You won't see that happen. That was back in the day of the PS2, and as far as I'm aware Sony never actually got away with that claim. Since then the tax rules have changed so that there isn't the same distinction between games consoles and computers, so there's no tax break involved in passing one off as the other.
You have to check that for every separate EU country, as rules for what rate of VAT to use vary at the member state scale. (Control over taxation is very jealously guarded; I don't expect that to pass to Brussels for a long time, if ever.)
Does that include high quality data for South Africa (near Johannesburg) or were you planning to ask that prehistoric man be relocated to near San Jose so can take advantage of the free GIS data for California?
You've got to map things where they are, not where it's convenient for you to map. Moreover, Google's data is free to use, global in scope, and their application is easy to use too.
Few mainstream languages do concurrency well; the notion that concurrency is the operating system's problem results in pain for all concerned.
There are two fundamental problems there:
There are (at least) two fundamentally different models of concurrent programming: shared memory, and message passing. You can't really mix and match between the two in the same program because they manage memory accesses in totally different ways.
Most programmers don't grok concurrent programming at all, even at the level of several processes talking to each other. There's a need for much better training here; at the very least, concurrency principles and techniques ought to be a mandatory part of every CS programme in the world.
The operating system can share out execution time easily enough, but doing the right thing with it requires thought and planning; throwing code at the wall to see what sticks doesn't really cut it.
Is the increased resolution of 6 screens really that much of an improvement over one large Full HD television, that the fact there are lines running right through your vision is acceptable?
Think about it. You could have 6 Full HD televisions...
On a side note we live in South Africa, and while no priest would publicly say "use condoms", they definitely do so privately.
On the bright side, at least those priests aren't using those condoms in public, but are saving it for when they're in somewhere where the congregation aren't watching.
... were it not for the fact that SQLite is at least two orders of magnitude slower than any other database, including ones written by first year comp sci students.
O RLY? Care to point to a degree programme with such students?
(SQLite has some other nice advantages in that it's much simpler to show that it isn't introducing new vulnerabilities into the machine. Adding a database server to a system makes that proof much harder.)
Can you trust CAs for financial transactions? So far, apparently yes. Can you trust CAs with your international trade secrets as a non-US company? NOT a good idea. If you have a relatively secure side-channel for key exchange and are a non-US citizen with trade secrets, it's better not to rely on SSL for your communication but on your own certificates.
You're highly confused as to just what a CA does. All a CA really does is make statements about identity. They don't say anything about the cryptographic algorithms being used. They don't say anything (much) about how you use the certificates they issue.
Who can be a CA? Anyone! (Well, so long as they can stand using the software tools. The openssl ca command is pretty horrible.) The only constraint is that browsers won't trust you by default; you'll have to add these custom CAs' certificates manually, and that's only a good idea if you trust the policies of each CA that you add. If you remove all the standard CAs and add in your own for your small group, you've got just as much control as you might ever wish for. (The alternative is to do lots of bipartite key exchange, but that really doesn't scale well. A web-of-trust isn't any more resistant either - people make mistakes and can be corrupted - and remembering-first-certificate has many of its own faults as a rule.)
I'm not very surprised that you're spreading misinformation though. If you've never tried to run a private CA or work out what the protocols actually do for you, you'll be susceptible to magical thinking. Lose 5 geek points for looking like a dumbass about a technical subject.
Whenever a capitalist talks about "adding value" or "creating wealth", they're really talking about creating scarcity.
No. That's what a monopolist means. There are other sorts of capitalist too.
If I buy wood, make tables from it, and sell those tables on, I'm adding value. I'm hardly creating scarcity in any meaningful way that you care about. (You don't want me to have a monopoly on table-making; I'm terrible at woodworking.)
Programming as a skill in itself is totally separate from most of those.
It's applied logic. Every other piece of math is only useful some of the time (even algebra!) but logic is utterly embedded throughout, and even a low-level programmer needs it. OK, maybe not the fancy parts of logic, but nor do most physicists need the fancier parts of math all the time.
Not uniformly. They've got some significant problems (e.g., a non-thread-safe getaddrinfo() for goodness' sake! They've not even bothered to put a lock internally, despite the fact that the specs for these functions have required thread safety since RFC 2553, i.e., over 10 years...) but they perhaps aren't strictly security problems. Just major functionality issues that every other vendor addressed long ago.
I don't see how anyone can take a long flight sober.
I've given up on drinking on flights. I find I arrive in much better condition if I stay sober and still get some sleep. The problem with drinking on flights, especially long-haul, is that it dehydrates you and you're in a pretty dry environment anyway. FWIW, I stay off the coffee too on planes for the same reason, which is about the only time when I cut back there...
Depends where you are. If you're stuck round London (or other large city) then yes, 3 hours. Get to somewhere which isn't crazy congested and it's less than half that.
While I don't know about "financially" (since the USSR didn't organize its finances in an easily comparable way) it's reasonably clear that it was economically where the USA and its allies were ahead of the USSR (and their allies). In particular, the west was able to sustain a higher level of military spending without crippling the rest of its economy.
Of course, we only really knew how bad things had got through the '70s and early '80s quite a bit later, and that wasn't a period when the Maniacs of Wall Street weren't so thoroughly set on the course which lead to the current recession. 20 years is quite a long time in human affairs.
Wouldn't this be an ideal target for test driven development
Depends on the difficulty of running meaningful tests. Moreover, testing an application architecture is rather more difficult than testing individual units that plug into such an architecture. (One of the goals of an architecture ought to be that it allows the testing of modules plugged into it without doing a full run of the whole mess, i.e., that it enables TDD. Getting to that stage isn't trivial; if you think it is, that's probably because you've never tried writing one for real, and have just been leveraging someone else's architecture.)
My theory is that the architectural problems would have been resolved over the decade of active use for BIND 9, as users submitted their patches and the developers periodically refactored the code.
I doubt that. Having seen open source communities in action, it is very rare that architectural problems get fixed by communities. This is because architecture-by-committee doesn't work. For sanity, you need one person to hold the core architecture in their head and describe it to everyone else. Once things get complicated enough, it is just about impossible for anyone to be that person and it is easier to throw it all away and start over. That's a shame, but how it goes.
Communities tend to build on top of the basic architecture, sometimes grossly distorting it, sometimes making it much less flexible than it was originally, but still preserving the original basic plan. That's because the architecture, the basic plan, it guides how people think about the whole edifice.
Another example would be if Windows 7 was an excellent product, but was considered otherwise because previous Microsoft products were less than excellent.
But Win7 just isn't that bad. A pyrrhic victory is the kind that makes people think "with victories like these, who needs losses?" Mind you, politics is more inclined towards pyrrhic victories than business.
Taking a partner on for their customer or vendor contact lists opens you up to a lawsuit, and to having to basically turn over your company to their former employer. Do you really want to engineer your own liquidation?
I'd have thought that you'd generally only be at risk if you poached someone from another employer. If they're no longer employed by them (and there's no enforceable non-compete agreement in place) then there's really no comeback by the ex-employer. After all, if they really wanted to keep their former employee's expertise then they would still be employing them.
I mean, who'd believe linux, or bsd, or asterix, or postgresql, or apache,... were all free. I've met people who were skeptical, who wanted to know what the catch was...
The catch is that they typically require some effort and expertise on your part to make them useful. They're not generally fully-productized turnkey solutions.
Some of us like it that way by comparison with the alternatives, but the catch is there.
Slashdot Mirror
You won't see that happen. That was back in the day of the PS2, and as far as I'm aware Sony never actually got away with that claim. Since then the tax rules have changed so that there isn't the same distinction between games consoles and computers, so there's no tax break involved in passing one off as the other.
You have to check that for every separate EU country, as rules for what rate of VAT to use vary at the member state scale. (Control over taxation is very jealously guarded; I don't expect that to pass to Brussels for a long time, if ever.)
Couldn't afford free Really?
There's plenty of free GIS data out there.
Does that include high quality data for South Africa (near Johannesburg) or were you planning to ask that prehistoric man be relocated to near San Jose so can take advantage of the free GIS data for California?
You've got to map things where they are, not where it's convenient for you to map. Moreover, Google's data is free to use, global in scope, and their application is easy to use too.
How many UK citizens have enough money to even reach European courts after being disconnected?
More than you might expect, due to Legal Aid.
Now with Java in the clutches of the enterprise people who are the leading source of anti-cool, it doesn't stand a chance.
At least it's gradually edging out all that fossilized COBOL.
Few mainstream languages do concurrency well; the notion that concurrency is the operating system's problem results in pain for all concerned.
There are two fundamental problems there:
The operating system can share out execution time easily enough, but doing the right thing with it requires thought and planning; throwing code at the wall to see what sticks doesn't really cut it.
Is the increased resolution of 6 screens really that much of an improvement over one large Full HD television, that the fact there are lines running right through your vision is acceptable?
Think about it. You could have 6 Full HD televisions...
On a side note we live in South Africa, and while no priest would publicly say "use condoms", they definitely do so privately.
On the bright side, at least those priests aren't using those condoms in public, but are saving it for when they're in somewhere where the congregation aren't watching.
[Afghanistan] is the only country in the world with borders to the ex Soviet Union, China, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq.
FYI, there is no common border between Afghanistan and Iraq. The whole of Iran lies in-between.
If you replace Schindler's List with Killer Tomatoes and SciFi with Propaganda Movies, we can talk.
Oh, it works just fine. It's just the wrong Schindler and the wrong List. We're talking Dave Schindler and his List of 100 Best Ever Fart Jokes.
... were it not for the fact that SQLite is at least two orders of magnitude slower than any other database, including ones written by first year comp sci students.
O RLY? Care to point to a degree programme with such students?
(SQLite has some other nice advantages in that it's much simpler to show that it isn't introducing new vulnerabilities into the machine. Adding a database server to a system makes that proof much harder.)
Can you trust CAs for financial transactions? So far, apparently yes. Can you trust CAs with your international trade secrets as a non-US company? NOT a good idea. If you have a relatively secure side-channel for key exchange and are a non-US citizen with trade secrets, it's better not to rely on SSL for your communication but on your own certificates.
You're highly confused as to just what a CA does. All a CA really does is make statements about identity. They don't say anything about the cryptographic algorithms being used. They don't say anything (much) about how you use the certificates they issue.
Who can be a CA? Anyone! (Well, so long as they can stand using the software tools. The openssl ca command is pretty horrible.) The only constraint is that browsers won't trust you by default; you'll have to add these custom CAs' certificates manually, and that's only a good idea if you trust the policies of each CA that you add. If you remove all the standard CAs and add in your own for your small group, you've got just as much control as you might ever wish for. (The alternative is to do lots of bipartite key exchange, but that really doesn't scale well. A web-of-trust isn't any more resistant either - people make mistakes and can be corrupted - and remembering-first-certificate has many of its own faults as a rule.)
I'm not very surprised that you're spreading misinformation though. If you've never tried to run a private CA or work out what the protocols actually do for you, you'll be susceptible to magical thinking. Lose 5 geek points for looking like a dumbass about a technical subject.
Whenever a capitalist talks about "adding value" or "creating wealth", they're really talking about creating scarcity.
No. That's what a monopolist means. There are other sorts of capitalist too.
If I buy wood, make tables from it, and sell those tables on, I'm adding value. I'm hardly creating scarcity in any meaningful way that you care about. (You don't want me to have a monopoly on table-making; I'm terrible at woodworking.)
Programming as a skill in itself is totally separate from most of those.
It's applied logic. Every other piece of math is only useful some of the time (even algebra!) but logic is utterly embedded throughout, and even a low-level programmer needs it. OK, maybe not the fancy parts of logic, but nor do most physicists need the fancier parts of math all the time.
OpenBSD code quality is higher
Not uniformly. They've got some significant problems (e.g., a non-thread-safe getaddrinfo() for goodness' sake! They've not even bothered to put a lock internally, despite the fact that the specs for these functions have required thread safety since RFC 2553, i.e., over 10 years...) but they perhaps aren't strictly security problems. Just major functionality issues that every other vendor addressed long ago.
No wonder that didn't result in a PROFIT!!!!.
You're using the wrong definition of "profit".
I don't see how anyone can take a long flight sober.
I've given up on drinking on flights. I find I arrive in much better condition if I stay sober and still get some sleep. The problem with drinking on flights, especially long-haul, is that it dehydrates you and you're in a pretty dry environment anyway. FWIW, I stay off the coffee too on planes for the same reason, which is about the only time when I cut back there...
It's about 3 hours in UK traffic
Depends where you are. If you're stuck round London (or other large city) then yes, 3 hours. Get to somewhere which isn't crazy congested and it's less than half that.
My desk's a lot bigger than the computer monitor
Spoken like a man who needs a bigger monitor. Go on! You know you want it!
And I question that we "beat them financially"
While I don't know about "financially" (since the USSR didn't organize its finances in an easily comparable way) it's reasonably clear that it was economically where the USA and its allies were ahead of the USSR (and their allies). In particular, the west was able to sustain a higher level of military spending without crippling the rest of its economy.
Of course, we only really knew how bad things had got through the '70s and early '80s quite a bit later, and that wasn't a period when the Maniacs of Wall Street weren't so thoroughly set on the course which lead to the current recession. 20 years is quite a long time in human affairs.
Wouldn't this be an ideal target for test driven development
Depends on the difficulty of running meaningful tests. Moreover, testing an application architecture is rather more difficult than testing individual units that plug into such an architecture. (One of the goals of an architecture ought to be that it allows the testing of modules plugged into it without doing a full run of the whole mess, i.e., that it enables TDD. Getting to that stage isn't trivial; if you think it is, that's probably because you've never tried writing one for real, and have just been leveraging someone else's architecture.)
My theory is that the architectural problems would have been resolved over the decade of active use for BIND 9, as users submitted their patches and the developers periodically refactored the code.
I doubt that. Having seen open source communities in action, it is very rare that architectural problems get fixed by communities. This is because architecture-by-committee doesn't work. For sanity, you need one person to hold the core architecture in their head and describe it to everyone else. Once things get complicated enough, it is just about impossible for anyone to be that person and it is easier to throw it all away and start over. That's a shame, but how it goes.
Communities tend to build on top of the basic architecture, sometimes grossly distorting it, sometimes making it much less flexible than it was originally, but still preserving the original basic plan. That's because the architecture, the basic plan, it guides how people think about the whole edifice.
Another example would be if Windows 7 was an excellent product, but was considered otherwise because previous Microsoft products were less than excellent.
But Win7 just isn't that bad. A pyrrhic victory is the kind that makes people think "with victories like these, who needs losses?" Mind you, politics is more inclined towards pyrrhic victories than business.
I heard George Lucas is writing it.
Could (just about) be worse. Uwe Boll is not involved in the project.
Taking a partner on for their customer or vendor contact lists opens you up to a lawsuit, and to having to basically turn over your company to their former employer. Do you really want to engineer your own liquidation?
I'd have thought that you'd generally only be at risk if you poached someone from another employer. If they're no longer employed by them (and there's no enforceable non-compete agreement in place) then there's really no comeback by the ex-employer. After all, if they really wanted to keep their former employee's expertise then they would still be employing them.
I mean, who'd believe linux, or bsd, or asterix, or postgresql, or apache, ... were all free. I've met people who were skeptical, who wanted to know what the catch was...
The catch is that they typically require some effort and expertise on your part to make them useful. They're not generally fully-productized turnkey solutions.
Some of us like it that way by comparison with the alternatives, but the catch is there.