The Internet isn't something where you can hope to find any significant percentage of its information _without_ indices. By definition, google.cn's existence as an unfirewalled site increases the availability of information to China over the somewhat firewalled google.com, through its extensive (even if artificially restricted) index of information now being available to a wider pool of users.
In addition, it increases the total of information over competing search engines as results can potentially inform users that results have been censored, unlike other sources.
I'd say it's absurd to suggest that this further increases poltical censorship of information to China - existing search engines already did a partial job with similar censorship but (as I understand) less disclosure. It's not like Google have suddenly introduced search censorship to China - quite the reverse, they've introduced _disclosure_ of search censorship to China. This can only help increase day-to-day awareness and visibility of this problem within the Chinese population, and help undermine Chinese government efforts.
Let's look at the negative case.
Does Google not offering a localised service increase Chinese information availability? No.
Does Google have a reliable way of delivering any service to China without working with the Chinese government's terms? No.
Does Google not offering a filtered localised service stand any chance of persuading the Chinese government to permit such a service? No.
Does Google informing search users that results are filtered decrease information availability over other providers filtering silently? No.
Does Google providing this service drive people away from reliably available unfiltered results offered by competitors? Not as I understand.
Efficient as the Great Firewall of China is, I can't imagine them catching every last link, so by definition something will get through eventually. An increase of index providers increases the probability of something slipping through, and the entry to the market of another high-quality index provider increases the chance of the items actually being found.
I honestly cannot construct a single case in which this does anything but increase the available pool of information to the Chinese population. No, it's not ideal, but it is an improvement over the previous positions. Yes, this is a careful balance to strike because on one side you have the slow chipping away at the censorship and on the other you have a position that's getting close enough to good that people become unconcerned about the censorship - but, considering the type of censorship, I can't see that position happening.
This is a positive thing for the Chinese population and I'm yet to see a single example of how this makes it worse for them. Congratulations to Google for not taking an overly idealistic position and reaching the highest quality available solution.
I'm 27 and I own a PS2 (though admittedly I was a late customer, only got it in late 2004).
I have 15 games for it (and a social life, and a girlfriend! really! she likes some of the games too:-)), of which only 7 were new.
Of those 7: * 1 was bundled with the machine (GT3) * 3 were seriously cheap anyway (original Codemasters Indycar, £10, WRC3, £10 and Stock Car Speedway, £7) * 1 was in a sale, on a voucher and largely for my girlfriend anyway (Sonic Mega Collection, £20) * 2 were games I 'just had to have' (GT4 and NASCAR 2006, both £30) and in my defence, both were discounted and NASCAR titles pre-2006 had been like hens' teeth for UK PS2 gamers so I was determined to get this one in case they pulled it from the market quickly
So I've never paid full retail, there's only 2 games where I've paid over 50% of what'd be the usual full retail price for PS2 games over here and all bar 3 of the games I've bought (so not really counting the bundle, can't remember what they were selling it at separately) have either been second hand or price competitive with the second hand games anyway.
Sony: I know you don't get much money from me but you get some and it stops me becoming an XBox 360 household and helping boost Microsoft's market. I will only buy a PS3 as and when it has compelling games (or services) I can't play on my PS2 and when the game availability is similar to what it is on the PS2 a the moment in the UK.
Google's core purpose (to a user) is helping users find information quickly, accurately and reliably.
Before google.cn appeared, some Chinese users could sometimes get access to google.com and other international portals, and it'd help if they had some English.
After google.cn appeared, all Chinese Internet users could always get access to some of the information, with a disclaimer (albeit not over prominent from the sounds of things) explaining how they weren't allowed to see some of the results.
While I won't deny that Google stands to profit from google.cn's new increased availability, so do Chinese users. The sum total of available information has increased, particularly through the disclaimer about missing results that was absent from other providers.
The ideal situation is still that the oppresive Chinese regime is ended by some means, for all sorts of reasons - for one entirely selfish thing a major reason the Chinese economy is currently so competitive in the world is that the currency doesn't float so sits way below its market value, making exports artificially cheap and imports artificially expensive - all to the benefit of the local economy. Anyway, Google's increased service does not increase the control that the Chinese authorities have over their users as there's already (inferior) search provision in place from competitors. It does increase service availability for Chinese users, even if that's to a still suboptimal position.
The absolutist position may look ideologically wonderful, but it can just lead to a poor result becoming the de facto standard rather than an available compromise that's better for all and doesn't actually cause practical harm relative to the absolutist position being achieved instead. That is all Google has done.
I do pretty regularly. I'm a motorsports fan, and unless you can get very high to shoot over the top or a pass to get on the other side of the fence, you're routinely shooting through chain link fence to get the cars. Just an enthusiastic amateur but I've got a few thousand such photos filed away from film and digital:-)
Not that this is a particular problem - just get relatively close to the fence and don't shoot on f/16 or higher and you won't even _see_ the fence in most enclosures.
The other obvious example is zoos and wildlife parks - almost by definition you have to shoot through fences but you can still get some great photos of the animals with creative framing.
(FWIW I now shoot a D70 too and it's great for this, gives me all the control I know how to use and a little more too. Lovely camera!)
Actually, that's not how I read the post or what I feel about music as a heavy CD buyer (OK, whose tastes are more mainstream than that - http://www.last.fm/user/eftpotrm/) BUT I would say much the same - because I feel that what is being pushed as the CURRENT mainstream is largely crap.
I would counter that by saying though that there have been times when genres were pushed as part of the mainstream that weren't crap - as a rock fan, I'd have to go for the early to mid 70s, most of the 80s (though tailing off towards the end) and the mid 90s.
If the mainstream were to move from its current obsession with vacuous kiddy / frat boy pop on one hand and hip hop on the other and embrace wider genres, that'd be fine with me. What? I don't really mind. Start signing Jazz artists with greater depth than Jamie Cullam and I'll be happy. Pick up some nice blues and I'll be happy. Or some proper rock, not the current punk / rap influenced group of clones (disclaimer - Green Day have definite potential IMHO). I just can't see the appeal of hip hop (so don't really consider myself best placed to judge its artistic merit) and consider the current pop market thoroughly silly.
All they have to do here is to eventually get enough developer mindshare (and not just for games, but for the general home uses as a 'digital entertainment hub') to squeeze Sony out of the market as a serious player. Then, they can do what they want at the price they want because they own the mainstream market, and they've got the same level of control over the home entertainment market as they have the desktop OS marktet. It's not like they even have to necessarily deliver, there's been enough cases of innovative companies being stopped by the word getting out that MS might come into the market eventually.
Look what they've done elsewhere. They'll work really hard to stop someone else getting a big market, then slow down hugely when the competition is gone. IE being a prime example.
The difference here is that I can't think of another occasion when they've been against an opponent as big as Sony. Question is, will Sony consider the PlayStation division important enough to underwrite the losses of the fight? If not, MS have got the market.
Ratzenberger and Senna both died at Imola, not Spa.
And how? * Ratzenberger spun and damaged his rear wing, but didn't go in to get it checked. Next lap it failed at speed and he went straight on into a wall at speed.
* Senna had been running for several laps behind a pace car that was far, far too slow for the job (Opel Vectra), which causes a drop in tyre pressures and consequently ride height - critical in F1 as the cars run high profile, low-pressure tyres so a low pressure can cause a major change in ride height. The car was designed to run active suspension (which runs stably at low ride heights) but had to change to passive due to a late rule change, meaning the car wasn't fully stable. On the first lap at full speed he hit a bump in a high-speed corner and crashed, and a piece of the suspension came off and penetrated his helmet - a freak accident.
In any case, neither accident was by any means fully attributable to the circuit.
There's still enough ways of injecting SQL into stored procedures - assuming that your app using stored procedures automatically protects you from SQL injection isn't clever, and you should be filtering your input regardless.
Not with MSSQL they're not. ANY parameterised query gets its execution plan cached for exactly the same length of time, according to Books Online. SProc or elsewhere makes no difference.
While it's good to see more features I agree, I have specific problems with stored procedures.
Each time I've looked at a different database, they've been implemented in an incompatible way. This means that as soon as I have to switch DBMS for the application, all the queries have to be moved in a huge, laborious job with SProcs.
Alternatively, I've worked in a system that held its database queries separately as simple SELECTs, INSERTs etc - and, wherever the syntax or commands differed between DBMSs, it had branches or just read constants that output whatever the necessary syntax was for that DBMS (which was set as an install variable). Switching between DBMSs became SO quick and easy, and you had one less thing to worry about keeping in sync:-)
Also, if I'm honest, I've got a problem with SQL as a text manipulation language - there's enough times where I've been able to do some really cool SQL by building the guts of a query in one place and then injecting in restriction fragments as required by user selections, and while I've seen ways to do that with SProcs, they seem to be very fiddly and come out lots longer, and they mostly stop me holding the restriction code centrally in libraries, thus messing up code reuse.
S'pose the thing is, I quite like them for some things - but they seem to be used, religiously, for EVERYTHING by far too many people and I'm a long way from being convinced they help in a great many cases.
I've thought for a while that, now with the net so much media can be quickly, easily and relatively cheaply distributed on demand, copyright law should be amended.
Specifically, once (x) copies of an item had been ditrubuted (x being set by item category but at a relatively low level as we're just trying to block true limited collector releases), it had to remain available for purchase somehow at a reasonable price. If it was removed from commercial distribution for longer than (say) 3 months, copyright would be forefeit.
I'm aware that, with things like software, third party licensing complicates this - but if that's the copyright law, we'd simply end up with third party component licenses being modified to account for that contingency and deal with it accordingly.
I've downloaded _plenty_ of software that's never been commercially released - it's freeware, PD, GPL etc etc etc.
I've downloaded music that's never been commercially released. The authors decided to distribute it for free.
I've downloaded films that have never been commercially released. Flash animations by amateurs playing mostly, but I can't see how you can argue that Honda's 'cog' advert was ever commercially released as they never sold the thing.
Firefox is OK, but... Quite simply, it just feels a bit emasculated and kiddified. I just prefer the look and feel of the full suite and I'm sure they've moved around and lost some options in the fox.
If Firefox had a suite interface skin and a full (browser) set of suite config options available without having to root around in about:config, I'd give it a try. As it stands, it just doesn't feel right and I'd much rather they pushed ahead with suite 1.8.
DR DOS didn't work with Windows 3.1 betas. What could DR have done to fix it? Nothing. MS were sensing for it.
ATI graphics cards were lots faster on Quake 3 benchmarks than competitors. Competitors slipped behind? No, ATI were sensing for Q3's filename and disabling some visual effects to give a false benchmarking boost.
It doesn't always follow that it's the fault of the party with the perceived problem.
Now, in this case I reckon it's Moz's fault. There's definitely a known issue related to very slow wakeup from hibernation with the main suite and I've regularly had it freeze if I change focus while a PDF is opening, but it's perfectly possible that other applications are sensing the browser and deliberately behaving differently.
Having travelled a bit (not a huge amount, mind you) across Europe and Canada, I can't understand what the problem with British food is. Perfectly good, thank you very much!
Anyone complaining about British food has never spent any great length of time in Belgium or Holland though. A diet that consists of variants of chips, potatoes and mayonnaise is not exactly haute cuisine...
Speaking of which, anyone know why Outlook 2003's spellchecker seems not to handle them properly?
As soon as I send plain text e-mail quoted normally, it insists the spellchecker isn't bright enough to ignore lines that start with a '>' just like the rest of the world's been using for ages, so spellchecks the entire thread. This is not useful!
(Personal choice - Moz suite. Wish there was a menu option to select between Plain text and HTML when sending an individual mail, though. It's occasionally useful to send HTML!)
SQL injection has far more to do with the front-end application - it's more down to whether that's filtering the user's input before it gets to any SQL and ensuring that only safe data gets through.
I wouldn't rule out being able to write a DBMS that couldn't have SQL injection attacks while still being useful, but I'm not quite sure how.
Exactly, this is anti-ripping and very few rip to distribute anyway. A bunch may rip to stick them into computer libraries etc but hey, I've got no problem with that sort of thing. No different from putting your CD onto your iPod.
The big groups are the downloaders (most of whom seem to download randomly out of curiosity and, if they like something they see, buy it later anyway - so free advertising) who this can't stop because you still only need _1_ to get through and the rip is on the net, and the boot fair pirates, who this won't stop because they're still just going to be getting direct disc copies from Taiwan.
The media industry are stupid, short-sighted, money grabbing idiots who are accelerating their own death. They've helped fund some cool things over the years so I wish this weren't true but really, the current lot...
Aside from the argument being thin enough for me to think you're probably trolling, no, he's not particularly a self-made man. His father was a seriously rich lawyer and his mother was on several large corporate boards - can't find who, but I'm sure there was a family link to the IBM board that got MS-DOS considered for the PC. So, while he's improved on his start, I hardly think he qualifies being described as straight up self-made.
No, but if people learn to watch for 'Runs in Firefox' not 'Runs in Windows' then a Linux / OS X / BeOS / FreeBSD / etc box becomes perfectly satisfactory. _That's_ the problem for MS.
Slashdot Mirror
The Internet isn't something where you can hope to find any significant percentage of its information _without_ indices. By definition, google.cn's existence as an unfirewalled site increases the availability of information to China over the somewhat firewalled google.com, through its extensive (even if artificially restricted) index of information now being available to a wider pool of users.
In addition, it increases the total of information over competing search engines as results can potentially inform users that results have been censored, unlike other sources.
I'd say it's absurd to suggest that this further increases poltical censorship of information to China - existing search engines already did a partial job with similar censorship but (as I understand) less disclosure. It's not like Google have suddenly introduced search censorship to China - quite the reverse, they've introduced _disclosure_ of search censorship to China. This can only help increase day-to-day awareness and visibility of this problem within the Chinese population, and help undermine Chinese government efforts.
Let's look at the negative case.
Does Google not offering a localised service increase Chinese information availability? No.
Does Google have a reliable way of delivering any service to China without working with the Chinese government's terms? No.
Does Google not offering a filtered localised service stand any chance of persuading the Chinese government to permit such a service? No.
Does Google informing search users that results are filtered decrease information availability over other providers filtering silently? No.
Does Google providing this service drive people away from reliably available unfiltered results offered by competitors? Not as I understand.
Efficient as the Great Firewall of China is, I can't imagine them catching every last link, so by definition something will get through eventually. An increase of index providers increases the probability of something slipping through, and the entry to the market of another high-quality index provider increases the chance of the items actually being found.
I honestly cannot construct a single case in which this does anything but increase the available pool of information to the Chinese population. No, it's not ideal, but it is an improvement over the previous positions. Yes, this is a careful balance to strike because on one side you have the slow chipping away at the censorship and on the other you have a position that's getting close enough to good that people become unconcerned about the censorship - but, considering the type of censorship, I can't see that position happening.
This is a positive thing for the Chinese population and I'm yet to see a single example of how this makes it worse for them. Congratulations to Google for not taking an overly idealistic position and reaching the highest quality available solution.
OK, case study.
:-)), of which only 7 were new.
I'm 27 and I own a PS2 (though admittedly I was a late customer, only got it in late 2004).
I have 15 games for it (and a social life, and a girlfriend! really! she likes some of the games too
Of those 7:
* 1 was bundled with the machine (GT3)
* 3 were seriously cheap anyway (original Codemasters Indycar, £10, WRC3, £10 and Stock Car Speedway, £7)
* 1 was in a sale, on a voucher and largely for my girlfriend anyway (Sonic Mega Collection, £20)
* 2 were games I 'just had to have' (GT4 and NASCAR 2006, both £30) and in my defence, both were discounted and NASCAR titles pre-2006 had been like hens' teeth for UK PS2 gamers so I was determined to get this one in case they pulled it from the market quickly
So I've never paid full retail, there's only 2 games where I've paid over 50% of what'd be the usual full retail price for PS2 games over here and all bar 3 of the games I've bought (so not really counting the bundle, can't remember what they were selling it at separately) have either been second hand or price competitive with the second hand games anyway.
Sony: I know you don't get much money from me but you get some and it stops me becoming an XBox 360 household and helping boost Microsoft's market. I will only buy a PS3 as and when it has compelling games (or services) I can't play on my PS2 and when the game availability is similar to what it is on the PS2 a the moment in the UK.
No, I'm sorry, that argument doesn't hold water.
Google's core purpose (to a user) is helping users find information quickly, accurately and reliably.
Before google.cn appeared, some Chinese users could sometimes get access to google.com and other international portals, and it'd help if they had some English.
After google.cn appeared, all Chinese Internet users could always get access to some of the information, with a disclaimer (albeit not over prominent from the sounds of things) explaining how they weren't allowed to see some of the results.
While I won't deny that Google stands to profit from google.cn's new increased availability, so do Chinese users. The sum total of available information has increased, particularly through the disclaimer about missing results that was absent from other providers.
The ideal situation is still that the oppresive Chinese regime is ended by some means, for all sorts of reasons - for one entirely selfish thing a major reason the Chinese economy is currently so competitive in the world is that the currency doesn't float so sits way below its market value, making exports artificially cheap and imports artificially expensive - all to the benefit of the local economy. Anyway, Google's increased service does not increase the control that the Chinese authorities have over their users as there's already (inferior) search provision in place from competitors. It does increase service availability for Chinese users, even if that's to a still suboptimal position.
The absolutist position may look ideologically wonderful, but it can just lead to a poor result becoming the de facto standard rather than an available compromise that's better for all and doesn't actually cause practical harm relative to the absolutist position being achieved instead. That is all Google has done.
I do pretty regularly. I'm a motorsports fan, and unless you can get very high to shoot over the top or a pass to get on the other side of the fence, you're routinely shooting through chain link fence to get the cars. Just an enthusiastic amateur but I've got a few thousand such photos filed away from film and digital :-)
Not that this is a particular problem - just get relatively close to the fence and don't shoot on f/16 or higher and you won't even _see_ the fence in most enclosures.
The other obvious example is zoos and wildlife parks - almost by definition you have to shoot through fences but you can still get some great photos of the animals with creative framing.
(FWIW I now shoot a D70 too and it's great for this, gives me all the control I know how to use and a little more too. Lovely camera!)
Greg
Actually, that's not how I read the post or what I feel about music as a heavy CD buyer (OK, whose tastes are more mainstream than that - http://www.last.fm/user/eftpotrm/) BUT I would say much the same - because I feel that what is being pushed as the CURRENT mainstream is largely crap.
I would counter that by saying though that there have been times when genres were pushed as part of the mainstream that weren't crap - as a rock fan, I'd have to go for the early to mid 70s, most of the 80s (though tailing off towards the end) and the mid 90s.
If the mainstream were to move from its current obsession with vacuous kiddy / frat boy pop on one hand and hip hop on the other and embrace wider genres, that'd be fine with me. What? I don't really mind. Start signing Jazz artists with greater depth than Jamie Cullam and I'll be happy. Pick up some nice blues and I'll be happy. Or some proper rock, not the current punk / rap influenced group of clones (disclaimer - Green Day have definite potential IMHO). I just can't see the appeal of hip hop (so don't really consider myself best placed to judge its artistic merit) and consider the current pop market thoroughly silly.
User loyalty is irrelevant to MS.
All they have to do here is to eventually get enough developer mindshare (and not just for games, but for the general home uses as a 'digital entertainment hub') to squeeze Sony out of the market as a serious player. Then, they can do what they want at the price they want because they own the mainstream market, and they've got the same level of control over the home entertainment market as they have the desktop OS marktet. It's not like they even have to necessarily deliver, there's been enough cases of innovative companies being stopped by the word getting out that MS might come into the market eventually.
Look what they've done elsewhere. They'll work really hard to stop someone else getting a big market, then slow down hugely when the competition is gone. IE being a prime example.
The difference here is that I can't think of another occasion when they've been against an opponent as big as Sony. Question is, will Sony consider the PlayStation division important enough to underwrite the losses of the fight? If not, MS have got the market.
Ratzenberger and Senna both died at Imola, not Spa.
And how?
* Ratzenberger spun and damaged his rear wing, but didn't go in to get it checked. Next lap it failed at speed and he went straight on into a wall at speed.
* Senna had been running for several laps behind a pace car that was far, far too slow for the job (Opel Vectra), which causes a drop in tyre pressures and consequently ride height - critical in F1 as the cars run high profile, low-pressure tyres so a low pressure can cause a major change in ride height. The car was designed to run active suspension (which runs stably at low ride heights) but had to change to passive due to a late rule change, meaning the car wasn't fully stable. On the first lap at full speed he hit a bump in a high-speed corner and crashed, and a piece of the suspension came off and penetrated his helmet - a freak accident.
In any case, neither accident was by any means fully attributable to the circuit.
There's still enough ways of injecting SQL into stored procedures - assuming that your app using stored procedures automatically protects you from SQL injection isn't clever, and you should be filtering your input regardless.
Not with MSSQL they're not. ANY parameterised query gets its execution plan cached for exactly the same length of time, according to Books Online. SProc or elsewhere makes no difference.
While it's good to see more features I agree, I have specific problems with stored procedures.
:-)
Each time I've looked at a different database, they've been implemented in an incompatible way. This means that as soon as I have to switch DBMS for the application, all the queries have to be moved in a huge, laborious job with SProcs.
Alternatively, I've worked in a system that held its database queries separately as simple SELECTs, INSERTs etc - and, wherever the syntax or commands differed between DBMSs, it had branches or just read constants that output whatever the necessary syntax was for that DBMS (which was set as an install variable). Switching between DBMSs became SO quick and easy, and you had one less thing to worry about keeping in sync
Also, if I'm honest, I've got a problem with SQL as a text manipulation language - there's enough times where I've been able to do some really cool SQL by building the guts of a query in one place and then injecting in restriction fragments as required by user selections, and while I've seen ways to do that with SProcs, they seem to be very fiddly and come out lots longer, and they mostly stop me holding the restriction code centrally in libraries, thus messing up code reuse.
S'pose the thing is, I quite like them for some things - but they seem to be used, religiously, for EVERYTHING by far too many people and I'm a long way from being convinced they help in a great many cases.
I've thought for a while that, now with the net so much media can be quickly, easily and relatively cheaply distributed on demand, copyright law should be amended.
Specifically, once (x) copies of an item had been ditrubuted (x being set by item category but at a relatively low level as we're just trying to block true limited collector releases), it had to remain available for purchase somehow at a reasonable price. If it was removed from commercial distribution for longer than (say) 3 months, copyright would be forefeit.
I'm aware that, with things like software, third party licensing complicates this - but if that's the copyright law, we'd simply end up with third party component licenses being modified to account for that contingency and deal with it accordingly.
I've downloaded _plenty_ of software that's never been commercially released - it's freeware, PD, GPL etc etc etc.
I've downloaded music that's never been commercially released. The authors decided to distribute it for free.
I've downloaded films that have never been commercially released. Flash animations by amateurs playing mostly, but I can't see how you can argue that Honda's 'cog' advert was ever commercially released as they never sold the thing.
Is the legislation really _that_ badly worded?
Freezes, but if you switch to another app you can't switch back again - it's frozen solid.
Firefox is OK, but... Quite simply, it just feels a bit emasculated and kiddified. I just prefer the look and feel of the full suite and I'm sure they've moved around and lost some options in the fox.
If Firefox had a suite interface skin and a full (browser) set of suite config options available without having to root around in about:config, I'd give it a try. As it stands, it just doesn't feel right and I'd much rather they pushed ahead with suite 1.8.
DR DOS didn't work with Windows 3.1 betas. What could DR have done to fix it? Nothing. MS were sensing for it.
ATI graphics cards were lots faster on Quake 3 benchmarks than competitors. Competitors slipped behind? No, ATI were sensing for Q3's filename and disabling some visual effects to give a false benchmarking boost.
It doesn't always follow that it's the fault of the party with the perceived problem.
Now, in this case I reckon it's Moz's fault. There's definitely a known issue related to very slow wakeup from hibernation with the main suite and I've regularly had it freeze if I change focus while a PDF is opening, but it's perfectly possible that other applications are sensing the browser and deliberately behaving differently.
Doesn't mean many people actually do it, though - it's mostly just the company trying to get an increased market for their product.
Over in Benelux, they appear to celebrate the idea...
Having travelled a bit (not a huge amount, mind you) across Europe and Canada, I can't understand what the problem with British food is. Perfectly good, thank you very much!
Anyone complaining about British food has never spent any great length of time in Belgium or Holland though. A diet that consists of variants of chips, potatoes and mayonnaise is not exactly haute cuisine...
Speaking of which, anyone know why Outlook 2003's spellchecker seems not to handle them properly?
As soon as I send plain text e-mail quoted normally, it insists the spellchecker isn't bright enough to ignore lines that start with a '>' just like the rest of the world's been using for ages, so spellchecks the entire thread. This is not useful!
(Personal choice - Moz suite. Wish there was a menu option to select between Plain text and HTML when sending an individual mail, though. It's occasionally useful to send HTML!)
Never knew that, thanks! Still a case of the front-end app being carefully built, though, it's just using a built in protection tool in the language.
SQL injection has far more to do with the front-end application - it's more down to whether that's filtering the user's input before it gets to any SQL and ensuring that only safe data gets through.
I wouldn't rule out being able to write a DBMS that couldn't have SQL injection attacks while still being useful, but I'm not quite sure how.
Exactly, this is anti-ripping and very few rip to distribute anyway. A bunch may rip to stick them into computer libraries etc but hey, I've got no problem with that sort of thing. No different from putting your CD onto your iPod.
The big groups are the downloaders (most of whom seem to download randomly out of curiosity and, if they like something they see, buy it later anyway - so free advertising) who this can't stop because you still only need _1_ to get through and the rip is on the net, and the boot fair pirates, who this won't stop because they're still just going to be getting direct disc copies from Taiwan.
The media industry are stupid, short-sighted, money grabbing idiots who are accelerating their own death. They've helped fund some cool things over the years so I wish this weren't true but really, the current lot...
Aside from the argument being thin enough for me to think you're probably trolling, no, he's not particularly a self-made man. His father was a seriously rich lawyer and his mother was on several large corporate boards - can't find who, but I'm sure there was a family link to the IBM board that got MS-DOS considered for the PC. So, while he's improved on his start, I hardly think he qualifies being described as straight up self-made.
Sorry to sound unappreciative but a Delphi text editor? That took you, what, 15 minutes?
:-)
;-)
Pretty decisive
(Miss Delphi terribly, now write ASP with VBScript, miss Pascal very regularly and periodically drop into it by mistake
Not necessarily - Babylon 5's EarthGov had a Ministry of Peace under President Clarke.
No, but if people learn to watch for 'Runs in Firefox' not 'Runs in Windows' then a Linux / OS X / BeOS / FreeBSD / etc box becomes perfectly satisfactory. _That's_ the problem for MS.