Its only the biggest companies putting massive traffic on the network that benefit from NN, not any users.
Um.. are you saying that when a user requests a youtube stream, that youtube is putting massive traffic over the network and not the user? The user benefits from the youtube stream, do they not?
I don't think that real competition is realistic in the ISP space. Why can't you choose your water provider? There is only one set of pipes entering your home. The situation with ISPs isn't quite that extreme, but it is an example of the same problem - there is expensive infrastructure that needs to be plumbed to every home and that naturally limits the number of competitors that can play. Therefore the "free market" cannot solve the problem on its own. If you only have one option for your ISP, without net neutrality there is nothing stopping your local ISP that serves your home from say, only serving news from CNN (or FOX), or blocking youtube. They can do whatever they want because you have no other option.
...but neverthless have a very large volume of written code, from TFA we can conclude that COBOL and FORTRAN are the safest language to use.
I'm sure you're joking, but for those that don't get it: COBOL and FORTRAN do have a large base of running code, but are rarely/never used to write a web or even network aware applications. You can pull the network cable from a Windows 95 box, put it in a bank vault, and it will be reasonably secure, after all.
Exactly. AMD appears to be betting the company on their 7nm process shipping next year. I've heard that AMD 's 7nm is roughly equivalent to Intel's 10nm. Anyway - the idea that there's no incentive anymore to shrink CPU dies anymore is dead wrong. Two things prevent CPU cores from processing faster and more efficiently - heat and the speed of light (or the speed of electrical signals in sillicon). Both are helped by using a smaller process. Almost all purchasers of CPUs benefit from this. On a laptop you can get better performance, better battery life or a smaller battery, or some combination of these. In a data center you can get more servers in a smaller space, fewer servers, lower cooling costs, etc. I don't believe for a second that Intel is going to stop trying to shrink their process - this is just a setback for them and if they don't act quickly, AMD will eat their lunch.
Why don't tech companies choose a location in the middle of nowhere and build their offices there? With such a high concentration of highly paid workers, the free market will build a city around it.
Microsoft did. Walmart did for their tech bunker (want a freaking mansion as a software dev? Work for Walmart.)
Google and Facebook and Amazon want to have offices in prestigious cities, as it helps attract young stupid talent. People who would rather live in a 400 sq foot highrise apartment "in the city!" than a large house somewhere nice. It makes sense if you're mostly hiring guys in their 20s: they don't want a house, they want someplace they can stagger to drunk after a night at the club, hopefully with company.
That may be true to some degree, but it doesn't really explain the silicon valley phenomenon. If that were all that were going on, New York and London would have all the tech companies and nobody else. Tech companies need skilled workers, and the average stint at a tech company is dropping like a rock. IBM used to build tech campuses out in the middle of nowhere and towns would build up around them. They don't do that anymore. Possibly due to loss of market clout, but also because the employment landscape is changing. People just change jobs a lot more often than they used to - and are basically expected to do so. Many/most experienced tech workers are not going to uproot their families to go work in the middle of nowhere when there is little chance they will stay at that job until retirement. Given that, tech companies usually want to set up where there are other tech companies in the hope of attracting experienced talent.
Except a "highly lucrative career" doesn't always panned out. A friend spent $64K per year for four years to send his daughter to NYU to become a Broadway star. While she had minor roles in off Broadway productions during the summers, she never landed a role after graduation. She came back to home to work at Staples while working for free in local productions. She will be a star — someday.
A degree in the arts does not make you a more in-demand artist, or give you a leg up against other artists that have learned their trade on their own. It's a hard lesson to learn - it should probably be a disclaimer that every art student should sign.
We need the humanities, but prior to the financial crisis it seemed to me that it was already widely accepted that we had far more graduates in those fields than we needed, and that the vast majority of them were thus incapable of putting their degree to good use. While enrollment may be half of what it was prior to the crisis, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem. If anything, I'm inclined to think that the market has corrected itself and that today's supply of graduates is closer to actual demand for people in those fields.
Exactly. To add to this: There used to be (and still is) in some circles a saying that "A liberal arts education prepares you for any job", meaning that if you major in art history for example you can get a great job in banking. I think that while it's true that studying any field in depth can help you in any other field, the reality is that the world is more specialized now. Due to better communication, everyone is now affected by global competition to some degree, and, as a result of this, people are now more than ever expected to actually have skills in the field they work in. I think student expectations have also changed. Why spend 4 years studying art history when you have almost no chance of getting a job in that field, whereas if you study a field that has good job prospects, you'll be at an advantage compared to everyone without that degree. It's just practicality.
> In my experience, many people who have a degree in computer science are worse coders because they are taught that there is a specific way to do something rather then being able to creatively solve problems.
In my experience, the exact opposite is true. When you don't have a background in thinking about the structure of code, the algorithms it will use, how that will translate to memory and CPU usage, you are likely going to code your way into a big mess. A good CS school will not teach a specific way to solve each problem - they teach various programming styles, algorithms, and concepts. If you think that a coding bootcamp can make you a good programmer, I simply beg to differ. What makes a good programmer is having the right knowledge and the right experience. That's not to say that all CS schools do a great job of this, or that the right hands-on experience and post-graduate learning can't replace it. IMO it can if someone is passionate enough about their craft. That is the key - passion, experience, and studying the craft. And talent. I just take issue with the idea that somehow having a background in CS would make you a worse coder. I have never experienced that. Maybe you've just worked with people who had degrees but no passion or talent? That I have experienced.
>In this case, it doesn't matter what 2-factor authentication method you use. I don't think this proves Google's device is any better or worse than any other 2FA mechanism, merely proving "requiring 2FA makes phishing less effective".
Actually the U2F protocol (yubikey and google's new key) is more phish-proof than TOTP or SMS based 2FA. In TOTP, it would be possible to for a phishing attacker to set up a fake website which passes credentials directly to the real website, thus owning the account. In SMS, it would be possible for an attacker to trigger the SMS authentication through the same means (passing the first factor to the real website, then presenting a form for the second factor). 2FA outside of U2F makes phishing more difficult, but still is possible, and these kinds of attacks do happen. U2F is "practically unphishable" because it doesn't allow a user to type in a OTP on a fake website.
A phishing attack generally takes the form of a web form that looks like a legitimate site, the idea that the victim will enter their user and password into the form and the attacker will then be able to steal the credentials. 2FA is not always immune to this sort of attack since the second factor could be stolen and passed along immediately to the target site. In the U2F protocol implemented by these security keys, there is a public/private key pair generated for each site (which is in turn tied to the TLS certificate of that site). Proof of possession of the key by means of a signature is the second factor. This makes it pretty difficult to phish since the fake server owned by the phisher would not be able to stand up the same domain and TLS cert in order to get U2F on the client to generate a challenge that would be accepted by the attacked site.
Maybe I didn't explain it that well.. but the point is that the key becomes cryptographically tied to the target site in a way that cannot be replayed by a standard phishing attack.
Realistically though, on 1GB of RAM you're likely to notice a slight performance degradation moving to 64 bit due to the larger pointer sizes taking up more of the limited RAM. There probably are use cases which could benefit from a 64 bit OS on a 1 GB RAM pi, but they are few.
I'm hoping that a future model 4 will have more than 4GB, where 64bit will be a net benefit.
>I suspect until someone runs a fiber optic line into your house and gives you internet for free, you'll bitch about whoever your current provider is and whatever agreement you sign with them. Infrastructure like broadband cables, sewer, and electricity do not lend themselves to multiple providers in direct competition with each other. It's just the way things work. The capital expenditures are too large.
Your having 3-4 local broadband options makes you an outlier. Most people have one choice for broadband, which makes them a natural monopoly. Natural monopolies tend to abuse their positions of power unless regulated. This is where net neutrality comes in.
The further you go in your career - development lead, architect, etc. the interruptions only increase. The time you have for productive coding will drop to near zero unless you explicitly make the time. But yet if you stop coding, you will not be as familiar as you need to be with your domain. Here are some strategies that may help: * Schedule 1:1 meetings with yourself in a different area than you normally work. Be disciplined and use the time only for coding. * Come in earlier than anyone else. I find it impossible to stay later, but coming in earlier is quite easy. * Code in the evenings at home. Leave yourself some time to relax too though or you'll burn out. * Don't go to every meeting you're invited to. Be judicious. * Be visible and available and ready to answer questions when you're at your desk. That way people will tend to ask questions when you're prepared to answer them.
Honestly I don't think that being a great developer is quantifiable in the sense that you can feed some metrics into an equation and come up with a number. If you do that, even poor developers are smart enough to work the system.
Here are some signs of a good developer, IMO:
* Writes code that can be easily understood, even when the task at hand is relatively complex. * Removes code on a regular basis. (Net LOC added might even be negative) * Asks good questions to clarify requirements. * Produces good tests, uses them to validate the code they've written. * Makes proper use of libraries instead of "re-inventing the wheel". * Makes good review comments on other developer's code that make it cleaner, more testable etc. * Documents complex systems so that the next poor sap who owns it won't be completely lost.
Obviously if you're measuring by LOC added, stop it. That's in direct opposition to most of these principles.
Skype as an IM app has been awful for around 13 years. I'm just too familiar with the spinning skype wheel of death to take this seriously. Most other IM apps (such as Slack or HipChat)... you know... let you chat... and they do it consistently!
As a counterpoint to this, my childhood was on a farm, and pretty much was straight out of a John Mellencamp song. We didn't have hired hands, were not dirt poor but certainly not "well off". We pretty much did all the work as a family - including fixing the tractors to some degree. Well, honestly, my dad did that and at best I watched. That might not be your experience, and I respect that, but small family farms still do exist in some parts of the US. I can see why these folks would want to fix their own tractors. For one, do you know how hard it is to get a tractor that isn't working to a dealer?
As for John Deere being a greedy corporation or just trying to make an honest buck - you can look at it either way. The fact is that tractors these days are large very expensive pieces of machinery that are generally not purchased sans financing - so the initial cost vs monthly cost is just a matter of which pocket the money comes from.
I take it you've never had to debug something done by someone who was high. It's horrid.. The writer thinks their work was the best thing the have ever done but the reality ends up being a mess. If drunk it's a lazy unmotivated mess with everything done the easy way, if high it's a massively overcomplicated mess (everything is connected!).
It's not as if were talking about the arts here, both systems admin and programming are a logical process and require a clear head.
Maybe, but in my experience, programming while incompetent is a much, much bigger problem than programming while high. I've seen plenty of programming fails by well meaning, sober people that just made my head spin - and I've never (knowingly) seen an example of what could be labeled "high coding". That said, in the end you need both competent programmers and competent code reviewers. If they are incompetent, they need to go. Presumably competent coders will will also keep their "recreational activities" at home. If they don't do that and it shows, they are incompetent and need to go. Drug testing won't really help determine who is competent and who is not - at least for coders.
There have been bad cables out there that put in the wrong spec resistor or are otherwise mis-wired. However, I don't agree that "authenticating" the cables is the answer. The word "authentication" implies that there will be key exchanges involved, which puts all the pieces into place for vendor lock-in (i.e. LG devices only charge with LG certified cables, etc... ), not to mention additional cost and complexity. I for one already have a selection of USB-C compliant chargers and cables (yes, using Benson's spreadsheet). Will those be accepted by new USB-C devices supporting this specification? Will there be a supply of cheap USB-C cables that support this "authentication" AND work with every device vendor? I doubt it on both accounts. I prefer Benson's approach of shaming the vendors that don't follow the spec.
I suppose that since April Fool's day is two days away that this is not a joke. That said, Canonical has completely lost their collective minds. It started with Unity, then Mir, and now "ubuntu minus Linux". Seriously guys. What the hell IS ubuntu if it is not Linux? Unity for windows? Barf.
>I understand that the licensing terms make it impossible for Netflix to have such an extensive library, but they and the content producers need to work out something or people will start abandoning them and going back to the old-fashioned way of streaming movies... illegally or quasi-legally.
Not really, no. Think of Netflix as a provider of exclusive content and curated, rotating third party content for a low monthly price. It's more akin to HBO than a video store. IMO most people that have Netflix understand that. For the "video store" model to make economic sense, it pretty much has to have a la carte pricing per show or movie. Guess what? iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play are all doing that and it's 100% legal.
Personally I don't think that netflix streaming has to be a video store. I'm quite happy with what I'm getting now for the price. That said, it wouldn't shock me if someday they launch a parallel streaming service with a la carte pricing.
>If ever there was a language where people copy and paste somebodiy's working code and try to mangle it to work for their own purposes with no understanding of the actual language or security thereof, it is Javascript.
In the majority of web applications the client is given limited scope by the server. Clients can't be given full trust because anyone can create their own malicious client. Security bugs are therefore on the server. Today most javascript is still client side. Yes, node.js has been making inroads, but it is far from the most popular server side language. I predict that if node does eclipse java in popularity, it will also beat java in server side security bugs. Perhaps by a wide margin, since I've also seen a lot of client side programmers work on server code in node. If you're used to being on the untrusted side of things and then suddenly have to make secure code, you're bound to make mistakes.
And, under ideal circumstances . . . its gonna be hard to beat Assembler. (Slower to market . . . perhaps . . . but faster for you the next 20 years as you run it.)
You may be right, but I wouldn't bet on that. First of all, it's not unheard of for a CPU architecture to die in 20 years, but that aside: It would be interesting to take an x86 assembler program written 20 years ago and run it on modern hardware, then perform the same experiment with a C program recompiled with a modern compiler.
The 20 year old assembly program would be optimized for a 20 year old CPU architecture (and essentially running in backward compatibility mode), whereas the C program would be optimized for the current architecture. I'd wager you'd see far greater improvement moving to the modern CPU in the C program. Whether it would be faster than the assembly program would depend on what it did, but I would think that in many cases the C program would be faster, even if the assembly program smoked it 20 years ago.
4k is indeed pointless, unless you literally have a full size movie theater in your house. How in the world can anyone make out individual pixels at 1080p on a reasonable screen size without getting right up to the screen? It's physically impossible.
And as for streaming being able to provide 4k before disc-based formats - HD streaming is good, but not close to blu-ray quality today at 1080p/24. This is due to bandwidth constraints. How is increasing the resolution going to help improve the bandwidth?
I would rather like to have a 4k desktop monitor (because I do sit right next to it), but I would not pay more for a living room TV that has 4k (because I don't).
It's a little known fact that Android supports USB controllers... I use one from time to time on the nexus 7. Adding a $9 USB gamepad and a USB OTG cable can immensely improve the tablet gaming experience.
Outdated? You could still buy a new Wii through normal retail channels in 2012 (maybe you still can). Less than a year of support is the standard now? That's shameful. Not that I know anyone who uses a wii for news and weather, but still.
Slashdot Mirror
Its only the biggest companies putting massive traffic on the network that benefit from NN, not any users.
Um.. are you saying that when a user requests a youtube stream, that youtube is putting massive traffic over the network and not the user? The user benefits from the youtube stream, do they not?
I don't think that real competition is realistic in the ISP space. Why can't you choose your water provider? There is only one set of pipes entering your home. The situation with ISPs isn't quite that extreme, but it is an example of the same problem - there is expensive infrastructure that needs to be plumbed to every home and that naturally limits the number of competitors that can play. Therefore the "free market" cannot solve the problem on its own. If you only have one option for your ISP, without net neutrality there is nothing stopping your local ISP that serves your home from say, only serving news from CNN (or FOX), or blocking youtube. They can do whatever they want because you have no other option.
...but neverthless have a very large volume of written code, from TFA we can conclude that COBOL and FORTRAN are the safest language to use.
I'm sure you're joking, but for those that don't get it: COBOL and FORTRAN do have a large base of running code, but are rarely/never used to write a web or even network aware applications. You can pull the network cable from a Windows 95 box, put it in a bank vault, and it will be reasonably secure, after all.
Exactly. AMD appears to be betting the company on their 7nm process shipping next year. I've heard that AMD 's 7nm is roughly equivalent to Intel's 10nm. Anyway - the idea that there's no incentive anymore to shrink CPU dies anymore is dead wrong. Two things prevent CPU cores from processing faster and more efficiently - heat and the speed of light (or the speed of electrical signals in sillicon). Both are helped by using a smaller process. Almost all purchasers of CPUs benefit from this. On a laptop you can get better performance, better battery life or a smaller battery, or some combination of these. In a data center you can get more servers in a smaller space, fewer servers, lower cooling costs, etc. I don't believe for a second that Intel is going to stop trying to shrink their process - this is just a setback for them and if they don't act quickly, AMD will eat their lunch.
Why don't tech companies choose a location in the middle of nowhere and build their offices there? With such a high concentration of highly paid workers, the free market will build a city around it.
Microsoft did. Walmart did for their tech bunker (want a freaking mansion as a software dev? Work for Walmart.)
Google and Facebook and Amazon want to have offices in prestigious cities, as it helps attract young stupid talent. People who would rather live in a 400 sq foot highrise apartment "in the city!" than a large house somewhere nice. It makes sense if you're mostly hiring guys in their 20s: they don't want a house, they want someplace they can stagger to drunk after a night at the club, hopefully with company.
That may be true to some degree, but it doesn't really explain the silicon valley phenomenon. If that were all that were going on, New York and London would have all the tech companies and nobody else. Tech companies need skilled workers, and the average stint at a tech company is dropping like a rock. IBM used to build tech campuses out in the middle of nowhere and towns would build up around them. They don't do that anymore. Possibly due to loss of market clout, but also because the employment landscape is changing. People just change jobs a lot more often than they used to - and are basically expected to do so. Many/most experienced tech workers are not going to uproot their families to go work in the middle of nowhere when there is little chance they will stay at that job until retirement. Given that, tech companies usually want to set up where there are other tech companies in the hope of attracting experienced talent.
Except a "highly lucrative career" doesn't always panned out. A friend spent $64K per year for four years to send his daughter to NYU to become a Broadway star. While she had minor roles in off Broadway productions during the summers, she never landed a role after graduation. She came back to home to work at Staples while working for free in local productions. She will be a star — someday.
A degree in the arts does not make you a more in-demand artist, or give you a leg up against other artists that have learned their trade on their own. It's a hard lesson to learn - it should probably be a disclaimer that every art student should sign.
We need the humanities, but prior to the financial crisis it seemed to me that it was already widely accepted that we had far more graduates in those fields than we needed, and that the vast majority of them were thus incapable of putting their degree to good use. While enrollment may be half of what it was prior to the crisis, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem. If anything, I'm inclined to think that the market has corrected itself and that today's supply of graduates is closer to actual demand for people in those fields.
Exactly. To add to this: There used to be (and still is) in some circles a saying that "A liberal arts education prepares you for any job", meaning that if you major in art history for example you can get a great job in banking. I think that while it's true that studying any field in depth can help you in any other field, the reality is that the world is more specialized now. Due to better communication, everyone is now affected by global competition to some degree, and, as a result of this, people are now more than ever expected to actually have skills in the field they work in. I think student expectations have also changed. Why spend 4 years studying art history when you have almost no chance of getting a job in that field, whereas if you study a field that has good job prospects, you'll be at an advantage compared to everyone without that degree. It's just practicality.
> In my experience, many people who have a degree in computer science are worse coders because they are taught that there is a specific way to do something rather then being able to creatively solve problems.
In my experience, the exact opposite is true. When you don't have a background in thinking about the structure of code, the algorithms it will use, how that will translate to memory and CPU usage, you are likely going to code your way into a big mess. A good CS school will not teach a specific way to solve each problem - they teach various programming styles, algorithms, and concepts. If you think that a coding bootcamp can make you a good programmer, I simply beg to differ. What makes a good programmer is having the right knowledge and the right experience. That's not to say that all CS schools do a great job of this, or that the right hands-on experience and post-graduate learning can't replace it. IMO it can if someone is passionate enough about their craft. That is the key - passion, experience, and studying the craft. And talent. I just take issue with the idea that somehow having a background in CS would make you a worse coder. I have never experienced that. Maybe you've just worked with people who had degrees but no passion or talent? That I have experienced.
>In this case, it doesn't matter what 2-factor authentication method you use. I don't think this proves Google's device is any better or worse than any other 2FA mechanism, merely proving "requiring 2FA makes phishing less effective".
Actually the U2F protocol (yubikey and google's new key) is more phish-proof than TOTP or SMS based 2FA. In TOTP, it would be possible to for a phishing attacker to set up a fake website which passes credentials directly to the real website, thus owning the account. In SMS, it would be possible for an attacker to trigger the SMS authentication through the same means (passing the first factor to the real website, then presenting a form for the second factor). 2FA outside of U2F makes phishing more difficult, but still is possible, and these kinds of attacks do happen. U2F is "practically unphishable" because it doesn't allow a user to type in a OTP on a fake website.
A phishing attack generally takes the form of a web form that looks like a legitimate site, the idea that the victim will enter their user and password into the form and the attacker will then be able to steal the credentials. 2FA is not always immune to this sort of attack since the second factor could be stolen and passed along immediately to the target site. In the U2F protocol implemented by these security keys, there is a public/private key pair generated for each site (which is in turn tied to the TLS certificate of that site). Proof of possession of the key by means of a signature is the second factor. This makes it pretty difficult to phish since the fake server owned by the phisher would not be able to stand up the same domain and TLS cert in order to get U2F on the client to generate a challenge that would be accepted by the attacked site.
Maybe I didn't explain it that well.. but the point is that the key becomes cryptographically tied to the target site in a way that cannot be replayed by a standard phishing attack.
>Any sign of a 64 bit Raspbian yet ?
You can try this: https://github.com/bamarni/pi6...
Realistically though, on 1GB of RAM you're likely to notice a slight performance degradation moving to 64 bit due to the larger pointer sizes taking up more of the limited RAM. There probably are use cases which could benefit from a 64 bit OS on a 1 GB RAM pi, but they are few.
I'm hoping that a future model 4 will have more than 4GB, where 64bit will be a net benefit.
>I suspect until someone runs a fiber optic line into your house and gives you internet for free, you'll bitch about whoever your current provider is and whatever agreement you sign with them. Infrastructure like broadband cables, sewer, and electricity do not lend themselves to multiple providers in direct competition with each other. It's just the way things work. The capital expenditures are too large.
Your having 3-4 local broadband options makes you an outlier. Most people have one choice for broadband, which makes them a natural monopoly. Natural monopolies tend to abuse their positions of power unless regulated. This is where net neutrality comes in.
The further you go in your career - development lead, architect, etc. the interruptions only increase. The time you have for productive coding will drop to near zero unless you explicitly make the time. But yet if you stop coding, you will not be as familiar as you need to be with your domain. Here are some strategies that may help:
* Schedule 1:1 meetings with yourself in a different area than you normally work. Be disciplined and use the time only for coding.
* Come in earlier than anyone else. I find it impossible to stay later, but coming in earlier is quite easy.
* Code in the evenings at home. Leave yourself some time to relax too though or you'll burn out.
* Don't go to every meeting you're invited to. Be judicious.
* Be visible and available and ready to answer questions when you're at your desk. That way people will tend to ask questions when you're prepared to answer them.
Honestly I don't think that being a great developer is quantifiable in the sense that you can feed some metrics into an equation and come up with a number. If you do that, even poor developers are smart enough to work the system.
Here are some signs of a good developer, IMO:
* Writes code that can be easily understood, even when the task at hand is relatively complex.
* Removes code on a regular basis. (Net LOC added might even be negative)
* Asks good questions to clarify requirements.
* Produces good tests, uses them to validate the code they've written.
* Makes proper use of libraries instead of "re-inventing the wheel".
* Makes good review comments on other developer's code that make it cleaner, more testable etc.
* Documents complex systems so that the next poor sap who owns it won't be completely lost.
Obviously if you're measuring by LOC added, stop it. That's in direct opposition to most of these principles.
Skype as an IM app has been awful for around 13 years. I'm just too familiar with the spinning skype wheel of death to take this seriously. Most other IM apps (such as Slack or HipChat)... you know... let you chat... and they do it consistently!
As a counterpoint to this, my childhood was on a farm, and pretty much was straight out of a John Mellencamp song. We didn't have hired hands, were not dirt poor but certainly not "well off". We pretty much did all the work as a family - including fixing the tractors to some degree. Well, honestly, my dad did that and at best I watched. That might not be your experience, and I respect that, but small family farms still do exist in some parts of the US. I can see why these folks would want to fix their own tractors. For one, do you know how hard it is to get a tractor that isn't working to a dealer?
As for John Deere being a greedy corporation or just trying to make an honest buck - you can look at it either way. The fact is that tractors these days are large very expensive pieces of machinery that are generally not purchased sans financing - so the initial cost vs monthly cost is just a matter of which pocket the money comes from.
I take it you've never had to debug something done by someone who was high. It's horrid.. The writer thinks their work was the best thing the have ever done but the reality ends up being a mess. If drunk it's a lazy unmotivated mess with everything done the easy way, if high it's a massively overcomplicated mess (everything is connected!).
It's not as if were talking about the arts here, both systems admin and programming are a logical process and require a clear head.
Maybe, but in my experience, programming while incompetent is a much, much bigger problem than programming while high. I've seen plenty of programming fails by well meaning, sober people that just made my head spin - and I've never (knowingly) seen an example of what could be labeled "high coding". That said, in the end you need both competent programmers and competent code reviewers. If they are incompetent, they need to go. Presumably competent coders will will also keep their "recreational activities" at home. If they don't do that and it shows, they are incompetent and need to go. Drug testing won't really help determine who is competent and who is not - at least for coders.
There have been bad cables out there that put in the wrong spec resistor or are otherwise mis-wired. However, I don't agree that "authenticating" the cables is the answer. The word "authentication" implies that there will be key exchanges involved, which puts all the pieces into place for vendor lock-in (i.e. LG devices only charge with LG certified cables, etc... ), not to mention additional cost and complexity. I for one already have a selection of USB-C compliant chargers and cables (yes, using Benson's spreadsheet). Will those be accepted by new USB-C devices supporting this specification? Will there be a supply of cheap USB-C cables that support this "authentication" AND work with every device vendor? I doubt it on both accounts. I prefer Benson's approach of shaming the vendors that don't follow the spec.
I suppose that since April Fool's day is two days away that this is not a joke. That said, Canonical has completely lost their collective minds. It started with Unity, then Mir, and now "ubuntu minus Linux". Seriously guys. What the hell IS ubuntu if it is not Linux? Unity for windows? Barf.
>I understand that the licensing terms make it impossible for Netflix to have such an extensive library, but they and the content producers need to work out something or people will start abandoning them and going back to the old-fashioned way of streaming movies... illegally or quasi-legally.
Not really, no. Think of Netflix as a provider of exclusive content and curated, rotating third party content for a low monthly price. It's more akin to HBO than a video store. IMO most people that have Netflix understand that. For the "video store" model to make economic sense, it pretty much has to have a la carte pricing per show or movie. Guess what? iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play are all doing that and it's 100% legal.
Personally I don't think that netflix streaming has to be a video store. I'm quite happy with what I'm getting now for the price. That said, it wouldn't shock me if someday they launch a parallel streaming service with a la carte pricing.
>If ever there was a language where people copy and paste somebodiy's working code and try to mangle it to work for their own purposes with no understanding of the actual language or security thereof, it is Javascript.
In the majority of web applications the client is given limited scope by the server. Clients can't be given full trust because anyone can create their own malicious client. Security bugs are therefore on the server. Today most javascript is still client side. Yes, node.js has been making inroads, but it is far from the most popular server side language. I predict that if node does eclipse java in popularity, it will also beat java in server side security bugs. Perhaps by a wide margin, since I've also seen a lot of client side programmers work on server code in node. If you're used to being on the untrusted side of things and then suddenly have to make secure code, you're bound to make mistakes.
And, under ideal circumstances . . . its gonna be hard to beat Assembler. (Slower to market . . . perhaps . . . but faster for you the next 20 years as you run it.)
You may be right, but I wouldn't bet on that. First of all, it's not unheard of for a CPU architecture to die in 20 years, but that aside: It would be interesting to take an x86 assembler program written 20 years ago and run it on modern hardware, then perform the same experiment with a C program recompiled with a modern compiler.
The 20 year old assembly program would be optimized for a 20 year old CPU architecture (and essentially running in backward compatibility mode), whereas the C program would be optimized for the current architecture. I'd wager you'd see far greater improvement moving to the modern CPU in the C program. Whether it would be faster than the assembly program would depend on what it did, but I would think that in many cases the C program would be faster, even if the assembly program smoked it 20 years ago.
4k is indeed pointless, unless you literally have a full size movie theater in your house. How in the world can anyone make out individual pixels at 1080p on a reasonable screen size without getting right up to the screen? It's physically impossible.
And as for streaming being able to provide 4k before disc-based formats - HD streaming is good, but not close to blu-ray quality today at 1080p/24. This is due to bandwidth constraints. How is increasing the resolution going to help improve the bandwidth?
I would rather like to have a 4k desktop monitor (because I do sit right next to it), but I would not pay more for a living room TV that has 4k (because I don't).
It's a little known fact that Android supports USB controllers... I use one from time to time on the nexus 7.
Adding a $9 USB gamepad and a USB OTG cable can immensely improve the tablet gaming experience.
Outdated? You could still buy a new Wii through normal retail channels in 2012 (maybe you still can). Less than a year of support is the standard now? That's shameful. Not that I know anyone who uses a wii for news and weather, but still.