The news media has been in a long downward spiral of consolidation and/or bankruptcies since about 1980 which coincides with the birth of both CNN and the age of a zillion cable channels. Prior to then, the limited media available (only major networks, radio and print) kept traditional advertising at the top of the heap for revenue generation. Networks and local papers saw news gathering as a quasi independent, money losing necessary evil. Networks had to be viewed as somewhat neutral in news to attract viewers and advertisers. In cities with more than one paper, the papers tended to take particular editorial positions but they still had to be viewed as accurate. Cable started taking viewers and ad dollars from the major networks and after the internet further messed up the advertising model channels like CNN and Fox discovered that ad revenue grew and they made more money by biasing their coverage (and their accuracy) to pander to their viewership. In the meantime daily rags were losing their shirts. The lack of readership killed ad revenues major mergers started happening everywhere. Most cities were whittled down to one major daily and the battling editorial positions were gone. At the same time USA Today showed papers that a lot of readers were happy without local news and loads of papers became localized versions of a national paper. Now the paper only needed a handful of employees or just contract reporters for local news with everything else (layout, production, website, delivery, billing etc) handled by the national organization.
We have no independent mainstream media left in the US. Every story that comes out of every organization has a primary focus of revenue generation.
Its going to be hard to research terrorism if itâ(TM)s illegal to look at their trail on the internet. This should be a big boost to the terrorists. Viewing their content will be âforbidden fruitâ(TM) for disturbed or dissatisfied folks but genuine research into their content, recruitment methods, etc will be illegal. In situations where parents are trying to track down runaway children whoâ(TM)ve hooked up with terrorists the process of looking for their kids will make them criminals. What a stupendous idea.
It shall soon be illegal to speak in person without government authorities present to ensure nothing illegal is being discussed.
The government rep wouldn't have to be present if they could just convince people to carry small, wirelessly connected computing devices in their pockets that contain cameras and microphones. If people were to start doing that, then the government would be pretty much be able to monitor anything it wants anytime it wants.
Luckily, I doubt there's much chance of getting folks to carry such a device around with them at all times....
A space command is going to have to ultimately maintain large, self contained and self sustaining long term facilities in remote, mobile locations. This is a lot closer to the model of a naval command than an Air Force one. The Navy has hundreds of self contained commands that are mobile; have large multi-disciplinary crews, and handle everything from medicine to propulsion to garbage disposal. The Air Force on the other hand has almost no expertise in this area. Their bases are fixed, land locations with little in the way of environmental hazards and they are typically run for the most part by subcontractors. it will be a space ânavyâ(TM), not a space âair forceâ(TM).
It seems to me that in addition to Google, that the carriers were complicit in this and got benefit out of it as well. I would hope that the EU commission would go after them in addition to Google.
You would think, in the interests of thoroughness that they would also require the recording of all conversations at all times. I am sure that there are a lot of conversations happening that are 'outside of the law'.
I switched to a Mac once Apple had OS X and Intel in place. As a long time Unix/Linux user it gives me a stable, secure environment with all of the tools I am used to and productive with..out of the box. I gave up on Windows OSes in the late 90's and switched to Linux for my laptop. In 2006 when Apple introduced Intel base OS X switching to it freed me from constantly rolling my own drivers and let me focus on using the box rather than tweaking it.
From a hardware POV I will say, my 2009 MBP is still fully functional (although stuck on El Capitan) and running great. Its been through 4-5 OS upgrades without a wipe and reload and runs great. I've never, ever had (or heard of) a windows notebook that was upgraded from OS to OS and remained fully functional and usable for that long.
Pretty impressive. I remember hand assembling Z80 assembler and manually entering as hex pairs into a string in a 'c' program so I could vector to it as a device driver after my program loaded. I thought that was labor intensive but at least I had a keyboard.
It was maxed out. 48k Ram and (eventually) 4 floppy drives. I thought I had reached nirvana when I reached the point that I could edit, compile, assemble and link 'c' programs without swapping floppies...
JS is a lingua franca but its a very bad one. It wouldn't be so bad if the language had actually been designed and was consistently implemented.
That being said our industry never learns. We dealt with termcaps and incompatible ChUI terminals in the 80's, odd and/or incompatible desktop graphics capabilities thru the 90's followed by browser incompatibilities and now vastly different JS engines. You would think the industry would eventually figure out that taking decades to establish baseline standards for software means that the horse is out of the barn (and it burned down and they put up a shopping mall in its place) because the standards come too late.
Each company views the giant gap between rising popularity of something and the actual establishment of a standard as a place to drive a wedge and establish a competitive advantage. In the meantime developers and users suffer and projects come in even later; even more over budget and still not fully functional.
I agree with your comments but I would also add that I think we have a tendency today to assume that all a programmer needs to know is the language and the tools. I've found that it is very rare for a programmer to do a truly acceptable and successful job if they don't thoroughly understand the problem that they are solving, The belief that we can document requirements well enough to send them to programmers who have zero understanding of the problem or its domain is leading to a lot of bad code, late, incomplete solutions and unhappy users. We don't hand residential framing carpenters the plans to a sailing vessel and assume that because they have the plans they are now shipwrights and can do a great job building it; we shouldn't do that with developers either.
This is crazy. They are losing money and they have no clear runway to working business model. Its like a flashback to 20 years ago. Apparently a whole new generation of investors has to learn all of these lessons for themselves.
Its pretty clear from Gartner's predictions 3 years ago which company was paying them the most money among M$, Apple and others.
Gartner's predictions eerily parallel the amount of money vendors pay them yet it never seems to matter to them or their customers that they are so consistently wrong.
Eval, properly used, can be extremely valuable and reduce a lot of code bulk. Improperly used it presents various nightmare scenarios for security and stability.
In reality though, I don't see much more than a slightly nuanced difference between using eval and dynamically constructing any portion of a SQL statement for execution at runtime.
First, I feel that Snowden should actually have his day in court and present his case before anything related to a pardon or commutation is discussed. The American people need to see and hear both his and the government's position and evidence in a more balanced, less sensational environment than the MSM gives us.
Second, I feel that neither Manning nor General Cartwright should have their sentences commuted. They were both members of the US military who had sworn oaths regarding their behavior and ethics in their service and disregarded them. Gen Cartwright, as an officer should be held to an even higher standard. They were both tried, found guilty and sentenced. What message does it send to the rest of the military if they don't have to serve their sentences? Why should anyone in the military feel compelled to obey any order or protect any secret if they know that whatever punishment they get will be commuted and all they need is some publicity to make it happen.
I don't believe controlling which apps are accepted into the store is much of an argument. I have a Vizio TV that supports apps. I can put any app I want in it as long as its in Vizio's store. Guess how it gets there. Where do I get apps for my Roku...Oh yes, the Roku store (even the private channels are actually there.) In all such cases, the apps must go through some kind of acceptance and review to get into the store. The only real difference isn't so much in style as it is in volume.
Anti trust implies controlling prices to the detriment of the consumer. Apple in no way sets or controls the pricing. An app developer is free to charge whatever they want or make it free.
Slashdot Mirror
The news media has been in a long downward spiral of consolidation and/or bankruptcies since about 1980 which coincides with the birth of both CNN and the age of a zillion cable channels. Prior to then, the limited media available (only major networks, radio and print) kept traditional advertising at the top of the heap for revenue generation. Networks and local papers saw news gathering as a quasi independent, money losing necessary evil. Networks had to be viewed as somewhat neutral in news to attract viewers and advertisers. In cities with more than one paper, the papers tended to take particular editorial positions but they still had to be viewed as accurate. Cable started taking viewers and ad dollars from the major networks and after the internet further messed up the advertising model channels like CNN and Fox discovered that ad revenue grew and they made more money by biasing their coverage (and their accuracy) to pander to their viewership. In the meantime daily rags were losing their shirts. The lack of readership killed ad revenues major mergers started happening everywhere. Most cities were whittled down to one major daily and the battling editorial positions were gone. At the same time USA Today showed papers that a lot of readers were happy without local news and loads of papers became localized versions of a national paper. Now the paper only needed a handful of employees or just contract reporters for local news with everything else (layout, production, website, delivery, billing etc) handled by the national organization. We have no independent mainstream media left in the US. Every story that comes out of every organization has a primary focus of revenue generation.
Its going to be hard to research terrorism if itâ(TM)s illegal to look at their trail on the internet. This should be a big boost to the terrorists. Viewing their content will be âforbidden fruitâ(TM) for disturbed or dissatisfied folks but genuine research into their content, recruitment methods, etc will be illegal. In situations where parents are trying to track down runaway children whoâ(TM)ve hooked up with terrorists the process of looking for their kids will make them criminals. What a stupendous idea.
For Europe to put itself at the mercy of vulnerable infrastructure transmitting energy across a volatile region would be crazy.
We need to be looking at solar/wind/etc technologies as ways to eliminate fragile national electric grids and to move to locally supplied power.
Forget the Russians, by tomorrow there will be 'news' stories tying this to AGW somehow.
It shall soon be illegal to speak in person without government authorities present to ensure nothing illegal is being discussed.
The government rep wouldn't have to be present if they could just convince people to carry small, wirelessly connected computing devices in their pockets that contain cameras and microphones. If people were to start doing that, then the government would be pretty much be able to monitor anything it wants anytime it wants.
Luckily, I doubt there's much chance of getting folks to carry such a device around with them at all times....
A space command is going to have to ultimately maintain large, self contained and self sustaining long term facilities in remote, mobile locations. This is a lot closer to the model of a naval command than an Air Force one. The Navy has hundreds of self contained commands that are mobile; have large multi-disciplinary crews, and handle everything from medicine to propulsion to garbage disposal. The Air Force on the other hand has almost no expertise in this area. Their bases are fixed, land locations with little in the way of environmental hazards and they are typically run for the most part by subcontractors. it will be a space ânavyâ(TM), not a space âair forceâ(TM).
It seems to me that in addition to Google, that the carriers were complicit in this and got benefit out of it as well. I would hope that the EU commission would go after them in addition to Google.
These would be the same idiots that go into those same stores looking for a 'hot water heater'.
You would think, in the interests of thoroughness that they would also require the recording of all conversations at all times. I am sure that there are a lot of conversations happening that are 'outside of the law'.
I switched to a Mac once Apple had OS X and Intel in place. As a long time Unix/Linux user it gives me a stable, secure environment with all of the tools I am used to and productive with..out of the box. I gave up on Windows OSes in the late 90's and switched to Linux for my laptop. In 2006 when Apple introduced Intel base OS X switching to it freed me from constantly rolling my own drivers and let me focus on using the box rather than tweaking it.
From a hardware POV I will say, my 2009 MBP is still fully functional (although stuck on El Capitan) and running great. Its been through 4-5 OS upgrades without a wipe and reload and runs great. I've never, ever had (or heard of) a windows notebook that was upgraded from OS to OS and remained fully functional and usable for that long.
Pretty impressive. I remember hand assembling Z80 assembler and manually entering as hex pairs into a string in a 'c' program so I could vector to it as a device driver after my program loaded. I thought that was labor intensive but at least I had a keyboard.
Also Fortran. In 1974 all engineering students at Ga Tech took Fortran (and learned how to create and submit punchcard decks.)
It was maxed out. 48k Ram and (eventually) 4 floppy drives. I thought I had reached nirvana when I reached the point that I could edit, compile, assemble and link 'c' programs without swapping floppies...
JS is a lingua franca but its a very bad one. It wouldn't be so bad if the language had actually been designed and was consistently implemented.
That being said our industry never learns. We dealt with termcaps and incompatible ChUI terminals in the 80's, odd and/or incompatible desktop graphics capabilities thru the 90's followed by browser incompatibilities and now vastly different JS engines. You would think the industry would eventually figure out that taking decades to establish baseline standards for software means that the horse is out of the barn (and it burned down and they put up a shopping mall in its place) because the standards come too late.
Each company views the giant gap between rising popularity of something and the actual establishment of a standard as a place to drive a wedge and establish a competitive advantage. In the meantime developers and users suffer and projects come in even later; even more over budget and still not fully functional.
Its just a steady stream of seriously questionable actions by Uber. Is it a company or a fraternity?
I've never had a bad experience with an Uber driver. Its a shame they have to work for such sh*tty organization.
This is in L Rob H's 1982 novel "Battlefield Earth". Who knew?
I agree with your comments but I would also add that I think we have a tendency today to assume that all a programmer needs to know is the language and the tools. I've found that it is very rare for a programmer to do a truly acceptable and successful job if they don't thoroughly understand the problem that they are solving, The belief that we can document requirements well enough to send them to programmers who have zero understanding of the problem or its domain is leading to a lot of bad code, late, incomplete solutions and unhappy users. We don't hand residential framing carpenters the plans to a sailing vessel and assume that because they have the plans they are now shipwrights and can do a great job building it; we shouldn't do that with developers either.
This is crazy. They are losing money and they have no clear runway to working business model. Its like a flashback to 20 years ago. Apparently a whole new generation of investors has to learn all of these lessons for themselves.
I'd say prison is the worst place to listen to music.
Its pretty clear from Gartner's predictions 3 years ago which company was paying them the most money among M$, Apple and others.
Gartner's predictions eerily parallel the amount of money vendors pay them yet it never seems to matter to them or their customers that they are so consistently wrong.
The combination of this ludicrous story and the plethora of snarky comments ripping it to shreds really made my day.
/. great and kept me coming back for more in the late 90's.
This is the stuff that made
Eval, properly used, can be extremely valuable and reduce a lot of code bulk. Improperly used it presents various nightmare scenarios for security and stability.
In reality though, I don't see much more than a slightly nuanced difference between using eval and dynamically constructing any portion of a SQL statement for execution at runtime.
Use it, but use it carefully.
First, I feel that Snowden should actually have his day in court and present his case before anything related to a pardon or commutation is discussed. The American people need to see and hear both his and the government's position and evidence in a more balanced, less sensational environment than the MSM gives us.
Second, I feel that neither Manning nor General Cartwright should have their sentences commuted. They were both members of the US military who had sworn oaths regarding their behavior and ethics in their service and disregarded them. Gen Cartwright, as an officer should be held to an even higher standard. They were both tried, found guilty and sentenced. What message does it send to the rest of the military if they don't have to serve their sentences? Why should anyone in the military feel compelled to obey any order or protect any secret if they know that whatever punishment they get will be commuted and all they need is some publicity to make it happen.
I don't believe controlling which apps are accepted into the store is much of an argument. I have a Vizio TV that supports apps. I can put any app I want in it as long as its in Vizio's store. Guess how it gets there. Where do I get apps for my Roku...Oh yes, the Roku store (even the private channels are actually there.) In all such cases, the apps must go through some kind of acceptance and review to get into the store. The only real difference isn't so much in style as it is in volume.
Anti trust implies controlling prices to the detriment of the consumer. Apple in no way sets or controls the pricing. An app developer is free to charge whatever they want or make it free.