As a web developer, I like the Firefox/Chrome updating system also. It means that the vast majority of FireFox and Chrome users will be running the latest version of the browser. Contrast this with IE where there are 4 or 5 major versions that I need to support - each of which has wildly different compatibility with the latest web technologies. Want to use border-radius or box-shadow? Sorry, too many people are still on IE8 which doesn't support it. Want to use placeholder text in an input element or ranged input elements? IE8 and 9 don't support that. I can still use those newer technologies, but need to do double work to make sure the sites are still usable to someone on older browsers. If IE auto-updated to the newest version, it would be so much easier for web developers.
No, but clothes clearly only inhibit police investigations and thus should be banned. Plus, it's well known that terrorists wear clothes. If you've got nothing to hide why are you wearing clothes?
Exactly this. It would likely take the terrorists at least a generation of "pre-911 hijackings" (where you fly to another country, have your hijacker make a big political statement, and then you all go free unharmed) before another 9-11 would be possible. The hijackers weren't even able to complete their 9-11 plans. By the time United Airlines Flight 93 was en route to the White House or Capital Building, passengers found out what had happened with the other 3 planes. Knowing that this wasn't your normal pre-911 hijacking, they tried to take control of the plane and it wound up crashing without hitting its target. This has happened with other terrorist wannabes. (Shoe bomber, for example.) If a terrorist got on a plane tomorrow with a box cutter and demanded control of the plane, the passengers would rise up and subdue him.
Notice that it's the "War on Terror" and not the "War on Terrorists."
Step 1: Government instills fear into the populace. (e.g. There are terrorists behind every corner waiting to blow you up!) Step 2: The Government wages war on the terror it created by making the people feel safe (while actually gathering more powers for itself). Step 3: Repeat Steps 1 & 2 until "terror" is destroyed. (Which, since they keep creating more terror to combat, mean repeat ad infinitum.)
A "backdoor" isn't a fantasy. The quote was "“You can't build a backdoor that only the good guys can walk through,” The key words are "only the good guys." Say I make an incredible encryption tool but build in a backdoor for the FBI to use. (Arguably, this makes the encryption tool no longer "incredible", but just accept it for now.) The theory is that only the FBI uses this backdoor while the hackers try in vain to break into the front door. The reality, though, is that - after trying the front door - the hackers will examine the encryption and will discover the open back door. Then, it's just a matter of time before they figure out how to get into it.
You can make a backdoor to any program. What you can't do is keep "bad guys" from entering that back door while allowing "good guys" in. If a backdoor exists, the bad guys WILL find it and WILL exploit it. It's just a matter of time.
My wife loves her Keurig. (Like yours, the non-DRM version.) She got two reusable cups to use with it. She can buy whatever coffee she likes, put it in the reusable cup, brew her coffee, and then clean the filter out for the next cup. Keurig's DRM would have prevented this and would have forced her to buy only Keurig-approved coffee. We'd rather leave the "Keurig ecosystem" entirely. Keurig doesn't have a monopoly on coffee.
True. I agree with the poster who said he keeps a mixed team. Older developers will temper the younger developers and keep them from trying HOT_NEW_THING which the older developer, with his experience, sees has glaring problems. The younger developers will push the older developers into new technologies instead of remaining in their comfort zones.
But just hiring young developers because they know the latest stuff (and will work cheap) is a big mistake.
(Disclaimer: I'm turning 40 this year, so I guess I count as an older developer.)
Even if we just selected for 2001, you had a 0.001% chance of dying from terrorism if you lived in the US then. It would make more sense to declare a War On Heart Disease or a War On Cancer and toss funding to those causes.
they are perceived to not be willing to put in the hours that younger developers will.
A younger developer will often need 40 hours to write the same code that an older developer will write in 10 hours. The only problem is when management sees TIME_SPENT_CODING as equal to QUALITY_OF_WORK. So they prefer the younger coders who will put in 60 hour weeks over the older coders who do that same work and more in 40 hours and then go to spend time with their families.
I had a college professor that loved telling us that everything he taught us would be obsolete by the time we graduated but that the concepts would stick with us throughout our careers. This was 20 years ago. Sure enough, the concepts he taught me are the same as the ones I use today even though I couldn't name a single line of code he taught us that year.
Any developer who doesn't keep up isn't a good developer. A fresh-out-of-college developer might be up to date on the newest coding theory but theory isn't the same as practice. An experienced developer will know how to write secure code that is stable and won't chase every flash-in-the-pan-fad that fizzles out in 6 months (and which renders the code base a mash-up of fads past).
Exactly this. When I started coding, I made a ton of mistakes and had false assumptions. Luckily, my code didn't have a huge reach and so those security holes weren't exploited. As I taught myself more, I became aware of issues like SQL Injection Attacks and how to prevent them. Do I write 100% secure code now? Of course not. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to assume I have every hole covered. However, I know a lot of pitfalls and how to avoid them. As an older coder, my code is much better than it was when I was a younger coder.
most models today seem to be built to last only 3 years.
This isn't just the case for Microwaves. Refrigerators, washing machines, and many other big appliances seem to be built with a 10 year maximum lifespan. Somewhere along the way, the manufacturers figured out just how long a device should work so that users won't think of them as defective (breaking in the first year = bad) but not lasting so long that they miss out on people buying new devices to replace the older ones. If your washing machine lasts 30 years, you'll likely only buy two in your lifetime. If they last 10 years, you'll likely buy 6 or 7 which means more profits for the manufacturers making shorter lived appliances.
Voice-to-text input is an option and Siri/Cortana or whatever your flavor does a decent job but the function would be a battery hog.
Also, it's a bit creepy if your watch is listening to everything you and everyone around you says and sends all that to Apple/Google/Microsoft's central servers to process to see if there's a command that should be fun.
Then there's the background noise factor. Talking to your computer/phone when you're in the car and there's minimal noise is one thing. What's going to happen when you're in a loud area (e.g. busy train station)? And how much will the noise level increase if everyone is talking to their phones/watches? How much will it increase if everyone begins shouting at their phones/watches trying to get their voice over the background noise?
Not only this but most of the "students falling behind" that you hear about turns out to be about poverty, not about teachers or schools failing the kids. If a child lives in poverty, they are worried about when they'll eat next, are afraid that today might be the day they lose their home, might be scared for their safety in their neighborhood, etc. All of those worries/concerns/fears make it hard to focus on what your teacher is trying to teach you. It also makes it seem irrelevant. If your big concern is whether you'll get to eat dinner tonight or whether this will be the fifth night in a row that you go to bed hungry, figuring out the area of a circle can seem completely useless. Yes, learning pays off long-term, but there are big short-term concerns that drown that out.
Unfortunately, a lot of rich politicians/businessmen who have never had these worries/concerns like to place all of the blame on public schools and public school teachers and then lobby to pull more money from them to fund other schools for them to send their kids to. Meanwhile, the poor kids do even worse, but at least the rich folks have a nice scapegoat.
There's also the "intellectual elite" term that's bandied about.
How dare those climatologists tell us what is going on with the Earth's climate! They think they're so smart because they studied climate systems for years, can make a model of the entire Earth's climate system, and can compare its predictions against past and current data points. Well, why should those "intellectual elite" climatologists get to say what's going on with the Earth's climate? I stepped outside the other day and it was chilly so that disproves all climate change. Also, my computer professional said not to reply to spam but clearly I know better that that intellectual elite so I'll be getting that Nigerian princes treasures after I wire them this money.
I think his point is that the Republicans in power seems to be reflexively against anything "those liberals" are in favor of. Liberals say climate change is real and we've got to combat it? Well, obviously, it is false and we need to investigate anyone who says it is true. You've got to wonder if Obama released a statement that read "I like puppies. They're cute.", how quickly would Republicans line up to declare that puppies are evil spawns of Satan and real Americans own cats, not dogs.
The problem with stating that liberals should stop pushing fighting against climate change - targeting clean air/water instead - in the hopes that the Republicans would drop their objections and things would get done is that the Republicans in power have a lot invested in "things are good as-is." Plus, once liberals start decrying polluted air/water, the Republican leadership would reflexively declare all water/air to be 100% clean and would cut EPA funding to match their declaration.
never really got the hang of handwriting, switched to using a computer keyboard whenever possible as I was learning to write
Ugh. I remember my pre-computer days when I had to write reports. Horrible handwriting (my mother joked that I was destined to be a doctor based solely on my handwriting) + lefty (pen smears on your hand as you write) + having to rewrite entire pages because you JUST figured out a better way of phrasing something = I hated writing assignments and writing in general. Despised them.
Then, I got to use a computer for the first time.
Suddenly, my "writing" was recognizable, I had no pen smears on my hands, and most importantly, it was easy to copy/paste entire sections of my writing. Even in those early, keyboard-only, hunt-and-peck-bad-typist days, I could churn out a better essay quicker than I could if I handwrote it. From that point on, I found out that I LOVED writing.
I can't speak for Jesus cartoons, but if there was a cartoon depicting a Jewish stereotype (say, a long nosed, fat, corrupt banker hording money from honest non-Jewish folks), I would protest it, but wouldn't kill over it. Would I march against such a cartoon being published or call for the cartoonist to be fired? Yes, but that would be my using my Freedom of Speech to counter the cartoonist's Freedom of Speech. No matter how offensive I found the cartoon, though, I wouldn't march into the guy's office and kill him.
Protests are fine. Especially if they are done peacefully. (Hint: If you're looting random stores or destroying random people's property along your "protest", you aren't protesting.) Saying "I take offense to that" is a perfectly fine reaction. It's when you add "and I'm going to kill you for offending me" that you've crossed the line.
Or, he filed the patent years ago, and then filed a series of updates to it. Each update delays the final "approval date" and allows him to modify the patent. Over time, he can craft a vague sounding patent and/or one that covers existing technology. Then, his "prior art date" is from a year before when he INITIALLY filed the patent. So while the final patent might have been considered innovative if filed as-is on the initial filing date, patent trolls abuse the "update" system to draw their patents out until they are hard to beat via prior art.
Or, even more likely, the patent examiners said "We'll approve this and let the courts sort it out." Meanwhile, the courts are likely to say "Well, the patent examiners wouldn't have approved this if it wasn't a valid patent."
Because the copyright infringement fees* they would have been subjected to would have likely bankrupted them and those patents, software, etc would need to be sold off anyway. So the settlement was likely "give us all your stuff and we won't seek further fines that might wind up bankrupting you, personally, for life."
* You can agree or disagree with copyright laws/fee structures (and I often do), but you don't get to violate copyright, get caught, say "Oops, silly me, I'll go legit now", and get off scot-free.
Slashdot Mirror
As a web developer, I like the Firefox/Chrome updating system also. It means that the vast majority of FireFox and Chrome users will be running the latest version of the browser. Contrast this with IE where there are 4 or 5 major versions that I need to support - each of which has wildly different compatibility with the latest web technologies. Want to use border-radius or box-shadow? Sorry, too many people are still on IE8 which doesn't support it. Want to use placeholder text in an input element or ranged input elements? IE8 and 9 don't support that. I can still use those newer technologies, but need to do double work to make sure the sites are still usable to someone on older browsers. If IE auto-updated to the newest version, it would be so much easier for web developers.
No, but clothes clearly only inhibit police investigations and thus should be banned. Plus, it's well known that terrorists wear clothes. If you've got nothing to hide why are you wearing clothes?
Exactly this. It would likely take the terrorists at least a generation of "pre-911 hijackings" (where you fly to another country, have your hijacker make a big political statement, and then you all go free unharmed) before another 9-11 would be possible. The hijackers weren't even able to complete their 9-11 plans. By the time United Airlines Flight 93 was en route to the White House or Capital Building, passengers found out what had happened with the other 3 planes. Knowing that this wasn't your normal pre-911 hijacking, they tried to take control of the plane and it wound up crashing without hitting its target. This has happened with other terrorist wannabes. (Shoe bomber, for example.) If a terrorist got on a plane tomorrow with a box cutter and demanded control of the plane, the passengers would rise up and subdue him.
Notice that it's the "War on Terror" and not the "War on Terrorists."
Step 1: Government instills fear into the populace. (e.g. There are terrorists behind every corner waiting to blow you up!)
Step 2: The Government wages war on the terror it created by making the people feel safe (while actually gathering more powers for itself).
Step 3: Repeat Steps 1 & 2 until "terror" is destroyed. (Which, since they keep creating more terror to combat, mean repeat ad infinitum.)
A "backdoor" isn't a fantasy. The quote was "“You can't build a backdoor that only the good guys can walk through,” The key words are "only the good guys." Say I make an incredible encryption tool but build in a backdoor for the FBI to use. (Arguably, this makes the encryption tool no longer "incredible", but just accept it for now.) The theory is that only the FBI uses this backdoor while the hackers try in vain to break into the front door. The reality, though, is that - after trying the front door - the hackers will examine the encryption and will discover the open back door. Then, it's just a matter of time before they figure out how to get into it.
You can make a backdoor to any program. What you can't do is keep "bad guys" from entering that back door while allowing "good guys" in. If a backdoor exists, the bad guys WILL find it and WILL exploit it. It's just a matter of time.
That Doctor's advice is always kind of wibbly-wobbly.
My wife loves her Keurig. (Like yours, the non-DRM version.) She got two reusable cups to use with it. She can buy whatever coffee she likes, put it in the reusable cup, brew her coffee, and then clean the filter out for the next cup. Keurig's DRM would have prevented this and would have forced her to buy only Keurig-approved coffee. We'd rather leave the "Keurig ecosystem" entirely. Keurig doesn't have a monopoly on coffee.
True. I agree with the poster who said he keeps a mixed team. Older developers will temper the younger developers and keep them from trying HOT_NEW_THING which the older developer, with his experience, sees has glaring problems. The younger developers will push the older developers into new technologies instead of remaining in their comfort zones.
But just hiring young developers because they know the latest stuff (and will work cheap) is a big mistake.
(Disclaimer: I'm turning 40 this year, so I guess I count as an older developer.)
Even if we just selected for 2001, you had a 0.001% chance of dying from terrorism if you lived in the US then. It would make more sense to declare a War On Heart Disease or a War On Cancer and toss funding to those causes.
A younger developer will often need 40 hours to write the same code that an older developer will write in 10 hours. The only problem is when management sees TIME_SPENT_CODING as equal to QUALITY_OF_WORK. So they prefer the younger coders who will put in 60 hour weeks over the older coders who do that same work and more in 40 hours and then go to spend time with their families.
Does it count that they transport soft meat-bags?
I had a college professor that loved telling us that everything he taught us would be obsolete by the time we graduated but that the concepts would stick with us throughout our careers. This was 20 years ago. Sure enough, the concepts he taught me are the same as the ones I use today even though I couldn't name a single line of code he taught us that year.
Any developer who doesn't keep up isn't a good developer. A fresh-out-of-college developer might be up to date on the newest coding theory but theory isn't the same as practice. An experienced developer will know how to write secure code that is stable and won't chase every flash-in-the-pan-fad that fizzles out in 6 months (and which renders the code base a mash-up of fads past).
Exactly this. When I started coding, I made a ton of mistakes and had false assumptions. Luckily, my code didn't have a huge reach and so those security holes weren't exploited. As I taught myself more, I became aware of issues like SQL Injection Attacks and how to prevent them. Do I write 100% secure code now? Of course not. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to assume I have every hole covered. However, I know a lot of pitfalls and how to avoid them. As an older coder, my code is much better than it was when I was a younger coder.
This isn't just the case for Microwaves. Refrigerators, washing machines, and many other big appliances seem to be built with a 10 year maximum lifespan. Somewhere along the way, the manufacturers figured out just how long a device should work so that users won't think of them as defective (breaking in the first year = bad) but not lasting so long that they miss out on people buying new devices to replace the older ones. If your washing machine lasts 30 years, you'll likely only buy two in your lifetime. If they last 10 years, you'll likely buy 6 or 7 which means more profits for the manufacturers making shorter lived appliances.
Just remember to think "Close all browser tabs. Clear browser history" every 7 seconds or so.
Also, it's a bit creepy if your watch is listening to everything you and everyone around you says and sends all that to Apple/Google/Microsoft's central servers to process to see if there's a command that should be fun.
Then there's the background noise factor. Talking to your computer/phone when you're in the car and there's minimal noise is one thing. What's going to happen when you're in a loud area (e.g. busy train station)? And how much will the noise level increase if everyone is talking to their phones/watches? How much will it increase if everyone begins shouting at their phones/watches trying to get their voice over the background noise?
Not only this but most of the "students falling behind" that you hear about turns out to be about poverty, not about teachers or schools failing the kids. If a child lives in poverty, they are worried about when they'll eat next, are afraid that today might be the day they lose their home, might be scared for their safety in their neighborhood, etc. All of those worries/concerns/fears make it hard to focus on what your teacher is trying to teach you. It also makes it seem irrelevant. If your big concern is whether you'll get to eat dinner tonight or whether this will be the fifth night in a row that you go to bed hungry, figuring out the area of a circle can seem completely useless. Yes, learning pays off long-term, but there are big short-term concerns that drown that out.
Unfortunately, a lot of rich politicians/businessmen who have never had these worries/concerns like to place all of the blame on public schools and public school teachers and then lobby to pull more money from them to fund other schools for them to send their kids to. Meanwhile, the poor kids do even worse, but at least the rich folks have a nice scapegoat.
There's also the "intellectual elite" term that's bandied about.
How dare those climatologists tell us what is going on with the Earth's climate! They think they're so smart because they studied climate systems for years, can make a model of the entire Earth's climate system, and can compare its predictions against past and current data points. Well, why should those "intellectual elite" climatologists get to say what's going on with the Earth's climate? I stepped outside the other day and it was chilly so that disproves all climate change. Also, my computer professional said not to reply to spam but clearly I know better that that intellectual elite so I'll be getting that Nigerian princes treasures after I wire them this money.
I think his point is that the Republicans in power seems to be reflexively against anything "those liberals" are in favor of. Liberals say climate change is real and we've got to combat it? Well, obviously, it is false and we need to investigate anyone who says it is true. You've got to wonder if Obama released a statement that read "I like puppies. They're cute.", how quickly would Republicans line up to declare that puppies are evil spawns of Satan and real Americans own cats, not dogs.
The problem with stating that liberals should stop pushing fighting against climate change - targeting clean air/water instead - in the hopes that the Republicans would drop their objections and things would get done is that the Republicans in power have a lot invested in "things are good as-is." Plus, once liberals start decrying polluted air/water, the Republican leadership would reflexively declare all water/air to be 100% clean and would cut EPA funding to match their declaration.
Ugh. I remember my pre-computer days when I had to write reports. Horrible handwriting (my mother joked that I was destined to be a doctor based solely on my handwriting) + lefty (pen smears on your hand as you write) + having to rewrite entire pages because you JUST figured out a better way of phrasing something = I hated writing assignments and writing in general. Despised them.
Then, I got to use a computer for the first time.
Suddenly, my "writing" was recognizable, I had no pen smears on my hands, and most importantly, it was easy to copy/paste entire sections of my writing. Even in those early, keyboard-only, hunt-and-peck-bad-typist days, I could churn out a better essay quicker than I could if I handwrote it. From that point on, I found out that I LOVED writing.
How big is her ego exactly? Can you express it in Donald Trumps? (The standard measure of ego size.)
I can't speak for Jesus cartoons, but if there was a cartoon depicting a Jewish stereotype (say, a long nosed, fat, corrupt banker hording money from honest non-Jewish folks), I would protest it, but wouldn't kill over it. Would I march against such a cartoon being published or call for the cartoonist to be fired? Yes, but that would be my using my Freedom of Speech to counter the cartoonist's Freedom of Speech. No matter how offensive I found the cartoon, though, I wouldn't march into the guy's office and kill him.
Protests are fine. Especially if they are done peacefully. (Hint: If you're looting random stores or destroying random people's property along your "protest", you aren't protesting.) Saying "I take offense to that" is a perfectly fine reaction. It's when you add "and I'm going to kill you for offending me" that you've crossed the line.
Or, he filed the patent years ago, and then filed a series of updates to it. Each update delays the final "approval date" and allows him to modify the patent. Over time, he can craft a vague sounding patent and/or one that covers existing technology. Then, his "prior art date" is from a year before when he INITIALLY filed the patent. So while the final patent might have been considered innovative if filed as-is on the initial filing date, patent trolls abuse the "update" system to draw their patents out until they are hard to beat via prior art.
Or, even more likely, the patent examiners said "We'll approve this and let the courts sort it out." Meanwhile, the courts are likely to say "Well, the patent examiners wouldn't have approved this if it wasn't a valid patent."
Because the copyright infringement fees* they would have been subjected to would have likely bankrupted them and those patents, software, etc would need to be sold off anyway. So the settlement was likely "give us all your stuff and we won't seek further fines that might wind up bankrupting you, personally, for life."
* You can agree or disagree with copyright laws/fee structures (and I often do), but you don't get to violate copyright, get caught, say "Oops, silly me, I'll go legit now", and get off scot-free.