If zero predates christianity, then why isn't there a year zero? We go straight from 1 BC to 1 AD!
Bizarrely, when people number things they're counting, they usually number the first item "one", the second item "two", etc. Take five apples and put them in a box, remembering the order you put them in. Now, point to the first apple. Point to the fifth apple. And now, point to apple zero. What do you mean there's no apple zero? Uh huh...
Imagine that a significant percentage of./ is sock-puppets and bots. It's possible.. Posting an otherwise reasonable comment today, or yesterday is a fair indication of your true nature and a bug in your code.
I was replaced by a small shell script years ago...
Most IT professionals are worse than ignorant. If they were merely ignorant, they'd spend some time to learn what they don't know. The problem is not what they don't know, but what they think they do know that's just plain wrong.
erad ot kaerb siht ythgim rehpyc ytrid tsilairepmi
I actually had a spot of trouble with that one, since I used to make a game out of reading and writing "mirror-text", so I instinctively started by reading the entire sentence from right to left. Then I thought you were using a jumbled word order to make it more difficult, started reordering the words, and finally realized I'd just read it backwards.
According to Bruce Schneier, there are two types of cryptography - that which will keep secrets safe from your little sister, and that which will keep secrets safe from your government.
What if your little sister works for the government?
It seems they do have a copy of the data (the original article alludes to that) -- so this is in effect just a loss of a laptop that contained a copy of this data.
Indeed. No doubt they put a copy of this data on every laptop, and keep in a public server somewhere so anyone can copy it, so they always have many copies around just in case something like this happens./eyeroll
That whooshing sound you heard when you read the summary was the whole point going over your head. The issue was never that they might no longer have access to the data. The issue is that they aren't doing a particularly good job of making sure not everyone has access to the data.
Such data is usually copied by many on their laptops or devices so they can run some quick analyses or answer questions -- there is nothing out of the ordinary.
If the data is sensitive, it shouldn't be copied, it should be accessible in such a way that they can do this without requiring an individual copy of the entire database on the laptop. Alternately, if this isn't feasible for the task that needs to be done on that laptop, then much higher levels of security should be required and extra care should be taken to ensure that the machines that do have the data are not stolen or lost.
This is only "nothing out of the ordinary" is the sense that irresponsible behavior and gross negligence are nothing out of the ordinary at BP.
Well, let's see. Most banks require an ID to open an account. Most check-cashers want an ID to cash a check.
Most banks use some form of identity verification. However, at least the last bank account I opened, this did not involve the presentation of any physical paperwork. I certainly didn't need a birth certificate, I simply told them my SSN, and I didn't present any state issued ID. IIRC, when I opened a bank account back in the 80s I had to go through something like that, but not recently. As for check-cashers, I assume you're talking about people to stand around in the bank talking to people who go in? Do they still have those? I haven't been physically inside a bank in over a decade. I certainly haven't had any of the machines I've given checks to require me to show any form of ID beyond the ATM card itself, although I haven't used my ATM card in years, either. My web browser, which has been from where I've sent and "cashed" checks for the last few years, has never once demanded I show it any ID... which is good since I lost my webcam.
The difference in mass between the Earth and the Sun and the difference in mass between a pebble and the Sun is roughly equal. Yes, the Earth has more mass than a pebble, but compared to the Sun's mass, the difference is negligible. Hence, although the mass of both objects is used in calculating the gravitational pull between them, you will find when you do the calculations that the pull between the Earth and the Sun is almost exactly equal to the pull between a pebble and the Sun, and thus, if you "just kind of let go" of the pebble, it will go into orbit around the Sun in an orbit that's technically slightly bigger than the Earth's, but the size difference will be immeasurably small. It definitely won't go flying into interstellar space.
And before anyone moans that "header files provides a good overview of a project", well, it should be up to the IDE to display information (much better presented) about a project and its classes and members.
The only thing the IDE should be doing is moving bits onto and off of my hard drive.
I've never seen an assembler that didn't permit the use of every single possible bit of machine code. Granted, sometimes you needed to make a macro, but that sounds like exactly what you said you're already doing.
Please do tell which languages do you believe are "simpler (and arguably better" than C++.
error:Unexpected end of line.
You need to update your parser. The actual error is an unbalanced parenthesis in the quote. Except in poetry, line endings are not significant at all in the English language.
Since when did parser errors ever reflect the actual error?:p
Alas, you can't pick any two. Freedom and privacy works. Freedom and security doesn't, since you toss out any possibility of freedom once you toss out privacy. Security and privacy is arguable...
I mean, if I'm not doing anything wrong, what's the problem if Google, the goverment, or such, track me?
No problem, as long as they're not doing anything wrong, either. And history shows government officials never misuse the information or power given to them, amirite?
Try getting a job these days when you tell them you don't have a cellphone, or you will only be reachable on it when it's convenient for you.
Are you a doctor or something? If your boss wants to know what number to dial if there's an emergency, tell him "911".:p If there's an actual emergency, there ain't anything *I* can do about it. I'm a software engineer, not a doctor, fireman, or any other kind of professional that deals with emergencies. There are no problems I'm qualified to solve that can't wait until the start of the next business day.
Sysadmins may feel differently, of course, but that's the reason I stopped doing that kind of thing professionally. Believe it or not, it is possible to get a tech job without being a sysadmin.
Perhaps one could consider the possibility that OOP isn't the right tool for the job of teaching freshman students basic, introductory computer science concepts.
Honestly, it's a bit shocking to me to hear that any colleges these days try to teach OOP before anything else. Wrong tool for the job, indeed!
No, you have terrible reading and logic skills, because what I summarized is exactly what the post to which I replied actually means.
Hmm. Nope, not even close. Looks like the pot calling the kettle black here... except the kettle isn't black in this case, just the pot. In any case, your logic and reading comprehension skills are sorely lacking...
Agreed... but aren't most modern OS's OO based? In most cases students need OO programming in order to become employable. OO certainly isn't the holly grail of computing but it is entrenched in business and needs to be taught just like COBOL was all those years ago (when I had to learn it even though it was like writing a book every time I wanted to write a small program).
And how is this an argument for including in the introductory, freshman curriculum? I put forward the possibility that some topics may be more appropriate to be taught to students only after they've learned the basics.
I mean, even World of Warcraft requires that you type "DELETE" in a text field in order to delete a character or rare item - you'd think an emergency warning system would be better designed.
Funny you should mention that. Coming to WoW after having played GW for years, I always viewed this as an example of the generally poorer user interface design at Blizzard vs. ArenaNet. In GW, when you select a character and hit "Delete", you get a confirmation box where you have to type text, but you don't type "DELETE" -- you type the name of the character, thus both confirmed you really meant to hit "Delete" AND that you selected the intended character before doing so. WoW's system does guarantee you don't delete a character when you didn't mean to, but it fails to make guarantee you delete the intended character. Unsurprisingly, Blizzard Support does occasionally have to deal with people who accidentally delete the wrong character.
Unfortunately, this kind of very good design advice is the kind of thing they never teach you at school. I went to an accredited and highly rated college full of wonderful classes teaching all the features of good software design -- from the point of view of creating robust, stable, and maintainable code, with useful documentation. The amount of time spent on UI issues was essentially nonexistent. As long as the code does what it's supposed to do, if the user is confused into pressing the wrong buttons, the code can't be blamed for doing what the user requested, right? It's just a training issue, amirite?
Slashdot Mirror
If zero predates christianity, then why isn't there a year zero? We go straight from 1 BC to 1 AD!
Bizarrely, when people number things they're counting, they usually number the first item "one", the second item "two", etc. Take five apples and put them in a box, remembering the order you put them in. Now, point to the first apple. Point to the fifth apple. And now, point to apple zero. What do you mean there's no apple zero? Uh huh...
Imagine that a significant percentage of ./ is sock-puppets and bots. It's possible.. Posting an otherwise reasonable comment today, or yesterday is a fair indication of your true nature and a bug in your code.
I was replaced by a small shell script years ago...
Most IT professionals are worse than ignorant. If they were merely ignorant, they'd spend some time to learn what they don't know. The problem is not what they don't know, but what they think they do know that's just plain wrong.
erad ot kaerb siht ythgim rehpyc ytrid tsilairepmi
I actually had a spot of trouble with that one, since I used to make a game out of reading and writing "mirror-text", so I instinctively started by reading the entire sentence from right to left. Then I thought you were using a jumbled word order to make it more difficult, started reordering the words, and finally realized I'd just read it backwards.
According to Bruce Schneier, there are two types of cryptography - that which will keep secrets safe from your little sister, and that which will keep secrets safe from your government.
What if your little sister works for the government?
It seems they do have a copy of the data (the original article alludes to that) -- so this is in effect just a loss of a laptop that contained a copy of this data.
Indeed. No doubt they put a copy of this data on every laptop, and keep in a public server somewhere so anyone can copy it, so they always have many copies around just in case something like this happens. /eyeroll
That whooshing sound you heard when you read the summary was the whole point going over your head. The issue was never that they might no longer have access to the data. The issue is that they aren't doing a particularly good job of making sure not everyone has access to the data.
Such data is usually copied by many on their laptops or devices so they can run some quick analyses or answer questions -- there is nothing out of the ordinary.
If the data is sensitive, it shouldn't be copied, it should be accessible in such a way that they can do this without requiring an individual copy of the entire database on the laptop. Alternately, if this isn't feasible for the task that needs to be done on that laptop, then much higher levels of security should be required and extra care should be taken to ensure that the machines that do have the data are not stolen or lost.
This is only "nothing out of the ordinary" is the sense that irresponsible behavior and gross negligence are nothing out of the ordinary at BP.
Well, let's see. Most banks require an ID to open an account. Most check-cashers want an ID to cash a check.
Most banks use some form of identity verification. However, at least the last bank account I opened, this did not involve the presentation of any physical paperwork. I certainly didn't need a birth certificate, I simply told them my SSN, and I didn't present any state issued ID. IIRC, when I opened a bank account back in the 80s I had to go through something like that, but not recently. As for check-cashers, I assume you're talking about people to stand around in the bank talking to people who go in? Do they still have those? I haven't been physically inside a bank in over a decade. I certainly haven't had any of the machines I've given checks to require me to show any form of ID beyond the ATM card itself, although I haven't used my ATM card in years, either. My web browser, which has been from where I've sent and "cashed" checks for the last few years, has never once demanded I show it any ID... which is good since I lost my webcam.
The difference in mass between the Earth and the Sun and the difference in mass between a pebble and the Sun is roughly equal. Yes, the Earth has more mass than a pebble, but compared to the Sun's mass, the difference is negligible. Hence, although the mass of both objects is used in calculating the gravitational pull between them, you will find when you do the calculations that the pull between the Earth and the Sun is almost exactly equal to the pull between a pebble and the Sun, and thus, if you "just kind of let go" of the pebble, it will go into orbit around the Sun in an orbit that's technically slightly bigger than the Earth's, but the size difference will be immeasurably small. It definitely won't go flying into interstellar space.
And before anyone moans that "header files provides a good overview of a project", well, it should be up to the IDE to display information (much better presented) about a project and its classes and members.
The only thing the IDE should be doing is moving bits onto and off of my hard drive.
P.S. Get off my lawn... *waves cane menacingly*
I've never seen an assembler that didn't permit the use of every single possible bit of machine code. Granted, sometimes you needed to make a macro, but that sounds like exactly what you said you're already doing.
Please do tell which languages do you believe are "simpler (and arguably better" than C++.
error:Unexpected end of line.
You need to update your parser. The actual error is an unbalanced parenthesis in the quote. Except in poetry, line endings are not significant at all in the English language.
Since when did parser errors ever reflect the actual error? :p
It's so easy it's not even sporting. You don't even need C++ for that.
Bonus points for tucking it away into some build script as a compiler switch instead. Double bonus when build scripts are generated.
This is how I know I'm not truly evil. Something that diabolical would never even occur to me. Um... kudos?
"We support privacy in principle, but oppose privacy in practice."
Freedom, security, privacy: Pick two.
Alas, you can't pick any two. Freedom and privacy works. Freedom and security doesn't, since you toss out any possibility of freedom once you toss out privacy. Security and privacy is arguable...
I mean, if I'm not doing anything wrong, what's the problem if Google, the goverment, or such, track me?
No problem, as long as they're not doing anything wrong, either. And history shows government officials never misuse the information or power given to them, amirite?
Try getting a job these days when you tell them you don't have a cellphone, or you will only be reachable on it when it's convenient for you.
Are you a doctor or something? If your boss wants to know what number to dial if there's an emergency, tell him "911". :p If there's an actual emergency, there ain't anything *I* can do about it. I'm a software engineer, not a doctor, fireman, or any other kind of professional that deals with emergencies. There are no problems I'm qualified to solve that can't wait until the start of the next business day.
Sysadmins may feel differently, of course, but that's the reason I stopped doing that kind of thing professionally. Believe it or not, it is possible to get a tech job without being a sysadmin.
The basics; isn't that what PASCAL is for?
That's precisely what freshman classes were taught in when I started on my CSci degree. I'm probably dating myself, though...
So, nothing really really difficult huh?
Pfft. Well, yeah, if you read the entire summary rather than just the first line or two -- but honestly, who does that?
google music? we won't have music without paying for google music et al. we'll stick with ungooed just plain music for now, thanks
he who controls the trade routes....
Paying? Remember, this is Google we're talking about. The "product" will be a free "beta" app until doomsday...
Perhaps one could consider the possibility that OOP isn't the right tool for the job of teaching freshman students basic, introductory computer science concepts.
Honestly, it's a bit shocking to me to hear that any colleges these days try to teach OOP before anything else. Wrong tool for the job, indeed!
No, you have terrible reading and logic skills, because what I summarized is exactly what the post to which I replied actually means.
Hmm. Nope, not even close. Looks like the pot calling the kettle black here... except the kettle isn't black in this case, just the pot. In any case, your logic and reading comprehension skills are sorely lacking...
Agreed ... but aren't most modern OS's OO based? In most cases students need OO programming in order to become employable. OO certainly isn't the holly grail of computing but it is entrenched in business and needs to be taught just like COBOL was all those years ago (when I had to learn it even though it was like writing a book every time I wanted to write a small program).
And how is this an argument for including in the introductory, freshman curriculum? I put forward the possibility that some topics may be more appropriate to be taught to students only after they've learned the basics.
Perhaps by not quitting after their freshman year, and learning some OOP?
I mean, even World of Warcraft requires that you type "DELETE" in a text field in order to delete a character or rare item - you'd think an emergency warning system would be better designed.
Funny you should mention that. Coming to WoW after having played GW for years, I always viewed this as an example of the generally poorer user interface design at Blizzard vs. ArenaNet. In GW, when you select a character and hit "Delete", you get a confirmation box where you have to type text, but you don't type "DELETE" -- you type the name of the character, thus both confirmed you really meant to hit "Delete" AND that you selected the intended character before doing so. WoW's system does guarantee you don't delete a character when you didn't mean to, but it fails to make guarantee you delete the intended character. Unsurprisingly, Blizzard Support does occasionally have to deal with people who accidentally delete the wrong character.
Unfortunately, this kind of very good design advice is the kind of thing they never teach you at school. I went to an accredited and highly rated college full of wonderful classes teaching all the features of good software design -- from the point of view of creating robust, stable, and maintainable code, with useful documentation. The amount of time spent on UI issues was essentially nonexistent. As long as the code does what it's supposed to do, if the user is confused into pressing the wrong buttons, the code can't be blamed for doing what the user requested, right? It's just a training issue, amirite?