since when was "free software" equated with "respects your privacy".
Since never. RMS has never had much to do with "free software", and that's not what he's talking about here. A huge chunk of "free software" actually generates its revenue by violating your privacy.
On the other hand, the underlying principles of Free Software have always been about defending the long-run information interests of the user first. Information security and privacy are tightly intertwined, and both are critical to the long-term interests of the individual user's liberty and society's ability to speak and associate freely in the long run.
Given that you conflate "free software" with Free Software, it may take some more contemplation to grasp why the preceding is true. It's not an easy concept to get at first, and I wouldn't expect you to just take my word for it. But there are an awful lot of seriously hard-core information scientists who have reached the same conclusion. It is worth the mental exercise to figure it out on your own, if you think freedom of thought is worth protecting.
Also the usual stuff here applies about pragmatism
Most times when people talk about pragmatism in the context of software, them mean the easy or cost effective short-term path. RMS has never shown any interest in extolling the virtues of taking the easy way out in the short term. His point has been, from the very beginning, that it is worth the extra work it takes to defend individual information liberty and authority.
A lot of people _like_ sharing all the minutia of their day with the entire world.
When they choose to, on their terms, that is perfectly aligned with RMS's principles. When a corporation tracks ignorant people who don't realize what they are disclosing, it is anathema to individual information authority.
Might be cool if the EFF or FSF put up a channel. EFF could identify apps that don't spy on you. FSF could list apps that offer their source code under a F/LOSS license. Either one could also create an "Approved by EFF" (or FSF) logo program to generate revenue to fund the channel administration.
Malicious apps have emerged as perhaps the most serious threat to mobile devices at the moment
It is true that I am much more likely to install software I believe I can trust,. For me, the EFF and FSF are organizations that I would trust to make the call, not a corporation like Google, Apple, MS, or Amazon. But Google does make it easy to get the software onto my rooted and rom'd Galaxy, and pay the programmers for their work.
It may not have mass market appeal, but it doesn't have to. It only needs to appeal to the hundreds of thousands of technophiles who know about the EFF and FSF; that's enough to make a successful channel. There'd be some decent revenue there, and it would raise the public image of the EFF and FSF as defenders of digital liberty.
Obviously there are EULA, DRM, and walled garden questions that must be contemplated, but there seems to be enough upside to at least go through the thought process and see if it can be reconciled.
How does this actually help someone who's bought a TV or monitor during this time?
It is similar to how incarcerating a person who commits assault helps the person who was assaulted. It helps society in much the same way, and that is the larger goal. If you sincerely think about it for a minute, you should be able to figure it out.
Arguments? Pillow talk? Imagine it overhears you discussing whether it is time to overthrow the government (one of the duties of American citizens is to overthrow the government when necessary -- see, for example, The Declaration of Independence). Now suppose it shows you ads for Buds Gun Shop and three books; The Anarchist Cookbook, The Amateur's Guide to Forming a Militia, and So You Want to Overthrow The Government.
Now, since Verizon is a good citizen that wants to play ball with the government, they provide access to their private corporate information about what ads they have been serving to which households.
Obviously she's saying it to be provocative, but is her underlying message that Lucas is a genius, or that our generation venerates garish reheated tripe? We have extended and expanded copyright into such a giant cash spewing regulatory juggernaut that it has drowned out art, strangled cultural commentary, and left nothing of media production but self-loathing prostitution of regurgitated, once-great story lines. Maybe she's just a senior citizen taking a shot at "these damn kids these days".
Being skeptical of our government is among the most important patriotic duties of U.S. citizens. The Declaration of Independence is an impassioned ode to the enduring beauty of critical enquiry of the motives and actions of government. Regardless of how we feel about Rep. Issa, it is our duty to challenge his statements.
a discussion draft
One of my common complaints about the state of our government is that our elected officials, when addressing complex issues, focus more effort on directing public opinion than on fostering public debate. The goal of our leaders should be to bring the nation into the analysis, not to establish our conclusions. By presenting this as a provocative entree rather than a finalized declaration, he has given us a kernel upon which to found the discussion.
For my part in that; I think a moratorium is a double edged sword. Authoritarian versus libertarian is only one dimension, another is organizational versus individual. It is possible to believe that individual rights to speak and associate freely on the Internet should be subject to less government authority and also that that organizations (lobbies, unions, corporations, religions) should be more limited in their permits to influence or monitor the behavior of individuals on the Internet. A moratorium could prevent the government from censoring individual speech, or it could give ISPs a two year foothold on selective restriction of online activities.
Any value Slashdot once had as a source for tech news is entirely gone now.
You're doing it wrong. The value of Slashdot is not in the flawed and often biased summaries, it is in the discussions. And it is not in the majority of discussion comments that you find fault with, it is in the rare gems that make you think. You have to work for it. Facile criticism is moderately useful in chastening fan-bois and -grrls, but you could be getting more, and giving more, if you tried.
The real magic of Slashdot is on the other side of the pen. When you start doing some real analysis and putting your rich and well-formed thoughts out there, that's when it really starts to shine. It's tough; you will have to suffer shallow potshots from armchair critics, but you will get a thousand times more upside from those few people who constructively explore a subtle flaw in your perception. Those people give you the opportunity to improve your world view. What you gain by putting a more substantive post out there, facing the slings and arrows, and evolving your hypotheses to subsume an ever more accuate picture of reality is truly extraordinary.
I've looked through your posts. Once you get past the daggers you have a lot to add. You have more to give than cheap shots at easy targets.
"found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana."
Uhh, really? OK, so 8.15% of nighttime drivers are high. How many drives on an average night? Using U.S. status, if one in 30 people average one drive per night, that would be 10 million. If so, that would mean there would be 800,000 high drives every night. Over the course of a year, that's 292,000,000 stoned nighttime drives. And we only have 34,000 annual traffic fatalities from all causes day and night. So if 25% of all traffic fatalities are caused by a person who is driving high at night, that would be about one in 35,000 drives. If you get high and drive every night for the rest of your life, you can just get past a 50/50 chance of causing one fatality (if you have 50 years of driving left in you). That sounds significantly less dangerous than, say, changing the radio station -- so let's outlaw that first (or also).
True. As a 42 year old hacker (in the empirical tinkerer sense, not the security circumvention sense), I have to spend as much time learning my craft, every day, as I did when I was 12. It was hard to stay relevant then, and when I was 22, and 32, and now. Fortunately, I love doing so now as much as I did then.
'The shelf life of a software engineer today is no more than that of a cricketer -- about 15 years,'
Depends on what you are using them for. If they are expected to mindlessly bash out the filling of methods prescribed by a spec, that may be so. If, however, they are expected to understand the context -- both business and logical -- of the component, and to make decisions accordingly, experience and its attendant judgment can be far more valuable than stamina.
SAP's India R&D Labs... Microsoft's India-based
I have done a lot of work on the database side of enterprise software. Given Oracle's educational initiatives in India in the 90's, that means I have worked with a lot of Indian database professionals. Many of them are incredibly skilled and it has been an enriching experience to work with and learn from them.
However, it is just statistically / economically true that most people over 35 in India were not spending hours writing code on their own computers when they were 18. It is unfortunate that most of them did not have that opportunity, but a person who has not been cutting code for 15 years will not have the experience that is the strength of veteran programmers. A manager of an Indian software lab has an inherently distorted view of reality because of the small number of people in India who have been programming for 15 years. In that context the natural, flawed, conclusion is that age is inversely related to software productivity. It is as rational and objective as the conclusion that swashbuckling buccaneer quantity is inversely proportional to the rate of global warming.
"By extension, the same holds true for porn, pirated videos and music, etc., right? So, would you feel comfortable being judged by the online company you keep?"
Definitely. Most of the people whose company I enjoy favor a liberal interpretation of the authority of copyright and prefer adult-oriented content to PG and lighter fare. They speak ill of their government when it is justified (and sometimes when it is not) and accept that the four boxes of liberty are all unfortunate necessities. And they believe that even suspected terrorists who worship the wrong deity are endowed by their creator with the rights documented in the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
I rather like that sort of person, and hope that the world sees me as one of them. I think people who are not proud to fit that description tend to lie somewhere between pretentious and dull, and are detrimental to our advancement as a productive, open, honest, and self-aware society.
I don't get where supposed rational technical people on Slashdot of all places, think that any data they transmit over public networks NEVERMIND then storing said data on hard drives owned and physically controlled by someone else, was ever YOURS.
Depends on your definition of "YOURS". Most people in modern Western civilizations recognize a distinction between posession and ownership.
The physical reality of the thing is that by definition, any data you are keeping on devices controlled by someone else is never really yours.
Shall I assume, by that definition, that you never park your car anywhere except on your own property, and that you never leave it in the custody of an auto repair or maintenance facility? Similarly, have you never left your coat at a coat check, or let your dry cleaner have posession of your clothing?
Your statement is both valid and poignant regarding the risk of a custodian unlawfully distributing or granting access to your information. This argument, however, claims you have no legal standing regarding the information in the first place, like saying you no longer own your street clothes when you leave them in the gym locker.
Cloud backups are great as a cheap last offsite resort but are not the same as backups that you physically control. You should never have data you care about recovering on a cloud service that you do not also have in multiple copies on devices you own.
Your advice is sound, particularly in the current legally uncertain context. But it does not imply that the government's argument is reasonable or excusable. It is our responsibility to the future of our nation to protect its information security from these misguided government officials. We must raise our voices against this sort of behavior precisely because our legal right to our information is not yet rooted in statutory bedrock.
There can no longer be any doubt: a Nexus device is about openness first and foremost.
By giving us cheap and open devices, Google is making sure it's in control â" not the carriers.
This is even more true when people are using the internet on a device sold and maintained by Google. Mountain View gets to slurp up more of our data, show us more location-aware ads, and drive adoption of its services. Maybe in this case, freedom really isnâ(TM)t free
OK, so which is it? Is it open, or is it controlled by Google? Either of those things might be fine in a given context, but I think the article's author might not realize they are contradictory. Open means I am in control, for better and for worse.
I have used IDEs (IDEA, Eclipse, and Xcode) and text editors (Vi and Emacs) on large scale projects with teams both elite and ordinary. I have been productive with them all, and have found each approach to have its own benefits. A lot of modern programmers have not walked a mile in non-IDE land, and have turned the advantages of IDEs into compulsory requirements with which to judge the manual/small tools aproach an automatic failure. They can be broadly categorized as integrated tools, code generation, and autocomplete. Each is a good thing, but is not always the One True Answer.
1. IDEs have integrated build/debug/test/etc.
Staying in the IDE to perform those functions is nice, though switching to another tool in another window is also fine. Having it in the same UI means you don't have to switch mental context to a different UI style, but having smaller, purpose-built tools for specialized tasks also has advantages.
2. IDEs have code generation and refactoring built in.
This is a good feature for getting today's code out quickly, but manual approaches can aid long-term system improvement. Using a boilerplate solution foregoes an opportunity to consider subtly different approaches and may lead to "every problem looks like a nail." Automated refactoring means you are not looking at the callers to understand their intent. These things work well most of the time and get code in front of the customer without wasting time on typo management or gold plating, but spending more time considering new and existing code can lead to a more robust system.
3. IDEs have autocomplete.
Similar to item 2, this saves wasted time looking through source code or documentation, but may cost opportunities for debugging or improvement. For calls to internal code, not having autocomplete essentially inlines code review, and automatically focuses the most review on the most heavily used methods. Whether calling an external library or internal code, manual lookup gives the opportunity to see what else is available in a library or class. As with code generation, autocomplete saves time at the expense of opportunities for discovery.
IDEs are excellent tools, and IDE-oriented programming is very effective. More manual programming and using smaller tools also has advantages. To suggest that either method -- like any one language -- is the One True Way to program proves little more than one's lack of imagination.
I have been coding since I have been 13 years old, which means I have been writing code for 30 years, and 20 years professionally.
9, 33, and 18 here.
The idea that you don't need an IDE is a hair brained idea.
I have worked on large systems using IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse, and have written Eclipse plugins. I currently use Emacs without any of the bells and whistles, just syntax highlighting and paren matching.
How on earth are you supposed to keep track of the several thousand files?
Well designed project components and rational directory structure.
I am talking about using a naming convention so that you can easily find functionality
Yeah, that's a good example of one of the things professionals do to keep large systems manageable. It is one of the habits that keeps your system in a place where an IDE is not required.
If I have to keep track of every method name, and its parameters then I am definitely wasting time on stuff that does not need thinking about.
You are making an implicit statement that with an IDE you don't have to do that, and without an IDE you do. The latter is not the case. When coding a class that calls other classes, you have the other classes or their documentation on screen (rotating through buffers if you are using several in rapid sequence), and they (or their documentation) is cleanly structured so you can find the calls that fit your context quickly.
It is definitely a different way of doing things than using the IDE to autocomplete, but it means you have the target code on screen. That makes it faster to verify fine points of the target functionality when you are not sure what it should be doing and gives an opportunity to catch bugs or mismatches in intent. It essentially inlines code review into the standard workflow, with the most often-used code getting reviewed most often.
I'm not saying it is objectively better for everyone and every context than using an IDE. It's a tradeoff, but it is a valid one with upside that is worthy of consideration.
If you say, "oh but wait you should be able to keep track of the methods." I reply, "yeah please write some professional code!"
Well, I don't think you should keep every method in your head, but to address the latter part of your statement: The system I'm working on at the moment is written in Java, Javascript, Python, Perl, SQL, and some shell scripting, has custom coded EC2 cluster management, does load testing at up to a million calls per second using our standard in-house ten slave cluster, has been run with one hundred of Amazon's largest nodes, and aggregates the results into a central database where they are accessed and charted as they happen.
The fact that you prefer to do it a different way and can write a dandy appeal to ridicule is hardly a compelling argument.
How come JetBrains makes money from providing IDE's that do exactly what the article author is bad?
Presumably because a lot of people like to use IDEs and are willing to pay for a good one. But that does not mean that is the only way to program. McDonald's makes a lot of money selling hamburgers, but plenty of people make their own and some people don't even eat meat. The mere fact that something sells well is no argument that it is a requirement for some task for which it can be used.
Despite all the pretense of morality, voters are going to side with sending screaming death down upon these people if there's a chance that some of our people are going to get killed.
OK, let's look at the poll question again:
Do you support more use of drone aircraft to attack suspected terrorists?
Now, let's put that in a different context:
Do you support execution of suspected child sex abusers?
as a "just works" freeware replacement for Windows, it's been a bust.
It also makes a terrible cheese grater, and the last time I tried to drive it to the store it turned out Linux isn't even tangible, let alone a serviceable automobile.
The answer to that is an emphatic, "Yes and No." Slightly off-topic, but I think it is important to keep these thoughts fresh in our minds, in the current context:
The answer to that exact question is, "Yes." I might put a tracking device on my child, if I chose to, for my own reasons, under my own authority and control, without coercion or consideration by society, government, or any third party.
But do not confuse that with the question, "Would I consent to allowing someone else to put a tracking device on my child, or would I put a third-party-controlled tracking device on my child?" The answer to that is a very tenuous, "Maybe, but I need a lot more information and some serious legal accountability."
Even more hazardous is the question, "Would you consent to society mandating that children wear a tracking device under a third party's control?" The answer to that is an emphatic, "No."
Ubiquitous tracking is presumption of guilt. In my nation, the government is not authorized to create such a law. Let us not slip down the slope by failing to restate those limits early and often.
The problem with patent litigation is not whether the party doing the enforcement produces things, but whether the cost of the patent enforcement outweighs the value. The purpose of patents is to reward inventors, not manufacturers. If an inventor comes up with something novel that should be rewarded through the patent system, whether he builds a factory or licenses it to a manufacturer and continues to focus on invention does not change the worth of the patent. If he deserves to be rewarded but wishes to focus on continued invention instead of licensing, and a third party company is willing to pay him for the patent, it does not change the net value of the patent.
What makes patents harmful is that they are too long, too strong, too easily granted, and given the presumption of validity in court. As long as that is true, harmful patents will be harmful whether they are wielded by abusive licensing agencies or anticompetitive manufacturers. It could be even worse with manufacturers, since they are not merely maximizing direct revenue from the patent but also have a financial motive to harm their competitors. Surely the mobile device patent war has shown us that merely being a manufacturer does not prevent bad patents from harming our economy.
By focusing our disdain on those companies that specialize in patent licensing and enforcement, we are distracting ourselves from the real problems of the patents themselves. It will lead us to attempt legislation which will only prevent independent inventors from having an open market for their inventions and force them to work with incumbent manufacturers. If patents are to reward inventors, we should not narrow their markets and chain them to manufacturing. If patents are harmful, we should limit their power for everyone, including manufacturers.
'If you are very open to new experiences and if you have psychopathic traits (yes, as in those shared by serial killers) such as being aggressive and emotionally tough, you are more likely to be considered a genius.'... 'Offering a greater variety of enrichment activities to children will cause many more hidden talents to surface. And accelerated classes and psychological coaching are essential for nurturing talent as early and vigorously as possible.'
We should also have people they trust randomly hit them with no explanation, to nurture that desirable sociopathic trait.
Now, wait... That doesn't sound right. In fact, it sounds so wrong that there must be some other explanation. How about this:
Perhaps the answer is not to hold sociopaths up as geniuses just because they succeed in an economic system that can be exploited by sociopaths. Perhaps when Scientific American discusses genius, it should not accept the average idiot's perception but should delve a bit deeper and even explain why sociopathic business success is not a good measure of genius. Perhaps Scientific American should focus on actual geniuses rather than merely people in the top 1% in intelligence, who are also willing to harm society to win.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Scientific American's role is to reflect the average man's perception of genius. Perhaps Scientific American should report on the coach of the next Superbowl winning team, since that is what all the beer-soaked fat-part-of-the-curve folks at the pub seem to shout after the game, "That coach is a genuis!"
authorized data transfers wouldn't be using it to commit... other damaging acts.
That statement misses the point of the privacy advocates; that the authorized data transfers are, in fact, being used to commit other damaging acts. As both a student of economics and having spent several years doing behavioral targeted advertising, I am strongly convinced that it is damaging to our economy. It causes consumer behavior that is very different from rational self-inteterest, which is the bedrock upon which the efficiency of the free market must rest. It leads to wasted GDP, loss of consumer confidence, and ultimately reduces consumption (and hence production) in the long run.
I am guessing you know all that, at least in rough terms, but it is impotant to identify that point when commenting on things like authorized data transfers and their potential to cause harm. This is harming our society, right now, in real dollars and cents. A portion of our GDP is being turned into unearned income for amoral companies who have no other choice if they want to remain competitive with their amoral competition. I don't think we can (or even should) expect companies to be strongly moralistic at their shareholders' expense, so we need to cut off the cashflow that encourages them to do harmful things. Stopping that inefficient flow of our GDP would stimulate the economy and create jobs -- and isn't that what all our politicians claim they support?
Slashdot Mirror
since when was "free software" equated with "respects your privacy".
Since never. RMS has never had much to do with "free software", and that's not what he's talking about here. A huge chunk of "free software" actually generates its revenue by violating your privacy.
On the other hand, the underlying principles of Free Software have always been about defending the long-run information interests of the user first. Information security and privacy are tightly intertwined, and both are critical to the long-term interests of the individual user's liberty and society's ability to speak and associate freely in the long run.
Given that you conflate "free software" with Free Software, it may take some more contemplation to grasp why the preceding is true. It's not an easy concept to get at first, and I wouldn't expect you to just take my word for it. But there are an awful lot of seriously hard-core information scientists who have reached the same conclusion. It is worth the mental exercise to figure it out on your own, if you think freedom of thought is worth protecting.
Also the usual stuff here applies about pragmatism
Most times when people talk about pragmatism in the context of software, them mean the easy or cost effective short-term path. RMS has never shown any interest in extolling the virtues of taking the easy way out in the short term. His point has been, from the very beginning, that it is worth the extra work it takes to defend individual information liberty and authority.
A lot of people _like_ sharing all the minutia of their day with the entire world.
When they choose to, on their terms, that is perfectly aligned with RMS's principles. When a corporation tracks ignorant people who don't realize what they are disclosing, it is anathema to individual information authority.
Might be cool if the EFF or FSF put up a channel. EFF could identify apps that don't spy on you. FSF could list apps that offer their source code under a F/LOSS license. Either one could also create an "Approved by EFF" (or FSF) logo program to generate revenue to fund the channel administration.
Malicious apps have emerged as perhaps the most serious threat to mobile devices at the moment
It is true that I am much more likely to install software I believe I can trust,. For me, the EFF and FSF are organizations that I would trust to make the call, not a corporation like Google, Apple, MS, or Amazon. But Google does make it easy to get the software onto my rooted and rom'd Galaxy, and pay the programmers for their work.
It may not have mass market appeal, but it doesn't have to. It only needs to appeal to the hundreds of thousands of technophiles who know about the EFF and FSF; that's enough to make a successful channel. There'd be some decent revenue there, and it would raise the public image of the EFF and FSF as defenders of digital liberty.
Obviously there are EULA, DRM, and walled garden questions that must be contemplated, but there seems to be enough upside to at least go through the thought process and see if it can be reconciled.
Posted by timothy on Thursday December 06, @02:15PM
What got posted is an edited version of my submission, and the editing is a distinct improvement. Thanks, Timothy!
How does this actually help someone who's bought a TV or monitor during this time?
It is similar to how incarcerating a person who commits assault helps the person who was assaulted. It helps society in much the same way, and that is the larger goal. If you sincerely think about it for a minute, you should be able to figure it out.
Arguments? Pillow talk? Imagine it overhears you discussing whether it is time to overthrow the government (one of the duties of American citizens is to overthrow the government when necessary -- see, for example, The Declaration of Independence). Now suppose it shows you ads for Buds Gun Shop and three books; The Anarchist Cookbook, The Amateur's Guide to Forming a Militia, and So You Want to Overthrow The Government.
Now, since Verizon is a good citizen that wants to play ball with the government, they provide access to their private corporate information about what ads they have been serving to which households.
Obviously she's saying it to be provocative, but is her underlying message that Lucas is a genius, or that our generation venerates garish reheated tripe? We have extended and expanded copyright into such a giant cash spewing regulatory juggernaut that it has drowned out art, strangled cultural commentary, and left nothing of media production but self-loathing prostitution of regurgitated, once-great story lines. Maybe she's just a senior citizen taking a shot at "these damn kids these days".
skeptical of the paper's motives and credibility.
Being skeptical of our government is among the most important patriotic duties of U.S. citizens. The Declaration of Independence is an impassioned ode to the enduring beauty of critical enquiry of the motives and actions of government. Regardless of how we feel about Rep. Issa, it is our duty to challenge his statements.
a discussion draft
One of my common complaints about the state of our government is that our elected officials, when addressing complex issues, focus more effort on directing public opinion than on fostering public debate. The goal of our leaders should be to bring the nation into the analysis, not to establish our conclusions. By presenting this as a provocative entree rather than a finalized declaration, he has given us a kernel upon which to found the discussion.
For my part in that; I think a moratorium is a double edged sword. Authoritarian versus libertarian is only one dimension, another is organizational versus individual. It is possible to believe that individual rights to speak and associate freely on the Internet should be subject to less government authority and also that that organizations (lobbies, unions, corporations, religions) should be more limited in their permits to influence or monitor the behavior of individuals on the Internet. A moratorium could prevent the government from censoring individual speech, or it could give ISPs a two year foothold on selective restriction of online activities.
Biased summary much?
Any value Slashdot once had as a source for tech news is entirely gone now.
You're doing it wrong. The value of Slashdot is not in the flawed and often biased summaries, it is in the discussions. And it is not in the majority of discussion comments that you find fault with, it is in the rare gems that make you think. You have to work for it. Facile criticism is moderately useful in chastening fan-bois and -grrls, but you could be getting more, and giving more, if you tried.
The real magic of Slashdot is on the other side of the pen. When you start doing some real analysis and putting your rich and well-formed thoughts out there, that's when it really starts to shine. It's tough; you will have to suffer shallow potshots from armchair critics, but you will get a thousand times more upside from those few people who constructively explore a subtle flaw in your perception. Those people give you the opportunity to improve your world view. What you gain by putting a more substantive post out there, facing the slings and arrows, and evolving your hypotheses to subsume an ever more accuate picture of reality is truly extraordinary.
I've looked through your posts. Once you get past the daggers you have a lot to add. You have more to give than cheap shots at easy targets.
"found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana."
Uhh, really? OK, so 8.15% of nighttime drivers are high. How many drives on an average night? Using U.S. status, if one in 30 people average one drive per night, that would be 10 million. If so, that would mean there would be 800,000 high drives every night. Over the course of a year, that's 292,000,000 stoned nighttime drives. And we only have 34,000 annual traffic fatalities from all causes day and night. So if 25% of all traffic fatalities are caused by a person who is driving high at night, that would be about one in 35,000 drives. If you get high and drive every night for the rest of your life, you can just get past a 50/50 chance of causing one fatality (if you have 50 years of driving left in you). That sounds significantly less dangerous than, say, changing the radio station -- so let's outlaw that first (or also).
It's Hard For Techies Over 40 To Stay Relevant
True. As a 42 year old hacker (in the empirical tinkerer sense, not the security circumvention sense), I have to spend as much time learning my craft, every day, as I did when I was 12. It was hard to stay relevant then, and when I was 22, and 32, and now. Fortunately, I love doing so now as much as I did then.
'The shelf life of a software engineer today is no more than that of a cricketer -- about 15 years,'
Depends on what you are using them for. If they are expected to mindlessly bash out the filling of methods prescribed by a spec, that may be so. If, however, they are expected to understand the context -- both business and logical -- of the component, and to make decisions accordingly, experience and its attendant judgment can be far more valuable than stamina.
SAP's India R&D Labs ... Microsoft's India-based
I have done a lot of work on the database side of enterprise software. Given Oracle's educational initiatives in India in the 90's, that means I have worked with a lot of Indian database professionals. Many of them are incredibly skilled and it has been an enriching experience to work with and learn from them.
However, it is just statistically / economically true that most people over 35 in India were not spending hours writing code on their own computers when they were 18. It is unfortunate that most of them did not have that opportunity, but a person who has not been cutting code for 15 years will not have the experience that is the strength of veteran programmers. A manager of an Indian software lab has an inherently distorted view of reality because of the small number of people in India who have been programming for 15 years. In that context the natural, flawed, conclusion is that age is inversely related to software productivity. It is as rational and objective as the conclusion that swashbuckling buccaneer quantity is inversely proportional to the rate of global warming.
PDF Form (easier to read without a decent text editor)
Here are three links to the text form of the brief:
On One of My Boxes
On Reference Blog
On Pastebin
"By extension, the same holds true for porn, pirated videos and music, etc., right? So, would you feel comfortable being judged by the online company you keep?"
Definitely. Most of the people whose company I enjoy favor a liberal interpretation of the authority of copyright and prefer adult-oriented content to PG and lighter fare. They speak ill of their government when it is justified (and sometimes when it is not) and accept that the four boxes of liberty are all unfortunate necessities. And they believe that even suspected terrorists who worship the wrong deity are endowed by their creator with the rights documented in the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
I rather like that sort of person, and hope that the world sees me as one of them. I think people who are not proud to fit that description tend to lie somewhere between pretentious and dull, and are detrimental to our advancement as a productive, open, honest, and self-aware society.
There's not even room for the ambiguity of a "???" in that sequence.
Elegant turn of phrase. :)
I don't get where supposed rational technical people on Slashdot of all places, think that any data they transmit over public networks NEVERMIND then storing said data on hard drives owned and physically controlled by someone else, was ever YOURS.
Depends on your definition of "YOURS". Most people in modern Western civilizations recognize a distinction between posession and ownership.
The physical reality of the thing is that by definition, any data you are keeping on devices controlled by someone else is never really yours.
Shall I assume, by that definition, that you never park your car anywhere except on your own property, and that you never leave it in the custody of an auto repair or maintenance facility? Similarly, have you never left your coat at a coat check, or let your dry cleaner have posession of your clothing?
Your statement is both valid and poignant regarding the risk of a custodian unlawfully distributing or granting access to your information. This argument, however, claims you have no legal standing regarding the information in the first place, like saying you no longer own your street clothes when you leave them in the gym locker.
Cloud backups are great as a cheap last offsite resort but are not the same as backups that you physically control. You should never have data you care about recovering on a cloud service that you do not also have in multiple copies on devices you own.
Your advice is sound, particularly in the current legally uncertain context. But it does not imply that the government's argument is reasonable or excusable. It is our responsibility to the future of our nation to protect its information security from these misguided government officials. We must raise our voices against this sort of behavior precisely because our legal right to our information is not yet rooted in statutory bedrock.
I think you may have hit reply on the wrong post -- I was questioning whether the device is open or controlled.
There can no longer be any doubt: a Nexus device is about openness first and foremost.
By giving us cheap and open devices, Google is making sure it's in control â" not the carriers.
This is even more true when people are using the internet on a device sold and maintained by Google. Mountain View gets to slurp up more of our data, show us more location-aware ads, and drive adoption of its services. Maybe in this case, freedom really isnâ(TM)t free
OK, so which is it? Is it open, or is it controlled by Google? Either of those things might be fine in a given context, but I think the article's author might not realize they are contradictory. Open means I am in control, for better and for worse.
I have used IDEs (IDEA, Eclipse, and Xcode) and text editors (Vi and Emacs) on large scale projects with teams both elite and ordinary. I have been productive with them all, and have found each approach to have its own benefits. A lot of modern programmers have not walked a mile in non-IDE land, and have turned the advantages of IDEs into compulsory requirements with which to judge the manual/small tools aproach an automatic failure. They can be broadly categorized as integrated tools, code generation, and autocomplete. Each is a good thing, but is not always the One True Answer.
1. IDEs have integrated build/debug/test/etc.
Staying in the IDE to perform those functions is nice, though switching to another tool in another window is also fine. Having it in the same UI means you don't have to switch mental context to a different UI style, but having smaller, purpose-built tools for specialized tasks also has advantages.
2. IDEs have code generation and refactoring built in.
This is a good feature for getting today's code out quickly, but manual approaches can aid long-term system improvement. Using a boilerplate solution foregoes an opportunity to consider subtly different approaches and may lead to "every problem looks like a nail." Automated refactoring means you are not looking at the callers to understand their intent. These things work well most of the time and get code in front of the customer without wasting time on typo management or gold plating, but spending more time considering new and existing code can lead to a more robust system.
3. IDEs have autocomplete.
Similar to item 2, this saves wasted time looking through source code or documentation, but may cost opportunities for debugging or improvement. For calls to internal code, not having autocomplete essentially inlines code review, and automatically focuses the most review on the most heavily used methods. Whether calling an external library or internal code, manual lookup gives the opportunity to see what else is available in a library or class. As with code generation, autocomplete saves time at the expense of opportunities for discovery.
IDEs are excellent tools, and IDE-oriented programming is very effective. More manual programming and using smaller tools also has advantages. To suggest that either method -- like any one language -- is the One True Way to program proves little more than one's lack of imagination.
I have been coding since I have been 13 years old, which means I have been writing code for 30 years, and 20 years professionally.
9, 33, and 18 here.
The idea that you don't need an IDE is a hair brained idea.
I have worked on large systems using IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse, and have written Eclipse plugins. I currently use Emacs without any of the bells and whistles, just syntax highlighting and paren matching.
How on earth are you supposed to keep track of the several thousand files?
Well designed project components and rational directory structure.
I am talking about using a naming convention so that you can easily find functionality
Yeah, that's a good example of one of the things professionals do to keep large systems manageable. It is one of the habits that keeps your system in a place where an IDE is not required.
If I have to keep track of every method name, and its parameters then I am definitely wasting time on stuff that does not need thinking about.
You are making an implicit statement that with an IDE you don't have to do that, and without an IDE you do. The latter is not the case. When coding a class that calls other classes, you have the other classes or their documentation on screen (rotating through buffers if you are using several in rapid sequence), and they (or their documentation) is cleanly structured so you can find the calls that fit your context quickly.
It is definitely a different way of doing things than using the IDE to autocomplete, but it means you have the target code on screen. That makes it faster to verify fine points of the target functionality when you are not sure what it should be doing and gives an opportunity to catch bugs or mismatches in intent. It essentially inlines code review into the standard workflow, with the most often-used code getting reviewed most often.
I'm not saying it is objectively better for everyone and every context than using an IDE. It's a tradeoff, but it is a valid one with upside that is worthy of consideration.
If you say, "oh but wait you should be able to keep track of the methods." I reply, "yeah please write some professional code!"
Well, I don't think you should keep every method in your head, but to address the latter part of your statement: The system I'm working on at the moment is written in Java, Javascript, Python, Perl, SQL, and some shell scripting, has custom coded EC2 cluster management, does load testing at up to a million calls per second using our standard in-house ten slave cluster, has been run with one hundred of Amazon's largest nodes, and aggregates the results into a central database where they are accessed and charted as they happen.
The fact that you prefer to do it a different way and can write a dandy appeal to ridicule is hardly a compelling argument.
How come JetBrains makes money from providing IDE's that do exactly what the article author is bad?
Presumably because a lot of people like to use IDEs and are willing to pay for a good one. But that does not mean that is the only way to program. McDonald's makes a lot of money selling hamburgers, but plenty of people make their own and some people don't even eat meat. The mere fact that something sells well is no argument that it is a requirement for some task for which it can be used.
Despite all the pretense of morality, voters are going to side with sending screaming death down upon these people if there's a chance that some of our people are going to get killed.
OK, let's look at the poll question again:
Do you support more use of drone aircraft to attack suspected terrorists?
Now, let's put that in a different context:
Do you support execution of suspected child sex abusers?
as a "just works" freeware replacement for Windows, it's been a bust.
It also makes a terrible cheese grater, and the last time I tried to drive it to the store it turned out Linux isn't even tangible, let alone a serviceable automobile.
Would You Put a Tracking Device On Your Child?
The answer to that is an emphatic, "Yes and No." Slightly off-topic, but I think it is important to keep these thoughts fresh in our minds, in the current context:
The answer to that exact question is, "Yes." I might put a tracking device on my child, if I chose to, for my own reasons, under my own authority and control, without coercion or consideration by society, government, or any third party.
But do not confuse that with the question, "Would I consent to allowing someone else to put a tracking device on my child, or would I put a third-party-controlled tracking device on my child?" The answer to that is a very tenuous, "Maybe, but I need a lot more information and some serious legal accountability."
Even more hazardous is the question, "Would you consent to society mandating that children wear a tracking device under a third party's control?" The answer to that is an emphatic, "No."
Ubiquitous tracking is presumption of guilt. In my nation, the government is not authorized to create such a law. Let us not slip down the slope by failing to restate those limits early and often.
The problem with patent litigation is not whether the party doing the enforcement produces things, but whether the cost of the patent enforcement outweighs the value. The purpose of patents is to reward inventors, not manufacturers. If an inventor comes up with something novel that should be rewarded through the patent system, whether he builds a factory or licenses it to a manufacturer and continues to focus on invention does not change the worth of the patent. If he deserves to be rewarded but wishes to focus on continued invention instead of licensing, and a third party company is willing to pay him for the patent, it does not change the net value of the patent.
What makes patents harmful is that they are too long, too strong, too easily granted, and given the presumption of validity in court. As long as that is true, harmful patents will be harmful whether they are wielded by abusive licensing agencies or anticompetitive manufacturers. It could be even worse with manufacturers, since they are not merely maximizing direct revenue from the patent but also have a financial motive to harm their competitors. Surely the mobile device patent war has shown us that merely being a manufacturer does not prevent bad patents from harming our economy.
By focusing our disdain on those companies that specialize in patent licensing and enforcement, we are distracting ourselves from the real problems of the patents themselves. It will lead us to attempt legislation which will only prevent independent inventors from having an open market for their inventions and force them to work with incumbent manufacturers. If patents are to reward inventors, we should not narrow their markets and chain them to manufacturing. If patents are harmful, we should limit their power for everyone, including manufacturers.
'If you are very open to new experiences and if you have psychopathic traits (yes, as in those shared by serial killers) such as being aggressive and emotionally tough, you are more likely to be considered a genius.' ... 'Offering a greater variety of enrichment activities to children will cause many more hidden talents to surface. And accelerated classes and psychological coaching are essential for nurturing talent as early and vigorously as possible.'
We should also have people they trust randomly hit them with no explanation, to nurture that desirable sociopathic trait.
Now, wait... That doesn't sound right. In fact, it sounds so wrong that there must be some other explanation. How about this:
Perhaps the answer is not to hold sociopaths up as geniuses just because they succeed in an economic system that can be exploited by sociopaths. Perhaps when Scientific American discusses genius, it should not accept the average idiot's perception but should delve a bit deeper and even explain why sociopathic business success is not a good measure of genius. Perhaps Scientific American should focus on actual geniuses rather than merely people in the top 1% in intelligence, who are also willing to harm society to win.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Scientific American's role is to reflect the average man's perception of genius. Perhaps Scientific American should report on the coach of the next Superbowl winning team, since that is what all the beer-soaked fat-part-of-the-curve folks at the pub seem to shout after the game, "That coach is a genuis!"
authorized data transfers wouldn't be using it to commit ... other damaging acts.
That statement misses the point of the privacy advocates; that the authorized data transfers are, in fact, being used to commit other damaging acts. As both a student of economics and having spent several years doing behavioral targeted advertising, I am strongly convinced that it is damaging to our economy. It causes consumer behavior that is very different from rational self-inteterest, which is the bedrock upon which the efficiency of the free market must rest. It leads to wasted GDP, loss of consumer confidence, and ultimately reduces consumption (and hence production) in the long run.
I am guessing you know all that, at least in rough terms, but it is impotant to identify that point when commenting on things like authorized data transfers and their potential to cause harm. This is harming our society, right now, in real dollars and cents. A portion of our GDP is being turned into unearned income for amoral companies who have no other choice if they want to remain competitive with their amoral competition. I don't think we can (or even should) expect companies to be strongly moralistic at their shareholders' expense, so we need to cut off the cashflow that encourages them to do harmful things. Stopping that inefficient flow of our GDP would stimulate the economy and create jobs -- and isn't that what all our politicians claim they support?