Most people don't realize that PayPal charges a small fortune for nothing more than a little convenience
That phrase right there sums up the business model of entire industries; care to explain what's so evil about it?
Re:"Disagreement on Terminology"
on
Ajax Design Patterns
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I just don't put Usability "patterns" in the same category as the GoF patterns
That's because you don't know what a pattern is. Note that nothing in that definition, that a pattern is "a particular way in which something is done" in any way references computing.
A pattern is a way of doing something, a common solution to a common problem. That even applies to knitting patterns - the problem is that you have wool and no jumper, you follow the pattern, you have a jumper. Nothing about the GoF book makes them C++-specific - in fact, most patterns are entirely language-agnostic. To claim that AJAX isn't "complicated enough" to deserve patterns is to fall foul of language snobbery.
Besides, who needs a book to learn AJAX?
People who don't yet know programming (or XML, etc) and want a single reference to learn from? I've known some truly great designers who wanted to get into client-side scripting, etc, but who had so far had little or no exposure to programming. Believe it or not, some people manage to make a good living doing useful work without ever touching a compiler or interpreter...
it's possible (probable?) that somewhere on your system there will be vulnerabilities
Actually, it's absolutely certain that almost no matter what system you're using there will be vulnerabilities. Just because they haven't been found and exploited doesn't mean they're not there - lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, and all that.
What would MS and the electronics industry stand to gain by such an action? People are going to end up buying Vista one way or another, and the number that will buy it because they took a stand against HD DRM is vanishingly small. Likewise the electronics manufacturers stand to make more money *with* DRM - they can simply pass the costs on to the consumers, with a small markup on top.
Fighting would be costly, time-consuming and gain them little even if they won. Not fighting is cheap, easy, and loses them nothing.
So, do you disagree that hypothetically you can be forced into a situation in which all of your possible choices are morally wrong?
When you go to war, you condemn to injury and death huge numbers of entirely innocent people (civilians as well as servicemen); how is that not morally wrong? Yet in the case of WW2, as noted, not going to war also indirectly condemned huge numbers of innocent people to death and suffering; also, surely, morally wrong. Yet they are essentially your only two choices - fight or don't.
So, er, what was the purpose of deciding if it's morally wrong, again?
To explain why, in his opinion, people should no more be making games about WW2 than they should be making them about Columbine. Because if the act itself is morally wrong, then glorifying it must also be.
Because theory and experiment both demand it; the theories only work, and the experiments only make sense, if that's what's happening.
It goes against common sense, but then our common sense is born of our experiences in a macroscopic, Newtonian world; that's why they break down in microscopic and/or relativistic frames. We simply don't have the experience of dealing with them.
The problem with waiving constitutional rights for certain classes of criminals (drug dealers, terrorists, DWIs, child molesters all come to mind as the favorite bogeyman) is that it makes it ok to waive them for others.
"When you allow a good excuse, you open the door to bad excuses" (paraphrased from memory, with apologies to Terry Pratchett)
You seem to assume that virus writers and other malware producers won't simply follow the market trend as well, and target whatever platforms it makes sense to target.
Right now, the vast majority of people are running some flavour of Windows on x86, so that's what's targetted. It helps that Windows machines are also generally a soft(er) target, used by people with little or on clue as to how to use a PC safely. As and when significant numbers of users move to other platforms, those platforms will also be targetted.
There's money to be made, a fair number of intelligent, talented people more than willing to do what it takes to make it, and no shortage of less talented but just as morally dubious people more than willing to use the tools created by them.
Well, personally I think I'd notice that the number was wrong if I looked it up and it had been changed - I know roughly what it should be, so if it's much different I'll be suspicious or confused, and likely check their website.
On the other hand, if I just fired up my VoIP software and double-clicked the "Bank" entry in a phone list, I may never even suspect that anything's amiss.
No, this isn't VoIP-specific, but I can see how it might be made *easier* if the person uses VoIP.
A couple of weeks ago a work mate of mine visited a phishing site he got a scam email about, and filled the form in with a load of bogus data (to help poison their database). It wasn't until after he'd submitted the form that google warned him that the site was a suspected phishing site...
How do you know that it's not being patented specifically to prevent someone else from patenting it and charging outrageous licence fees? How do you know that this group isn't planning on making the research free for anyone to use, free of charge?
Besides which, as other posters have already pointed out, this is an academic group, not "Big Business"; they're not out to scalp people.
Which was pretty much the GP's point - Apple want chips that are appropriate for the use to which their customers put them. Motorola and IBM don't really target those uses; Intel does.
That's simple to abuse. If there really is a human sat there reviewing submitted URLs, then you just DoS it, by flooding it with far more submissions than it's possible to review.
If it's an automatic, "X hits and you're blacklisted" type system, then zombie PC networks will be submitting URLs and getting legitimate sites blacklisted - sure, you probably won't be able to do that to a large, well known site, but there are millions of sites that would be vulnerable.
It's a nice idea, but I personally think that a world in which such a system would actually be practicable wouldn't need it in the first place. In ours, I just don't see it working; too easy to abuse, and too many people with an interest in abusing it (before we even get to the bored ne'er-do-wells)
That's assuming that they're actually waiting, of course, and ignoring the possibility that it really took them 200 days to diagnose the issue, fix it, QA the fix (with subsequent fix/QA cycles as required) and release the fix.
If they sit around drinking coffee for 190 days then start work on it, that's bad. If it takes them 190 days to get it right, at least they're working on it.
I've never understood the attitude that "metric is too hard". It's all powers of ten and standard prefixes. How many millimetres in a metre? 1000. How many millilitres in a litre? 1000. How many metres in a kilometre? 1000. How many ounces in a pound? 16 (I think!) How many pounds in a stone? 14. What's the name of the next unit up? I had to google for it - apparently it's a quarter, which is 28lb (2 stones). Same with distance; 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile (skipping over chains, poles and furlongs).
I know that a lot of it is simply what you're used to, but Imperial units are nonsensical to me after a science-heavy education using only SI units.
The laws of today may not be, but what about the laws of tomorrow?
Besides which, if suddenly associating with known terrorists becomes illegal, then anyone who was ever seen to appear to be associating with a now-known terrorist in the past is going to come under suspicion. Depending on the regime, that suspicion could be very nasty. Yes, I'm talking worst-case, but when the data could potentially persist for the rest of your life, you have to.
Well, then you shouldn't have picked your nose. If you want to become a public figure then the public should have the right to know whom they ar voting for, and yes, even if the person used to pick its nose when young.
Actually, I happen to agree with you on that one, and not just for trivial stuff like picking your nose. If you do something dumb when young, or drunk or in the heat of the moment, that you later come to regret, well that's life. Shouldn't have done it. The thing most people seem to forget is that everyone does dumb things occasionally, and as surveillance becomes increasingly pervasive, more people will be caught doing them on camera.
It'll suck for the first few people caught out like this who can't convince people that they've changed, or that it really isn't that bad, but eventually it'll become impossible to deny that *everyone* is more or less the same. In other words, it'll be harder for people to become hypocritical.
Fear of public shame for actions you perform is no reason to object to cameras; fear of future persecution for currently-acceptable acts is.
Remember when Computer Games came in bigger boxes?
Yes I do - and I remember at the time quite a few people (myself included) thinking that it was a ridiculous waste of space and cardboard. I'm actually very happy that they come in much smaller boxes now, and if that's down to Walmart then I think that's something we should be thanking them for.
Hell, one of my reasons for finally buying a DVD player is that DVDs take up less space on my shelves than VHS cassettes.
That is a lot of duds, so I agree with the GP that there's likely something wrong with your electrical supply; I have a couple of CFL bulbs that I've had for literally years (5+) that show no sign of going yet; I've replaced some of my incandescents and even halogens a number of times in that time.
That hardly constitutes a rigorous scientific proof I know, but that's my experience.
2) Promote Brand loyalty by pushing Gift Cards thereby forcing even non-customers to occasionally consume Starbucks
Well, if someone gave me a Starbucks gift card, I'd thank them kindly then wait for an opportune moment to throw it away (or sell it to a Starbucks-frequenting friend). Just because someone gives you a gift doesn't mean you're compelled to use it. Hell, if they were a good enough friend, I might even point out the error of their ways - it's not that I have anything in particular against Starbucks, I just don't like their coffee.
5) Raise the prices on our addictive substance every six months
So buy it somewhere else. If enough people do that, it'll solve most of your other objections too.
It's not clear from the abstract (and you don't seem to be able to access the paper itself, not that I'd really understand it), but I assume that they're not talking about transmitting genetic information via the food chain, or that prion ingestion (or lack thereof) affects human long-term memory.
Assuming it's the memory of the animal itself, why would food producers care? These animals don't need to remember much more than how to mill around in a field for a while eating before being lead off to slaughter.
(Note that I don't necessarily condone that sort of an attitude; we may be breeding them specifically to eat them, but that's no reason not to make the animal's lives as comfortable as practicable)
As another poster already pointed out, that's the maximum amount allowable by law, and while judges often don't grant the maximum asked for, they can't grant more than was asked for.
Just because they've asked for a trillion and a half doesn't mean that they'll get more than a couple of hundred million, even if they win and they're able to collect.
It's ironic that the one advising people to adapt is the one that's calling for the status quo, not the one that's trying to change things.
Languages change as people add new words and terms. Not all changes are for the better, not all should thrive, but ultimately, it's the people that should decide. You get your vote, we get ours; me, I like USian (and EUian, UKian, etc), although it does seem to inflame some quite remarkable passions. So far, the only people I remember seeing object are Americans...
Re:Vista already doing some of this
on
DieHard, the Software
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Vista has been in development for around 5 years; unless you were expecting this to be released as a service pack for XP or Server 2003, what's your point? It's in MS's latest release, what more do you want? (Yeah, a shorter release cycle would be nice - except that then people would bitch about the upgrade treadmill...)
Slashdot Mirror
Most people don't realize that PayPal charges a small fortune for nothing more than a little convenience
That phrase right there sums up the business model of entire industries; care to explain what's so evil about it?
I just don't put Usability "patterns" in the same category as the GoF patterns
That's because you don't know what a pattern is. Note that nothing in that definition, that a pattern is "a particular way in which something is done" in any way references computing.
A pattern is a way of doing something, a common solution to a common problem. That even applies to knitting patterns - the problem is that you have wool and no jumper, you follow the pattern, you have a jumper. Nothing about the GoF book makes them C++-specific - in fact, most patterns are entirely language-agnostic. To claim that AJAX isn't "complicated enough" to deserve patterns is to fall foul of language snobbery.
Besides, who needs a book to learn AJAX?
People who don't yet know programming (or XML, etc) and want a single reference to learn from? I've known some truly great designers who wanted to get into client-side scripting, etc, but who had so far had little or no exposure to programming. Believe it or not, some people manage to make a good living doing useful work without ever touching a compiler or interpreter...
Does this mean you ay for 2 and get 1
Yes. What else could it mean?
(You pay for two, receive one, the other goes to a needy kid. Easy.)
it's possible (probable?) that somewhere on your system there will be vulnerabilities
Actually, it's absolutely certain that almost no matter what system you're using there will be vulnerabilities. Just because they haven't been found and exploited doesn't mean they're not there - lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, and all that.
What would MS and the electronics industry stand to gain by such an action? People are going to end up buying Vista one way or another, and the number that will buy it because they took a stand against HD DRM is vanishingly small. Likewise the electronics manufacturers stand to make more money *with* DRM - they can simply pass the costs on to the consumers, with a small markup on top.
Fighting would be costly, time-consuming and gain them little even if they won. Not fighting is cheap, easy, and loses them nothing.
The 360 is already at that point. You actually patch your games now. Thanks, Microsoft.
How is it MS's fault if a third-party software developer releases a buggy game and subsequently has to provide patches for it?
So, do you disagree that hypothetically you can be forced into a situation in which all of your possible choices are morally wrong?
When you go to war, you condemn to injury and death huge numbers of entirely innocent people (civilians as well as servicemen); how is that not morally wrong? Yet in the case of WW2, as noted, not going to war also indirectly condemned huge numbers of innocent people to death and suffering; also, surely, morally wrong. Yet they are essentially your only two choices - fight or don't.
So, er, what was the purpose of deciding if it's morally wrong, again?
To explain why, in his opinion, people should no more be making games about WW2 than they should be making them about Columbine. Because if the act itself is morally wrong, then glorifying it must also be.
Because theory and experiment both demand it; the theories only work, and the experiments only make sense, if that's what's happening.
It goes against common sense, but then our common sense is born of our experiences in a macroscopic, Newtonian world; that's why they break down in microscopic and/or relativistic frames. We simply don't have the experience of dealing with them.
The problem with waiving constitutional rights for certain classes of criminals (drug dealers, terrorists, DWIs, child molesters all come to mind as the favorite bogeyman) is that it makes it ok to waive them for others.
"When you allow a good excuse, you open the door to bad excuses" (paraphrased from memory, with apologies to Terry Pratchett)
You seem to assume that virus writers and other malware producers won't simply follow the market trend as well, and target whatever platforms it makes sense to target.
Right now, the vast majority of people are running some flavour of Windows on x86, so that's what's targetted. It helps that Windows machines are also generally a soft(er) target, used by people with little or on clue as to how to use a PC safely. As and when significant numbers of users move to other platforms, those platforms will also be targetted.
There's money to be made, a fair number of intelligent, talented people more than willing to do what it takes to make it, and no shortage of less talented but just as morally dubious people more than willing to use the tools created by them.
Well, personally I think I'd notice that the number was wrong if I looked it up and it had been changed - I know roughly what it should be, so if it's much different I'll be suspicious or confused, and likely check their website.
On the other hand, if I just fired up my VoIP software and double-clicked the "Bank" entry in a phone list, I may never even suspect that anything's amiss.
No, this isn't VoIP-specific, but I can see how it might be made *easier* if the person uses VoIP.
A couple of weeks ago a work mate of mine visited a phishing site he got a scam email about, and filled the form in with a load of bogus data (to help poison their database). It wasn't until after he'd submitted the form that google warned him that the site was a suspected phishing site...
How do you know that it's not being patented specifically to prevent someone else from patenting it and charging outrageous licence fees? How do you know that this group isn't planning on making the research free for anyone to use, free of charge?
Besides which, as other posters have already pointed out, this is an academic group, not "Big Business"; they're not out to scalp people.
(Oh, and "FP?"? Sad, sad, sad.)
Which was pretty much the GP's point - Apple want chips that are appropriate for the use to which their customers put them. Motorola and IBM don't really target those uses; Intel does.
That's simple to abuse. If there really is a human sat there reviewing submitted URLs, then you just DoS it, by flooding it with far more submissions than it's possible to review.
If it's an automatic, "X hits and you're blacklisted" type system, then zombie PC networks will be submitting URLs and getting legitimate sites blacklisted - sure, you probably won't be able to do that to a large, well known site, but there are millions of sites that would be vulnerable.
It's a nice idea, but I personally think that a world in which such a system would actually be practicable wouldn't need it in the first place. In ours, I just don't see it working; too easy to abuse, and too many people with an interest in abusing it (before we even get to the bored ne'er-do-wells)
That's assuming that they're actually waiting, of course, and ignoring the possibility that it really took them 200 days to diagnose the issue, fix it, QA the fix (with subsequent fix/QA cycles as required) and release the fix.
If they sit around drinking coffee for 190 days then start work on it, that's bad. If it takes them 190 days to get it right, at least they're working on it.
I've never understood the attitude that "metric is too hard". It's all powers of ten and standard prefixes. How many millimetres in a metre? 1000. How many millilitres in a litre? 1000. How many metres in a kilometre? 1000. How many ounces in a pound? 16 (I think!) How many pounds in a stone? 14. What's the name of the next unit up? I had to google for it - apparently it's a quarter, which is 28lb (2 stones). Same with distance; 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile (skipping over chains, poles and furlongs).
I know that a lot of it is simply what you're used to, but Imperial units are nonsensical to me after a science-heavy education using only SI units.
Laws are not retroactive.
The laws of today may not be, but what about the laws of tomorrow?
Besides which, if suddenly associating with known terrorists becomes illegal, then anyone who was ever seen to appear to be associating with a now-known terrorist in the past is going to come under suspicion. Depending on the regime, that suspicion could be very nasty. Yes, I'm talking worst-case, but when the data could potentially persist for the rest of your life, you have to.
Well, then you shouldn't have picked your nose. If you want to become a public figure then the public should have the right to know whom they ar voting for, and yes, even if the person used to pick its nose when young.
Actually, I happen to agree with you on that one, and not just for trivial stuff like picking your nose. If you do something dumb when young, or drunk or in the heat of the moment, that you later come to regret, well that's life. Shouldn't have done it. The thing most people seem to forget is that everyone does dumb things occasionally, and as surveillance becomes increasingly pervasive, more people will be caught doing them on camera.
It'll suck for the first few people caught out like this who can't convince people that they've changed, or that it really isn't that bad, but eventually it'll become impossible to deny that *everyone* is more or less the same. In other words, it'll be harder for people to become hypocritical.
Fear of public shame for actions you perform is no reason to object to cameras; fear of future persecution for currently-acceptable acts is.
Remember when Computer Games came in bigger boxes?
Yes I do - and I remember at the time quite a few people (myself included) thinking that it was a ridiculous waste of space and cardboard. I'm actually very happy that they come in much smaller boxes now, and if that's down to Walmart then I think that's something we should be thanking them for.
Hell, one of my reasons for finally buying a DVD player is that DVDs take up less space on my shelves than VHS cassettes.
That is a lot of duds, so I agree with the GP that there's likely something wrong with your electrical supply; I have a couple of CFL bulbs that I've had for literally years (5+) that show no sign of going yet; I've replaced some of my incandescents and even halogens a number of times in that time.
That hardly constitutes a rigorous scientific proof I know, but that's my experience.
2) Promote Brand loyalty by pushing Gift Cards thereby forcing even non-customers to occasionally consume Starbucks
Well, if someone gave me a Starbucks gift card, I'd thank them kindly then wait for an opportune moment to throw it away (or sell it to a Starbucks-frequenting friend). Just because someone gives you a gift doesn't mean you're compelled to use it. Hell, if they were a good enough friend, I might even point out the error of their ways - it's not that I have anything in particular against Starbucks, I just don't like their coffee.
5) Raise the prices on our addictive substance every six months
So buy it somewhere else. If enough people do that, it'll solve most of your other objections too.
It's not clear from the abstract (and you don't seem to be able to access the paper itself, not that I'd really understand it), but I assume that they're not talking about transmitting genetic information via the food chain, or that prion ingestion (or lack thereof) affects human long-term memory.
Assuming it's the memory of the animal itself, why would food producers care? These animals don't need to remember much more than how to mill around in a field for a while eating before being lead off to slaughter.
(Note that I don't necessarily condone that sort of an attitude; we may be breeding them specifically to eat them, but that's no reason not to make the animal's lives as comfortable as practicable)
As another poster already pointed out, that's the maximum amount allowable by law, and while judges often don't grant the maximum asked for, they can't grant more than was asked for.
Just because they've asked for a trillion and a half doesn't mean that they'll get more than a couple of hundred million, even if they win and they're able to collect.
It's ironic that the one advising people to adapt is the one that's calling for the status quo, not the one that's trying to change things.
Languages change as people add new words and terms. Not all changes are for the better, not all should thrive, but ultimately, it's the people that should decide. You get your vote, we get ours; me, I like USian (and EUian, UKian, etc), although it does seem to inflame some quite remarkable passions. So far, the only people I remember seeing object are Americans...
Vista has been in development for around 5 years; unless you were expecting this to be released as a service pack for XP or Server 2003, what's your point? It's in MS's latest release, what more do you want? (Yeah, a shorter release cycle would be nice - except that then people would bitch about the upgrade treadmill...)