One of the most engaging presentations I've seen on this was the making of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich where the students write out the instructions and you execute them -- very literally, as a computer would do -- illustrating the attention to detail and error checking required for programming.
I recall seeing the knife go through the lids for the peanut butter and jelly jars, the jars being placed directly on slices of bread, peanut butter being spread on the bread wrapper, etc.
This would be something to incorporate into a larger talk, probably at the end (to keep their attention going).
Just shop at a Microsoft store (online or at retail). The PCs they sell are part of their "Signature" program whereby they remove all crap/bloatware and optimize the Windows install to run its best on that hardware.
Sort of, kind of, but not really. From their home page, under the "Just the software you need" heading: "Each PC includes Windows 7, Windows Live Essentials, Zune software, Internet Explorer with Bing optimization, and more." In other words, you get Microsoft's bloatware instead of third-parties'.
worst case scenario - there is no change and status quo remains
Not quite. Worst case scenario involves a cult-like user following who won't stop praddling on at parties about how cool and open their spiffy new phone/laptop is. Then we'll have to open FSF Friend Bars, too.
Most companies are smart enough to let sleeping dogs lie.
Doing battle with Microsoft (or any other big name company) means a lot of money spent on legal fees, whether you're on the serving or receiving end of the lawsuit. If you do sue them, you had better hope that you can fund your lawyers through the duration of the case and that the expected payout is worth the expense.
Oh, I don't *agree* with what I wrote. In fact, I wholly agree with everything you're arguing.
I'm just stating how the tax collectors will (try to) argue it. I've worked (as a developer) in the tax department at $LARGE_COMPANY, and I've seen some screwy legal interpretations put forth by tax collectors; they're hoping you won't have the willingness to challenge it in a court. (We frequently did, and probably won more than we lost.)
Since US income taxes are limited to state and federal, I'm not sure how a municipality would enforce this.
By not making up arbitrary rules like limiting taxes to state and federal levels. Philadelphia imposes this on the employer, so it's invisible to the employees; but if you live in Pittsburgh, for example, you're filling out three forms: the IRS 1040, a PA-40, and a PGH-40.
(I've thankfully moved to a state which doesn't have income tax...)
But as the parent poster pointed out, Philly can't tax assets that aren't located in it's jurisdiction.
Ah, most tax collectors in this situation would just argue that creating the content in Philly gives the city jurisdiction.
And this is peanuts. Illinois takes the trophy for overly broad interpretations of jurisdiction and nexus; take a look at this letter of ruling (PDF) for example of this abuse. In this case:
This is a New York company running a vehicle database for insurance companies.
This company does not have an office, data center, or any other physical property in Illinois.
This company does not have any employees in Illinois.
No employee of the company sets foot in Illinois for anything work related.
Independent dealers and inspectors who do own shops in Illinois forward the results of their inspections to the company in New York.
The ruling? The company is liable for Illinois income tax. (And probably New York, as well, but the letter does not identify the company.)
Linux's software RAID is quicker than fakeraid -- that is, the hardware RAID which is merely a bit of code which is executed on the CPU itself. However, it's definitely slower than a real RAID card -- decent ones run in the hundreds to thousands of dollars.
In addition to offloading the RAID function (saving a fraction of the CPU and I/O bandwidth), decent RAID cards will contain a large amount of battery backed cache RAM. Any operation which requires writes to be committed to disk will complete in the time it takes to write it to the cache RAM -- a huge savings. If/when the battery fails, these cards fail back to committing the write to disk. The performance impact seriously hurts our databases (to the point where we typically fail over to the standby as quickly as possible). This is all on a host with 60-80 2.5" SCSI drives.
The form factor of the portable keyboard and screen are the big stumbling blocks to making the laptop obsolete. If I have to carry around something which is 95% of the bulk of a laptop, I might as well get a laptop. (Low storage and CPU capacity are minor issues, and the gap there is quickly narrowing.)
But someone smarter than I will probably come up with an elegant solution here, too. I just can't quite visualize what that will look like. (All the folding ideas I can come up with require non-existent technology or outright suck.)
Heh... also on that page... interesting that they actually commented their exploit code.:-) <!-- This object plays the "hey everybody, I'm watching gay porno!" sound -->
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<param name="movie" value="flash/hey.swf"/>
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Ayup. Someone managed an XSS attack and got this into a comment: <script> window.location = "http://www.hax.on.nimp.org" </script>
That domain's main page attempts to download a few files and invoke a number of other programs: lm.pdf jews.wmv irc://irc.gnaa.us/gnaa irc://irc.efnet.org/politics news:alt.flame.niggers news:alt.flame.faggots mailto:JOIN@THE.GNAA?subject=2006_RECRUITMENT_DRIVE&body=www.gnaa.us callto://JOIN_THE_GNAA__2005_RECRUITMENT_DRIVE aim:GoIM?screenname=Gary_Niger&message=HY+LOL+HY+LOL rlogin://1.1.1.1:80 telnet://1.1.1.1:80 aim:addbuddy?listofscreennames=HY,LOL,HY,LOL,HY,LOL,join,the,gnaa,2006,RECRUITMENT,DRIVE,heartiez2incog&groupname=gnaa mailto:JOIN@THE.GNAA?subject=2006_RECRUITMENT_DRIVE&body=www.gnaa.us ed2k://|file|Gayniggers From Outer Space [GNAA Digitally Remastered].avi|134174720|F8AF9D8A7091CD7A7B8968C9EB397C02|/
I hadn't heard of callto: before; sounds like it might be Skype related.
... as you've done. What percentage of those IE users are still running IE6/7? Then ask yourself, "Am I willing to lose X% of my visitors to save Y% of coding effort?"
For any typical website which depends on traffic for revenue, I'd say you'd have to be nuts to cut support for IE 6/7; thats about 35% of the visitors to your site. The fact that only 5% (and not 62%) of your visitors use IE at all, however, indicates that you're not running a typical site (or there's an error in your metrics collection).
The differences in the quality and content of cost estimation handbooks for software and civil engineering disciplines are astounding. It's possible to take a detailed description of a building and come up with an accurate cost estimate; the books describe how much the material costs and the labor and equipment required to install it. Software engineering cost estimation books, on the other hand, can be distilled down to: "Using a process for cost estimation is good!" and "Use the result from the last time you built it".
For instance, compare the descriptions between these books. Look at the specifics given in the construction estimator vs. the fluff in the software estimator -- and keep in mind the latter was written by Steve McConnell, a well respected author in this field:
Cost Estimation of Structures in Commercial Buildings: "A broad range of commercial building types is considered, from five to 50 storeys in height, and the effects on quantities of the varying design parameters, such as column grid size, number of storeys, location of structural components, arrangement of beams, grades of concrete, and so on, are described and illustrated by charts."
Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art: "Software Estimation focuses on the art of software estimation and provides a proven set of procedures and heuristics that software developers, technical leads, and project managers can apply to their projects. Instead of arcane treatises and rigid modeling techniques, award-winning author Steve McConnell gives practical guidance to help organizations achieve basic estimation proficiency and lay the groundwork to continue improving project cost estimates."
Granted, a handful of software is sufficiently bleeding edge that it's not possible to find and document past experience. But surely we've deployed database schemas, created servlets, written session handling code, etc., often enough to start documenting the typical tasks involved and how long they took.
People learning English as a foreign language get taught proper grammar and only learn the vernacular later. People in England learn the street language and never get taught the grammar.
I had a fairly standard U.S. education (read: not the horror stories you read about in D.C., but not spectacular, either), which included English grammar in elementary and middle school. It was fairly dry and little of it stuck -- normal "street" grammar is too easy to slide back into -- until I started taking German and (later) Japanese classes. Learning a foreign language and its grammar rules opened my eyes to English grammar. That's when it suddenly became interesting.
The most this will do is alter people's behavior. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the bandwidth needs of the new applications being developed (Torrent, Skype, video services, etc.) and malware -- and those will happen independently of H1N1.
Of those, malware is the most worrisome to me. Imagine a network-clogging virus spreading through Windows Update servers, using Skype-like techniques to effectively mask its packets from firewalls and traffic shaping systems. Even if you're running Linux or Mac OS, you'll be affected if you're trying to get any bits through them tubes...
Slashdot Mirror
You can emulate the orientation bit by playing with transforms (<g transform="rotate(30)">...), but at the second-grade level? Yeah, stick with Logo.
One of the most engaging presentations I've seen on this was the making of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich where the students write out the instructions and you execute them -- very literally, as a computer would do -- illustrating the attention to detail and error checking required for programming.
I recall seeing the knife go through the lids for the peanut butter and jelly jars, the jars being placed directly on slices of bread, peanut butter being spread on the bread wrapper, etc.
This would be something to incorporate into a larger talk, probably at the end (to keep their attention going).
Just shop at a Microsoft store (online or at retail). The PCs they sell are part of their "Signature" program whereby they remove all crap/bloatware and optimize the Windows install to run its best on that hardware.
Sort of, kind of, but not really. From their home page, under the "Just the software you need" heading: "Each PC includes Windows 7, Windows Live Essentials, Zune software, Internet Explorer with Bing optimization, and more." In other words, you get Microsoft's bloatware instead of third-parties'.
I don't know about "most used" -- perhaps most used on non-iPhones -- but certainly a browser to test against.
And, yes, please fix it for OperaMini. I was disappointed to find that I couldn't read /. during my morning commute.
Finally, yikes -- what's up with the edit box jumping around during preview?
Promoted from VP to CEO by a single /. summary! Too bad she had to butcher her name in the process.
(For future reference, "executive" -- as the article states -- does not necessarily mean "CEO"...)
worst case scenario - there is no change and status quo remains
Not quite. Worst case scenario involves a cult-like user following who won't stop praddling on at parties about how cool and open their spiffy new phone/laptop is. Then we'll have to open FSF Friend Bars, too.
Most companies are smart enough to let sleeping dogs lie.
Doing battle with Microsoft (or any other big name company) means a lot of money spent on legal fees, whether you're on the serving or receiving end of the lawsuit. If you do sue them, you had better hope that you can fund your lawyers through the duration of the case and that the expected payout is worth the expense.
Your network admin will still see that your browser requested .jpg files from the 4chan image server.
Ah, so it's vulnerable to a grep attack, then...
Oh, I don't *agree* with what I wrote. In fact, I wholly agree with everything you're arguing.
I'm just stating how the tax collectors will (try to) argue it. I've worked (as a developer) in the tax department at $LARGE_COMPANY, and I've seen some screwy legal interpretations put forth by tax collectors; they're hoping you won't have the willingness to challenge it in a court. (We frequently did, and probably won more than we lost.)
Since US income taxes are limited to state and federal, I'm not sure how a municipality would enforce this.
By not making up arbitrary rules like limiting taxes to state and federal levels. Philadelphia imposes this on the employer, so it's invisible to the employees; but if you live in Pittsburgh, for example, you're filling out three forms: the IRS 1040, a PA-40, and a PGH-40.
(I've thankfully moved to a state which doesn't have income tax...)
Net Income != Profits
While technically true (due to accounting rules), you probably meant: "Gross Income != Profits."
But as the parent poster pointed out, Philly can't tax assets that aren't located in it's jurisdiction.
Ah, most tax collectors in this situation would just argue that creating the content in Philly gives the city jurisdiction.
And this is peanuts. Illinois takes the trophy for overly broad interpretations of jurisdiction and nexus; take a look at this letter of ruling (PDF) for example of this abuse. In this case:
The ruling? The company is liable for Illinois income tax. (And probably New York, as well, but the letter does not identify the company.)
Private re-sale doesn't attract taxation - you don't pay taxes on your used car[...]
Not necessarily true. Quite often you have to pay sales and title transfer taxes. Evading these can make it difficult to get the registration renewed.
But their reverse DNS wouldn't be "crawl-66-xx-xx-xx.googlebot.com"
If you own the IP block, you can make the reverse DNS point to anything you wish. That doesn't mean it belongs to Google.
Verifying the owner of the IP block requires whois, e.g.:
Linux's software RAID is quicker than fakeraid -- that is, the hardware RAID which is merely a bit of code which is executed on the CPU itself. However, it's definitely slower than a real RAID card -- decent ones run in the hundreds to thousands of dollars.
In addition to offloading the RAID function (saving a fraction of the CPU and I/O bandwidth), decent RAID cards will contain a large amount of battery backed cache RAM. Any operation which requires writes to be committed to disk will complete in the time it takes to write it to the cache RAM -- a huge savings. If/when the battery fails, these cards fail back to committing the write to disk. The performance impact seriously hurts our databases (to the point where we typically fail over to the standby as quickly as possible). This is all on a host with 60-80 2.5" SCSI drives.
The form factor of the portable keyboard and screen are the big stumbling blocks to making the laptop obsolete. If I have to carry around something which is 95% of the bulk of a laptop, I might as well get a laptop. (Low storage and CPU capacity are minor issues, and the gap there is quickly narrowing.)
But someone smarter than I will probably come up with an elegant solution here, too. I just can't quite visualize what that will look like. (All the folding ideas I can come up with require non-existent technology or outright suck.)
No one should EVER be criminally liable for taking a nude photo of themselves and showing to another...
Even if it's the goatse guy?
Heh... also on that page... interesting that they actually commented their exploit code. :-) /> />
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<param name="movie" value="flash/hey.swf"
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Ayup. Someone managed an XSS attack and got this into a comment:
<script> window.location = "http://www.hax.on.nimp.org" </script>
That domain's main page attempts to download a few files and invoke a number of other programs:
lm.pdf
jews.wmv
irc://irc.gnaa.us/gnaa
irc://irc.efnet.org/politics
news:alt.flame.niggers
news:alt.flame.faggots
mailto:JOIN@THE.GNAA?subject=2006_RECRUITMENT_DRIVE&body=www.gnaa.us
callto://JOIN_THE_GNAA__2005_RECRUITMENT_DRIVE
aim:GoIM?screenname=Gary_Niger&message=HY+LOL+HY+LOL
rlogin://1.1.1.1:80
telnet://1.1.1.1:80
aim:addbuddy?listofscreennames=HY,LOL,HY,LOL,HY,LOL,join,the,gnaa,2006,RECRUITMENT,DRIVE,heartiez2incog&groupname=gnaa
mailto:JOIN@THE.GNAA?subject=2006_RECRUITMENT_DRIVE&body=www.gnaa.us
ed2k://|file|Gayniggers From Outer Space [GNAA Digitally Remastered].avi|134174720|F8AF9D8A7091CD7A7B8968C9EB397C02|/
I hadn't heard of callto: before; sounds like it might be Skype related.
... as you've done. What percentage of those IE users are still running IE6/7? Then ask yourself, "Am I willing to lose X% of my visitors to save Y% of coding effort?"
For any typical website which depends on traffic for revenue, I'd say you'd have to be nuts to cut support for IE 6/7; thats about 35% of the visitors to your site. The fact that only 5% (and not 62%) of your visitors use IE at all, however, indicates that you're not running a typical site (or there's an error in your metrics collection).
The differences in the quality and content of cost estimation handbooks for software and civil engineering disciplines are astounding. It's possible to take a detailed description of a building and come up with an accurate cost estimate; the books describe how much the material costs and the labor and equipment required to install it. Software engineering cost estimation books, on the other hand, can be distilled down to: "Using a process for cost estimation is good!" and "Use the result from the last time you built it".
For instance, compare the descriptions between these books. Look at the specifics given in the construction estimator vs. the fluff in the software estimator -- and keep in mind the latter was written by Steve McConnell, a well respected author in this field:
Granted, a handful of software is sufficiently bleeding edge that it's not possible to find and document past experience. But surely we've deployed database schemas, created servlets, written session handling code, etc., often enough to start documenting the typical tasks involved and how long they took.
People learning English as a foreign language get taught proper grammar and only learn the vernacular later. People in England learn the street language and never get taught the grammar.
I had a fairly standard U.S. education (read: not the horror stories you read about in D.C., but not spectacular, either), which included English grammar in elementary and middle school. It was fairly dry and little of it stuck -- normal "street" grammar is too easy to slide back into -- until I started taking German and (later) Japanese classes. Learning a foreign language and its grammar rules opened my eyes to English grammar. That's when it suddenly became interesting.
Can you compile a Linux kernel without gcc?
Sure! Pencil and paper translation to assembly and then x86 opcodes, and then enter the bits in through floppies encoded using a magnetized needle.
Still working on 0.95... Damn, broke another one. Can you hand me that needle over there?
Give me a break. "Bank", in this context, describes the type of robber. "Robber" isn't the adjective.
Whooosh!
The most this will do is alter people's behavior. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the bandwidth needs of the new applications being developed (Torrent, Skype, video services, etc.) and malware -- and those will happen independently of H1N1.
Of those, malware is the most worrisome to me. Imagine a network-clogging virus spreading through Windows Update servers, using Skype-like techniques to effectively mask its packets from firewalls and traffic shaping systems. Even if you're running Linux or Mac OS, you'll be affected if you're trying to get any bits through them tubes...