how about that guy who modified the login program to give him a backdoor hard-coded password and username? then he modified the compiler to recognize when it was compiling login and automatically insert the code, and deleted that code from login so it wouldn't be apparent in a code review. then he modified the compiler to recognize when it was compiling itself, and insert the code to modify both itself and login, and then deleted that code from the compiler as well. now there ain't no code to do that in the source code no more, but it does it anyway. eh?
You're an airport security official, checking passengers en route to their departure gate. Which of the following do you stop for interrogation:
A.) A bent, elderly woman in a wheelchair. B.) A 12 year old kid on vacation with his family. C.) A middle-eastern man in his late 20's, carrying an AK-47, a few grenades, a copy of the Quran, and yelling "Allah akbar!" D.) A businessman sporting a MacBook Air.
I think the choice is clear. If you chose anything but option C, you are correct!! At least by our politically correct airport security standards, since heaven forbid if you should use (shudder) racial profiling. After all, 99% of terrorism worldwide is committed by elderly grandmothers, 12 year old kids on vacation, and businessmen with MacBook Airs. The remaining 1% is committed by "disgruntled youth."
(After all, the MacBook Air ads are only all over the papers, billboards, the Internet, and television.)
They were selling out and making Dor Mart $201 in profit for each $200 machine sold, but Mikro$loth offered to pay Dor Mart $201.01 per machine that would otherwise be sold in order to prevent their sale and the further distribution of Linux, so Dor Mart went for it. Another penny per unit is significant, since it stands to increase their billion dollar profits by about five bucks in the next quarter. Hey, five bucks could be the difference between making your earnings target and getting that fat promotion, and missing it by $4.99 and, well, not.
I think certain "hot button" issues come up in every election because it's a good way to hide what's really going on, and people would NOT be happy with their government if they were aware. This way, everyone is so busy talking about what the right solution is to abortion, social security, the border, the war, that they vote based on these issues and not on anything important, such as the candidate's voting record or what they really stand for, beyond the hot-button issues, that sort of thing. It's not done to give reporters a job; rather it's done to give the politicians a job. The reporters simply see an opening to create more of a job for themselves, and they take advantage of it.
As for the Mid East problem, it is definitely in the media's best interest to help fuel the conflict. This conflict would have ended years ago if the media would have consistently shown it for what it is, because most of the world's people would not permit it to continue for this long. It's so easy for the media to get away with this because most of the people in the world have no idea what is actually going on in the middle east. Well, no idea except what they see on TV or read in the paper; and what they see and read is selected by... the media!!
You know where there's a real shortage of technical people? Technicians in the industrial electromechanical field. Well, there are many such technicians, but I mean good ones. People who understand industrial control, who can diagnose and repair problems in a system composed of software, electronic, electrical, and mechanical components. This field requires extensive experience in all four areas, and people who can do a good job in this area are scarce to find, and hiring them is very expensive.
Don't put any personal information into your profile.
Don't add anyone to your friends whom you don't know personally.
Don't add any applications and don't give any application permission to run.
Ignore all "requests" and "invitations."
The only remaining thing is photographs and videos that you or your friends might upload or "tag" you in. I believe you have the choice to confirm the tags, or at least to untag yourself if you prefer not to be named in your friends' photos. I think this particular issue is not that important, because your pictures are probably on the Internet, and on Facebook, whether with or without your name, whether or not you're on Facebook, and you have no control over them anyway. Chances are, that's the case unless you never leave the house.
I don't know why people still use IE. There's Firefox, there's Opera, and on both Mac and Windows, there is Safari too. There are plenty of other browsers out there if these three aren't good enough for you. Why in the world would anyone use IE?!?!? This is a sincere question. Would someone please tell me?
I know this isn't specifically about scientific journalism, but I think it must be said. People will always be biased, no matter how much they claim to provide a balanced view. In the end, the writer has an opinion, and this will appear in the writing.
In some cases, the bias is deliberate. The news reporting that you receive on television and in the papers is the best example of materials that are biased. This is done in a rather sophisticated manner. Information isn't necessarily modified to favor one viewpoint over another; rather information is selectively omitted and other information is selectively made more prominent. Anybody who is involved in writing on a regular basis should be well aware that you can state exactly the same thing in different ways, each way favoring one viewpoint over another. This is precisely what takes place in the news reporting, and since its distribution is so widespread, it actually affects the thing upon which it reports. In this manner, the media actually has control over the outcome.
Why misrepresent the facts? For a simple reason that will become apparent very quickly: Take the so-called Mid East Peace Process for example. What peace process? Things blow up everywhere, and have been for decades, and there's a peace process going on? That's news to me! Stop and ask yourself why the problems of the middle east will never get solved, and why so much misinformation circulates about the problem. The answer is obvious: An endless middle east peace problem makes for an endless supply of news, bad news specifically, and good ratings. People tune in to hear about the latest thing that exploded, and watch the commercials in between.
The same logic applies to any sort of reporting, whether the issue is war, social security, illegal immigration, the legality of abortion, or any other issue that seems to perpetuate itself forever with no solution in sight. Once again, the outcome of the reporting causes the problem to perpetuate itself, which makes for job security and good future ratings.
I have to disagree that average desktop users are buying whatever is cheap that week. Many still are, but I have noticed that increasingly, people are getting fed up with how unreliable computers seem to be, and the simplistic viewpoint of the average user is that "PCs suck, my next computer is a Mac." Seriously, I'm not saying this to advocate Macs, although they are my primary desktop system, Linux and FreeBSD being my server-side OSes. It's just my impression that everywhere I look, people are complaining about how slow and clunky PCs are, and when they say "PCs suck," they don't realize that what they should actually say "Windows sucks." It's not the hardware's fault. It's simply executing the instructions it's given, and it's garbage in, garbage out, the garbage being Windows. That's why your average PC user, who doesn't know the difference between the box that is the computer and the OS that runs in it, blames the PC. They complain specifically about viruses and adware filling up their computers, and how maddeningly slow things are. Then you need to print out some stupid piece of paper and you have to sacrifice a goat to get it done. That's the PC way. Things run extremely slowly and unreliably because there's a ton of garbage running in the background that they don't know how to control or get rid of. This is slowly driving your average users towards Mac computers. Linux won't cut it for most people because they don't understand computers or UNIX, and they don't want to. A Mac is a real marketable alternative that you can get now. These are not cheap; in fact, you have to make more of an investment. However, it seems pretty much unanimous that you get what you pay for. And that's why the Apple store near my house is increasingly crowded every time I pop my head in for a quick look.
What?! Windows did not have the best NVIDIA performance?!
This is a new one. No, really. Usually NVIDIA makes their Windows drivers their best drivers, and Linux is supported as an afterthought because they can make a few percentage points more in sales this way, and because it discourages reverse engineering their hardware, since those who would take the time and effort to do so won't on account of there being a working solution.
In other words, I am surprised that although Windows Vista has been such a mess in terms of compatibility and speed, that even the NVIDIA benchmarks put it last.
Perhaps people should invest all of this effort into learning and improving Linux, instead of relying on Microsoft's monopoly to provide software that isn't really what people want on a mass scale. Too many people are complaining about Vista.
Don't worry about a few parts per quadrillion of who the heck knows what.
You should worry about the massive amounts of fluoride that is being placed deliberately in our drinking water despitemanyknowndangers. This extremely toxic and dangerous substance is being put into our water in massive quantities, on purpose, allegedly to help our teeth.
This is ridiculous! For Germany to go raiding an event in this manner borders on thoughtcrime enforcement a la George Orwell's 1984. Next thing you know, they'll raid peoples' homes by random in search of expired medicines, unhealthy junk food, or materials that don't support the latest president. This sort of thing is dangerous and the German people cannot permit this to continue.
The citizens of every country in the world are quite frankly too busy working for a living to express any concern over how their government identifies them.
It is almost a rule of thumb that governments can get away with just about anything up to a certain threshold, and that threshold is quite high. It's not until things become incredibly bad, to the point that it's nearly impossible to lead any kind of meaningful life in a country, that the citizens rise up, tear down their government, and start from scratch. The whole routine then starts over again, with an initially small government growing and slowly extending its tentacles into every facet of life, until it is once again so involved that it must be fought against once more.
It is this way because until things become that bad, the citizens of the country are so busy earning a living and dealing with the zillions of problems that bombard them every day, that they have little or no time or energy to deal with trivialities like voting, being politically involved, etc.
People are always concerned about what the effects of playing violent video games might be, but nobody seems to question whether there are any undesirable effects of programming these games. I imagine that a programmer, stressing out to meet the game's shipping deadline in the face of a show-stopping heisenbug somewhere in the code, might be more inclined to do something violent during a particularly frustrating midnight debugging session, such as take the computer up to the roof of his company's 12-story office building and then drop it to the ground whilst yelling profanities at the top of his lungs.
I think there should be a law that people have to pass a background check before being allowed to program violent video games.
I have this rowboat outside called the Poseidon. I drop a C compiler CD-ROM into the water next to it and I'm in a ship traveling close to C. Heck, I can travel close to C++ for that matter.
If they don't want people to access a URL, they should take technical steps to prevent it from being accessed. An accessible URL is an invitation to use a service on that server. Having an accessible URL and then sending stupid legal letters is akin to putting an "Open House" sign in front of your house and then calling the police and pressing burglary charges when someone comes in.
I doubt NVIDIA really thought this through. How could a leading graphics company say such a thing about ray tracing? Ray tracing provides THE best quality images.
It is simultaneously 13.73 billion years and 6000 years old, depending on your frame of reference. As we know, time dilation means that a spaceship flying for a year at a high enough speed could return to Earth only to find that the crew's families have been dead for a thousand years due to local time passing at different rates for objects moving at different speeds. For this reason, a photon moves at the speed of light no matter how fast you are moving relative to that photon. Similarly, from our frame of reference inside the Universe, 13.73 billion years have elapsed. From another frame of reference, it is 6000 years old and not a minute more. Both measurements are perfectly valid and correct.
Unless this is some kind of hoax, I think the/. community should contact this university and politely explain how the world is changing in the information age.
I'll have to put in an order for one. I'll call him Data. That's Data with the first "a" being a long "a." There is a big difference between "Data" with a long "a" and "data" with a short "a": One is my robot's name. The other is not.
I got a better idea than passing stuff around on memory sticks. Now that Fidel ain't in charge no more, the people of Cuba need to kick Raul's butt out of power, get rid of this Communism rubbish, install a democratic government, and watch how everyone's wages soar, the quality of life goes from fourth-world to first-class, and this nonsense about the state controlling everyone through fear becomes a thing of the past.
Dude. Who said the iPhone isn't ready for business? You can write apps for it using the SDK. Anything it can't do yet is only a matter of writing a check to an iPhone programmer and voila, it does it. Not ready for business... Bah, humbug!
Slashdot Mirror
how about that guy who modified the login program to give him a backdoor hard-coded password and username? then he modified the compiler to recognize when it was compiling login and automatically insert the code, and deleted that code from login so it wouldn't be apparent in a code review. then he modified the compiler to recognize when it was compiling itself, and insert the code to modify both itself and login, and then deleted that code from the compiler as well. now there ain't no code to do that in the source code no more, but it does it anyway. eh?
Pop quiz:
You're an airport security official, checking passengers en route to their departure gate. Which of the following do you stop for interrogation:
A.) A bent, elderly woman in a wheelchair.
B.) A 12 year old kid on vacation with his family.
C.) A middle-eastern man in his late 20's, carrying an AK-47, a few grenades, a copy of the Quran, and yelling "Allah akbar!"
D.) A businessman sporting a MacBook Air.
I think the choice is clear. If you chose anything but option C, you are correct!! At least by our politically correct airport security standards, since heaven forbid if you should use (shudder) racial profiling. After all, 99% of terrorism worldwide is committed by elderly grandmothers, 12 year old kids on vacation, and businessmen with MacBook Airs. The remaining 1% is committed by "disgruntled youth."
(After all, the MacBook Air ads are only all over the papers, billboards, the Internet, and television.)
They were selling out and making Dor Mart $201 in profit for each $200 machine sold, but Mikro$loth offered to pay Dor Mart $201.01 per machine that would otherwise be sold in order to prevent their sale and the further distribution of Linux, so Dor Mart went for it. Another penny per unit is significant, since it stands to increase their billion dollar profits by about five bucks in the next quarter. Hey, five bucks could be the difference between making your earnings target and getting that fat promotion, and missing it by $4.99 and, well, not.
I think certain "hot button" issues come up in every election because it's a good way to hide what's really going on, and people would NOT be happy with their government if they were aware. This way, everyone is so busy talking about what the right solution is to abortion, social security, the border, the war, that they vote based on these issues and not on anything important, such as the candidate's voting record or what they really stand for, beyond the hot-button issues, that sort of thing. It's not done to give reporters a job; rather it's done to give the politicians a job. The reporters simply see an opening to create more of a job for themselves, and they take advantage of it.
As for the Mid East problem, it is definitely in the media's best interest to help fuel the conflict. This conflict would have ended years ago if the media would have consistently shown it for what it is, because most of the world's people would not permit it to continue for this long. It's so easy for the media to get away with this because most of the people in the world have no idea what is actually going on in the middle east. Well, no idea except what they see on TV or read in the paper; and what they see and read is selected by... the media!!
Why aren't more Linux users gamers? Because they're too busy trying to figure out how to make ls output in color. That's why.
You know where there's a real shortage of technical people? Technicians in the industrial electromechanical field. Well, there are many such technicians, but I mean good ones. People who understand industrial control, who can diagnose and repair problems in a system composed of software, electronic, electrical, and mechanical components. This field requires extensive experience in all four areas, and people who can do a good job in this area are scarce to find, and hiring them is very expensive.
Privacy on Facebook is relatively simple:
- Don't put any personal information into your profile.
- Don't add anyone to your friends whom you don't know personally.
- Don't add any applications and don't give any application permission to run.
- Ignore all "requests" and "invitations."
The only remaining thing is photographs and videos that you or your friends might upload or "tag" you in. I believe you have the choice to confirm the tags, or at least to untag yourself if you prefer not to be named in your friends' photos. I think this particular issue is not that important, because your pictures are probably on the Internet, and on Facebook, whether with or without your name, whether or not you're on Facebook, and you have no control over them anyway. Chances are, that's the case unless you never leave the house.I don't know why people still use IE. There's Firefox, there's Opera, and on both Mac and Windows, there is Safari too. There are plenty of other browsers out there if these three aren't good enough for you. Why in the world would anyone use IE?!?!? This is a sincere question. Would someone please tell me?
I know this isn't specifically about scientific journalism, but I think it must be said. People will always be biased, no matter how much they claim to provide a balanced view. In the end, the writer has an opinion, and this will appear in the writing.
In some cases, the bias is deliberate. The news reporting that you receive on television and in the papers is the best example of materials that are biased. This is done in a rather sophisticated manner. Information isn't necessarily modified to favor one viewpoint over another; rather information is selectively omitted and other information is selectively made more prominent. Anybody who is involved in writing on a regular basis should be well aware that you can state exactly the same thing in different ways, each way favoring one viewpoint over another. This is precisely what takes place in the news reporting, and since its distribution is so widespread, it actually affects the thing upon which it reports. In this manner, the media actually has control over the outcome.
Why misrepresent the facts? For a simple reason that will become apparent very quickly: Take the so-called Mid East Peace Process for example. What peace process? Things blow up everywhere, and have been for decades, and there's a peace process going on? That's news to me! Stop and ask yourself why the problems of the middle east will never get solved, and why so much misinformation circulates about the problem. The answer is obvious: An endless middle east peace problem makes for an endless supply of news, bad news specifically, and good ratings. People tune in to hear about the latest thing that exploded, and watch the commercials in between.
The same logic applies to any sort of reporting, whether the issue is war, social security, illegal immigration, the legality of abortion, or any other issue that seems to perpetuate itself forever with no solution in sight. Once again, the outcome of the reporting causes the problem to perpetuate itself, which makes for job security and good future ratings.
I have to disagree that average desktop users are buying whatever is cheap that week. Many still are, but I have noticed that increasingly, people are getting fed up with how unreliable computers seem to be, and the simplistic viewpoint of the average user is that "PCs suck, my next computer is a Mac." Seriously, I'm not saying this to advocate Macs, although they are my primary desktop system, Linux and FreeBSD being my server-side OSes. It's just my impression that everywhere I look, people are complaining about how slow and clunky PCs are, and when they say "PCs suck," they don't realize that what they should actually say "Windows sucks." It's not the hardware's fault. It's simply executing the instructions it's given, and it's garbage in, garbage out, the garbage being Windows. That's why your average PC user, who doesn't know the difference between the box that is the computer and the OS that runs in it, blames the PC. They complain specifically about viruses and adware filling up their computers, and how maddeningly slow things are. Then you need to print out some stupid piece of paper and you have to sacrifice a goat to get it done. That's the PC way. Things run extremely slowly and unreliably because there's a ton of garbage running in the background that they don't know how to control or get rid of. This is slowly driving your average users towards Mac computers. Linux won't cut it for most people because they don't understand computers or UNIX, and they don't want to. A Mac is a real marketable alternative that you can get now. These are not cheap; in fact, you have to make more of an investment. However, it seems pretty much unanimous that you get what you pay for. And that's why the Apple store near my house is increasingly crowded every time I pop my head in for a quick look.
What?! Windows did not have the best NVIDIA performance?!
This is a new one. No, really. Usually NVIDIA makes their Windows drivers their best drivers, and Linux is supported as an afterthought because they can make a few percentage points more in sales this way, and because it discourages reverse engineering their hardware, since those who would take the time and effort to do so won't on account of there being a working solution.
In other words, I am surprised that although Windows Vista has been such a mess in terms of compatibility and speed, that even the NVIDIA benchmarks put it last.
Perhaps people should invest all of this effort into learning and improving Linux, instead of relying on Microsoft's monopoly to provide software that isn't really what people want on a mass scale. Too many people are complaining about Vista.
Don't worry about a few parts per quadrillion of who the heck knows what.
You should worry about the massive amounts of fluoride that is being placed deliberately in our drinking water despite many known dangers. This extremely toxic and dangerous substance is being put into our water in massive quantities, on purpose, allegedly to help our teeth.
This is ridiculous! For Germany to go raiding an event in this manner borders on thoughtcrime enforcement a la George Orwell's 1984. Next thing you know, they'll raid peoples' homes by random in search of expired medicines, unhealthy junk food, or materials that don't support the latest president. This sort of thing is dangerous and the German people cannot permit this to continue.
The citizens of every country in the world are quite frankly too busy working for a living to express any concern over how their government identifies them.
It is almost a rule of thumb that governments can get away with just about anything up to a certain threshold, and that threshold is quite high. It's not until things become incredibly bad, to the point that it's nearly impossible to lead any kind of meaningful life in a country, that the citizens rise up, tear down their government, and start from scratch. The whole routine then starts over again, with an initially small government growing and slowly extending its tentacles into every facet of life, until it is once again so involved that it must be fought against once more.
It is this way because until things become that bad, the citizens of the country are so busy earning a living and dealing with the zillions of problems that bombard them every day, that they have little or no time or energy to deal with trivialities like voting, being politically involved, etc.
People are always concerned about what the effects of playing violent video games might be, but nobody seems to question whether there are any undesirable effects of programming these games. I imagine that a programmer, stressing out to meet the game's shipping deadline in the face of a show-stopping heisenbug somewhere in the code, might be more inclined to do something violent during a particularly frustrating midnight debugging session, such as take the computer up to the roof of his company's 12-story office building and then drop it to the ground whilst yelling profanities at the top of his lungs.
I think there should be a law that people have to pass a background check before being allowed to program violent video games.
You will if you put a dollar at the other end of the universe.
I have this rowboat outside called the Poseidon. I drop a C compiler CD-ROM into the water next to it and I'm in a ship traveling close to C. Heck, I can travel close to C++ for that matter.
If they don't want people to access a URL, they should take technical steps to prevent it from being accessed. An accessible URL is an invitation to use a service on that server. Having an accessible URL and then sending stupid legal letters is akin to putting an "Open House" sign in front of your house and then calling the police and pressing burglary charges when someone comes in.
I doubt NVIDIA really thought this through. How could a leading graphics company say such a thing about ray tracing? Ray tracing provides THE best quality images.
It is simultaneously 13.73 billion years and 6000 years old, depending on your frame of reference. As we know, time dilation means that a spaceship flying for a year at a high enough speed could return to Earth only to find that the crew's families have been dead for a thousand years due to local time passing at different rates for objects moving at different speeds. For this reason, a photon moves at the speed of light no matter how fast you are moving relative to that photon. Similarly, from our frame of reference inside the Universe, 13.73 billion years have elapsed. From another frame of reference, it is 6000 years old and not a minute more. Both measurements are perfectly valid and correct.
Unless this is some kind of hoax, I think the /. community should contact this university and politely explain how the world is changing in the information age.
I'll have to put in an order for one. I'll call him Data. That's Data with the first "a" being a long "a." There is a big difference between "Data" with a long "a" and "data" with a short "a": One is my robot's name. The other is not.
I got a better idea than passing stuff around on memory sticks. Now that Fidel ain't in charge no more, the people of Cuba need to kick Raul's butt out of power, get rid of this Communism rubbish, install a democratic government, and watch how everyone's wages soar, the quality of life goes from fourth-world to first-class, and this nonsense about the state controlling everyone through fear becomes a thing of the past.
Dude. Who said the iPhone isn't ready for business? You can write apps for it using the SDK. Anything it can't do yet is only a matter of writing a check to an iPhone programmer and voila, it does it. Not ready for business... Bah, humbug!