I wanted to install Windows on my new hard disk, plugged into a PCI SATA card.
The Windows CD didn't have drivers for this card.
I had to copy the drivers to a floppy.
Even though I had two CD-ROM drives, and a USB memory stick, Windows still insisted the only place it could get the drivers from was a floppy disk.
It's the only time I've used a floppy disk drive this year.
Okay. It's a rare problem, but little things like this will mean that the floppy disk drive will have to remain for some time.
No need to try to fool it. Simply run it on two different processors with the same compiler flags. The code created should be identical. Compilers should not be designed to assume software is going to be run on the system used for compilation.
Yes there is. But you underestimate the power of the middle classes. Once a hacker is represented as "basically a good boy who fell by the wayside", and his good grades and sweet smiling face are shown, suddenly any politician who supports executing him is going to becomevery unpopular. These are the people who vote. They also collectively have a lot more money than the super rich, and make a much more interesting news story if they're about to suffer an unfair penalty.
As long as it's unfair enough to get people to club together they are the most powerful group there is.
On average, an execution costs 3 times as much as 40 years in prison. Unless you want to remocve the right of appeal. Personally, I quite like the idea of making sure people are guilty before killing them, but maybe I'm weird.
But the hacker is probably middle class and fairly well off. Middle class families with middle class kids will probably have some (middle class) sympathy for the hacker. It's not a segment of society that you want to offend.
so, 4 years ago, 3000 people were killed by terrorists. That works out to 750 a year, out of a population of approx 300 million.
Some idiot using a mobile phone while driving is considerably more likely to kill you than a terrorist. Shold we also allow wiretaps if people are suspected driving while phoning?
The "virtual =0" syntax instead of something nice like "abstract" or "interface" is just weird. How can you set a prototype equal to 0? What's wrong with nice words?
I'd like to see one of C#'s improvements here as well, where a reimplementation of a virtual method is explicitely stated. I've seen quite a few bugs caused by people changing the parameters of a base method without doing the same to inherited.
You own a copy. Copyright law limits your rights to an extent, but the limits are explicit, and generally only cover copying, broadcasting and public performance. You do have the right to read it, sell it and copy small portions of it for certain purposes, read it out loud to friends, lend it, and unless they make you agree to another contract, they can't limit your rights as a purchaser.
Computer software is a little vague in that in order to use a copy you typically have to make another copy on your hard drive. As a result they can get away with the EULA.
It seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that playing a game where users pay for the venue could be considered a copy or a broadcast, any more than sharing the cost of renting a DVD player would make it a public performance of a DVD. However, I'm no lawyer. Maybe this is a public performance.
I'm sorry, you still haven't pointed out anything unfair about it.
You're looking at this from the wrong point of view. The publishers aren't concerned about fairness for it's own sake. They're just concerned about appearing fair to the retailers, for the purpose of maximising their profits. This is the whole point of running a business after all.
If a retailer feels he may not sell enough because of the unfair competition from a bigger rival, he may decide not to bother to buy any copies at all, and dedicate the space to promoting other, less competitive children's books. If the small store doesn't have a big HP display, the publishers will miss out on some of the impulse purchases from that store.
It's not just about the energy. It's about the source of hydrogen. As fas as I understand it, the best source for hydrogen is petrochemicals. The extra cost over water is more than offset by the lower cost of conversion.
The downside is that the conversion will create lots of carbon dioxide.
A company should try to sell itself to anyone they see as worth interviewing. The employee usually has the option to reject a job. Either they are already employed or they will have other offers.
If the candidate turns them down, they've lost that person possibly for good, which means they're missing out on the money they would have made from him.
I would ask something like handing them a bubble sort with a simple error in it, like boundary checking. If they catch that error, they're qualified to be a junior programmer.
So you want to hire people who make a lot of clumsy mistakes? They're the ones who are good at spotting clumsy mistakes.
If they ask why I'm using my own bubble sort instead of calling the standard qsort() routine, they're senior developer/analyst material.
Is that really a test you'd use? Presumably you're using a bubble sort algorithm as a simple example for the purposes of a test because it fits the requirements. But since I have specualted and come up with a realistic solution based on understanding your requirements and on my previous experience, I'm only qualified to be a junior programmer.
It's a good test. It would mean I'd never work for you.
Why are you hiring a PhD for a codemonkey job? A PhD has some very specific skills. You can find someone to actually write the code for him easily enough.
My theory is that the really good programmers tended to want to get out into the world and learn practical knowledge, while the less proficient ones continued on to get "educated".
Yes. I'm a programmer so I got out. Some of my colleagues were a lot better at the Computer Science stuff. Who cares if they write bad code? We need them to come up with good ideas. Bad implementations can be rewritten by someone like me.
But this is working. "Not working" is the correct behaviour, and that's what it's doing. So the only way for it to work is not to work. Must be a pain to test.
London Underground is an exception. Plans to add receivers are occasionally suggested, but it's not hugely popular. Typical journey times are only 15 minutes, and being out of touch for 15 minutes is considered less annoying than sitting next to some idiot shouting into his phone.
The thing is, to take them seriously, we need better evidence than we have. If it was an independent organisation, then we could reasonably assume that they had a reliable testing mechanism. Sophos are far from independent. They need to present better evidence, especially if they're going to be as specific as 12 minutes.
Anecdotal evidence does not make their result any more reliable. I can find dozens of people who will provide an example of just about anything happening. It doesn't make it any more likely. You may just have been unlucky. A single sample is by no means representative, especially a sample that is self selecting. All the people who didn't get a virus in less than 30 minutes would not bother to respond to my comment.
Is it possible that a computer will be infected in 30 minutes? Clearly it is. Will that happen to all computers? Perhaps. Is the average 12 minutes? We don't know. The only evidence is from a company that makes no mention of their methodology, and has a definite reason to be biased. It has as much validity as a Microsoft sponsored report on Windows cost of ownership vs. Linux. Nobody would believe that, so why believe Sophos?
Slashdot Mirror
...while wearing a shirt that said "car for sale".
Why doesn't he use this mechanism to generate direct sales? Are people simply not willing to pay money for digital content?
So, you're saying that Google should break the laws of a company in which it operates because it can get away with it.
Is this really the way an ethical business should behave?
So why does everyone providing non-DRM publications seem to be giving them away? If they're that convinced in people's honesty, prove it. Make money!
I'm not sure it would be that easy a target. Hitting a fast moving object with another fast moving object is not easy
Silicon Sraphics abolished the floppy in their workstations in 1992.
And that was before CD-ROM drives. The OS was installed from a tape.
I wanted to install Windows on my new hard disk, plugged into a PCI SATA card.
The Windows CD didn't have drivers for this card.
I had to copy the drivers to a floppy.
Even though I had two CD-ROM drives, and a USB memory stick, Windows still insisted the only place it could get the drivers from was a floppy disk. It's the only time I've used a floppy disk drive this year.
Okay. It's a rare problem, but little things like this will mean that the floppy disk drive will have to remain for some time.
No need to try to fool it. Simply run it on two different processors with the same compiler flags. The code created should be identical. Compilers should not be designed to assume software is going to be run on the system used for compilation.
Yes there is. But you underestimate the power of the middle classes. Once a hacker is represented as "basically a good boy who fell by the wayside", and his good grades and sweet smiling face are shown, suddenly any politician who supports executing him is going to becomevery unpopular. These are the people who vote. They also collectively have a lot more money than the super rich, and make a much more interesting news story if they're about to suffer an unfair penalty.
As long as it's unfair enough to get people to club together they are the most powerful group there is.
On average, an execution costs 3 times as much as 40 years in prison. Unless you want to remocve the right of appeal. Personally, I quite like the idea of making sure people are guilty before killing them, but maybe I'm weird.
But the hacker is probably middle class and fairly well off. Middle class families with middle class kids will probably have some (middle class) sympathy for the hacker. It's not a segment of society that you want to offend.
so, 4 years ago, 3000 people were killed by terrorists. That works out to 750 a year, out of a population of approx 300 million.
Some idiot using a mobile phone while driving is considerably more likely to kill you than a terrorist. Shold we also allow wiretaps if people are suspected driving while phoning?
The "virtual =0" syntax instead of something nice like "abstract" or "interface" is just weird. How can you set a prototype equal to 0? What's wrong with nice words?
I'd like to see one of C#'s improvements here as well, where a reimplementation of a virtual method is explicitely stated. I've seen quite a few bugs caused by people changing the parameters of a base method without doing the same to inherited.
You own a copy. Copyright law limits your rights to an extent, but the limits are explicit, and generally only cover copying, broadcasting and public performance. You do have the right to read it, sell it and copy small portions of it for certain purposes, read it out loud to friends, lend it, and unless they make you agree to another contract, they can't limit your rights as a purchaser.
Computer software is a little vague in that in order to use a copy you typically have to make another copy on your hard drive. As a result they can get away with the EULA.
It seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that playing a game where users pay for the venue could be considered a copy or a broadcast, any more than sharing the cost of renting a DVD player would make it a public performance of a DVD. However, I'm no lawyer. Maybe this is a public performance.
I'm sorry, you still haven't pointed out anything unfair about it.
You're looking at this from the wrong point of view. The publishers aren't concerned about fairness for it's own sake. They're just concerned about appearing fair to the retailers, for the purpose of maximising their profits. This is the whole point of running a business after all.
If a retailer feels he may not sell enough because of the unfair competition from a bigger rival, he may decide not to bother to buy any copies at all, and dedicate the space to promoting other, less competitive children's books. If the small store doesn't have a big HP display, the publishers will miss out on some of the impulse purchases from that store.
It's not just about the energy. It's about the source of hydrogen. As fas as I understand it, the best source for hydrogen is petrochemicals. The extra cost over water is more than offset by the lower cost of conversion.
The downside is that the conversion will create lots of carbon dioxide.
Because they want the candidate.
A company should try to sell itself to anyone they see as worth interviewing. The employee usually has the option to reject a job. Either they are already employed or they will have other offers.
If the candidate turns them down, they've lost that person possibly for good, which means they're missing out on the money they would have made from him.
I would ask something like handing them a bubble sort with a simple error in it, like boundary checking. If they catch that error, they're qualified to be a junior programmer.
So you want to hire people who make a lot of clumsy mistakes? They're the ones who are good at spotting clumsy mistakes.
If they ask why I'm using my own bubble sort instead of calling the standard qsort() routine, they're senior developer/analyst material.
Is that really a test you'd use? Presumably you're using a bubble sort algorithm as a simple example for the purposes of a test because it fits the requirements. But since I have specualted and come up with a realistic solution based on understanding your requirements and on my previous experience, I'm only qualified to be a junior programmer.
It's a good test. It would mean I'd never work for you.
Why are you hiring a PhD for a codemonkey job? A PhD has some very specific skills. You can find someone to actually write the code for him easily enough.
My theory is that the really good programmers tended to want to get out into the world and learn practical knowledge, while the less proficient ones continued on to get "educated".
Yes. I'm a programmer so I got out. Some of my colleagues were a lot better at the Computer Science stuff. Who cares if they write bad code? We need them to come up with good ideas. Bad implementations can be rewritten by someone like me.
But this is working. "Not working" is the correct behaviour, and that's what it's doing. So the only way for it to work is not to work. Must be a pain to test.
London Underground is an exception. Plans to add receivers are occasionally suggested, but it's not hugely popular. Typical journey times are only 15 minutes, and being out of touch for 15 minutes is considered less annoying than sitting next to some idiot shouting into his phone.
Well, they totally screwed up then. I received a text message but can't reply.
The thing is, to take them seriously, we need better evidence than we have. If it was an independent organisation, then we could reasonably assume that they had a reliable testing mechanism. Sophos are far from independent. They need to present better evidence, especially if they're going to be as specific as 12 minutes.
Anecdotal evidence does not make their result any more reliable. I can find dozens of people who will provide an example of just about anything happening. It doesn't make it any more likely. You may just have been unlucky. A single sample is by no means representative, especially a sample that is self selecting. All the people who didn't get a virus in less than 30 minutes would not bother to respond to my comment.
Is it possible that a computer will be infected in 30 minutes? Clearly it is. Will that happen to all computers? Perhaps. Is the average 12 minutes? We don't know. The only evidence is from a company that makes no mention of their methodology, and has a definite reason to be biased. It has as much validity as a Microsoft sponsored report on Windows cost of ownership vs. Linux. Nobody would believe that, so why believe Sophos?
Have you done extensive tests on a range of IP addresses, or are you just extrapolating based on a single result?
And anti-virus firm says anti-virus software is essential.
They may be right, but I'd like a little more information since they're not exactly an unbiased source.