I have a better idea than making up restrictive school policies, which will inevitably lead to problems for all the people in the future, as laws get increasingly restrictive.
Instead of making up restrictive laws, let's loosen the laws up, allow everybody to buy guns, swords, and other weapons, and bring back the duel. In other words, if some jerk says something behind your back, you go up, slap him with a white glove, challenge him to a duel, and then take witnesses with you to the prescribed time and place. As long as both parties consent to the duel, you CANNOT be punished for maiming or killing the other person.
That would lead to a very reasonable system of law, where everybody would respect everybody, or be shot.
I have an idea. Every company that is plagued with spam should set up an automatic system that takes registrations from everybody who receives spam. In other words, if you receive spam, you push a single button in your email client (as email clients will include a kill spam button) which will forward it to a spam distribution site, which will distribute it to a special address in every company that is plagued with spam. Their systems will automatically record the email addresses of spammers in databases and send them a billion emails each day, spoofed to come from the same people they sent the spam to. They will have no way to differentiate these bogus responses from the real ones.
The advantage of a method like this is:
You would not have to waste your time to answer each spam. A single click and it's done.
Companies that really have to make a budget for handling spam probably already have high bandwidth connections, the idle cycles of which could be used to send these billions of spam-responses.
It would be done automatically and in incredibly high volumes.
Spammers would receive so much spam themselves, which they could not filter or distinguish from real responses, that they would essentially be put out of business.
Microsoft just lose ONE MILLION (1,000,000) sales to Linux! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!
This is good news. I am glad that Microsoft lost a lot of potential profit here. This is making me very happy.
Oh, by the way, I'm happy that Linux will get more exposure, too. Maybe with the addition of a million installations in China, there will be more resources invested in improving Linux. Hopefully the research and development that is going into this will find its way into other free operating systems, like the BSDs, and into other free software. The world will be a much better place when Microsoft doesn't dictate everything to the tech sector.
I think they should tie biometrics into everything you have... your bank accounts, credit cards, the keys to your car and house... everything. And to make it consumer-ready, they should take everybody's biometrics and put them on public-access databases that anybody can access. Furthermore, anybody can go online to the database website, fill in a few blanks, push a single button, and get mailed an ID card with all the biometric information encoded on it, so that instead of putting a finger on a reader to withdraw cash from a bank account, all they have to do is insert a card that has the same information on it. There would be no safeguards to make sure that only the person named on the card can receive a copy of it. In fact, the system and all the laws around it would be deliberately designed so that anybody can get anybody's card.
Microsoft would run this service, and advertise it as 100% secure. I feel safer every day.
Oh yeah, and it would be an anti-felony, punishable by a $1000 reward, to use somebody else's biometrics to obtain money, goods, or services. (If that makes you feel unsafe, remember that listening to a CD that you didn't buy, such as if a friend plays a CD and you happen to be in the vicinity, will constitute piracy punishable by death. Feel better? Good.)
I think there should be a federal law that nobody can make, buy, sell, or traffic in anything that competes with anything else. Violators of this law would receive a mandatory sentence greater than or equal to that of murderers and rapists, because such a crime is definitely worse than those.
Thus, if a component of a product you own, like a car or something, breaks down, it is illegal for you to get a replacement part from any source, however derived, other than the original copyright holder of that part, even if said original copyright holder has gone out of business and/or no longer exists. It would even be illegal for you to obtain a replacement that was made by that source but sold or given to you by someone else (in other words, you could not go to a junk yard and disassemble the part from another car, because that is piracy). This would be good for consumers because it directly coincides with the noble, good, and correct line of thinking that led to that fine law known as the DMCA.
Oh yeah, and people should be put into prison upon being born, because that is human genome piracy.
Hey billg, all I can say is, "Told you so!" Well, I haven't actually told you that personally, but for quite a few years, I've talked to many people who use your products, and we've all agreed that your security issues will eventually cause serious damage to your company.
(In this post, I am going to describe two or three reasons that I believe Microsoft will soon become a regular industry player, and will no longer rule at the top.)
Think that putting a bounty on virus writers is going to solve the problem? That's the trouble with you, billg, you think you can buy your way out of all your problems. Heck, if I had as much money as you, I could buy my way out of anything, too. The only trouble is that your mighty empire is slipping through your fingers, and because of what I'm about to say, you cannot fix it, no matter what you do.
Many companies have realized that using free software, and contributing to that software, both in fixes and in features, provides many advantages, such as independance from a vendor. If you think about it, suppose you get a contractor to add a room to your house and he does a crappy job. You could fire him and get someone else to do it. But when you use proprietary Microsoft programs, there is nobody but Microsoft that can fix them. While this may not have been an issue over the past 20 years or so, this is becoming a very critical issue.
Not only does the proprietary status of your software prevent others from finding and fixing its problems before they cost billions, but you continue to do everything in your power to isolate your software from anything else out there. Other companies want their software to interoperate with the competition, but you just want to embrace and extend. Why do you do that? If your software is so good, why can't you make it friendlier with your competitors' stuff? I know the answer: It's because you're insecure. You know that perhaps the biggest thing that kept people using your software was the fact that they were locked in to it and were forced to upgrade repeatedly.
By doing what I just described, you tightened your fist as much as you could on this software, but now governments, corporations, and individual users are beginning to look elsewhere in significant numbers. This is the beginning of the end of your monopoly. Soon, you will no longer rule at the top, but will be just another player in an industry. I'm sure it was fun while it lasted, though.
Once again, instead of fixing the problem, Microshucks is piling patch upon fix to hide the symptoms. Except in this instance, they are doing it with money instead of code.
I think many agree that Microsnobs is attacked by many viruses because of flaws in their software. These defects come in many shapes and sizes, from vague little bugs (like some memory leak) to really bad design decisions (like Outlook executing untrusted code because doing so is "convenient").
That's not to say, Bill, that you aren't smart. Hell, if I had half as much money as you, I'd buy my way out of all my problems, too.
Come on, Billy, I thought you'd know better. You're in a powerful position. You're a smart man. Why, instead, don't you use some doublespeak and say that, "Buggy code leads to robust security. Microsoft produces the buggiest code in the world. Therefore, Microsoft's products are the most robust, secure, fully-featured, efficient, and cost effective in the world."
Uh, we had to destroy the village in order to save it.
This is only one more proof that copy protection (a.k.a., digital rights management, a.k.a., product activation, a.k.a., anti-piracy, et cetera, ad nauseum) does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop people from making illegitimate copies of software or other information, while doing ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING to inconvenience legitimate users.
Of course, you know that Teraflops in computers are a lot like warp speed in Star Trek... You can only come infinitely close to 10.0 Teraflops. If it were possible to actually go 10.0 Teraflops, all computations would occur in zero time.
So a bunch of astronauts have all kinds of techno-mechanical-organic stuff implanted in their bodies to give them the ability to levitate, punch through a 24-inch-thich plate of forged steel without feeling a thing, spacewalk without a space suit, etc. They're hanging out in space on a long mission to Pluto or something, and over the years, they evolve and change, gaining the ability to live in the space environment, etc.
In the meantime, here on Earth, something terrible happens and just about everybody on the planet croaks, except for some people here and there. Technology all goes down the drain as most devices and whatnot break down and nobody is around to fix them. People band together in little tribes, tattooing the image of their tribes on their bodies to distinguish one another, and mini-wars break out between these tribes, in which people beat the crap out of each other with clubs. People forget the religions that filled the Earth, and they start worshipping rocks, trees, small statues, old tires on the sides of the roads that haven't disintegrated yet, etc. After some 750 years, nobody even remembers the technology that used to be. Most buildings have crumbled from disrepair. Once again, people are living in huts made of straw, sticks, or bricks. (Like the three little pigs.)
Anyway, while all this is going on, the space crew's decendants had reached Pluto, done some fascinating experiments like gathering samples of Pluto dirt in small jars, and they started on their way back home to Earth, which isn't visible to the naked eye from Pluto. By the 750 years that I mentioned before, the decendants of those who gathered the Pluto dust arrive at Earth. They come in for a landing, and everyone sees this, freaks out, and thinks it's an alien invasion with UFOs or something. Entire religions are invented over this, and people have bloody battles for the next 2000 years over whose account is correct.
Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet."
Hmmm... This is what EXPERTS are hoping? Who are these experts? What kind of experts are they?
Of course having six hundred thousand million billion trillion zillion bajillion googleplexes of Internet addresses, as opposed to, like, five, is going to prevent a shortage of addresses from happening real soon. EXPERTS. Bah, humbug.
The reason I am complaining about this, by the way, is that many articles in many publications are written this way. "Observations were held. 80% of those interviewed said [insert something here]. Experts predict [insert something else here]." Of course, they don't tell you that they interviewed five people out of fifty thousand... but the headline reads, "80% of [some group of people] does [this]."
Certifications are stupid. To pass the certification exam, you have to memorize stuff like which key does what in the fdisk screen, when it's all written right there. Instead of learning how to really administer the system.
Instead of certifications, just figure out how good someone is at getting results quickly and effectively for various types of problems that involve Linux as a solution and you've got a winner.
Here's the trouble with driving directions at Yahoo: If you're in a city like Los Angeles, and you want to go to a city on the other end of the county, Yahoo picks out a route that takes you zig-zagging around on five different freeways and many different streets, all of which will take you through bad neighborhoods and high traffic areas.
On one particular occasion, it told me to take certain streets to U.S. 101 South to I-10 East to S.R. 60 East to I-605 South to I-5 North to some other streets. All I had to do was take I-5 South to get to the same place.
What Yahoo needs to do is figure out how to minimize the number of changes between streets/roads. Directions that are five steps long, and involve taking only a few major streets, are infinitely easier to manage while driving than directions that have you turn at every other corner.
Then, Yahoo can improve further by figuring out how to measure traffic congestion patterns and then give directions based on that. Because in Los Angeles, it doesn't matter if you drive 26 miles or 42 miles to get to the same place. What matters is whether you're going 55 miles per hour or 15 miles per hour. But the computer, just by knowing the graph-like layout and connexions of the streets, in trying to find the "shortest path" as the horse runs, cannot figure out the "best" way, or even a reasonably good way, to get you there.
I have an idea that can prevent piracy and other digital rights problems: The next version of Windows and Office should present the user with a display that has icons, pull-down menus, and all the other parts of a GUI. But anything the user tries to do, whether it involves clicking the mouse or pushing a key on the keyboard, it will display an error message that says:
DRM Violation: You are not authorized to perform that operation. Your crime has been reported to the BSA. All your base are belong to us.
To avoid legal action from the BSA, write a check for $10,000.00, payable to Bill Gates and mail to the following address, postmarked no later than today:
ATTN: Protection Department One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 92044-7300
Computers that can do nothing and make all the decisions for their users will prevent people from using data. But these computers will be useless. A powerful computer, which allows its user to make decisions, not the other way around, will be truly useful.
For this reason, I think there is going to be an increasingly large backlash against Microsoft and other organizations out there that are pushing all this DRM bullshit.
I've been considering an idea like this for years. I mean, what's the problem in splitting a file system up into lots of smaller chunks and storing them on many different computers? My idea was to introduce redundancy so that even if not all of the nodes are active or reachable at any given time, the information could be located or constructed from other information. By doing so, a distributed storage system could be placed on millions of computers worldwide, in a sort of SETI@home-like setup, and users could donate a tiny chunk of their hard drive to help scientific research or student projects or whatever, where the people using the storage can't afford to pay for it. What's 50 megs, or 100, or 200, in today's hard drives anyway? People could easily "donate" the unused space on their drives and never feel a difference.
What C++ really needs is more features... LOTS more features. The language is not "rich" enough. C++ should add many other features to its syntax.
For example, the ability to name identifiers with any character in any character set.
As C++ is not complicated enough, we need a way to dynamically create syntax. It would work like operator overloading, but much more complicated. And it would be called Syntax Overloading. For example, the code, ("for (" class "in" class ")")() { [insert code here] } would allow you to specify a new type of for loop with your own syntax. The compiler, upon reading this line, would add the new syntax to its language rules. Then, you could type for (className in otherClassName) { some.code.here(); } and it would work as expected.
The language desperately needs some built-in cryptography functions. For example, the function const unsigned void do_it(const unsigned short void const crypto % arg) takes one parameter, arg, which is encrypted inside a processor register and cannot enter main memory for security reasons.
More complicated template syntax is needed. For example, suppose you want to create a class that is unknown at compile time... obviously, a way to specify runtime template processing is desperately needed.
Support for returning multiple return values from a function. For example, the function const unsigned short, const int *, const long long grok_the_file(void) might return three different return values, seperated by commas, as in, return i, j, size; Oh yeah, and you could specify functions that return an unknown number of values using ellipses, as in unsigned short... function_name() or simply... function_name(). Suppose you want to call a funciton that takes 3 parameters... you could instead pass it one function that returns 3 return values and C++ would know what to do with it.
C++ needs a reserved word, like please_reconsider_cast, or something, that uses common sense to figure out what the heck you're trying to typecast into what, so that even if the code is faulty, the compiler will figure out what you really mean.
These are all just a drop in the bucket. C++ is obviously too small and simple of a language.
We are extremely pleased with all the Microsoft products we use. Patches? Who cares? We are a 103 person company. Three people do the work, and a hundred MCSE IT professionals manage the network, which is 100% Windows. If we switch to Linux, we might have to fire 99 of our IT professionals! No... We don't want to do that! We're all Union IT workers. Like in the trains, when they continued to employ the caboose guys for 30 years after there were no more cabooses. Or the fire guys (who chucked coal into the boiler) for 30 years after they had switched to diesel. No... We're not going to fire our IT workers.
Seriously, now... People say that you have to patch Linux just as you have to patch Windows. But they don't realize something that is quite different between the two:
Under Linux, you have total control over the system. There is nothing hidden away, like it is under Microsoft. Therefore, when you apply a patch, you can know exactly where that patch goes and what that patch does. A sysadmin or two can put together a configuration (for 1 box, 100, or 10,000) that they like, and then when a patch comes out, write a small script that busts it into all the systems companywide.
Besides... Under Linux, it is not quite as critical to apply every single patch, as it is under Windows. Because sysadmins can control everything, they can prevent a lot of the stupidities that make Windows boxes vulnerable, like faulty configurations. And, because every company will likely have different Linux setups, viruses or cracks written for Linux will not have the same widespread effect as they do on Windows, where every Windows box is essentially the same, give or take a few variables.
eh? In the U.S., 10% of Americans pay 90% of the taxes. As it turns out, ultra-liberals find it very easy to say, "Tax the rich," but they don't realize that:
Most of "the rich" worked very hard to get to where they are.
Most of "the rich" who are business owners create jobs for many people.
"The rich," who work their asses off to get to where they are, should not have to pay more in taxes to support many people (such as illegals, but not limited to them) who take advantage (in a bad way) of social programs.
There are many other reasons that "the rich" already pay enough in taxes. In my opinion, the bracketed tax scheme is a piece of crap. It should be thrown away and replaced by a flat sales tax. This way, people are not forced to pay all kinds of tax bills that they may or may not be able to pay. People would simply pay tax when purchasing items. Those who spend more of their money would therefore pay more in taxes. Of course, that leaves everyone the option to put more money in the bank instead of blowing it all, which can lead to more successful businesses, more jobs, etc. Not to mention that most individuals would no longer have to deal with the IRS, to file taxes, to pay tax accountants to put together all their crap each year, etc. There would be no such thing. Instead, the IRS would deal ONLY with businesses, to collect sales tax. And that means less government overhead; less taxes wasted in the process of collecting taxes. I think this idea is a winner.
Hmmm... I have an idea. ISPs would simply keep track of how many bits of information are transmitted to each user, and then each user would pay a small nominal fee of $100.00 for each bit. For spam and other unwanted information, users will pay $200.00 per bit. The proceeds from these small charges will go directly to the RIAA, the MPAA, and Microsoft, to compensate those fine organizations for the evil effects that piracy on the high seas has on them.
Oh yeah, and since most people cannot afford to pay $100 or $200 per bit of information transmitted to them, the government would simply pay it, and collect the money in the form of higher taxes on the rich.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of making up restrictive laws, let's loosen the laws up, allow everybody to buy guns, swords, and other weapons, and bring back the duel. In other words, if some jerk says something behind your back, you go up, slap him with a white glove, challenge him to a duel, and then take witnesses with you to the prescribed time and place. As long as both parties consent to the duel, you CANNOT be punished for maiming or killing the other person.
That would lead to a very reasonable system of law, where everybody would respect everybody, or be shot.
Survival of the fittest.
The advantage of a method like this is:
- You would not have to waste your time to answer each spam. A single click and it's done.
- Companies that really have to make a budget for handling spam probably already have high bandwidth connections, the idle cycles of which could be used to send these billions of spam-responses.
- It would be done automatically and in incredibly high volumes.
- Spammers would receive so much spam themselves, which they could not filter or distinguish from real responses, that they would essentially be put out of business.
I think such a system would be good.This is good news. I am glad that Microsoft lost a lot of potential profit here. This is making me very happy.
Oh, by the way, I'm happy that Linux will get more exposure, too. Maybe with the addition of a million installations in China, there will be more resources invested in improving Linux. Hopefully the research and development that is going into this will find its way into other free operating systems, like the BSDs, and into other free software. The world will be a much better place when Microsoft doesn't dictate everything to the tech sector.
I am extremely glad at this news.
Microsoft would run this service, and advertise it as 100% secure. I feel safer every day.
Oh yeah, and it would be an anti-felony, punishable by a $1000 reward, to use somebody else's biometrics to obtain money, goods, or services. (If that makes you feel unsafe, remember that listening to a CD that you didn't buy, such as if a friend plays a CD and you happen to be in the vicinity, will constitute piracy punishable by death. Feel better? Good.)
Thus, if a component of a product you own, like a car or something, breaks down, it is illegal for you to get a replacement part from any source, however derived, other than the original copyright holder of that part, even if said original copyright holder has gone out of business and/or no longer exists. It would even be illegal for you to obtain a replacement that was made by that source but sold or given to you by someone else (in other words, you could not go to a junk yard and disassemble the part from another car, because that is piracy). This would be good for consumers because it directly coincides with the noble, good, and correct line of thinking that led to that fine law known as the DMCA.
Oh yeah, and people should be put into prison upon being born, because that is human genome piracy.
(In this post, I am going to describe two or three reasons that I believe Microsoft will soon become a regular industry player, and will no longer rule at the top.)
Think that putting a bounty on virus writers is going to solve the problem? That's the trouble with you, billg, you think you can buy your way out of all your problems. Heck, if I had as much money as you, I could buy my way out of anything, too. The only trouble is that your mighty empire is slipping through your fingers, and because of what I'm about to say, you cannot fix it, no matter what you do.
Many companies have realized that using free software, and contributing to that software, both in fixes and in features, provides many advantages, such as independance from a vendor. If you think about it, suppose you get a contractor to add a room to your house and he does a crappy job. You could fire him and get someone else to do it. But when you use proprietary Microsoft programs, there is nobody but Microsoft that can fix them. While this may not have been an issue over the past 20 years or so, this is becoming a very critical issue.
Not only does the proprietary status of your software prevent others from finding and fixing its problems before they cost billions, but you continue to do everything in your power to isolate your software from anything else out there. Other companies want their software to interoperate with the competition, but you just want to embrace and extend. Why do you do that? If your software is so good, why can't you make it friendlier with your competitors' stuff? I know the answer: It's because you're insecure. You know that perhaps the biggest thing that kept people using your software was the fact that they were locked in to it and were forced to upgrade repeatedly.
By doing what I just described, you tightened your fist as much as you could on this software, but now governments, corporations, and individual users are beginning to look elsewhere in significant numbers. This is the beginning of the end of your monopoly. Soon, you will no longer rule at the top, but will be just another player in an industry. I'm sure it was fun while it lasted, though.
Once again, instead of fixing the problem, Microshucks is piling patch upon fix to hide the symptoms. Except in this instance, they are doing it with money instead of code.
I think many agree that Microsnobs is attacked by many viruses because of flaws in their software. These defects come in many shapes and sizes, from vague little bugs (like some memory leak) to really bad design decisions (like Outlook executing untrusted code because doing so is "convenient").
That's not to say, Bill, that you aren't smart. Hell, if I had half as much money as you, I'd buy my way out of all my problems, too.
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.
Uh, we had to destroy the village in order to save it.
This is only one more proof that copy protection (a.k.a., digital rights management, a.k.a., product activation, a.k.a., anti-piracy, et cetera, ad nauseum) does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop people from making illegitimate copies of software or other information, while doing ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING to inconvenience legitimate users.
Quantum computers, with the proper software, could exhibit the same intelligence as an eight-year-old human child. Demonstration:
Dave: Computer, load up the research paper I wrote last year about binary computers in the twenty-first century.
Comp: I'm very sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: Please specify the source of the error, computer.
Comp: I'm very sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: Uh, computer, did you delete that file or something?
Comp: I'm very sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: Ok, look... If you didn't delete the file, then tell me why you can't bring it up!
Comp: I'm very sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: Ok, you dumb fucking piece of shit. If you don't bring up that damn file right fucking now, I'm going to take a sledgehammer to your processor.
Comp: Nanny nanny boo boo, Dave, I managed to piss you off! Nanny nanny boo boo!
Of course, you know that Teraflops in computers are a lot like warp speed in Star Trek... You can only come infinitely close to 10.0 Teraflops. If it were possible to actually go 10.0 Teraflops, all computations would occur in zero time.
I am really curious to know why, so please explain how I am an anti-semite.
One: There was nothing in my post about semite-style religions (such as Judaism or Islam).
Two: There was nothing in it about non-semite-style religions (such as Buddhism or Hinduism).
Three: My post discussed people worshipping stones and trees.
Four: There was nothing in my post neither for nor against any of the above.
Five: So please explain just how in the FUCK I am classified as such an anti-semite.
FOCK YOO!
In the meantime, here on Earth, something terrible happens and just about everybody on the planet croaks, except for some people here and there. Technology all goes down the drain as most devices and whatnot break down and nobody is around to fix them. People band together in little tribes, tattooing the image of their tribes on their bodies to distinguish one another, and mini-wars break out between these tribes, in which people beat the crap out of each other with clubs. People forget the religions that filled the Earth, and they start worshipping rocks, trees, small statues, old tires on the sides of the roads that haven't disintegrated yet, etc. After some 750 years, nobody even remembers the technology that used to be. Most buildings have crumbled from disrepair. Once again, people are living in huts made of straw, sticks, or bricks. (Like the three little pigs.)
Anyway, while all this is going on, the space crew's decendants had reached Pluto, done some fascinating experiments like gathering samples of Pluto dirt in small jars, and they started on their way back home to Earth, which isn't visible to the naked eye from Pluto. By the 750 years that I mentioned before, the decendants of those who gathered the Pluto dust arrive at Earth. They come in for a landing, and everyone sees this, freaks out, and thinks it's an alien invasion with UFOs or something. Entire religions are invented over this, and people have bloody battles for the next 2000 years over whose account is correct.
Hmmm... This is what EXPERTS are hoping? Who are these experts? What kind of experts are they?
Of course having six hundred thousand million billion trillion zillion bajillion googleplexes of Internet addresses, as opposed to, like, five, is going to prevent a shortage of addresses from happening real soon. EXPERTS. Bah, humbug.
The reason I am complaining about this, by the way, is that many articles in many publications are written this way. "Observations were held. 80% of those interviewed said [insert something here]. Experts predict [insert something else here]." Of course, they don't tell you that they interviewed five people out of fifty thousand... but the headline reads, "80% of [some group of people] does [this]."
Instead of certifications, just figure out how good someone is at getting results quickly and effectively for various types of problems that involve Linux as a solution and you've got a winner.
On one particular occasion, it told me to take certain streets to U.S. 101 South to I-10 East to S.R. 60 East to I-605 South to I-5 North to some other streets. All I had to do was take I-5 South to get to the same place.
What Yahoo needs to do is figure out how to minimize the number of changes between streets/roads. Directions that are five steps long, and involve taking only a few major streets, are infinitely easier to manage while driving than directions that have you turn at every other corner.
Then, Yahoo can improve further by figuring out how to measure traffic congestion patterns and then give directions based on that. Because in Los Angeles, it doesn't matter if you drive 26 miles or 42 miles to get to the same place. What matters is whether you're going 55 miles per hour or 15 miles per hour. But the computer, just by knowing the graph-like layout and connexions of the streets, in trying to find the "shortest path" as the horse runs, cannot figure out the "best" way, or even a reasonably good way, to get you there.
For this reason, I think there is going to be an increasingly large backlash against Microsoft and other organizations out there that are pushing all this DRM bullshit.
I've been considering an idea like this for years. I mean, what's the problem in splitting a file system up into lots of smaller chunks and storing them on many different computers? My idea was to introduce redundancy so that even if not all of the nodes are active or reachable at any given time, the information could be located or constructed from other information. By doing so, a distributed storage system could be placed on millions of computers worldwide, in a sort of SETI@home-like setup, and users could donate a tiny chunk of their hard drive to help scientific research or student projects or whatever, where the people using the storage can't afford to pay for it. What's 50 megs, or 100, or 200, in today's hard drives anyway? People could easily "donate" the unused space on their drives and never feel a difference.
What C++ really needs is more features... LOTS more features. The language is not "rich" enough. C++ should add many other features to its syntax.
- For example, the ability to name identifiers with any character in any character set.
- As C++ is not complicated enough, we need a way to dynamically create syntax. It would work like operator overloading, but much more complicated. And it would be called Syntax Overloading. For example, the code, ("for (" class "in" class ")")() { [insert code here] } would allow you to specify a new type of for loop with your own syntax. The compiler, upon reading this line, would add the new syntax to its language rules. Then, you could type for (className in otherClassName) { some.code.here(); } and it would work as expected.
- The language desperately needs some built-in cryptography functions. For example, the function const unsigned void do_it(const unsigned short void const crypto % arg) takes one parameter, arg, which is encrypted inside a processor register and cannot enter main memory for security reasons.
- More complicated template syntax is needed. For example, suppose you want to create a class that is unknown at compile time... obviously, a way to specify runtime template processing is desperately needed.
- Support for returning multiple return values from a function. For example, the function const unsigned short, const int *, const long long grok_the_file(void) might return three different return values, seperated by commas, as in, return i, j, size; Oh yeah, and you could specify functions that return an unknown number of values using ellipses, as in unsigned short... function_name() or simply
... function_name(). Suppose you want to call a funciton that takes 3 parameters... you could instead pass it one function that returns 3 return values and C++ would know what to do with it.
- C++ needs a reserved word, like please_reconsider_cast, or something, that uses common sense to figure out what the heck you're trying to typecast into what, so that even if the code is faulty, the compiler will figure out what you really mean.
These are all just a drop in the bucket. C++ is obviously too small and simple of a language.Seriously, now... People say that you have to patch Linux just as you have to patch Windows. But they don't realize something that is quite different between the two:
Under Linux, you have total control over the system. There is nothing hidden away, like it is under Microsoft. Therefore, when you apply a patch, you can know exactly where that patch goes and what that patch does. A sysadmin or two can put together a configuration (for 1 box, 100, or 10,000) that they like, and then when a patch comes out, write a small script that busts it into all the systems companywide.
Besides... Under Linux, it is not quite as critical to apply every single patch, as it is under Windows. Because sysadmins can control everything, they can prevent a lot of the stupidities that make Windows boxes vulnerable, like faulty configurations. And, because every company will likely have different Linux setups, viruses or cracks written for Linux will not have the same widespread effect as they do on Windows, where every Windows box is essentially the same, give or take a few variables.
- Most of "the rich" worked very hard to get to where they are.
- Most of "the rich" who are business owners create jobs for many people.
- "The rich," who work their asses off to get to where they are, should not have to pay more in taxes to support many people (such as illegals, but not limited to them) who take advantage (in a bad way) of social programs.
There are many other reasons that "the rich" already pay enough in taxes. In my opinion, the bracketed tax scheme is a piece of crap. It should be thrown away and replaced by a flat sales tax. This way, people are not forced to pay all kinds of tax bills that they may or may not be able to pay. People would simply pay tax when purchasing items. Those who spend more of their money would therefore pay more in taxes. Of course, that leaves everyone the option to put more money in the bank instead of blowing it all, which can lead to more successful businesses, more jobs, etc. Not to mention that most individuals would no longer have to deal with the IRS, to file taxes, to pay tax accountants to put together all their crap each year, etc. There would be no such thing. Instead, the IRS would deal ONLY with businesses, to collect sales tax. And that means less government overhead; less taxes wasted in the process of collecting taxes. I think this idea is a winner.What's wrong with viewing pr0n on a portable video player?
Oh yeah, and since most people cannot afford to pay $100 or $200 per bit of information transmitted to them, the government would simply pay it, and collect the money in the form of higher taxes on the rich.