Im pretty flat out with other projects at the moment, but Id love to get this project rolling, so here is a start for the foundation of a standardised worldwide patient record keeping system. Just flesh it out from here, add in some auditing, knock up some web interface forms, host it on a decent central site with lots of grunt and bandwidth, and we are all done.. problem solved :
Total system requirements : - There are patients that the system shall keep track of. - Each patient may have one or more illnesses over time. - Illnesses may be cured or left uncured. - Illnesses may result in the death of a patient.
create table patient (
id int not null primary key auto_increment,
medicare_number text,
debtor_id int, -- link into account receivable module
firstname text,
midnames text,
surname text,
date_of_birth datetime,
date_of_death datetime,
blood_type int,
genome dna_map_type );
create table patient_illness (
patient_id int not null,
date_reported datetime not null,
date_cured datetime,
condition_was_fatal enum('T','F') default F,
symptoms text,
diagnosis text,
treatment text,
results text );
Anything more than this is just fluff and bloat, so get on with it already.
If Microsoft was run by engineers.. surely it would make sense to just say something like :
"Hey, the whole internet browser concept has now matured, and is a commodity peice of kit. No need to work on internet explorer anymore, we can freely include Firefox with our Windows OS, and put our resources and money into developing something new instead."
What is it with this constant need to re-invent everything and make it a Microsoft Branded product, especially for commoditzed products where there is already freely available top-quality alternatives that are widely accepted ?
It doesnt even make good business sense.
Because of (and thanks to) this commoditization, you cant get away with putting out products that subvert standards, lock-in customers, and de-rail other inventions.
It doesnt work like that anymore !!!
Microsoft's future looks extremely bleak, if all they can think of doing is to spend the rest of eternity trying to undo things that are already commoditized, and put out a better free mousetrap than the next person.
That is just an idiotic and self destructive strategy.. unless.. well, this sort of strategy ONLY makes sense if they honestly believe that they can OWN the internet or something. Are they really that out of touch with reality ?
There are millions of billions of IT companies out there in the market, and how many of them are wasting their time developing a 'new internet browser' that isnt based on open source software ? ONLY ONE !!!
Is that because all those other companies are : a) Not as competant as Microsoft, or b) Not as pig-headedly, self destructively foolish as Microsoft ?
Whilst there are plenty of suggestions about the sex question, nobody wants to touch the illness issue.
What is needed is a whole new code of morality or religion even.
The dead and the seriously ill should of course be fed into the fusion reactors as fuel.. or recycled into food, or used as material for scientific experiments... but what we need is a moral code that makes the answers to these questions obvious.
NASA should employ some anthropoligsts, artists, theologians and great writers of fiction. They should apply part of their budget to writing the "Great Book of K'harg Ry'Gah", which tells of the origins of the universe, the ongoing struggles between the council of K'Harg and the dark forces beyond the hyperhorizon, and the prophesies regarding the coming awakening of the Great Nameless One.. whereupon all matter will be recycled back to its source.
At this point, group sexual activities, cannibalism, the study of the tissues of dead friends, and compulsory gay/bi dance clubbing at regular intervals will be not distractions, but religious sacraments sanctioned and policed by the moral social structures of the group.
The need to ram one up that hot blonde in the shiny silver suit who is bending over to tend the solient green machine will not be a thought wracked with guilt - it will be a religious duty, since you would both be following in the footsteps of the Great Prophet Al'Juramaba (Peace be unto his name), who on the 177th day of his fasting on the 3rd moon of Kol'Rurgh.. did enter into a physical union with his six legged sand camel.. and did so in the name of the 7 daughters of Grand Counsellor Chig'Widden.. where upon the worm hole threatening the sector and all its resources was finally closed.
From inside the mind of Microsoft, 'Cross Platform' could well mean something like this :
Being Cross-Platform means that Silverlight will be available on many different supported Operating Systems, and Silverlight represents THE most cross-platform product produced by Microsoft in its long and exciting history.
The wide range of operating systems targetted for production release of Silverlight include :
Vista Enterprise Vista Ultimate Vista Home Premium Vista Business Vista Home Basic (Limited support for some features)
The features and facilities of the free cross platform runtime binaries will understandably differ from platform to platform. For example, on Vista Home Basic, the silverlight runtime binary will only operate in full resolution no more than 3 times in any 24 hour period.. this being a feature that users have strongly demanded from Microsoft during pre-production surveys and beta tests.
Silverlight for Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate will be able to run for a whole 8 continuous hours in any 24 hours period before a noticable degradation in performance and visual resolution is apparent. Again, this is in response to demand from users for a safer and more secure experience when executing silverlight applications, and demonstrates Microsoft's committment to tailor its development to exactly suit the wishes of its valued users.
Silverlight makes use new synergistic paradigms in the field of computer science to provide the richest experience possible for the end user. Unfortunately, such highly advanced concepts as are seen in this new platform are not easily retrofitted to older legacy operating systems which are no longer vendor supported. Whilst Microsoft would dearly love to provide runtime binaries for systems such as Windows XP, our users have shown a clear preference for the more modern and powerful Vista range of operating systems, and so it is unlikely that a fully supported Silverlight runtime will be made available for Win XP. There may be some residual interest for Windows XP in the hobby niche market, however professional organisations overwhelmingly choose Vista.
Similarly, antique operating systems such as VMS, PrimeOS, MS-DOS and Linux either do not provide the necessary power to run Silverlight, or may in some instances have serious question marks regarding their legality, which unfortunately may impact our ability to support Silverlight in these environments. But again, the demand there is very low-impact, being part a dwindling hobby niche market of little mainstream interest.
A key principle in business (and armed conflict), is to reinforce success. You direct your resources to where you are strongest, and your opponent is weakest.
You exploit breakthroughs and follow them through. You dont waste resources by throwing them against minefields and barbed wire in some hope to wear your oppoent down over time, especially when you are out-gunned.
Sometimes this means seeing and adapting to opportunities that arrise, which were never part of the original plan.. and being flexible enough to change the plan to suit circumstances. Unexpected opportunities usually have short timeframes before they get patched up - you have to strike whilst the iron is hot, and sink the boot in hard when your opponent is down.
Intel is clearly the opponent of AMD in this contest. Intel's core2duo product consistently outperforms AMD's product on just every windows centric benchmark.
However, when it comes to 64bit linux, the AMD chips are arguably better performing than the core2duo. Never mind the price - AMD already wins there - Im saying that AMD64 X2's run 64bit linux better than Intel Core2Duos. People BUY these dual core AMD CPU's because they make great linux boxes.
Linux is AMD's unplanned, surprise strength. With a good general at the helm, they should have seen this for what it was - an unexpected weakness in the opponents line - and then followed through on it. Rather than slash the price to the bone, which is equivalent to a human wave attack to break a minefield, they should have positioned the AMD64 X2 at that point as 'The 64bit Linux CPU', and done something significant to get ATi video drivers in a state which is attractive to the OSS crowd.
But no, like General Haig at the Somme, its 'one more charge across the wire and we should break through', reinforcing failure and leaving their actual advantage unsupported.
Meanwhile, it appears that Intel understand whats going down, and doing something about it.. witness the Intel open source graphics chips.. winning back the hearts and minds where they know they are weakest.
People whinge and whine about multi-core chips, claiming 'there is no software that takes advantage of it yet', which is total crap - Linux thrives on multicore chips, even as a desktop. LAMP is inherently multi threaded. Again, its Intel leading the core count here not AMD. Everything indicates that Intel is addressing it's weaknesses when it comes to being the best bang for the buck Linux platform.
If AMD are too short sighted to recognise their real strength in the market.. and reinforce it.. then they deserve to die.
Geez, last time I went to a linux party, they were lots of dudes in their 40's with excellent anecdotes from their acid days.. and the (free) psilocibin punch being handed around kept the psy-trance music pumping till went into sunday night (party started friday arvo).
The mixing deck and pair of mac laptops was also a free for all.
Not a bad party at all. I think 'Dorks' know how to have a good time.
In the same way that you can anonymize a web request by going through some proxy server, is there a way to place phone calls anonymously ?
ie : to call 8203-MYSCHOOL, I dial 1800-ANON (which connects to some unaudited telephone exchange in Chechnia), connect to the operator, and type in 8203-MYSCHOOL to connect to the school anonymously before placing my bomb threat.
is there a market for such a thing do you think ? Its technically feasible anyway, and no real way to prevent it from happening.
"87% of people are aware of Vista, and 12% of people plan to upgrade to Vista."
Now, since 87% + 12% = 99% (approx 100%), my brain parsed that statement above to deduce that the only people planning to upgrade to Vista this year are those who are not fully aware of Vista. Which is quite a fair conclusion to draw.
But thats not the case, the 12% figure quoted is merely coincidental that it fills in the gap left by the 87% aware figure. The article is stating that 12% OF the set of 87% people who are aware of Vista, plan on upgrading.
The article could have stated this much more elegantly as : "10% of people interviewed plan on Upgrading to Vista this year, whilst 13% just shrugged and said 'Vista Who ?' "
On the other hand, results of my own quick poll of people in the lunchroom actually confirms my earlier mis-reading of the statement - people who have no clue about computers, and havent even seen Vista are the only ones expressing an interest in buying it later this year. The desire to use Vista seems to be based on TV ads featuring deers running wild through snow covered streets, and frustrated secretaries faking orgasms whenever a spreadsheet appears in their outlook folders. The other techs and developers just laughed at the thought of running Vista, and make 'Over my dead body' sort of remarks.
What is even more remarkable is that we dont even have snow covered streets or deers running wild in Australia. Just lots of blow flies, skin cancer, drought, and dead roos all over the road - but no snow and deers.
Id much rather see some hard peer-reviewed figures drawing coorelations between a person's level of gormlessness vs their desire to use Vista.
Re:Executing 3rd party code by default is insecure
on
Web 2.0 Under Siege
·
· Score: 1
lol, wish I had mods points to mod the whole cheese discussion up.
Im sure I have tried once to bite into cheese so hard that it would crack your teeth.. and Im sure there exists some cheeses which are not only non-porous, but actively REPEL water.. that would make for a good submarine methinks.
What a crock. This has got zero to do with ajax. For example, even with 'insecure' PHP - the first line of any backend ajax code should read something like..
require_once("include/session.inc");
Where session.inc reads the user cookie (or whatever the authentication mechanism your app uses), and sets up a validated user.
There is NO DIFFERENCE in the way users are authenticated between server side code that renders a regular page, and server side code that is called by ajax. One generally returns HTML, the other generally returns javascript or XML, but as far as authentication goes, they should use the same mechanism.
If your ajax code is capable of returning data that is not authorised, then the problem exists entirely between keyboard and chair. If that is the case with your app right now, then its something you should be able to fix entirely during your lunch break.
I have said it before on slashdot (re the Delphi/PHP thing) - ajax is not rocket science, its just a few extra lines of javascript to your program to call another program and get the results asynchronously. There is NO NEED to buy into some bloated third party 'pointy clicky enterprisey ajax' framework that cannot possibly know anything about your existing authentication methods.
Please mod me down as an old fashioned technology-phobic luddite.....
But I read TFA, and viewed the demo vid, and I cringed.
Maybe Im getting old, but Im perfectly content writing my PHP code in vim, and trusting that my template/rendering classes that I rely on will automatically look after the 'drawing of the screens' part of the application, in an efficient manner.
Im happy just writing code that twiddles attributes, performs calculations, and calls SQL. The only 'visualisation' that happens during coding time happens in my head. If you need to pull in the description of an SQL table at coding time - just:!! out to a shellscript that generates a template given a table name. Its not rocket science.
The mental state of mind that you need to be immersed in whilst coding is very different to the state you need to be in when testing, or viewing the result from an aesthetic POV. Coding belongs in a text editor, and anything else is a distraction.
Even Ajax - Im perfectly content coding that longhand. Its only a few pitiful javascript functions after all, and I dont see the need to wrap them in a framework. Lets not go around pretending that because we are using AJAX, that we are super-coders on the cutting edge of technology.. its just a few javascript functions and a bit of PHP on the receiving end. You should be able to code that in your lunch break.
OK, so my vim/PHP environment might put me back in the dark prehistoric stone ages, but at least I can sleep well at night knowing that none of my webby code is dependent on the fate of a 3rd party commercial product. After all - thats the main reason I use FOSS in the first place. The whole world wide economy can collapse in a radioactive heap tomorrow, and it wont affect my development at all.
And surely to goodness, isnt vanilla PHP with the standard libraries already way high level enough ? What sort of sheer sloth and laziness leads one to think that they need to front-end PHP with something even higher level ? Are we evolving into a race of Jabba-the-hut's, or what ?
Anyone that commits the blasphemy of 'developing an application' using mostly mouse-clicks honestly needs to be placed into a jar of isopropyl alcohol, and donated to medical science - it is just plain wrong, and always has been.
I tend to take the machine's side of the argument anyway - the less code the machine has to munch through in order to come up with any given result, the happier I am. The end result is just pixels on a screen when you think about it, and a lot of frameworks just add more and more layers of code munching for the machine to produce those same pixels and same behaviour. Silly - just keep it light, simple, scalable and avoid dependencies on proprietary products.
Hey - Im very interested in getting a PS3, not for the games, but for writing code that works on a Cell processor, incl SPU's. That doesnt make me weird - its just that I have some signal processing applications that are currently running on clusters of 64bit unix boxes, and I reckon that Cell might be a good architecture to port these applications too.
Question then : How much to add a Cell processor (or equivalent 6-8 core architecture) to an Xbox360, and also to provide a GNU compatible toolchain to build code with ?
Not suggesting for one moment that the Xbox360 is MS-Rubbish, but for what I want a 'console' for, the XBox360 has nothing much to offer compared to a PS3.
I know I know I know that they are supposed to be 'games consoles', and I sincerely hope that a lot of people buy a lot of expensive games and blu-ray movies for them, because that keeps the base price of the unit subsidised below cost, which is all I want anyway - cheap, readily available, parallel architecture linux machine. Awesome.
We have several login accounts with several oil companies to place orders for fuel cards and collect transactions via a number of (very convoluted) websites, on behalf of fleets in the thousands.
Like any sensible organisation, we sit around having coffee and cakes and BBQ's all day, whilst cron jobs kick off CURL scripts to do all the hard work and earn all the money.
By Oracle's definition, we may be treading some fine line of DMCA violation. Fuck, I hope not - I love my friday arvo BBQ and beer parties at work.
Thank you thank you thank you - that was a class act.
I got it.
You brilliantly illuminated the sort of thinking and false assumptions that are holding back progress, and kept a straight face all the way through. Its well done. Writing a good troll is a true art these days, and a well written one makes people think.. and is useful in outlining the absurdity of certain viewpoints.
In other news, cigarette companies are profiling non-smokers to look for areas to expand their market share. They defined 5 distinctly different profiles of non-smokers who are targets for conversion. These coorespond exactly to the Microsoft categories.
1) The Naughty Child (aka. Linux Experimenter)
This prospect comes from a good god-fearing household where Mum, Dad, and his brothers and sisters all smoke regularly. As does uncle Jed who lives in the spare room. The naughty child would like to be more like some of the cool jock types at school, instead of the fat wheezing slob that he is, and has dared to do sports and things when mum isnt looking. He has futile dreams of owning (and riding) a bike for his birthday.
Sales Pitch: Fat Chance kiddo ! Know thy place and respect thy parents !! Stop thinking and do as thou art told !! Inform the parents and resort to corporal punishment if required.
---oOo---
2) The Lemming (aka. Market Follower)
This prospect is always scared of offending people. Incapable of thinking for himself, the only reason he doesnt smoke at the moment is because its become trendy to be a non-smoker, and he wants to blend in with the crowd. Well hey buddy - its trendy to be gay as well !
Sales Pitch: Blackmail works best on this one. These weirdos always have some skeletons in the closet, so dig around and find some dirt (or make some up), and threaten to expose him for the paedofile that he surely is... if he doesnt start smoking. Remember - being Gay is trendy too !!
This person doesnt smoke, eats a whole lettuce every day for lunch, and goes to gym 3 times a week. What a wanker !! What this person doesnt realise is that its not the fitness thing that they are really into - its just a displacement activity to fill in their day, give them some sort of meaning to their life, and stop them from going nuts. Smoking offers a better and cheaper way out of this rut.. and something to fidget with during the day too.
Sales Pitch: Point out the psychology of their 'health regime', and show them how cigarettes can fill the gap in the life just as well as a gym membership - only cheaper !! Deflect and embrace.
---oOo---
4) The Know it all (aka. Linux Aficionado)
This one is a pain in the butt. They are fit and healthy, and love to show off about it in front of other people. A lot of them are ex-smokers who have totally embraced this whole healthy-living crud as some sort of revenge trip against fast food and cigarettes that may have dominated their previous life. Pointless getting into an argument with this type... they are incapable of rational debate.. just 'Being healthy is better, so there!!' is the best they can come up with.
Sales Pitch: Avoid direct comparisons between cigarettes and other methods of lifestyle enhancement - just stick with facts, eg FACT: Cigarettes calm you down, which is good for your stress levels FACT: Smoking kills your appetite, so you eat less, loose weight, look healthier FACT: Smoking gives you bad breath and impotence, so your chances of contracting an STD are much less, etc.
---oOo---
5) On the way to crack addiction. (aka. UNIX Transitioner)
This prospect is already a regular user of speed and party pills, and is rapidly on their way to becoming a full time crack addict. Perception that plain old cigarettes just arent wicked enough for them, so they dont even give smoking a second thought.
Sales Pitch: Restate the benefits - legal, easily available, and quite affordable in comparison. Sure, moving to crack would be a whole new lifestyle enhancement, but consider cigarettes as an excellent way to re-invent yourself as well. Point out movies where cool characters can be seen smoking. Offer them a free packet of smokes (secretly laced with cocaine and ground neurofen), and you just might have yourself a new friend !!
XBox 360 is going for $50, and comes with a free voucher to upgrade your home PC to Vista.
Nintendo Wii comes to market with a range of Hentai games and new uses for the Wiimote.
Kids beg Dad for one of each.
Dad tells them they are getting a cluster of PS3's instead, because Dad has finally mastered SPU coding using gcc, and reckons he has found a way to crack Fermat's last theorum, entirely bypassing the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, and involving a hitherto unheard of non-euclidean approach !! (if only he had acess to the CPU grunt).
Kids know better than to argue with Dad when he gets that gleam in his eyes.
And NetBEUI/LAN Manager was supposed to be the end of TCP/IP.
And lets not forget how Microsoft decided that 'The Internet' was a good plan, but that TCP/IP was not the right way to do it. They tried very hard to kill the internet, and they pushed 'The Microsoft Network' as a twisted alternative. Remember trumpet winsock and all the bullshit you would have to go through just to get a windows box talking TCP/IP ??
There developed a big fight that was dragged on over at least a year or two. Every print publication absolutely poured rubbish all over TCP/IP and 'The Internet', and this was all funded by Microsoft advertisting dollars, and those of their allies in this battle. (At the time, IBM was a very close ally of MS, and IBM was all out to kill Unix before it grew any bigger. This was in the days before MS pulled the big double cross on IBM over OS/2, effectively creating the enormous IBM Linux monster we see today)
Anyway, the 'Battle for the Internet' was won in the end by the 'geeks' who ran the backend machines. The hand that rocks the cradle and all that.
And as soon as it was obvious to even Microsoft that they were not going to win that one, they cut their loses, buried 'The Microsoft Network' deeply away with their other failures, and then jumped on the TCP/IP bandwagon. Shortly after that, they purchase spyglass, rebrand it as IE, and then turn up the marketting machine. (They pulled the launch of Windows95, and hit back with 'Windows95 with Internet Explorer' as a rushed facelift)
As a result, 99% of the public today, and no small number of 'techs' who dont know their history very well - believe that Windows IS the internet, or at least that Microsoft has been a strong supporter of this whole internet thing, and the standards that surround it.
The truth of the matter is that for a period of several years, Microsoft WAS at the head of a desperate battle to KILL the internet before it really took off. They spent a fortune, and used every dirty trick in their play book to kill it. They failed...
They obviously still dont like TCP/IP because of all this - since there are so many leftovers of their alternate tools making up the networking framework in every windows box out there today, including Vista...
It is very sad that they dont teach TECHO HISTORY in schools. We came VERY CLOSE to never having an internet at all, thanks to the determined efforts of MS. Losing that fight pretty much marked the end of the road for MS - they have been on a downward slide ever since.
I think that out of a sense of spite, MS goes around just trying its damndest to mess with standards, so it can at least win ONE little battle, since it lost the real big one years ago. Everything they do it seems - OOXML, WMV,.doc files, kerberos, DHTML, MS-Java, IE css 'standards', etc, etc, etc - seems to be motivated by pure spite.
Well, if this system works at all, why even bother with the pilot in the first place ?
Shove all the electronics in the belly of the plane, and replace the cockpit with a lectern and projector - and have some corporate marketting people at the front of the aircraft present the passengers with endless powerpoint slides.
You could have presentations about any of the following topics to a captive audience :
- That downloading mp3's and movies from the internet is supporting communism. - That linux actually costs more than Windows. - That Dell really does listen to its customers. - That SCO's legal claims are based on facts. - That everyone will be left in the stone age if they dont upgrade to Vista.
etc etc
The corporates would of course pump millions into providing these essential services and effectively subsidising the flights.
There are many comparisons here by Microsoft apologists to.. firefox defaulting to a google search which yeilds some PPV ads, and then yelling 'See - Those OSS guys are just as bad, Whats the Difference ?'
Well - the difference is : This is a Microsoft OS that bundles in a Microsoft client browser redirecting a user's request to a Microsoft hosted site which includes PPV ads which end up paying money back to Microsoft.
Cant you see the difference here ?
This is one of the dangers of allowing ONE company to control the whole stack.
If someone clicks through a Google advert, then sure, Google makes money just like MS makes money from its adverts.
The question is not 'Does someone recieve a benefit when a PPV ad is clicked on'.. the question is, as a user.. are the tools that I am using doing _something_ on the internet that ends up benefitting the provider of those tools.
And it is not like Google is in control of either the browser or OS that generates those incoming clicks, and so Google cannot be accused of manipulating the session.
Its the (very subtle) difference between driving a car and accidentally running someone over VS driving a car and accidentally running over your insured spouse. Either way you look at it, its just an accident... right ?.. and lets just ignore the fact that the driver in the second case also happens to have a record of accidentally benefitting from the deaths of so many other ex-spouses, but lets not allow facts to cloud our judgements here please.
If on the other hand, you totally believe everything MS says, and totally trust everything they do, then good luck to you...
Slashdot Mirror
Great idea - Would love to help.
.. problem solved :
Im pretty flat out with other projects at the moment, but Id love to get this project rolling, so here is a start for the foundation of a standardised worldwide patient record keeping system. Just flesh it out from here, add in some auditing, knock up some web interface forms, host it on a decent central site with lots of grunt and bandwidth, and we are all done
Total system requirements :
- There are patients that the system shall keep track of.
- Each patient may have one or more illnesses over time.
- Illnesses may be cured or left uncured.
- Illnesses may result in the death of a patient.
create table patient (
id int not null primary key auto_increment,
medicare_number text,
debtor_id int, -- link into account receivable module
firstname text,
midnames text,
surname text,
date_of_birth datetime,
date_of_death datetime,
blood_type int,
genome dna_map_type
);
create table patient_illness (
patient_id int not null,
date_reported datetime not null,
date_cured datetime,
condition_was_fatal enum('T','F') default F,
symptoms text,
diagnosis text,
treatment text,
results text
);
Anything more than this is just fluff and bloat, so get on with it already.
If Microsoft was run by engineers .. surely it would make sense to just say something like :
.. unless .. well, this sort of strategy ONLY makes sense if they honestly believe that they can OWN the internet or something. Are they really that out of touch with reality ?
"Hey, the whole internet browser concept has now matured, and is a commodity peice of kit. No need to work on internet explorer anymore, we can freely include Firefox with our Windows OS, and put our resources and money into developing something new instead."
What is it with this constant need to re-invent everything and make it a Microsoft Branded product, especially for commoditzed products where there is already freely available top-quality alternatives that are widely accepted ?
It doesnt even make good business sense.
Because of (and thanks to) this commoditization, you cant get away with putting out products that subvert standards, lock-in customers, and de-rail other inventions.
It doesnt work like that anymore !!!
Microsoft's future looks extremely bleak, if all they can think of doing is to spend the rest of eternity trying to undo things that are already commoditized, and put out a better free mousetrap than the next person.
That is just an idiotic and self destructive strategy
There are millions of billions of IT companies out there in the market, and how many of them are wasting their time developing a 'new internet browser' that isnt based on open source software ? ONLY ONE !!!
Is that because all those other companies are :
a) Not as competant as Microsoft, or
b) Not as pig-headedly, self destructively foolish as Microsoft ?
Whilst there are plenty of suggestions about the sex question, nobody wants to touch the illness issue.
.. or recycled into food, or used as material for scientific experiments. .. but what we need is a moral code that makes the answers to these questions obvious.
.. whereupon all matter will be recycled back to its source.
.. did enter into a physical union with his six legged sand camel .. and did so in the name of the 7 daughters of Grand Counsellor Chig'Widden .. where upon the worm hole threatening the sector and all its resources was finally closed.
What is needed is a whole new code of morality or religion even.
The dead and the seriously ill should of course be fed into the fusion reactors as fuel
NASA should employ some anthropoligsts, artists, theologians and great writers of fiction. They should apply part of their budget to writing the "Great Book of K'harg Ry'Gah", which tells of the
origins of the universe, the ongoing struggles between the council of K'Harg and the dark forces beyond the hyperhorizon, and the prophesies regarding the coming awakening of the Great Nameless One
At this point, group sexual activities, cannibalism, the study of the tissues of dead friends, and compulsory gay/bi dance clubbing at regular intervals will be not distractions, but religious sacraments sanctioned and policed by the moral social structures of the group.
The need to ram one up that hot blonde in the shiny silver suit who is bending over to tend the solient green machine will not be a thought wracked with guilt - it will be a religious duty, since you would both be following in the footsteps of the Great Prophet Al'Juramaba (Peace be unto his name), who on the 177th day of his fasting on the 3rd moon of Kol'Rurgh
From inside the mind of Microsoft, 'Cross Platform' could well mean something like this :
.. this being a feature that users have strongly demanded from Microsoft during pre-production surveys and beta tests.
Being Cross-Platform means that Silverlight will be available on many different supported Operating Systems, and Silverlight represents THE most cross-platform product produced by Microsoft in its long and exciting history.
The wide range of operating systems targetted for production release of Silverlight include :
Vista Enterprise
Vista Ultimate
Vista Home Premium
Vista Business
Vista Home Basic (Limited support for some features)
The features and facilities of the free cross platform runtime binaries will understandably differ from platform to platform. For example, on Vista Home Basic, the silverlight runtime binary will only operate in full resolution no more than 3 times in any 24 hour period
Silverlight for Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate will be able to run for a whole 8 continuous hours in any 24 hours period before a noticable degradation in performance and visual resolution is apparent. Again, this is in response to demand from users for a safer and more secure experience when executing silverlight applications, and demonstrates Microsoft's committment to tailor its development to exactly suit the wishes of its valued users.
Silverlight makes use new synergistic paradigms in the field of computer science to provide the richest experience possible for the end user. Unfortunately, such highly advanced concepts as are seen in this new platform are not easily retrofitted to older legacy operating systems which are no longer vendor supported. Whilst Microsoft would dearly love to provide runtime binaries for systems such as Windows XP, our users have shown a clear preference for the more modern and powerful Vista range of operating systems, and so it is unlikely that a fully supported Silverlight runtime will be made available for Win XP. There may be some residual interest for Windows XP in the hobby niche market, however professional organisations overwhelmingly choose Vista.
Similarly, antique operating systems such as VMS, PrimeOS, MS-DOS and Linux either do not provide the necessary power to run Silverlight, or may in some instances have serious question marks regarding their legality, which unfortunately may impact our ability to support Silverlight in these environments. But again, the demand there is very low-impact, being part a dwindling hobby niche market of little mainstream interest.
A key principle in business (and armed conflict), is to reinforce success. You direct your resources to where you are strongest, and your opponent is weakest.
.. and being flexible enough to change the plan to suit circumstances. Unexpected opportunities usually have short timeframes before they get patched up - you have to strike whilst the iron is hot, and sink the boot in hard when your opponent is down.
.. witness the Intel open source graphics chips .. winning back the hearts and minds where they know they are weakest.
.. and reinforce it .. then they deserve to die.
You exploit breakthroughs and follow them through. You dont waste resources by throwing them against minefields and barbed wire in some hope to wear your oppoent down over time, especially when you are out-gunned.
Sometimes this means seeing and adapting to opportunities that arrise, which were never part of the original plan
Intel is clearly the opponent of AMD in this contest. Intel's core2duo product consistently outperforms AMD's product on just every windows centric benchmark.
However, when it comes to 64bit linux, the AMD chips are arguably better performing than the core2duo. Never mind the price - AMD already wins there - Im saying that AMD64 X2's run 64bit linux better than Intel Core2Duos. People BUY these dual core AMD CPU's because they make great linux boxes.
Linux is AMD's unplanned, surprise strength. With a good general at the helm, they should have seen this for what it was - an unexpected weakness in the opponents line - and then followed through on it. Rather than slash the price to the bone, which is equivalent to a human wave attack to break a minefield, they should have positioned the AMD64 X2 at that point as 'The 64bit Linux CPU', and done something significant to get ATi video drivers in a state which is attractive to the OSS crowd.
But no, like General Haig at the Somme, its 'one more charge across the wire and we should break through', reinforcing failure and leaving their actual advantage unsupported.
Meanwhile, it appears that Intel understand whats going down, and doing something about it
People whinge and whine about multi-core chips, claiming 'there is no software that takes advantage of it yet', which is total crap - Linux thrives on multicore chips, even as a desktop. LAMP is inherently multi threaded. Again, its Intel leading the core count here not AMD. Everything indicates that Intel is addressing it's weaknesses when it comes to being the best bang for the buck Linux platform.
If AMD are too short sighted to recognise their real strength in the market
Geez, last time I went to a linux party, they were lots of dudes in their 40's with excellent anecdotes from their acid days .. and the (free) psilocibin punch being handed around kept the psy-trance music pumping till went into sunday night (party started friday arvo).
The mixing deck and pair of mac laptops was also a free for all.
Not a bad party at all. I think 'Dorks' know how to have a good time.
In the same way that you can anonymize a web request by going through some proxy server, is there a way to place phone calls anonymously ?
ie : to call 8203-MYSCHOOL, I dial 1800-ANON (which connects to some unaudited telephone exchange in Chechnia), connect to the operator, and type in 8203-MYSCHOOL to connect to the school anonymously before placing my bomb threat.
is there a market for such a thing do you think ? Its technically feasible anyway, and no real way to prevent it from happening.
Nah - every other man and his dog has already been there and done that, so where is the big thrill for Bill ?
My guess is that he is lining up for the first solo manned landing on the Sun. Ill spare $100 to fund that.
On first glance, I read the story as :
"87% of people are aware of Vista, and 12% of people plan to upgrade to Vista."
Now, since 87% + 12% = 99% (approx 100%), my brain parsed that statement above to deduce that the only people planning to upgrade to Vista this year are those who are not fully aware of Vista. Which is quite a fair conclusion to draw.
But thats not the case, the 12% figure quoted is merely coincidental that it fills in the gap left by the 87% aware figure. The article is stating that 12% OF the set of 87% people who are aware of Vista, plan on upgrading.
The article could have stated this much more elegantly as :
"10% of people interviewed plan on Upgrading to Vista this year, whilst 13% just shrugged and said 'Vista Who ?' "
On the other hand, results of my own quick poll of people in the lunchroom actually confirms my earlier mis-reading of the statement - people who have no clue about computers, and havent even seen Vista are the only ones expressing an interest in buying it later this year. The desire to use Vista seems to be based on TV ads featuring deers running wild through snow covered streets, and frustrated secretaries faking orgasms whenever a spreadsheet appears in their outlook folders. The other techs and developers just laughed at the thought of running Vista, and make 'Over my dead body' sort of remarks.
What is even more remarkable is that we dont even have snow covered streets or deers running wild in Australia. Just lots of blow flies, skin cancer, drought, and dead roos all over the road - but no snow and deers.
Id much rather see some hard peer-reviewed figures drawing coorelations between a person's level of gormlessness vs their desire to use Vista.
excellent reply - that made heaps of sense.
Thx
lol, wish I had mods points to mod the whole cheese discussion up.
.. and Im sure there exists some cheeses which are not only non-porous, but actively REPEL water .. that would make for a good submarine methinks.
Im sure I have tried once to bite into cheese so hard that it would crack your teeth
What a crock. This has got zero to do with ajax. For example, even with 'insecure' PHP - the first line of any backend ajax code should read something like ..
require_once("include/session.inc");
Where session.inc reads the user cookie (or whatever the authentication mechanism your app uses), and sets up a validated user.
There is NO DIFFERENCE in the way users are authenticated between server side code that renders a regular page, and server side code that is called by ajax. One generally returns HTML, the other generally returns javascript or XML, but as far as authentication goes, they should use the same mechanism.
If your ajax code is capable of returning data that is not authorised, then the problem exists entirely between keyboard and chair. If that is the case with your app right now, then its something you should be able to fix entirely during your lunch break.
I have said it before on slashdot (re the Delphi/PHP thing) - ajax is not rocket science, its just a few extra lines of javascript to your program to call another program and get the results asynchronously. There is NO NEED to buy into some bloated third party 'pointy clicky enterprisey ajax' framework that cannot possibly know anything about your existing authentication methods.
Please mod me down as an old fashioned technology-phobic luddite .....
:!! out to a shellscript that generates a template given a table name. Its not rocket science.
.. its just a few javascript functions and a bit of PHP on the receiving end. You should be able to code that in your lunch break.
But I read TFA, and viewed the demo vid, and I cringed.
Maybe Im getting old, but Im perfectly content writing my PHP code in vim, and trusting that my template/rendering classes that I rely on will automatically look after the 'drawing of the screens' part of the application, in an efficient manner.
Im happy just writing code that twiddles attributes, performs calculations, and calls SQL. The only 'visualisation' that happens during coding time happens in my head. If you need to pull in the description of an SQL table at coding time - just
The mental state of mind that you need to be immersed in whilst coding is very different to the state you need to be in when testing, or viewing the result from an aesthetic POV. Coding belongs in a text editor, and anything else is a distraction.
Even Ajax - Im perfectly content coding that longhand. Its only a few pitiful javascript functions after all, and I dont see the need to wrap them in a framework. Lets not go around pretending that because we are using AJAX, that we are super-coders on the cutting edge of technology
OK, so my vim/PHP environment might put me back in the dark prehistoric stone ages, but at least I can sleep well at night knowing that none of my webby code is dependent on the fate of a 3rd party commercial product. After all - thats the main reason I use FOSS in the first place. The whole world wide economy can collapse in a radioactive heap tomorrow, and it wont affect my development at all.
And surely to goodness, isnt vanilla PHP with the standard libraries already way high level enough ? What sort of sheer sloth and laziness leads one to think that they need to front-end PHP with something even higher level ? Are we evolving into a race of Jabba-the-hut's, or what ?
Anyone that commits the blasphemy of 'developing an application' using mostly mouse-clicks honestly needs to be placed into a jar of isopropyl alcohol, and donated to medical science - it is just plain wrong, and always has been.
I tend to take the machine's side of the argument anyway - the less code the machine has to munch through in order to come up with any given result, the happier I am. The end result is just pixels on a screen when you think about it, and a lot of frameworks just add more and more layers of code munching for the machine to produce those same pixels and same behaviour. Silly - just keep it light, simple, scalable and avoid dependencies on proprietary products.
Whats so hard about that ?
Hey - Im very interested in getting a PS3, not for the games, but for writing code that works on a Cell processor, incl SPU's. That doesnt make me weird - its just that I have some signal processing applications that are currently running on clusters of 64bit unix boxes, and I reckon that Cell might be a good architecture to port these applications too.
Question then : How much to add a Cell processor (or equivalent 6-8 core architecture) to an Xbox360, and also to provide a GNU compatible toolchain to build code with ?
Not suggesting for one moment that the Xbox360 is MS-Rubbish, but for what I want a 'console' for, the XBox360 has nothing much to offer compared to a PS3.
I know I know I know that they are supposed to be 'games consoles', and I sincerely hope that a lot of people buy a lot of expensive games and blu-ray movies for them, because that keeps the base price of the unit subsidised below cost, which is all I want anyway - cheap, readily available, parallel architecture linux machine. Awesome.
Its a fine line there -
We have several login accounts with several oil companies to place orders for fuel cards and collect transactions via a number of (very convoluted) websites, on behalf of fleets in the thousands.
Like any sensible organisation, we sit around having coffee and cakes and BBQ's all day, whilst cron jobs kick off CURL scripts to do all the hard work and earn all the money.
By Oracle's definition, we may be treading some fine line of DMCA violation. Fuck, I hope not - I love my friday arvo BBQ and beer parties at work.
Geez - at 411MB, it better be a complete operating system, plus development toolchain.
Many complete distros fit in under 411MB.
Nuts --
Just give us a little animated GIF of the chickens, we dont believe the rest of your claims anyway.
Thank you thank you thank you - that was a class act.
.. and is useful in outlining the absurdity of certain viewpoints.
I got it.
You brilliantly illuminated the sort of thinking and false assumptions that are holding back progress, and kept a straight face all the way through. Its well done. Writing a good troll is a true art these days, and a well written one makes people think
Right up there with JerryLeeCooper's best.
Thx
'DRN' Laden, Brother of Bin.
... but its been a long day.
Silly I know
In other news, cigarette companies are profiling non-smokers to look for areas to expand their market share. They defined 5 distinctly different profiles of non-smokers who are targets for conversion. These coorespond exactly to the Microsoft categories.
... if he doesnt start smoking. Remember - being Gay is trendy too !!
.. and something to fidget with during the day too.
... they are incapable of rational debate .. just 'Being healthy is better, so there!!' is the best they can come up with.
1) The Naughty Child (aka. Linux Experimenter)
This prospect comes from a good god-fearing household where Mum, Dad, and his brothers and sisters all smoke regularly. As does uncle Jed who lives in the spare room. The naughty child would like to be more like some of the cool jock types at school, instead of the fat wheezing slob that he is, and has dared to do sports and things when mum isnt looking. He has futile dreams of owning (and riding) a bike for his birthday.
Sales Pitch: Fat Chance kiddo ! Know thy place and respect thy parents !! Stop thinking and do as thou art told !! Inform the parents and resort to corporal punishment if required.
---oOo---
2) The Lemming (aka. Market Follower)
This prospect is always scared of offending people. Incapable of thinking for himself, the only reason he doesnt smoke at the moment is because its become trendy to be a non-smoker, and he wants to blend in with the crowd. Well hey buddy - its trendy to be gay as well !
Sales Pitch: Blackmail works best on this one. These weirdos always have some skeletons in the closet, so dig around and find some dirt (or make some up), and threaten to expose him for the paedofile that he surely is
---oOo---
3) Addictive Personality (aka. Application Driven)
This person doesnt smoke, eats a whole lettuce every day for lunch, and goes to gym 3 times a week. What a wanker !! What this person doesnt realise is that its not the fitness thing that they are really into - its just a displacement activity to fill in their day, give them some sort of meaning to their life, and stop them from going nuts. Smoking offers a better and cheaper way out of this rut
Sales Pitch: Point out the psychology of their 'health regime', and show them how cigarettes can fill the gap in the life just as well as a gym membership - only cheaper !! Deflect and embrace.
---oOo---
4) The Know it all (aka. Linux Aficionado)
This one is a pain in the butt. They are fit and healthy, and love to show off about it in front of other people. A lot of them are ex-smokers who have totally embraced this whole healthy-living crud as some sort of revenge trip against fast food and cigarettes that may have dominated their previous life. Pointless getting into an argument with this type
Sales Pitch: Avoid direct comparisons between cigarettes and other methods of lifestyle enhancement - just stick with facts, eg FACT: Cigarettes calm you down, which is good for your stress levels FACT: Smoking kills your appetite, so you eat less, loose weight, look healthier FACT: Smoking gives you bad breath and impotence, so your chances of contracting an STD are much less, etc.
---oOo---
5) On the way to crack addiction. (aka. UNIX Transitioner)
This prospect is already a regular user of speed and party pills, and is rapidly on their way to becoming a full time crack addict. Perception that plain old cigarettes just arent wicked enough for them, so they dont even give smoking a second thought.
Sales Pitch: Restate the benefits - legal, easily available, and quite affordable in comparison. Sure, moving to crack would be a whole new lifestyle enhancement, but consider cigarettes as an excellent way to re-invent yourself as well. Point out movies where cool characters can be seen smoking. Offer them a free packet of smokes (secretly laced with cocaine and ground neurofen), and you just might have yourself a new friend !!
Fast forward to November.
XBox 360 is going for $50, and comes with a free voucher to upgrade your home PC to Vista.
Nintendo Wii comes to market with a range of Hentai games and new uses for the Wiimote.
Kids beg Dad for one of each.
Dad tells them they are getting a cluster of PS3's instead, because Dad has finally mastered SPU coding using gcc, and reckons he has found a way to crack Fermat's last theorum, entirely bypassing the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, and involving a hitherto unheard of non-euclidean approach !! (if only he had acess to the CPU grunt).
Kids know better than to argue with Dad when he gets that gleam in his eyes.
And NetBEUI/LAN Manager was supposed to be the end of TCP/IP.
...
...
.doc files, kerberos, DHTML, MS-Java, IE css 'standards', etc, etc, etc - seems to be motivated by pure spite.
And lets not forget how Microsoft decided that 'The Internet' was a good plan, but that TCP/IP was not the right way to do it. They tried very hard to kill the internet, and they pushed 'The Microsoft Network' as a twisted alternative. Remember trumpet winsock and all the bullshit you would have to go through just to get a windows box talking TCP/IP ??
There developed a big fight that was dragged on over at least a year or two. Every print publication absolutely poured rubbish all over TCP/IP and 'The Internet', and this was all funded by Microsoft advertisting dollars, and those of their allies in this battle. (At the time, IBM was a very close ally of MS, and IBM was all out to kill Unix before it grew any bigger. This was in the days before MS pulled the big double cross on IBM over OS/2, effectively creating the enormous IBM Linux monster we see today)
Anyway, the 'Battle for the Internet' was won in the end by the 'geeks' who ran the backend machines. The hand that rocks the cradle and all that.
And as soon as it was obvious to even Microsoft that they were not going to win that one, they cut their loses, buried 'The Microsoft Network' deeply away with their other failures, and then jumped on the TCP/IP bandwagon. Shortly after that, they purchase spyglass, rebrand it as IE, and then turn up the marketting machine. (They pulled the launch of Windows95, and hit back with 'Windows95 with Internet Explorer' as a rushed facelift)
As a result, 99% of the public today, and no small number of 'techs' who dont know their history very well - believe that Windows IS the internet, or at least that Microsoft has been a strong supporter of this whole internet thing, and the standards that surround it.
The truth of the matter is that for a period of several years, Microsoft WAS at the head of a desperate battle to KILL the internet before it really took off. They spent a fortune, and used every dirty trick in their play book to kill it. They failed
They obviously still dont like TCP/IP because of all this - since there are so many leftovers of their alternate tools making up the networking framework in every windows box out there today, including Vista
See http://www.faughnan.com/netbios.html for a good rundown on the crap in their stack.
It is very sad that they dont teach TECHO HISTORY in schools. We came VERY CLOSE to never having an internet at all, thanks to the determined efforts of MS. Losing that fight pretty much marked the end of the road for MS - they have been on a downward slide ever since.
I think that out of a sense of spite, MS goes around just trying its damndest to mess with standards, so it can at least win ONE little battle, since it lost the real big one years ago. Everything they do it seems - OOXML, WMV,
Well, if this system works at all, why even bother with the pilot in the first place ?
Shove all the electronics in the belly of the plane, and replace the cockpit with a lectern and projector - and have some corporate marketting people at the front of the aircraft present the passengers with endless powerpoint slides.
You could have presentations about any of the following topics to a captive audience :
- That downloading mp3's and movies from the internet is supporting communism.
- That linux actually costs more than Windows.
- That Dell really does listen to its customers.
- That SCO's legal claims are based on facts.
- That everyone will be left in the stone age if they dont upgrade to Vista.
etc etc
The corporates would of course pump millions into providing these essential services and effectively subsidising the flights.
Idea - or not ?
So DR Evil, after emerging from his suspended animation, would demand a computer big enough to store 100 Megabytes of evil data.
There are many comparisons here by Microsoft apologists to .. firefox defaulting to a google search which yeilds some PPV ads, and then yelling 'See - Those OSS guys are just as bad, Whats the Difference ?'
.. the question is, as a user .. are the tools that I am using doing _something_ on the internet that ends up benefitting the provider of those tools.
... right ? .. and lets just ignore the fact that the driver in the second case also happens to have a record of accidentally benefitting from the deaths of so many other ex-spouses, but lets not allow facts to cloud our judgements here please.
...
Well - the difference is : This is a Microsoft OS that bundles in a Microsoft client browser redirecting a user's request to a Microsoft hosted site which includes PPV ads which end up paying money back to Microsoft.
Cant you see the difference here ?
This is one of the dangers of allowing ONE company to control the whole stack.
If someone clicks through a Google advert, then sure, Google makes money just like MS makes money from its adverts.
The question is not 'Does someone recieve a benefit when a PPV ad is clicked on'
And it is not like Google is in control of either the browser or OS that generates those incoming clicks, and so Google cannot be accused of manipulating the session.
Its the (very subtle) difference between driving a car and accidentally running someone over VS driving a car and accidentally running over your insured spouse. Either way you look at it, its just an accident
If on the other hand, you totally believe everything MS says, and totally trust everything they do, then good luck to you