>. Files don't generally call you, for example, you have to poll.
That's called inotify. If you want to be compatible with systems that have something other than inotify, fswatch is a wrapper around various implementations of "call me when a file changes".
Polling is normally the safest and simplest paradigm, though, because the standard thing is "when a file changes, do this". Polling / waiting makes that simple and self-explanatory: while tail file do
something done
The alternative, asynchronously calling the function like this has a big problem:
when file changes
do something
The biggest problem is that a file can change WHILE you're doing something(), meaning it will re-start your function while you're in the middle of it. Re-entrancy carries with it all manner of potential problems. Those problems can be handled of you really know what you're doing, you're careful, and you make a full suite of re-entrant integration tests. Or you can skip all that and just use synchronous io, waiting or polling. Neither is the best choice in ALL situations, but very often simplicity is the best choice.
> The Federal Government is screwing the American population with their ever-increasing bureaucracy and it increasing demand for paperwork.
Perhaps so. We've added more new laws in the last 20 years than the entire 200 years before that.
> It took 6 months longer for the Feds to approve the rechargeable batteries than the actual hearing processor. > What a Crock!
That sounds like a great example. Then you think about all the new technology and manufacturing processes and everything that went into the Boeing 787. What safety problem grounded the planes? The rechargeable batteries tended to spontaneously catch fire. This isn't a gentle, fairly cool fire like a wood fire either - it's so hot that the metal is on fire, burning. Tesla has a lot of cool tech. They've had two major safety problems - autopilot that isn't, and rechargeable batteries that spontaneously catch fire. You've probably seen reports of vape devices (e-cigs) exploding with burning metal in people's pockets. Because the rechargeable batteries caught fire.
I would dare say that putting newer, high energy-density rechargeable batteries in your ear is more dangerous than the audio processing done by the chip. It could very well be argued that's where regulators SHOULD have focused their concerns.
The number one rule of the Unix way is "everything is a file". Including everything in/proc. PS, ifconfig, etc read the information in proc and format it for human consumption. There is nothing in the Unix way that says "get confused about what is an application programming interface (proc) and what is a UK report (ifconfig)".
In fact the Unix way, everything is a file, makes it easy for scripts to use the API - the APU isn't some complex binary system like COM, it's just a directory of files.
A LOT of scripts use ifconfig and friends. Changing them would be bad, imho. Better would be to call it ifconfig6 or whatever if you're going to change the output or the meaning of commands, so you don't break existing scripts.
In general, it's better for application programs, including scripts to use an application programming interface (API) such as/proc, rather than a user interface such as ifconfig, but in reality tons of scripts do use ifconfig and such.
When I build electronic circuits, I sometimes use wire wrapped. You'll never find wire-wrapped circuits in any store, so the fact that I use it is completely irrelevant to any discussion about which electronics people buy. When I build model planes at home, I use Dollar Tree foam board, gift cards, and popsicle sticks. You won't find any stores selling planes made of DT foam board, gift cards, and popsicle sticks, so that construction method is irrelevant to what people choose to purchase in stores.
Your garden isn't in the grocery store, so it's completely irrelevant to the discussion of what consumers buy. Commercially produced organic produce uses significantly more toxic chemicals than that not marked organic.
Anything you say about your home garden or wasps is just trying to distract from that simple fact.
>Did you know that mint oil is a neurotoxin to wasps?
That would be interesting, and relevant if wasps were a pest to important crops, and therefore mint oil could be used to protect the crops from wasps. As you may know, that's not the case.
Well, I suppose it's indirectly relevant if you consider that wasps primarily feed in insects, some of which are crop pests. Therefore using the organic mint oil kills the wasps, which then can't kill the pest insects. In that way, organic mint oil increases the number of pest insects. That doesn't support your narrative, though, so we'll ignore the actual effect and just say it's not relevant.
That's funny. What's worse is that the "organic" label in no way means "no pesticides". It means they used what they call "organic pesticides", which are pesticides that are chemically similar to some of nature's more potent toxins. What's not allowed on organic produce are the newer, more targeted pesticides which designed to be effective against insects but harmless to people. Instead, organic pesticides are based on the chemistry of toxic plants.
It's like using belladonna (deadly nightshade) to treat ulcers. It works if you happen to get a belladonna plant with just the right concentration of hyoscyamine, and you take just the right amount, but it's a hell of a lot safer and more effective to use modern compounds like amoxicillin or Prilosec.
In one recent USDA study, lettuce marketed as organic contained, on average, ten times the amount of pesticide as lettuce not marked organic. That's because "regular" lettuce can use trace amounts of modern, much more effective, compounds, rather than drowning the lettuce in a toxin that's naturally produced by a bacterium.
> allow these experimental drugs to be administered, with limited liability so long as the drug has passed stage 1 approval and is seeking further trials, to patients with terminal illnesses that would otherwise die and for which no approved treatments exist... but that the drug companies offer these treatments for free to such patients as a part of their clinical trials.
> And this would completely eliminate snake oil and hope peddlers looking to turn a quick profit on unregulated medication.
That's certainly an interesting idea. A person wants to try something that might save their life. Drug companies want more data to know what dosage has what effects and side effects. Cool, just can't charge them for it, so that seems like it would largely eliminate snake oil salesmen.
> The expense of making drugs, after all, is constantly claimed to be about the regulatory hurdles.
Certainly the more regulation, the more expensive it is. (And hopefully safer). Also, the vast majority of new drugs never get approved. Something seems promising, so they spend $10 million on research and development, but it doesn't pan out. The pharmaceutical companies might go through that ten times before they hit on one that works well and has a large market. So while they spent $18 million directly on that medication, they spent $100 million to find the one that ends up being good.
This is a topic I've thought about before and I see two sides to it.
On the one hand, a person who is going to die of fatal illness should be allowed to try something that might save their life. "Proven safe and effective" is a good standard for headache medicine, but if you're almost certain die without it, "20% chance it might work" is worth a try.
On the other hand, we don't want people peddling snake oil taking advantage of desperate people.
The criteria in this law, fatal illness, a treatment that has already completed phase 1 trial, and is actively moving through the FDA approval process, sounds like a reasonable compromise between two opposing interests.
The listed devices are KNOWN to be affected. Others are also affected, but haven't been tested and proven vulnerable. A reboot is probably a good idea for any router - won't hurt anything.
> I'm just saying that it's easier to keep things that are public, public indefinitely than it is to keep things private, private indefinitely.
I'm not sure why you said "indefinitely", a couple years is what's needed, but that's true anyway.
Of course, if someone wants to hide it, it's trivially easy to do so. Suppose I give you $10. Over the course of the next week, you do a lot of things with money, buying groceries, paying your bills, etc. A week later you give Bob $10. Is there any connection between the fact that you gave Bob $10 and me giving you $10? There's no way for anyone to know. So it's pretty easy to hide who the actual donor is - just send it through a third party such as your lawyer. There are some laws that make that slightly inconvenient, so it takes a few minutes to arrange the transactions, but it's fundamentally impossible to prevent.
What's funny to me is that what the current system is supposed to do, it doesn't do. All of Hillary's big donors are Wall Street firms. In theory, that means the public knows she's bought and paid for by Wall Street. In fact, very few people actually know that. She reports it (sometimes), but nobody pays any attention to it.
I say sometimes she reports contributions because of things like in the most recent election she sent a ton of contributions through state parties. On the paperwork, the Democratic Party Of New York contributed $X million to Clinton. It's just a coincidence that George Soros donated $X million to the Democratic Party Of New York, 24 hours before they sent the same amount of money to Clinton.
> I haven't read the ruling, but typically, the Supreme Court rules only on exactly what the appellant asks them to rule on.
No need to even read it. As an appellate court, SCOTUS doesn't have witnesses and doesn't examine evidence, so they wouldn't have anything on which to decide facts, such as if Samsung did in fact infringe. Appellate courts rule on matters of law. By law, the award for Apple is unlawful.
SCOTUS has original jurisdiction and decides facts only when one state is suing another, or cases involving foreign ambassadors and consuls.
> I will expect a lot of "hacks" of company/private servers, which we are apparently powerless to stop already, which will leak and make public the details of contributions.
That situation would happen every so often. Under current law, it happens every time, it's required by law. If it's bad for politicians to be influenced by who is donating, I'd prefer that happen 1% of the time than 100% of the time.
People will always break laws, and that can't be stopped. Right now we make it illegal to not tell, and people break and avoid that law. We can only try to reduce the problems.
If contributions went through the FEC or similar as I mentioned, and were released in large bundles there would be no way for a candidate to *confirm* any contribution, and they would only have the names of the relatively few people who violate federal law by telling them. 99% would probably follow the law, so that reduces "buying politicians" by 99%.
Also, current law punishes what isn't said, what nobody knows about. The other way around would be punishing telling. It's easier to find out what was said than to find out what wasn't said.
The Supreme Court, and appeals courts generally, don't even rule on facts at all. There is no testimony at the Supreme Court, so they would have no basis on which to judge the facts.
SCOTUS couldn't rule that Samsung in fact violated the patents, that's for the trier of fact (the trial court) to decide, based in testimony and other evidence. What SCOTUS rules on is whether the process uses in the lower was legal. Scotus ruled that the trial was not lawful and ordered a new trial, this time following the law, as Samsung requested.
The Supreme Court ruling was actually in favor of Samsung, and it was 8-0.
The question before the Court was how damages were determined. The jury had not read the jury instructions and in fact violated those instructions in multiple ways. Samsung asked for a retrial and SCOTUS unanimously agreed the $1 billion award in favor of Apple was arrived at improperly and reversed. In other words, Samsung won 100% at the Supreme Court.
Just kidding. You do seem to avoid partisan groupthink more than most people. That's smart.
Here's a challenge for you in that regard - what are some of Donald Trump's strengths, as a businessman and as a President? It occurs to me that most people whose father is a *M*illionaire don't amass $3 *B*illion.
> (our team is the country, not one's political gang)
Indeed. When John McCain ran for President, he first asked Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, to be his running mate. A bipartisan ticket of two moderates would have been interesting. Depending on their leadership skills, they might have pointed the nation more toward what you're talking about, being Americans more than Republican vs Democrat. Of course, McCain ended up with Sarah Palin as his VP running mate, for "reasons".
Sticking with Lieberman against the advice of his team would have been a bold move, doing something really different. I can understand why he changed his mind, but the best leaders do bold things, they make things different.
> the smarter people will deem them as non-trustworthy
Unfortunately, in my experience even "the smarter people" are most often fanbois of one of the political parties, and specifically of whichever mouthpiece the party assigns at the moment.
Slashdot commenters, as a whole, probably have a median IQ somewhat higher than the average, yet most of the comments here about anything *remotely* political are obviously driven by the party line. Commenters routinely contradict themselves when asked a couple of questions, because the bumper sticker or tweet by their "team" didn't explain anything, it just announced the conclusion that their fans should defend.
> The important thing to take note, in a system like this will be that some will rate or judge based on > "how much they like the message" versus the quality and truthfulness of said message, > and the fact that it can be independently verified.
Indeed, that's the problem. It seems to me the majority of people routinely fall prey to that to the extent that how much the message fits with their pre-conceived, "first guess" ideas is more important than any evidence. We all do that to some extent, myself included. I *try* not to, and I'm not a fan of any particular political party or politician, so that helps.
* When I say "I'm not a fan of any particular politician", I mean I see faults in all of them, and don't follow any of them as "my team". I also see some good things about some of them, so in that sense you could call me a "fan", but I'm more than happy to discuss where I disagree with any of them, and what I see as their failings.
We should clarify one thing. I said "US only", you said "citizens". Those are two very different things.
If you are saying I'm wrong, that the government can't keep out people from other countries, what page number do you see that on? I don't see it. Under your theory, that the US government can't block people from other countries trying to come to a public place, all of our border security would be unconstitutional. The US would not have sovereignty.
It doesn't assume anything. It notices that the plaintiffs are in fact US citizens, who have been blocked based in the viewpoints they posted. The ruling is that the President's office can't block based on viewpoint. They could perhaps set it to US-only, which would send the Democrats into a tizzy.
Slashdot Mirror
>. Files don't generally call you, for example, you have to poll.
That's called inotify. If you want to be compatible with systems that have something other than inotify, fswatch is a wrapper around various implementations of "call me when a file changes".
Polling is normally the safest and simplest paradigm, though, because the standard thing is "when a file changes, do this". Polling / waiting makes that simple and self-explanatory:
while tail file
do
something
done
The alternative, asynchronously calling the function like this has a big problem:
when file changes
do something
The biggest problem is that a file can change WHILE you're doing something(), meaning it will re-start your function while you're in the middle of it. Re-entrancy carries with it all manner of potential problems. Those problems can be handled of you really know what you're doing, you're careful, and you make a full suite of re-entrant integration tests. Or you can skip all that and just use synchronous io, waiting or polling. Neither is the best choice in ALL situations, but very often simplicity is the best choice.
> The Federal Government is screwing the American population with their ever-increasing bureaucracy and it increasing demand for paperwork.
Perhaps so. We've added more new laws in the last 20 years than the entire 200 years before that.
> It took 6 months longer for the Feds to approve the rechargeable batteries than the actual hearing processor.
> What a Crock!
That sounds like a great example. Then you think about all the new technology and manufacturing processes and everything that went into the Boeing 787. What safety problem grounded the planes? The rechargeable batteries tended to spontaneously catch fire. This isn't a gentle, fairly cool fire like a wood fire either - it's so hot that the metal is on fire, burning. Tesla has a lot of cool tech. They've had two major safety problems - autopilot that isn't, and rechargeable batteries that spontaneously catch fire. You've probably seen reports of vape devices (e-cigs) exploding with burning metal in people's pockets. Because the rechargeable batteries caught fire.
I would dare say that putting newer, high energy-density rechargeable batteries in your ear is more dangerous than the audio processing done by the chip. It could very well be argued that's where regulators SHOULD have focused their concerns.
The number one rule of the Unix way is "everything is a file". Including everything in /proc. PS, ifconfig, etc read the information in proc and format it for human consumption. There is nothing in the Unix way that says "get confused about what is an application programming interface (proc) and what is a UK report (ifconfig)".
In fact the Unix way, everything is a file, makes it easy for scripts to use the API - the APU isn't some complex binary system like COM, it's just a directory of files.
A LOT of scripts use ifconfig and friends. Changing them would be bad, imho. Better would be to call it ifconfig6 or whatever if you're going to change the output or the meaning of commands, so you don't break existing scripts.
In general, it's better for application programs, including scripts to use an application programming interface (API) such as /proc, rather than a user interface such as ifconfig, but in reality tons of scripts do use ifconfig and such.
In case I lose my wallet or there is a problem with the bank or whatever, I keep $10-$20 cash in car. That'll get gas to get me home or whatever.
At home, in the safe, I have enough cash to at least make it to the next pay day.
> When I've done organic gardening ...
When I build electronic circuits, I sometimes use wire wrapped. You'll never find wire-wrapped circuits in any store, so the fact that I use it is completely irrelevant to any discussion about which electronics people buy. When I build model planes at home, I use Dollar Tree foam board, gift cards, and popsicle sticks. You won't find any stores selling planes made of DT foam board, gift cards, and popsicle sticks, so that construction method is irrelevant to what people choose to purchase in stores.
Your garden isn't in the grocery store, so it's completely irrelevant to the discussion of what consumers buy. Commercially produced organic produce uses significantly more toxic chemicals than that not marked organic.
Anything you say about your home garden or wasps is just trying to distract from that simple fact.
>Did you know that mint oil is a neurotoxin to wasps?
That would be interesting, and relevant if wasps were a pest to important crops, and therefore mint oil could be used to protect the crops from wasps. As you may know, that's not the case.
Well, I suppose it's indirectly relevant if you consider that wasps primarily feed in insects, some of which are crop pests. Therefore using the organic mint oil kills the wasps, which then can't kill the pest insects. In that way, organic mint oil increases the number of pest insects. That doesn't support your narrative, though, so we'll ignore the actual effect and just say it's not relevant.
That's funny. What's worse is that the "organic" label in no way means "no pesticides". It means they used what they call "organic pesticides", which are pesticides that are chemically similar to some of nature's more potent toxins. What's not allowed on organic produce are the newer, more targeted pesticides which designed to be effective against insects but harmless to people. Instead, organic pesticides are based on the chemistry of toxic plants.
It's like using belladonna (deadly nightshade) to treat ulcers. It works if you happen to get a belladonna plant with just the right concentration of hyoscyamine, and you take just the right amount, but it's a hell of a lot safer and more effective to use modern compounds like amoxicillin or Prilosec.
In one recent USDA study, lettuce marketed as organic contained, on average, ten times the amount of pesticide as lettuce not marked organic. That's because "regular" lettuce can use trace amounts of modern, much more effective, compounds, rather than drowning the lettuce in a toxin that's naturally produced by a bacterium.
> allow these experimental drugs to be administered, with limited liability so long as the drug has passed stage 1 approval and is seeking further trials, to patients with terminal illnesses that would otherwise die and for which no approved treatments exist... but that the drug companies offer these treatments for free to such patients as a part of their clinical trials.
> And this would completely eliminate snake oil and hope peddlers looking to turn a quick profit on unregulated medication.
That's certainly an interesting idea. A person wants to try something that might save their life. Drug companies want more data to know what dosage has what effects and side effects. Cool, just can't charge them for it, so that seems like it would largely eliminate snake oil salesmen.
> The expense of making drugs, after all, is constantly claimed to be about the regulatory hurdles.
Certainly the more regulation, the more expensive it is. (And hopefully safer). Also, the vast majority of new drugs never get approved. Something seems promising, so they spend $10 million on research and development, but it doesn't pan out. The pharmaceutical companies might go through that ten times before they hit on one that works well and has a large market. So while they spent $18 million directly on that medication, they spent $100 million to find the one that ends up being good.
This is a topic I've thought about before and I see two sides to it.
On the one hand, a person who is going to die of fatal illness should be allowed to try something that might save their life. "Proven safe and effective" is a good standard for headache medicine, but if you're almost certain die without it, "20% chance it might work" is worth a try.
On the other hand, we don't want people peddling snake oil taking advantage of desperate people.
The criteria in this law, fatal illness, a treatment that has already completed phase 1 trial, and is actively moving through the FDA approval process, sounds like a reasonable compromise between two opposing interests.
The listed devices are KNOWN to be affected.
Others are also affected, but haven't been tested and proven vulnerable. A reboot is probably a good idea for any router - won't hurt anything.
> I'm just saying that it's easier to keep things that are public, public indefinitely than it is to keep things private, private indefinitely.
I'm not sure why you said "indefinitely", a couple years is what's needed, but that's true anyway.
Of course, if someone wants to hide it, it's trivially easy to do so. Suppose I give you $10. Over the course of the next week, you do a lot of things with money, buying groceries, paying your bills, etc. A week later you give Bob $10. Is there any connection between the fact that you gave Bob $10 and me giving you $10? There's no way for anyone to know. So it's pretty easy to hide who the actual donor is - just send it through a third party such as your lawyer. There are some laws that make that slightly inconvenient, so it takes a few minutes to arrange the transactions, but it's fundamentally impossible to prevent.
What's funny to me is that what the current system is supposed to do, it doesn't do. All of Hillary's big donors are Wall Street firms. In theory, that means the public knows she's bought and paid for by Wall Street. In fact, very few people actually know that. She reports it (sometimes), but nobody pays any attention to it.
I say sometimes she reports contributions because of things like in the most recent election she sent a ton of contributions through state parties. On the paperwork, the Democratic Party Of New York contributed $X million to Clinton. It's just a coincidence that George Soros donated $X million to the Democratic Party Of New York, 24 hours before they sent the same amount of money to Clinton.
Thanks for the additional information
> I haven't read the ruling, but typically, the Supreme Court rules only on exactly what the appellant asks them to rule on.
No need to even read it. As an appellate court, SCOTUS doesn't have witnesses and doesn't examine evidence, so they wouldn't have anything on which to decide facts, such as if Samsung did in fact infringe. Appellate courts rule on matters of law. By law, the award for Apple is unlawful.
SCOTUS has original jurisdiction and decides facts only when one state is suing another, or cases involving foreign ambassadors and consuls.
> I will expect a lot of "hacks" of company/private servers, which we are apparently powerless to stop already, which will leak and make public the details of contributions.
That situation would happen every so often.
Under current law, it happens every time, it's required by law.
If it's bad for politicians to be influenced by who is donating, I'd prefer that happen 1% of the time than 100% of the time.
People will always break laws, and that can't be stopped.
Right now we make it illegal to not tell, and people break and avoid that law. We can only try to reduce the problems.
If contributions went through the FEC or similar as I mentioned, and were released in large bundles there would be no way for a candidate to *confirm* any contribution, and they would only have the names of the relatively few people who violate federal law by telling them. 99% would probably follow the law, so that reduces "buying politicians" by 99%.
Also, current law punishes what isn't said, what nobody knows about. The other way around would be punishing telling. It's easier to find out what was said than to find out what wasn't said.
The Supreme Court, and appeals courts generally, don't even rule on facts at all. There is no testimony at the Supreme Court, so they would have no basis on which to judge the facts.
SCOTUS couldn't rule that Samsung in fact violated the patents, that's for the trier of fact (the trial court) to decide, based in testimony and other evidence. What SCOTUS rules on is whether the process uses in the lower was legal. Scotus ruled that the trial was not lawful and ordered a new trial, this time following the law, as Samsung requested.
The Supreme Court ruling was actually in favor of Samsung, and it was 8-0.
The question before the Court was how damages were determined. The jury had not read the jury instructions and in fact violated those instructions in multiple ways. Samsung asked for a retrial and SCOTUS unanimously agreed the $1 billion award in favor of Apple was arrived at improperly and reversed. In other words, Samsung won 100% at the Supreme Court.
> Hey now not all of us.
I said the smarter people, not you.
Just kidding. You do seem to avoid partisan groupthink more than most people. That's smart.
Here's a challenge for you in that regard - what are some of Donald Trump's strengths, as a businessman and as a President? It occurs to me that most people whose father is a *M*illionaire don't amass $3 *B*illion.
> (our team is the country, not one's political gang)
Indeed. When John McCain ran for President, he first asked Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, to be his running mate. A bipartisan ticket of two moderates would have been interesting. Depending on their leadership skills, they might have pointed the nation more toward what you're talking about, being Americans more than Republican vs Democrat. Of course, McCain ended up with Sarah Palin as his VP running mate, for "reasons".
Sticking with Lieberman against the advice of his team would have been a bold move, doing something really different. I can understand why he changed his mind, but the best leaders do bold things, they make things different.
> the smarter people will deem them as non-trustworthy
Unfortunately, in my experience even "the smarter people" are most often fanbois of one of the political parties, and specifically of whichever mouthpiece the party assigns at the moment.
Slashdot commenters, as a whole, probably have a median IQ somewhat higher than the average, yet most of the comments here about anything *remotely* political are obviously driven by the party line. Commenters routinely contradict themselves when asked a couple of questions, because the bumper sticker or tweet by their "team" didn't explain anything, it just announced the conclusion that their fans should defend.
> The important thing to take note, in a system like this will be that some will rate or judge based on
> "how much they like the message" versus the quality and truthfulness of said message,
> and the fact that it can be independently verified.
Indeed, that's the problem. It seems to me the majority of people routinely fall prey to that to the extent that how much the message fits with their pre-conceived, "first guess" ideas is more important than any evidence. We all do that to some extent, myself included. I *try* not to, and I'm not a fan of any particular political party or politician, so that helps.
* When I say "I'm not a fan of any particular politician", I mean I see faults in all of them, and don't follow any of them as "my team". I also see some good things about some of them, so in that sense you could call me a "fan", but I'm more than happy to discuss where I disagree with any of them, and what I see as their failings.
We should clarify one thing. I said "US only", you said "citizens". Those are two very different things.
If you are saying I'm wrong, that the government can't keep out people from other countries, what page number do you see that on? I don't see it.
Under your theory, that the US government can't block people from other countries trying to come to a public place, all of our border security would be unconstitutional. The US would not have sovereignty.
It doesn't assume anything. It notices that the plaintiffs are in fact US citizens, who have been blocked based in the viewpoints they posted. The ruling is that the President's office can't block based on viewpoint. They could perhaps set it to US-only, which would send the Democrats into a tizzy.
> You're seriously analyzing World War I logistics in a post about worms?
No, I'm analyzing world world TWO STRATEGIC planning in a THREAD about worms.
Three errors in one sentence; that's impressive. Let me guess, you're a Democrat?
I haven't seen any evidence that they are attacking San Marino.