller as CEO?
3. Don Mattrick starts throwing brown bears and folding chairs?
Other ideas? C'mon... we're speaking of a dying craporation here... be merry, creative (meh)
Sad, because the EU may had imposed the ban for nothing: unless they also impose a quarantine against anything/anyone coming from outside, the drug-resistant staph will get into EU (directly from US or via other routes).
One wonders: would this staph strain they bred qualify to WMD?
There is a similar lack of recovery options for human stupidity. And let's be honest: It's more abundant in the universe than hydrogen, and infinitely harder to defend against, precisely because stupidity is far more cunning and unpredictable than intelligence could ever hope to be.
The last I knew, the stuff that's more abundant than hydrogen was called "dark matter/energy". You mean they lately discovered those are actually "stupidity in action"?
has been revealed to be an NSA intercept trap? (See the 'Chess leak')
Google asked me if I did mean "Cheese leek". What should I answer?
It was a nice republic, too bad we couldn't keep it.
You want to say you did try?
.... but unless they have the worlds top obfuscating coders working there (quite possible) , how long do you think it would be until someone spots the suspect code especially in something as well trodden as the Linux kernel or GNU utilities? I would guess not too long.
Would you like to give it a go and reduce the guesswork?
Mmm? Are you sure that's enough? It wouldn't be quite the first time NSA would have "helped" someone.
If I could, I would try to convince the Romans of the past to stop building roads. The reason for this is that I've discovered that since the advent of roads, there has been such a phenomenon as road-side bandits, highway robberies, and even standing armies using this newly found infrastructure to lay siege to our vast empire.
They are also the reason for not being able to deliver larger rocket boosters.
Also, you could skip the Mm from calculations and deal with the caused acceleration only.
So after skimming that presentation, I wondered: would it also be accurate (by the same logic) to say that the Earth doesn't orbit the Sun; it orbits the galactic center (and is perturbed by the Sun)? Serious question; I'm curious as to whether there's a qualitative difference between the two that astrophysicists would identify, or if it's just a matter of scale.
Yes, there is a qualitative difference: the force exerted by the Sun on the Moon vs the force exerted by the Earth on the Moon - the former is greater. As a consequence: the Moon's orbit around the Sun is convex (and it would be the same if the galaxy exerts on the Earth a greater force than the Sun).
For example: by contrast, the Jovian moons are "Jupiter bound" in respect with their respective Jupiter/Sun attraction force - (complete their orbit around Jupiter in a matter of days while the Jupiter orbits around the Sun in years - the jovian moons trajectory around the Sun resembles more an hypocycloid)
Yes, yes! And every time we use the Moon to slingshot spacecrafts, we cause an orbit decay that will ultimately result in a collision with the Earth!
No, no! Among other interesting facts about Moon's orbit: Moon does not orbit around the Earth, but around the Sun (and no, the distance between the Earth and the Moon is increasing in time).
Men (and women) need to grow up and learn to say "You go and see [insert girly flick here] with your friends, and I'll go see [insert action packed bloodbath here] with mine."
Oh, they learn it eventually. But until they learn, the partner that advances the idea of watching [insert girly flick here] will inflict [insert action packed bloodbath here] onto the other... at least the first times when receiving the suggested answer. If the other partner survives, there'll be chances of some learning over time.
(small voice: no dear, I don't keep posting on /. ... only... no, I didn't mean that... yes, dear, I'm done if you say so...)
(ducks)
GNU Hurd is going to reach stable status very soon! At that point, Linux will be essentially obsolete.
HURD? Heck, why? I mean: what's wrong with EMACS OS? You can even tweet from it: try this using only the retarded Linux or HURD kernels!
(ducks)