Waht could be easier than Microsoft Security issues?
To geeks like you and me, MS's security issues have obvious for a long time. But the big companies that decide which browsers most people use are only now facing the issue.
The person who submitted this story seems to have reading issues. There's nothing about area codes. It's about automated allocation of new phone numbers.
In any case, phone numbers not tied to a location are nothing new. My cell provider (Sprint) has let me change area code without verifying my actual location. (They used to be picky about having your initial area code match your billing address. Don't know if they still are.) And VoIP providers have always let people pick their area code, provided only they have phone numbers in that area code available.
I suppose that if we ever completely abandon the old landline system (unlikely), or if the landline system stops charging extra for long-distance calls (vaguely possible), then we might have area codes that aren't tied to a location. But until them, nobody will offer them because nobody would use them -- why make people pay extra to call you?
I think that's backwards. The first 10% is next to impossible, because until you get some serious market share, nobody takes you seriously.
For all its advantages, Firefox growth is driven mainly by the way Microsoft keeps tripping over its own feet when responding to security issues. It's not so much that they were careless in designing the browser to begin with. What hurts them is that they can't seem to keep up with the problem. Patches take forever, and often introduce new problems. And many people can't even install the patches! IT people are looking at Firefox simply because they can't continue to live with Internet Explorer.
I just had a thought. I've long suspected that the IE codebase is a real mess, and may have already reached "critical mass", where every bug fix creates, on average, more than one new bug. If Firefox's challenge to IE's supremacy ever becomes an issue, MS will have to consider a scorched-earth strategy: abandon the IE codebase and build a new browser from scratch. A horribly expensive strategy, but then MS can afford it.
But of course it's still Beta. A simple test for "Wilmington, DE to Jersey City, NJ" in my case renders a misplaced blue line that I can't quite make sense of.
I think "beta" is just Google's typical anti-hyping. They're on a severe "underpromise and overdeliver" trip. Anyway, severe glitches are not unknown on more established mapping engines.
Interestingly, Map24 is still a "Google partner" according to their web site. And address searches in the U.S. on Google still result in links to Mapquest and Yahoo maps, but none to Google maps. Presumably Google has exclusive arrangements with these companies -- who will not be happy that Google has become a major competitor.
Another interesting feature: you search for a business, and they seem to search multiple yellow-pages-type web sites for the address. When you get a hit, you also get a link to the web site that provided the listing. So when I searched for Starbucks in downtown San Jose, I got a link to the coffee shops page at SanJose.com. Very cool.
This is a typical Google announcement. No advance notice, no media hype, and a product that's 10 times as good as anything else out there. The only reason I would continue to use my current favorite (Yahoo Maps) is all the addresses they store for me. Talk about raising the bar.
On the other hand, Google has been trying to fill a job I'd be perfect for for months. But I can't get an interview, probably because my academic credentials suck. I hates them, I hates them forever!
Forget it. They'll put all they efforts into The Sims II. Which would be OK -- the game really did need updating. Unfortunately, they updated it with fancy 3D graphics that don't work unless you spend a lot of money on the latest hardware.
"FUD" is just a synonym for "flamebait". Somebody says something you don't want to hear, so you attack his motives for saying it. The validity of what's being said is of secondary importance!
I can't shoehorn my experience and beliefs into your black-and-white version of reality. It isn't a simple choice between doing a good job and going with the flow. Sometimes your bosses and fellow employees create a good environment where it's easy to do a good job. Sometimes they are total idiots who create a stifling environment where you can't survive except as a brown-nosed drone. But most often it's somewhere in between, where a certain amount of comprimise and politicking is just a part of the job.
Besides, sometimes you're the one that's full of shit. If you cop the attitude, "I know the right way to do this, and if you don't get it, fuck off!" is a recipe for disaster. You probably won't get away with it, in which case it's a disaster for your career. But some companies do let their employees get away with that kind of ego-tripping. Needless to say, they're hellish places to work.
You're preaching to the choir. I know very well I have a responsibility to use my brain. But it's important to remember that corporate culture doesn't always reward you for using your brain. Indeed, it often punishes you for doing so.
Telling your CEO "but the tool didn't see that problem" potentially makes you look just as dumb as the tool you paid for.
Why? It's not your job to see the problem. By hiding the implentation of the security software, its designers assumed responsibility for making it reliable.
Passing the buck is standard corporate politics. It's true that this leads to a lot of dysfunctional organizations and bad decisions. But if you choose to fight this trend, you better be very good at what you do. And at covering your ass.
Your love life is obviously more successful than mine.
Seriously though, people (well, mostly women) love romantic fantasies. Check out the romance section of your bookstore some time. There's an obvious market for romance-based games.
Violent stories are the junk food of gaming and other forms of entertainment. They're intellectually and emotionally unnutritious, but they're relatively easy to program (or write or film) and they have a large guaranteed audience. And just as junk food dominates the food diet of too many people, violence dominates the entertainment diet of too many people.
I enjoy a Jumbo Jack and a round of GTA3 now and then. But, like many people, I refuse to consume them until both my pancreas and my brain rot.
Judging from the fact that this is part of a project called KDE-Cygin, this probably started out as a Cygwin library, and only later was targetted at native Windows.
They probably had the same idea IBM had: "We'll call it the 360 because it's an all-around system!" (The System 360 was the first computer with byte-level addressing, breaking down the distinction between "Scientific" and "Business" computers.) I wonder if IBM will sue?
Uh, do you understand what I mean by "type checking"? "Strict" enforces various restrictions (including the requirement that you explicitly declare variables, which is probably what you were thinking of). But none of these include type-checking. In fact, type-checking would break a lot of standard perl idioms.
Your Palm pilot isn't programmed to simulate a Shakespeare tragedy! Does it seem odd to you that GTA uses mouse clicks to simulate gunfire? Violence is part of one game, emotion is part of the other. Neither is "real", but so what? It's a game.
As a matter of fact, variables don't have type, only the value that they contain does. This has its advantages. For instance, you can do things like assigning the name of a function to a variable, and then executing it by adding parentheses, for instance. It also has major disadvantages, making a typo in a variable name will create a new variable, and on top of that, Lua will not throw an error. This isn't such a big deal with a small codebase, or when the domain of Lua's use in a game is limited, but when a large portion of the game is written in Lua's, it can became a hassle. Often times, a member of the team would make a seemingly simple change, only to be greeted by Romeo and Juliet standing still on the stage, doing nothing, with naught a peep from Lua.
This is the same issue I have with with Python and (to a lesser extent) Perl. Neither language enforces any kind of type checking. Python objects don't even have types as such -- you just add or remove members as you need them. And Python doesn't provide a way to declare variables, so you have to be a very careful typist.
Some very successful applications have been writen in Perl and Python, so obviously there are good programmers who like self-discipline better than languages with anti-Murphy features. But a lot of us are not like that. Something to remember when you chose a language for a project.
You're right, having a program run off a CD is a good way to let people experiment with it. But that's not what a LiveCD is. It's a complete bootable system on a CD. Before you can run the demo, you have to boot into a completely new environtment, where you don't have access to all your tools and customizations. That strikes me as exactly the wrong way to demo software.
Users don't "use" GNUStep. They use software that happens to be written to the GNUStep API. Suppose (it's unlikely, but suppose) that some GNUStep program on this CD generates a lot of buzz. It doesn't tell programmers to create more GNUStep programs. It tells them to create more programs like the one that generated the buzz. They don't have to use GNUStep to do that.
In order for GNUStep to get more developers, it has to convince them that the API will make their jobs easier. The API has been around for 20 years (counting its NextStep and OpenStep incarnations) but has never caught on. (At least, not at any company not run by Steve Jobs.) A few popular GNUStep apps isn't going to change that.
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HP used to be the source for quality hardware. No longer.
In other words, you want PBS to pick up the show.
A game without fancy 3d graphics, where the player's skill and imagination are key? I'm pretty sure that's illegal.
In any case, phone numbers not tied to a location are nothing new. My cell provider (Sprint) has let me change area code without verifying my actual location. (They used to be picky about having your initial area code match your billing address. Don't know if they still are.) And VoIP providers have always let people pick their area code, provided only they have phone numbers in that area code available.
I suppose that if we ever completely abandon the old landline system (unlikely), or if the landline system stops charging extra for long-distance calls (vaguely possible), then we might have area codes that aren't tied to a location. But until them, nobody will offer them because nobody would use them -- why make people pay extra to call you?
For all its advantages, Firefox growth is driven mainly by the way Microsoft keeps tripping over its own feet when responding to security issues. It's not so much that they were careless in designing the browser to begin with. What hurts them is that they can't seem to keep up with the problem. Patches take forever, and often introduce new problems. And many people can't even install the patches! IT people are looking at Firefox simply because they can't continue to live with Internet Explorer.
I just had a thought. I've long suspected that the IE codebase is a real mess, and may have already reached "critical mass", where every bug fix creates, on average, more than one new bug. If Firefox's challenge to IE's supremacy ever becomes an issue, MS will have to consider a scorched-earth strategy: abandon the IE codebase and build a new browser from scratch. A horribly expensive strategy, but then MS can afford it.
Interestingly, Map24 is still a "Google partner" according to their web site. And address searches in the U.S. on Google still result in links to Mapquest and Yahoo maps, but none to Google maps. Presumably Google has exclusive arrangements with these companies -- who will not be happy that Google has become a major competitor.
Another interesting feature: you search for a business, and they seem to search multiple yellow-pages-type web sites for the address. When you get a hit, you also get a link to the web site that provided the listing. So when I searched for Starbucks in downtown San Jose, I got a link to the coffee shops page at SanJose.com. Very cool.
This is a typical Google announcement. No advance notice, no media hype, and a product that's 10 times as good as anything else out there. The only reason I would continue to use my current favorite (Yahoo Maps) is all the addresses they store for me. Talk about raising the bar.
On the other hand, Google has been trying to fill a job I'd be perfect for for months. But I can't get an interview, probably because my academic credentials suck. I hates them, I hates them forever!
Forget it. They'll put all they efforts into The Sims II. Which would be OK -- the game really did need updating. Unfortunately, they updated it with fancy 3D graphics that don't work unless you spend a lot of money on the latest hardware.
The thing to avoid is not feeling like a fool. It's looking like a fool.
Wild idea. It'll never catch on.
Besides, sometimes you're the one that's full of shit. If you cop the attitude, "I know the right way to do this, and if you don't get it, fuck off!" is a recipe for disaster. You probably won't get away with it, in which case it's a disaster for your career. But some companies do let their employees get away with that kind of ego-tripping. Needless to say, they're hellish places to work.
But preservation doesn't happen in isolation. It's something people do for a specific purpose.
You're preaching to the choir. I know very well I have a responsibility to use my brain. But it's important to remember that corporate culture doesn't always reward you for using your brain. Indeed, it often punishes you for doing so.
Great, film is a highlyly archivable medium. But why is archivability the only factor you care to consider?
Passing the buck is standard corporate politics. It's true that this leads to a lot of dysfunctional organizations and bad decisions. But if you choose to fight this trend, you better be very good at what you do. And at covering your ass.
Seriously though, people (well, mostly women) love romantic fantasies. Check out the romance section of your bookstore some time. There's an obvious market for romance-based games.
Violent stories are the junk food of gaming and other forms of entertainment. They're intellectually and emotionally unnutritious, but they're relatively easy to program (or write or film) and they have a large guaranteed audience. And just as junk food dominates the food diet of too many people, violence dominates the entertainment diet of too many people.
I enjoy a Jumbo Jack and a round of GTA3 now and then. But, like many people, I refuse to consume them until both my pancreas and my brain rot.
Judging from the fact that this is part of a project called KDE-Cygin, this probably started out as a Cygwin library, and only later was targetted at native Windows.
They probably had the same idea IBM had: "We'll call it the 360 because it's an all-around system!" (The System 360 was the first computer with byte-level addressing, breaking down the distinction between "Scientific" and "Business" computers.) I wonder if IBM will sue?
Uh, do you understand what I mean by "type checking"? "Strict" enforces various restrictions (including the requirement that you explicitly declare variables, which is probably what you were thinking of). But none of these include type-checking. In fact, type-checking would break a lot of standard perl idioms.
Here.. No downloads yet.
Your Palm pilot isn't programmed to simulate a Shakespeare tragedy! Does it seem odd to you that GTA uses mouse clicks to simulate gunfire? Violence is part of one game, emotion is part of the other. Neither is "real", but so what? It's a game.
Some very successful applications have been writen in Perl and Python, so obviously there are good programmers who like self-discipline better than languages with anti-Murphy features. But a lot of us are not like that. Something to remember when you chose a language for a project.
You're right, having a program run off a CD is a good way to let people experiment with it. But that's not what a LiveCD is. It's a complete bootable system on a CD. Before you can run the demo, you have to boot into a completely new environtment, where you don't have access to all your tools and customizations. That strikes me as exactly the wrong way to demo software.
In order for GNUStep to get more developers, it has to convince them that the API will make their jobs easier. The API has been around for 20 years (counting its NextStep and OpenStep incarnations) but has never caught on. (At least, not at any company not run by Steve Jobs.) A few popular GNUStep apps isn't going to change that.