And for those who haven't seen this trick before, a nice habit to get into is to write your checks like so:
if (NULL == myPointer) {... }
And how do you read that? "If NULL is equal to myPointer, then..." Yes, we all know equality is symmetric, but that doesn't make any intuitive sense; since NULL is a constant, how can it ever have a value other than NULL? IMO, it's much clearer--and therefore easier to read and maintain--to put the variable first. Besides, as others have pointed out, modern compilers are intelligent enough to catch improper usage of "=" in a boolean test (and if you don't compile with -Wall or the equivalent for your compiler, then you deserve all the bugs you get).
Aside from the significant limitation imposed by this being a state law (who can tell if a particular E-mail address belongs to a Michigan resident or not?), this law will likely fail because as soon as users (or providers) start to filter ADV:, the spammers will stop putting it in the Subject line, and there are too many of them out there for law enforcement to go after.
Japan enacted a law similar to this in July of last year, requiring that all UCE have a subject beginning with the Japanese equivalent of "ADV:". Spammers started following the law pretty quickly; so far so good. Then, last October, cell phone provider NTT DoCoMo started up a service that would let users reject such mail at the server. Having been subjected to lots of cellphone spam until then, I was very delighted at this, and as soon as I switched it on my spam level dropped to roughly zero.
Until this past May, when spam once again found its way to my phone. The spammers seem to have realized that adding the mandated text makes their mail not reach its destination, so they've decided to just ignore the law completely. I spoke with someone at the agency that handles spam complaints, and was told that "we're doing what we can, but there are so many of them it's hard to keep up."
C'est la vie, I guess--or should I say, shikata nai desu ne...
However, do note some people like to listen to their computer working... (you can hear all those funny noises in the electrical circuits due to resonance. It's very interesting.)
My father once played a tape for me of computer-generated music from back in the 70s (this was, of course, before the advent of sound cards, or PCs for that matter). It turned out that EMI generated by the computer in question just happened to get picked up by a nearby FM radio, and some clever programmer discovered that using different sequences of instructions would generate different tones on the radio--voila, computer music! And (at least to the ears of a 10-year-old in the mid-80s) it was Not All That Bad either. Though I wouldn't put it up against an Audigy...
There were some articles on Tom's Hardware a while back (can't find them now) which gave anything up to an 18% performance hit (frame rate wise) for onboard sound with EAX enabled.
Sound or no, there's enough register pressure on the x86 already without disabling EAX.
... oh, you weren't talking about assembly?
(Seriously, what does EAX mean with respect to audio? Please enlighten this poor SB16 user...)
Right... These kids without a lot of pocket money sure have a hell of a lot of money for high-tech toys like cellphones with digital cameras.
Not an issue, since the parents usually pay for the phone/service. Besides, something like 90% of currently available cell phones here have cameras built-in--it's hard to get a phone without one these days.
This isn't like the RIAA, it's more like the MPAA dealing with camcorders in theatres.
Like I said in my earlier post, you can accomplish the same thing with pen and paper. Cell phone cameras happen to be more convenient (if you can actually read anything on those tiny screens...) but they're in no way enabling something that wouldn't otherwise be easily doable.
The local newspapers' articles were light on content so I can't say for sure, but I suspect the main "violators" are teenage kids who don't have a lot of pocket money in the first place. That aside, though, this has all the markings of an industry not being able to cope with technology. The main "victims" seem to be information magazines and books--restaurant guides and whatnot--but given that the same information is already available with a quick Internet search, I fail to see what effect disallowing pictures would have on readers, other than driving them away. I guess alienating your customer base is the "in" thing these days...
(I'll save my comments that you could do this just as easily with pen and paper for another post.)
As the complexity of technology increases, so does the number of people who don't have a clue but pretend to anyway. I'm waiting for the day they decide to ban dihydrogen oxide...
This is exactly why I haven't gone back to the US in two years (I was born there but now live in Japan). As if it's not bad enough having to sit in an undersized economy-class seat for 12-13 hours, now they want me to go through 3-4 hours of screening? No thanks.
Incidentally, air travel in Japan is almost completely unchanged from before 9/11, with the exception that airlines are slightly stricter on the one-piece-of-baggage-per-person (not including purses, stuff you bought in the airport, etc.) rule than they used to be. I can arrive at the airport 15 minutes before the flight takes off and still make it onto the plane with close to 100% certainty.
That said, the Shinkansen (bullet train) is still much less of a pain--no baggage checks, no security officers asking you stupid questions, as long as you reach the platform before the train leaves you can get on it. The one disadvantage is that it's significantly more expensive than air travel. Ah well, can't win 'em all...
A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive --- you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.
"Taking advantage of resources to add features/maintainability" (which I have no problem with) is a completely different issue from "being lazy because you can get away with it" (which I strongly suspect is rampant in Redmond, and just about everywhere else for that matter).
Wrong. Downloading a copyrighted file without permission of the copyright owner is illegal. [...] Whatever your moral or political opinion on this, it is unequivocally illegal, at least in the US, to share copyrighted material without the owner's permission
Unless you live in some strange variation of the English language I haven't heard of before, "share" refers to the act of allowing others to use something that one owns--in other words, the act of giving, not the act of receiving.
As far as facts go, I haven't read Title 17 recently enough to state for certain, but I'm pretty sure that (as others have posted) the act of receiving is perfectly legal; it's giving (i.e. distributing) that's forbidden.
Linux for Playstation requires the addition of a hard drive and whatnot, which can not then be used for gaming
Wrong on the latter. It's not easy, but with a quick kernel patch and an extra computer on the LAN it's doable. Instructions here (Japanese only at the moment, if there's enough demand I'll see about doing an English translation).
Disclaimer: Sony probably wants to shoot me for making it possible.
I was thinking the same thing. The delicate membranes wouldn't be a problem either, since there'd be nothing to... hey, Junior, get off of the UPS... I said get off! NO, DON'T JUMP UP AND--
Money and E-mail are different beasts. If someone's E-mail doesn't get through to you, they can always contact you via a different method (this actually happened to me recently when one of my filters ran out of control--I got a call from my folks saying "what happened to your E-mail address?"... no big deal). But if your computer decides to spend money for you, you won't be able to go back later and say "oops, that wasn't me, that was my computer." This is the reason I always throw away those forms from the gas/electric/water company saying "use direct transfer, it's fast and convenient!"--it may be fast and simple, but it also keeps me from being able to check for any errors ahead of time. I've actually had cases where I was overcharged, and while I was eventually able to get my money back, it's not something I want to have to deal with, and I'll gladly forego the "convenience" of direct transfer if I can avoid such problems.
Well, I have heard of cell phones with sensitive microphones (say, just about any modern model), and yet every day I see (hear) people on trains yelling into them. And even if people knew how to use throat mikes properly, talking is still talking, still annoying, and still going to draw eyes (and ears).
Imagine: walk up to a vending machine in an airport, buy a little credit-card sized game to occupy you during the flight, and throw it away when the battery runs out.
And designing things to be thrown away is good practice?
As someone, who has some experience in this field, I can assure you, that the correct answer to the question "Want To Write Your Own OS?" is "No, you certainly do not."
As someone else who has some experience (including in-depth university classes) in this field, I suggest a better answer would be "Maybe." As with any software, it depends on what you need it to do. I'm completely in agreement that thinking that you can whip up a revolutionary new OS in a month to beat down everything else out there is way wrong, but I also don't think there's no room or reason to start a new OS, particularly if it's aimed at a particular niche or use.
As an example, while not nearly on the same complexity level, my server at home uses quite a bit software written by me from scratch--mailreader, HTTP server, SMTP server, other more minor things--all designed to fill exactly my needs without the bloat (and associated security problems) of mainstream packages like Pine, Apache, or Sendmail. I'd never claim that my own software could replace those packages in a general sense, but within the limited context of "what I need", they serve quite well.
Along the same lines, I think there are still contexts in which writing a new OS from scratch would make sense. Aside from niche environments, there's the issue of stability, especially considering how software design practice has changed over the last 10, 20, 30 years; is it easier to audit 10,000,000 lines of old code or write 500,000 (or 5,000,000) lines of new code? (I don't have the answer, but I don't think it's clear-cut either way.)
Space tourist tickets have recently been selling for $2e+7. ISS cost ~= $1e+11. At those prices, you'd have to send up 50,000 tourists just to pay for the amusement park, ignoring the cost of gas and a ride.
Putting aside that the ISS isn't just an amusement park, you're off by an order of magnitude:
1e+11 / 2e+7 = 10000e+7/2e+7 = 10000/2 = 5000
Slashdot Mirror
People need to realize that they really could have a case here.. its pointless to embark on this stunt if they didn't feel they had a chance..
Not necessarily. Put yourself in McBride's shoes:
The "sensible" course of action should be obvious.
I do agree, though, with your assessment about the damage to public opinion. Linux (and open source) folks really need to get moving to counter it.
And for those who haven't seen this trick before, a nice habit to get into is to write your checks like so:
And how do you read that? "If NULL is equal to myPointer, then..." Yes, we all know equality is symmetric, but that doesn't make any intuitive sense; since NULL is a constant, how can it ever have a value other than NULL? IMO, it's much clearer--and therefore easier to read and maintain--to put the variable first. Besides, as others have pointed out, modern compilers are intelligent enough to catch improper usage of "=" in a boolean test (and if you don't compile with -Wall or the equivalent for your compiler, then you deserve all the bugs you get).
Aside from the significant limitation imposed by this being a state law (who can tell if a particular E-mail address belongs to a Michigan resident or not?), this law will likely fail because as soon as users (or providers) start to filter ADV:, the spammers will stop putting it in the Subject line, and there are too many of them out there for law enforcement to go after.
Japan enacted a law similar to this in July of last year, requiring that all UCE have a subject beginning with the Japanese equivalent of "ADV:". Spammers started following the law pretty quickly; so far so good. Then, last October, cell phone provider NTT DoCoMo started up a service that would let users reject such mail at the server. Having been subjected to lots of cellphone spam until then, I was very delighted at this, and as soon as I switched it on my spam level dropped to roughly zero.
Until this past May, when spam once again found its way to my phone. The spammers seem to have realized that adding the mandated text makes their mail not reach its destination, so they've decided to just ignore the law completely. I spoke with someone at the agency that handles spam complaints, and was told that "we're doing what we can, but there are so many of them it's hard to keep up."
C'est la vie, I guess--or should I say, shikata nai desu ne...
However, do note some people like to listen to their computer working... (you can hear all those funny noises in the electrical circuits due to resonance. It's very interesting.)
My father once played a tape for me of computer-generated music from back in the 70s (this was, of course, before the advent of sound cards, or PCs for that matter). It turned out that EMI generated by the computer in question just happened to get picked up by a nearby FM radio, and some clever programmer discovered that using different sequences of instructions would generate different tones on the radio--voila, computer music! And (at least to the ears of a 10-year-old in the mid-80s) it was Not All That Bad either. Though I wouldn't put it up against an Audigy...
There were some articles on Tom's Hardware a while back (can't find them now) which gave anything up to an 18% performance hit (frame rate wise) for onboard sound with EAX enabled.
Sound or no, there's enough register pressure on the x86 already without disabling EAX.
... oh, you weren't talking about assembly?
(Seriously, what does EAX mean with respect to audio? Please enlighten this poor SB16 user...)
Right... These kids without a lot of pocket money sure have a hell of a lot of money for high-tech toys like cellphones with digital cameras.
Not an issue, since the parents usually pay for the phone/service. Besides, something like 90% of currently available cell phones here have cameras built-in--it's hard to get a phone without one these days.
This isn't like the RIAA, it's more like the MPAA dealing with camcorders in theatres.
Like I said in my earlier post, you can accomplish the same thing with pen and paper. Cell phone cameras happen to be more convenient (if you can actually read anything on those tiny screens...) but they're in no way enabling something that wouldn't otherwise be easily doable.
The local newspapers' articles were light on content so I can't say for sure, but I suspect the main "violators" are teenage kids who don't have a lot of pocket money in the first place. That aside, though, this has all the markings of an industry not being able to cope with technology. The main "victims" seem to be information magazines and books--restaurant guides and whatnot--but given that the same information is already available with a quick Internet search, I fail to see what effect disallowing pictures would have on readers, other than driving them away. I guess alienating your customer base is the "in" thing these days...
(I'll save my comments that you could do this just as easily with pen and paper for another post.)
The trouble is Who will do the suing?
Yes, I'd say that's trouble--Who ought to be paying attention to first base.
As the complexity of technology increases, so does the number of people who don't have a clue but pretend to anyway. I'm waiting for the day they decide to ban dihydrogen oxide...
This is exactly why I haven't gone back to the US in two years (I was born there but now live in Japan). As if it's not bad enough having to sit in an undersized economy-class seat for 12-13 hours, now they want me to go through 3-4 hours of screening? No thanks.
Incidentally, air travel in Japan is almost completely unchanged from before 9/11, with the exception that airlines are slightly stricter on the one-piece-of-baggage-per-person (not including purses, stuff you bought in the airport, etc.) rule than they used to be. I can arrive at the airport 15 minutes before the flight takes off and still make it onto the plane with close to 100% certainty.
That said, the Shinkansen (bullet train) is still much less of a pain--no baggage checks, no security officers asking you stupid questions, as long as you reach the platform before the train leaves you can get on it. The one disadvantage is that it's significantly more expensive than air travel. Ah well, can't win 'em all...
(thanks to Doug Adams)
In France it doesn't matter how long you've been in the company, we all get the same package:25 days of vacations plus another 12 days of RTT
Out of curiosity, what's "RTT"?
Just for reference, I work in Japan, and get:
- 20 regular vacation days
- 5 summer vacation days (usable only in July-September)
- 4-5 year-end vacation days (29 Dec through 3 Jan)
- 15(!) national holidays (Japan has some great national holidays--Sea Day, Green Day, Exercise Day...)
- 5 extra vacation days every 5 years
- half a day on the anniversary of the company's establishment
for a total of about 46 days a year on average.Thanks for the correction. It looks like I've been in Japan too long (Japan does allow, explicitly, copying for personal use).
"Taking advantage of resources to add features/maintainability" (which I have no problem with) is a completely different issue from "being lazy because you can get away with it" (which I strongly suspect is rampant in Redmond, and just about everywhere else for that matter).
Wrong. Downloading a copyrighted file without permission of the copyright owner is illegal. [...] Whatever your moral or political opinion on this, it is unequivocally illegal, at least in the US, to share copyrighted material without the owner's permission
Unless you live in some strange variation of the English language I haven't heard of before, "share" refers to the act of allowing others to use something that one owns--in other words, the act of giving, not the act of receiving.
As far as facts go, I haven't read Title 17 recently enough to state for certain, but I'm pretty sure that (as others have posted) the act of receiving is perfectly legal; it's giving (i.e. distributing) that's forbidden.
Linux for Playstation requires the addition of a hard drive and whatnot, which can not then be used for gaming
Wrong on the latter. It's not easy, but with a quick kernel patch and an extra computer on the LAN it's doable. Instructions here (Japanese only at the moment, if there's enough demand I'll see about doing an English translation).
Disclaimer: Sony probably wants to shoot me for making it possible.
I was thinking the same thing. The delicate membranes wouldn't be a problem either, since there'd be nothing to... hey, Junior, get off of the UPS... I said get off! NO, DON'T JUMP UP AND--
NO CARRIER
Money and E-mail are different beasts. If someone's E-mail doesn't get through to you, they can always contact you via a different method (this actually happened to me recently when one of my filters ran out of control--I got a call from my folks saying "what happened to your E-mail address?"... no big deal). But if your computer decides to spend money for you, you won't be able to go back later and say "oops, that wasn't me, that was my computer." This is the reason I always throw away those forms from the gas/electric/water company saying "use direct transfer, it's fast and convenient!"--it may be fast and simple, but it also keeps me from being able to check for any errors ahead of time. I've actually had cases where I was overcharged, and while I was eventually able to get my money back, it's not something I want to have to deal with, and I'll gladly forego the "convenience" of direct transfer if I can avoid such problems.
You never heard of a throat mic/earphones?
Well, I have heard of cell phones with sensitive microphones (say, just about any modern model), and yet every day I see (hear) people on trains yelling into them. And even if people knew how to use throat mikes properly, talking is still talking, still annoying, and still going to draw eyes (and ears).
Nobody considered simple voice recognition?
No, they finally realized it would be really, really stupid (and noisy) to have everyone talking to their PDAs.
Imagine: walk up to a vending machine in an airport, buy a little credit-card sized game to occupy you during the flight, and throw it away when the battery runs out.
And designing things to be thrown away is good practice?
As someone, who has some experience in this field, I can assure you, that the correct answer to the question "Want To Write Your Own OS?" is "No, you certainly do not."
As someone else who has some experience (including in-depth university classes) in this field, I suggest a better answer would be "Maybe." As with any software, it depends on what you need it to do. I'm completely in agreement that thinking that you can whip up a revolutionary new OS in a month to beat down everything else out there is way wrong, but I also don't think there's no room or reason to start a new OS, particularly if it's aimed at a particular niche or use.
As an example, while not nearly on the same complexity level, my server at home uses quite a bit software written by me from scratch--mailreader, HTTP server, SMTP server, other more minor things--all designed to fill exactly my needs without the bloat (and associated security problems) of mainstream packages like Pine, Apache, or Sendmail. I'd never claim that my own software could replace those packages in a general sense, but within the limited context of "what I need", they serve quite well.
Along the same lines, I think there are still contexts in which writing a new OS from scratch would make sense. Aside from niche environments, there's the issue of stability, especially considering how software design practice has changed over the last 10, 20, 30 years; is it easier to audit 10,000,000 lines of old code or write 500,000 (or 5,000,000) lines of new code? (I don't have the answer, but I don't think it's clear-cut either way.)
Am I the only one who read the title as "Senator Orrin Hatch on a Plate"?
You only have to get used to the fact you can't breathe during rush hour.
Space tourist tickets have recently been selling for $2e+7. ISS cost ~= $1e+11. At those prices, you'd have to send up 50,000 tourists just to pay for the amusement park, ignoring the cost of gas and a ride.
Putting aside that the ISS isn't just an amusement park, you're off by an order of magnitude:
1e+11 / 2e+7 = 10000e+7/2e+7 = 10000/2 = 5000