Today, if someone gets your credit card information, they can make charges in your name. To resolve this, you inform your credit card company that someone is fraudulently using you card. Typically they'll just nix the charges and issue you a new card with a new number.
Throw in biometrics: Someone gets your biometric information, they can make charges in your name. To resolve this, you inform your biometric-enhanced credit card company company that someone is fraudulently using you biometric information. They just nix the charges and issue you new...fingerprints?
So biometrics do go a long way toward fraud prevention. However, if it actually does occur, you're utterly and permanently fucked.
I still use SRWare Iron (the phone-home-free version of Chrome) because it runs each tab/window in a separate process, so I can load many tabs in the background while the foreground tab is unaffected and I'm able to use it.
The fact that Firefox still lacks this usability feature (the ability to do things in one window while another is busy) blows my mind. Even IE does it.
I mean, it's nice to see them steal - and expound on! - a feature from Chrome, but they're still missing one of the best ones: process isolation.
Logitech mice have always been alright, but their drivers are terrible and the software is obnoxious, bloated, ugly, difficult to use, and extremely terrible.
Not to mention I'm sick and tired of the middle mouse button being so hard to click and the notches being so easy to roll over that 50% of the time I roll the mouse when I mean to click it. Every mouse of theirs I've tried has this issue. I vastly prefer my razer diamondbacks, but support for those in linux is even worse.
The only reason I have a Logitech mouse at work is because using my razer diamondback is non-feasible in linux due to no drivers and it being way too sensitive. X's mouse settings are designed to make slow mice accelerate, there's no good way to make a too-fast-mouse slow down that works worth a damn. But good luck finding an 800 DPI mouse these days, especially since that's not a specification element most manufacturers even list.
It isn't a good language for teaching object-orientation because it isn't a pure OO language so you have to understand the difference between objects and intrinsics.
I would argue that any language that is pure OO is a huge PITA. Having a language that contains primitives provides a teacher an easy opportunity to illustrate the difference between objects and primitives. Simply compare
Integer
(object) to
int
(primitive). Then you can show them (in binary, hex, or decimal) the value of a primitive vs. the value of a pointer.
It isn't a good introduction to programming, because you need a fairly complex program a class with a static method) for hello world.
Really?
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello World.");
} }
You could say that the java version is verbose, but I would say the C version is terse. In terms of complexity, I would say the C version is slightly more so. Java has the class declaration, but C has the preprocessor directive. However, the C version requires a return value, Java does not. It's not a big difference, but at worst they're about the same.
And the C++ version is the most bizzare looking to a beginner:
#include <iostream> using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
cout << "Hello World !!!" << endl;
return 0; }
#include? namespace? iostream? *arv[]? <<? That is some cryptic stuff for the uninitiated.
It isn't a good introduction to data structures because all objects are references and all intrinsics are not, making aliasing difficult to teach.
How does that have an effect on data structures? Data structures are all about using the right one for the job. How the objects or pointers you put in them work are a bit tangential to the topic.
It isn't a good introduction to computer memory, since it adopts the Smalltalk memory model which hides almost everything from the programmer (great for using, bad for teaching).
I'll have to concede here, because it does hide just about everything, but the fact that you have to declare everything, and then make an explicit new call should provide hints. And as I said, this issue is why any programmer should have some experience with C/C++ and assembler to flesh out the abstractions Java provides.
And for teaching algorithmic design, it's nice not to have all thsoe cryptic symbols that C and C++ use.
So if you were going to plot the bandwidth as a function of surface area to cover and say that since Japan has 1/24th as much that it should have bandwidth about 24 times better it should have 120mbit lines now. I realize this isn't entirely realistic, but it does take considerably more fiber or copper lines to cover.
Now how about population density? It's only a sound business idea to wire up reasonably densely populated areas. Japan has a population density of 337/km^2, while the USA has a population density of only 31/km^2. Which do you think it's more financially sound to wire up?
If you want comparison that's even slightly scientific, try comparing only areas between the two with equivalent population densities. Say a few highly dense areas, a few median areas, and a few low density areas. Until you accompany your whines with those types of comparisons, they'll sound like nothing but xenophilia to me.
I'm not being a jerk here, I want to know why you think it was so bad.
I think there's nothing wrong with learning java as long as you get some real experience with C/C++ and assembler before you graduate so that you understand what the high level languages are doing for you behind the scenes (character arrays, memory allocation, pointers, for starters).
Slight disclaimer: I did assembler in college, and C on an OpenVMS VAX (isn't government work awesome?) prior to becoming a java developer.
I don't want them filtering my internet any more than I want them filtering my mail, my TV, or my radio. Unfortunately the FCC seems to have take upon itself to filter broadcast TV and radio. A power they were never granted by the people. They just took it; largely in response to a really whiny special interest group. An organization made up of a mere 1.3 million (~0.4% of the US population!) uptight fucks have almost single handedly managed to get all the real life stuff banned from TV. They're responsible for 99.9% of complaints (which is the only thing the FCC acts on) in 2003.
I don't want asshats like this sucking the life out of the internet like they have TV and radio.
Laws that are adhered to in spirit rather than wording. Judges and juries decide whether the crime fits the law and whether or not they're guilty. Simply written laws that any half-intelligent being can comprehend in minutes.
It has the benefit of covering crimes that haven't been though of yet, it obsoletes lawyers completely and the common man will become capable of comprehending every law he's subject to. It also has the benefit of being applicable on a case by case basis. This solves the problem of people falling unintentionally in the scope of draconian laws. This is a good thing. Because very few crimes are exactly alike.
It has the drawbacks of putting a lot of power on the judges (severe penalties need to be in place for corruption or graft).
And the laws go basically like this (it's a starter set). And you'll need to put aside your current ideas of laws before reading or you'll think I'm insane.)
Stealing is illegal. (no, I don't mean you RIAA, your business model is your problem)
Damaging something you don't own is illegal. (vanalism, hitting your car, etc)
Harming someone is illegal. (stab someone, go to jail; punch a friend in the arm - not a crime)
Attempting to deceive someone for profit or benefit is illegal. (this nails deceptive advertising mostly)
Obviously the interpretation is the important part. Under our fucked up system people would attempt to take their significant other to court based on the wording of that last one. Under the system I have in mind they'd be laughed out of court. If not charged for it themselves. Eventually people would learn that stupid dramatic shit doesn't count, (society at large doesn't give a shit if your spouse lied to you).
While Megan's death is tragic, I cannot approve of this abuse of the justice system being twisted just to find something, anything, to nail Lori Drew with. It sets dangerous precedents in an already fucked-up-beyond-repair system.
Certainly Drew deserved punishment, but if everybody using the internet was punished for causing emotional distress over the internet, we'd all be in jail. Keep in mind that that is all she did. She didn't go kill the girl with her bare hands.
I think a public beating would be more appropriate and cheaper to society as a whole. Give the bitch a few emotional and physical scars of her own to remind her that shit like this will not be tolerated. But computer crimes? Seriously, what the fuck?
What I wonder is, why don't some of those white/grey/black hat hackers out there don't try to hijack the botnets, spammers, or the control servers of the spammers and shut that shit down. I'm sure it would be challenging and billions would approve.
The way I see it, spam is a distributed problem that ignores virtually any boundary you can think of, so the solution must be equally pervasive and distributed. Such as an equally (dis)organized group of spammer-attackers. Sure some innocents will probably get nailed, but ain't war hell?
As long as people continue to buy physical CDs and DVDs, the *IAA will never go away, and neither will the labels and publishers or whatever.
However, they will experience a rather severe drop in profits since their business models for the last hundred years depended on control. Control of the ability to make copies of intangible things and distribute those corporeal anchors of intangible things for a heavy profit. The problem that they've failed to adapt to is the creation of a very easy and very accessible means to do fulfill their business role for them. They've really always been in a very tenuous position, but they were simply never willing to face the music and now they're paying the price.
Don't get me wrong, they're not going away, but they are looking a greatly diminished role (and profits) if they don't start adapting.
This is a bandaid on the real problem. The prisons failing to stop inmates from getting cell phones.
It would probably be much cheaper and simpler just to set up cell phone signal detectors and catch the inmates red handed. The risks of inadvertently jamming innocent phones (those of prison employees or off-site phones) are too high. A lot of people don't have land lines, and cell phones are a wonderful thing in an emergency.
Or, you know, they could learn to better prevent inmates from getting the phones in the first place.
IDWFTDOD (I Did Work For the Department of Defense), so FYI: DoD has been using !Windows since before Windows existed on their ships/planes etc. That is, the ships and planes don't run on windows and never have. Note that I didn't say what they do run.
You're right there are bright Comp Sci guys in the DoD. They're way ahead of you on this one.
That's because any news source that gets its revenue from advertising has an inherent conflict of interest.
They make money by selling ads. In order to sell ads, you need large viewer base. In order to get a large viewer base, you have to have interesting (read: sensational) stories. Real news isn't always exciting and rarely sells ads.
This is why I believe most news sources (in America anyway - most especially CNN & Fox) should be required to bear the warning label, "For entertainment purposes only" prominently visible at all times.
If this isn't blatant ageism, I don't know what is.
I'm 27 with 11 years of experience, and you want to know what my favorite buzz phrases are?
I'll spoil it for you:
maintainable
readable
well-documented
stable
unit-test
code coverage
ruthless testing
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)
don't make me think
I've seen some of the oldest programmers create some of the shittiest code. It caused maintenance headaches for literally years, and wasn't accomplished any faster than doing it the right way to begin with. And these guys were in their late 40s when they wrote it! Mr. Three-Dimensional-Arrays-In-Java, I'm looking at you.
I could tell just by looking at the style of code they wrote that they were C/C++ programmers with too much experience to write good Java code. Overlong, overcomplicated methods with cryptic variable names, heavy use of arrays, heavy use of magic numbers, and the list goes on.. Not to mention that for five years one of our companies primary application executed entirely as a side effect of its constructor because they didn't know how else to make code run in a class.
Long experience can actually do more harm than good. What I want to see is relevant experience code with a heavy emphasis on quality and maintainability.
I actually attempted to, but couldn't locate their bug tracking system. It wasn't linked anywhere on the alpha release page I looked at.
For that matter, neither were the installation instructions.
If they sincerely want people to help out, they could make it a lot easier. If not, they can continue as they are and receive help from fewer people. It's their decision really.
I think natural affinity accounts for a lot of it. I'm going to throw myself to the wolves here and risk flamebait moderation for the sake of a little honesty.
Generally speaking, men are inherently more logical and less emotional. Please keep in mind I'm speaking in generalities here!
This lends much more easily to dealing with cold, utterly emotionless dealings with machines. Men are more naturally suited to it.
For example, the computer doesn't give a shit how you feel about what it just did. It's not even capable of thinking about how you feel. Many women I've met have problems accepting that other than academically.
I've lost track of the number of times I've had a woman tell me, "the computer hates me" some other emotion-laden statement of utter absurdity. I've never heard that or anything like it a single solitary time from a human being with a Y chromosome. Not once.
However, this absolutely does not rule out the existence of incredibly competent women! I personally know several that I respect more than the average man, or even a skilled man, because I know they've faced a lot of bullshit to get where they are. They're out there, they're just more rare.
It's much the same when it comes to men being comforting and empathy. Generally we're not as good at it.
Sorry for that, but I just can't take any discussion about the sexes seriously if it doesn't acknowledge that they are different.
And I am sad that there aren't more females, but I refuse to try and encourage them by coddling. I wouldn't do that for a man, why would I for a woman?
I just installed it after hunting around for installation instructions for a few minutes. (WTG adobe.)
It showed up in my plugins window, but it doesn't work. Firefox doesn't even render the space they should take up correctly, it just collapses the elements.
I recently had the opportunity to design a survey. And preemptively learned from the mistakes at UPS.
We started out with a ton of questions we thought were good, then scrapped the idea and asked three open ended questions with big free form text fields.
Another group went ahead and asked a bunch of continuum and multiple choice questions.
In their survey everything looked peachy.
In ours (the freeform one) results were considerably less favorable, and considerably more useful.
Usefulness can be lost especially easily when you simply boil the continuum questions down to percentages. What if that mere fraction of a percentage of your employees that are extremely dissatisfied are crucial to it's function? Or if you didn't ask the right questions?
It's really easy to create a survey that tells you absolutely nothing useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Your first candidate for a motive should always be simple stupidity - which isn't really a motive, I guess. But it's correct the most often.
Biometrics are foolish.
Today, if someone gets your credit card information, they can make charges in your name. To resolve this, you inform your credit card company that someone is fraudulently using you card. Typically they'll just nix the charges and issue you a new card with a new number.
Throw in biometrics:
Someone gets your biometric information, they can make charges in your name. To resolve this, you inform your biometric-enhanced credit card company company that someone is fraudulently using you biometric information. They just nix the charges and issue you new...fingerprints?
So biometrics do go a long way toward fraud prevention. However, if it actually does occur, you're utterly and permanently fucked.
Does Firefox add threading for tabs yet?
I still use SRWare Iron (the phone-home-free version of Chrome) because it runs each tab/window in a separate process, so I can load many tabs in the background while the foreground tab is unaffected and I'm able to use it.
The fact that Firefox still lacks this usability feature (the ability to do things in one window while another is busy) blows my mind. Even IE does it.
I mean, it's nice to see them steal - and expound on! - a feature from Chrome, but they're still missing one of the best ones: process isolation.
But doing that wouldn't give the people in power any additional power!
Remember, governments only ever grow.
How the bloody hell did you get that past slashdot's filters?
Logitech mice have always been alright, but their drivers are terrible and the software is obnoxious, bloated, ugly, difficult to use, and extremely terrible.
Not to mention I'm sick and tired of the middle mouse button being so hard to click and the notches being so easy to roll over that 50% of the time I roll the mouse when I mean to click it. Every mouse of theirs I've tried has this issue. I vastly prefer my razer diamondbacks, but support for those in linux is even worse.
The only reason I have a Logitech mouse at work is because using my razer diamondback is non-feasible in linux due to no drivers and it being way too sensitive. X's mouse settings are designed to make slow mice accelerate, there's no good way to make a too-fast-mouse slow down that works worth a damn. But good luck finding an 800 DPI mouse these days, especially since that's not a specification element most manufacturers even list.
I would argue that any language that is pure OO is a huge PITA. Having a language that contains primitives provides a teacher an easy opportunity to illustrate the difference between objects and primitives. Simply compare
(object) to
(primitive). Then you can show them (in binary, hex, or decimal) the value of a primitive vs. the value of a pointer.
Really?
Compare to C:
You could say that the java version is verbose, but I would say the C version is terse. In terms of complexity, I would say the C version is slightly more so. Java has the class declaration, but C has the preprocessor directive. However, the C version requires a return value, Java does not. It's not a big difference, but at worst they're about the same.
And the C++ version is the most bizzare looking to a beginner:
#include? namespace? iostream? *arv[]? <<? That is some cryptic stuff for the uninitiated.
How does that have an effect on data structures? Data structures are all about using the right one for the job. How the objects or pointers you put in them work are a bit tangential to the topic.
I'll have to concede here, because it does hide just about everything, but the fact that you have to declare everything, and then make an explicit new call should provide hints. And as I said, this issue is why any programmer should have some experience with C/C++ and assembler to flesh out the abstractions Java provides.
And for teaching algorithmic design, it's nice not to have all thsoe cryptic symbols that C and C++ use.
You do realize that the USA has 24.4 times the land as Japan , right?
So if you were going to plot the bandwidth as a function of surface area to cover and say that since Japan has 1/24th as much that it should have bandwidth about 24 times better it should have 120mbit lines now. I realize this isn't entirely realistic, but it does take considerably more fiber or copper lines to cover.
Now how about population density? It's only a sound business idea to wire up reasonably densely populated areas. Japan has a population density of 337/km^2, while the USA has a population density of only 31/km^2. Which do you think it's more financially sound to wire up?
If you want comparison that's even slightly scientific, try comparing only areas between the two with equivalent population densities. Say a few highly dense areas, a few median areas, and a few low density areas. Until you accompany your whines with those types of comparisons, they'll sound like nothing but xenophilia to me.
What's wrong with learning Java?
I'm not being a jerk here, I want to know why you think it was so bad.
I think there's nothing wrong with learning java as long as you get some real experience with C/C++ and assembler before you graduate so that you understand what the high level languages are doing for you behind the scenes (character arrays, memory allocation, pointers, for starters).
Slight disclaimer: I did assembler in college, and C on an OpenVMS VAX (isn't government work awesome?) prior to becoming a java developer.
After that stuff, Java is easy.
Bollocks.
I don't want them filtering my internet any more than I want them filtering my mail, my TV, or my radio. Unfortunately the FCC seems to have take upon itself to filter broadcast TV and radio. A power they were never granted by the people. They just took it; largely in response to a really whiny special interest group. An organization made up of a mere 1.3 million (~0.4% of the US population!) uptight fucks have almost single handedly managed to get all the real life stuff banned from TV. They're responsible for 99.9% of complaints (which is the only thing the FCC acts on) in 2003.
I don't want asshats like this sucking the life out of the internet like they have TV and radio.
Laws that are adhered to in spirit rather than wording. Judges and juries decide whether the crime fits the law and whether or not they're guilty. Simply written laws that any half-intelligent being can comprehend in minutes.
It has the benefit of covering crimes that haven't been though of yet, it obsoletes lawyers completely and the common man will become capable of comprehending every law he's subject to. It also has the benefit of being applicable on a case by case basis. This solves the problem of people falling unintentionally in the scope of draconian laws. This is a good thing. Because very few crimes are exactly alike.
It has the drawbacks of putting a lot of power on the judges (severe penalties need to be in place for corruption or graft).
And the laws go basically like this (it's a starter set). And you'll need to put aside your current ideas of laws before reading or you'll think I'm insane.)
Obviously the interpretation is the important part. Under our fucked up system people would attempt to take their significant other to court based on the wording of that last one. Under the system I have in mind they'd be laughed out of court. If not charged for it themselves. Eventually people would learn that stupid dramatic shit doesn't count, (society at large doesn't give a shit if your spouse lied to you).
The goal of the thing is simple: fair justice.
While Megan's death is tragic, I cannot approve of this abuse of the justice system being twisted just to find something, anything, to nail Lori Drew with. It sets dangerous precedents in an already fucked-up-beyond-repair system.
Certainly Drew deserved punishment, but if everybody using the internet was punished for causing emotional distress over the internet, we'd all be in jail. Keep in mind that that is all she did. She didn't go kill the girl with her bare hands.
I think a public beating would be more appropriate and cheaper to society as a whole. Give the bitch a few emotional and physical scars of her own to remind her that shit like this will not be tolerated. But computer crimes? Seriously, what the fuck?
What I wonder is, why don't some of those white/grey/black hat hackers out there don't try to hijack the botnets, spammers, or the control servers of the spammers and shut that shit down. I'm sure it would be challenging and billions would approve.
The way I see it, spam is a distributed problem that ignores virtually any boundary you can think of, so the solution must be equally pervasive and distributed. Such as an equally (dis)organized group of spammer-attackers. Sure some innocents will probably get nailed, but ain't war hell?
This might be the most fucked up fact in human society.
Any legal system that has this problem should be considered utterly broken and dire need of disposal sooner rather than later.
As long as people continue to buy physical CDs and DVDs, the *IAA will never go away, and neither will the labels and publishers or whatever.
However, they will experience a rather severe drop in profits since their business models for the last hundred years depended on control. Control of the ability to make copies of intangible things and distribute those corporeal anchors of intangible things for a heavy profit. The problem that they've failed to adapt to is the creation of a very easy and very accessible means to do fulfill their business role for them. They've really always been in a very tenuous position, but they were simply never willing to face the music and now they're paying the price.
Don't get me wrong, they're not going away, but they are looking a greatly diminished role (and profits) if they don't start adapting.
This is a bandaid on the real problem. The prisons failing to stop inmates from getting cell phones.
It would probably be much cheaper and simpler just to set up cell phone signal detectors and catch the inmates red handed. The risks of inadvertently jamming innocent phones (those of prison employees or off-site phones) are too high. A lot of people don't have land lines, and cell phones are a wonderful thing in an emergency.
Or, you know, they could learn to better prevent inmates from getting the phones in the first place.
IDWFTDOD (I Did Work For the Department of Defense), so FYI: DoD has been using !Windows since before Windows existed on their ships/planes etc. That is, the ships and planes don't run on windows and never have. Note that I didn't say what they do run.
You're right there are bright Comp Sci guys in the DoD. They're way ahead of you on this one.
That's because any news source that gets its revenue from advertising has an inherent conflict of interest.
They make money by selling ads. In order to sell ads, you need large viewer base. In order to get a large viewer base, you have to have interesting (read: sensational) stories. Real news isn't always exciting and rarely sells ads.
This is why I believe most news sources (in America anyway - most especially CNN & Fox) should be required to bear the warning label, "For entertainment purposes only" prominently visible at all times.
If this isn't blatant ageism, I don't know what is.
I'm 27 with 11 years of experience, and you want to know what my favorite buzz phrases are?
I'll spoil it for you:
I've seen some of the oldest programmers create some of the shittiest code. It caused maintenance headaches for literally years, and wasn't accomplished any faster than doing it the right way to begin with. And these guys were in their late 40s when they wrote it! Mr. Three-Dimensional-Arrays-In-Java, I'm looking at you.
I could tell just by looking at the style of code they wrote that they were C/C++ programmers with too much experience to write good Java code. Overlong, overcomplicated methods with cryptic variable names, heavy use of arrays, heavy use of magic numbers, and the list goes on.. Not to mention that for five years one of our companies primary application executed entirely as a side effect of its constructor because they didn't know how else to make code run in a class.
Long experience can actually do more harm than good. What I want to see is relevant experience code with a heavy emphasis on quality and maintainability.
EAL84+ means it is self-aware. It's not recommended that you try to pull the plug. It will fight back.
I actually attempted to, but couldn't locate their bug tracking system. It wasn't linked anywhere on the alpha release page I looked at.
For that matter, neither were the installation instructions.
If they sincerely want people to help out, they could make it a lot easier. If not, they can continue as they are and receive help from fewer people. It's their decision really.
I think natural affinity accounts for a lot of it. I'm going to throw myself to the wolves here and risk flamebait moderation for the sake of a little honesty.
Generally speaking, men are inherently more logical and less emotional. Please keep in mind I'm speaking in generalities here!
This lends much more easily to dealing with cold, utterly emotionless dealings with machines. Men are more naturally suited to it.
For example, the computer doesn't give a shit how you feel about what it just did. It's not even capable of thinking about how you feel. Many women I've met have problems accepting that other than academically.
I've lost track of the number of times I've had a woman tell me, "the computer hates me" some other emotion-laden statement of utter absurdity. I've never heard that or anything like it a single solitary time from a human being with a Y chromosome. Not once.
However, this absolutely does not rule out the existence of incredibly competent women! I personally know several that I respect more than the average man, or even a skilled man, because I know they've faced a lot of bullshit to get where they are. They're out there, they're just more rare.
It's much the same when it comes to men being comforting and empathy. Generally we're not as good at it.
Sorry for that, but I just can't take any discussion about the sexes seriously if it doesn't acknowledge that they are different.
And I am sad that there aren't more females, but I refuse to try and encourage them by coddling. I wouldn't do that for a man, why would I for a woman?
I just installed it after hunting around for installation instructions for a few minutes. (WTG adobe.)
It showed up in my plugins window, but it doesn't work. Firefox doesn't even render the space they should take up correctly, it just collapses the elements.
It just quietly fails to function.
Oh well, back to 9 for me.
What format was that survey in?
I recently had the opportunity to design a survey. And preemptively learned from the mistakes at UPS.
We started out with a ton of questions we thought were good, then scrapped the idea and asked three open ended questions with big free form text fields.
Another group went ahead and asked a bunch of continuum and multiple choice questions.
In their survey everything looked peachy.
In ours (the freeform one) results were considerably less favorable, and considerably more useful.
Usefulness can be lost especially easily when you simply boil the continuum questions down to percentages. What if that mere fraction of a percentage of your employees that are extremely dissatisfied are crucial to it's function? Or if you didn't ask the right questions?
It's really easy to create a survey that tells you absolutely nothing useful.
I could've sworn th
And yes, Lameness filter, so many caps are like yelling, BECAUSE I WAS YELLING.