Assuming posting this on Slashdot was an attempt to prove verify the author's thesis. Bravo. The comment thread proves the veracity of everything he says.
I was making fun of the original poster who seemed to think that anyone with a soldering iron became a threat. You're disassembling the wrong statement.
"The answer to this is firearms safety education." - awesome. Most pro-gun types are vociferously against this sort of regulation. This is really what most gun-safety advocates are looking for. Requiring guns to be in safes or locked cases. Requiring training for everyone in a home with guns. Common sense stuff. Ramifications for accidents that occur due to negligence. I agree, that if we had laws with real teeth we wouldn't need things like electronic trigger locks.
Most gun lock advocates suggest using it to prevent a gun from being used by a child picking up a gun left around the house, a burglar taking it from your bedside table, or a mugger disarming you. The sarcasm was directed at the notion that somehow the ability to remove a gun lock with a soldering iron would change the dynamic in any of these situations.
Yeah, but we're talking about gun ownership so this is all about fantasy. You might as well have the cool sort of fantasy where the bad guy takes your gun with trigger lock, can't fire it, then you kick the crap out of him with your awesome martial arts skills.
[bad guy disarms person with smart gun] "Wait, hang on"... [he pulls out soldering iron]... "I'm gonna shoot you".... [soldering].... "hey where are you going?"
If you're any good at computer science I'd assume you could get a job right now. Clearly you're making a decision to improve your skills and deeply learn about computer science. Do that. Enjoy college. You have the rest of your life to work.
Me. Work and home. Ubuntu Gnome Trusty Tahr - I don't dual-boot. My wife runs Windows 8.1 and I have an OSX machine for development. I don't get why anyone runs Windows. I sort of get OSX, but I prefer Gnome.
It tells me the time with traffic to places I go most frequently. I find it very useful that Google knows my location, it's trivial to turn off, and is off by default.
I started in tech support. Created a QA department and eventually moved into development. Create a github repo. Build things to help make your job easier where you work now. Stress your customer service skills in interviews (programmers are frequently known for not having them). Look as startups as they're frequently looking for people who can wear multiple hats. Maybe you can do tech support and programming for one.
The issue is that many of us feel trapped into using Microsoft products that we hate and that don't work properly. I use Linux, but still continue to have to work on my wife's Windows machine to keep it marginally functional and keep it from imploding on itself. We're trapped because of Quicken. I actually have very little anger for them past that. They've become somewhat inconsequential in my life.
"In software, a spectacular crash caused by a particular kind of bug isn't publicly analyzed and the entire software development industry doesn't pass new standards that proscribe avoiding that error in the future"
What is a spectacular crash in software? I hear what you're saying, but you're basically defining why we haven't had this level of introspection. Software just doesn't fail that catastrophically. Being unable to load the healthcare.gov website does not in any way compare to a bridge collapsing killing hundreds of people. If you really think about it a pretty good case could be made for roads being just as buggy as software. Thousands of deaths in my state alone each year? Perhaps it's just that the bar for software "working" is quite a bit higher in software than for many other bits of engineering. Software needs to be innovative, aesthetically pleasing, easy to operate, functional, highly available, and more.
It's a bad analogy because non-software engineers who do really creative work generally do have similar failure rates to software engineers. If you look at builders of original architecture they have to deal with fixing a lot of problems. Petroleum engineers have all sorts of inefficiencies and failures. Bridges that are in any way original are frequently known to fail. Let's stop comparing complex software applications to incredibly standardized roads.
If your boss makes foolish comments that show a fundamental lack of understand of the complexity of real world problems should he forced to return to elementary school on his own time?
That is a hard question. Where would he find a suitable school?
Because a third party text messaging app could be much better than the one built into your phone? Because a third party app could offer you mesh networking, tethering with multiple SIDs and VLAN isolation, etc.
Well Android does offer more way more granularity than iOS. I think iOS is nicer in the way it will prompt for a couple of the permissions. That said, iOS can't do many of the things android can, so it's not really an apples to apples comparison.
Facebook can't read your texts on iOS because it's not possible. My app doesn't require a permission to access network state on iOS because my app can't change it anyway.
It's easy to do security by simply stopping developers from being able to do things. Of course you just have to trust that Apple is doing all your security properly since there's no way to validate that fact.
Android needs to add two levels of permissions for much of this stuff. You basically have to ask for everything or nothing. I wanted to check network state in my current app, which requires asking for permission to change the user's networks. I don't want to change their networks. I just want to see if the network is up.
I also think averages should go away. Most people think they are being reported the median (the number in the middle) when people tell them the average. It's great for real estate agents, and people trying to advocate for tax reform, but the numbers are not what people think they are.
Slashdot Mirror
"Says something I disagree with"
"puts fingers in ears and shouts I've never seen anything like that, whatever that is, I didn't read the article!"
Assuming posting this on Slashdot was an attempt to prove verify the author's thesis. Bravo. The comment thread proves the veracity of everything he says.
Well. You can go ahead and just read this comment thread for a start. All the people and reactions he mentions are in this comment thread in spades.
Yeah I was trolling you. I know there's no such thing as a reasonable pro gun advocate.
I was making fun of the original poster who seemed to think that anyone with a soldering iron became a threat. You're disassembling the wrong statement.
"The answer to this is firearms safety education." - awesome. Most pro-gun types are vociferously against this sort of regulation. This is really what most gun-safety advocates are looking for. Requiring guns to be in safes or locked cases. Requiring training for everyone in a home with guns. Common sense stuff. Ramifications for accidents that occur due to negligence. I agree, that if we had laws with real teeth we wouldn't need things like electronic trigger locks.
Most gun lock advocates suggest using it to prevent a gun from being used by a child picking up a gun left around the house, a burglar taking it from your bedside table, or a mugger disarming you. The sarcasm was directed at the notion that somehow the ability to remove a gun lock with a soldering iron would change the dynamic in any of these situations.
The moderators understand sarcasm.
Yeah, but we're talking about gun ownership so this is all about fantasy. You might as well have the cool sort of fantasy where the bad guy takes your gun with trigger lock, can't fire it, then you kick the crap out of him with your awesome martial arts skills.
Yeah, it's my understanding that the majority of disarmings happen at the funerals of the gun owner who committed suicide.
[bad guy disarms person with smart gun] "Wait, hang on"... [he pulls out soldering iron]... "I'm gonna shoot you".... [soldering].... "hey where are you going?"
If you're any good at computer science I'd assume you could get a job right now. Clearly you're making a decision to improve your skills and deeply learn about computer science. Do that. Enjoy college. You have the rest of your life to work.
Me. Work and home. Ubuntu Gnome Trusty Tahr - I don't dual-boot. My wife runs Windows 8.1 and I have an OSX machine for development. I don't get why anyone runs Windows. I sort of get OSX, but I prefer Gnome.
It tells me the time with traffic to places I go most frequently. I find it very useful that Google knows my location, it's trivial to turn off, and is off by default.
I started in tech support. Created a QA department and eventually moved into development. Create a github repo. Build things to help make your job easier where you work now. Stress your customer service skills in interviews (programmers are frequently known for not having them). Look as startups as they're frequently looking for people who can wear multiple hats. Maybe you can do tech support and programming for one.
It fails because it's not Quicken. My wife is unwilling to learn a new program, hence I'm trapped with Windows.
The issue is that many of us feel trapped into using Microsoft products that we hate and that don't work properly. I use Linux, but still continue to have to work on my wife's Windows machine to keep it marginally functional and keep it from imploding on itself. We're trapped because of Quicken. I actually have very little anger for them past that. They've become somewhat inconsequential in my life.
"In software, a spectacular crash caused by a particular kind of bug isn't publicly analyzed and the entire software development industry doesn't pass new standards that proscribe avoiding that error in the future"
What is a spectacular crash in software? I hear what you're saying, but you're basically defining why we haven't had this level of introspection. Software just doesn't fail that catastrophically. Being unable to load the healthcare.gov website does not in any way compare to a bridge collapsing killing hundreds of people. If you really think about it a pretty good case could be made for roads being just as buggy as software. Thousands of deaths in my state alone each year? Perhaps it's just that the bar for software "working" is quite a bit higher in software than for many other bits of engineering. Software needs to be innovative, aesthetically pleasing, easy to operate, functional, highly available, and more.
It's a bad analogy because non-software engineers who do really creative work generally do have similar failure rates to software engineers. If you look at builders of original architecture they have to deal with fixing a lot of problems. Petroleum engineers have all sorts of inefficiencies and failures. Bridges that are in any way original are frequently known to fail. Let's stop comparing complex software applications to incredibly standardized roads.
If your boss makes foolish comments that show a fundamental lack of understand of the complexity of real world problems should he forced to return to elementary school on his own time?
That is a hard question. Where would he find a suitable school?
I have a fake account for testing. It would be much simpler if they made testing as simple as companies like Stripe. Until then... fake accounts.
Because a third party text messaging app could be much better than the one built into your phone? Because a third party app could offer you mesh networking, tethering with multiple SIDs and VLAN isolation, etc.
iOS has solved the problem of security in text messaging apps? In apps that allow innovative network access methods?
Oh right. They haven't solved it, they just don't allow those apps.
Well Android does offer more way more granularity than iOS. I think iOS is nicer in the way it will prompt for a couple of the permissions. That said, iOS can't do many of the things android can, so it's not really an apples to apples comparison.
Facebook can't read your texts on iOS because it's not possible. My app doesn't require a permission to access network state on iOS because my app can't change it anyway.
It's easy to do security by simply stopping developers from being able to do things. Of course you just have to trust that Apple is doing all your security properly since there's no way to validate that fact.
Android needs to add two levels of permissions for much of this stuff. You basically have to ask for everything or nothing. I wanted to check network state in my current app, which requires asking for permission to change the user's networks. I don't want to change their networks. I just want to see if the network is up.
I also think averages should go away. Most people think they are being reported the median (the number in the middle) when people tell them the average. It's great for real estate agents, and people trying to advocate for tax reform, but the numbers are not what people think they are.