On Tuesday the EC voted to make the value of Pi equal to 3.
This will simplify the design of capstans for cash registers in Belgian butter stores, while causing a tolerable 400% increase in the paperwork required to calculate the orbits of communications satellites when requesting permission to use public-owned gravity generated by EC member states.
Re:Come see the violence inherent in the System!
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 2
No, you miss the point of my post, which is:
COMPETE OR DIE!
If you can't compete, you have no justification to complain other than envy, failure or a sense of entitlement.
Starbucks isn't a government. It doesn't have an army. All it can do is put stores next to yours and provide a better product and experience at a better value. And if it can't, you win. And if Starbucks is as bad as you say, then you can't lose, right? And if you don't compete with them, it's either because you know you can't, or because you know you can but you're scared to (which means you know you can't, because they aren't scared of you, which is also part of the free-market equation).
--Blair
Re:Come see the violence inherent in the System!
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 2
If you don't like Starbucks,
START YOUR OWN FUCKING COFFEE SHOP FRANCHISE.
Globalization isn't about utter homogeneity, it's about consistency of infrastructure and interface.
We export the freedom, they freedom back bits of their culture until we find those we really, really like.
That's why it's a good thing to have the power to knock off the assholes who would oppress other people. So those other people have someone to come to for that kind of help. And if we have to keep doing it again and again and again, then just think of it as a more explosion-intensive version of doing the dishes.
I was gonna say. What do you do? You call up George Costanza and tell him the situation index. If he's not there, just punch it into his faxback service.
That's a good point, but I thought the problem was the damage they were causing.
If you institute a mechanical solution, you create the problem of overburdening those responsible for policing it. If you institute no solution, you still have the problem.
Making people responsible for their actions, by first telling them they have the ability but no authority to take potentially dangerous action, and then allowing some to take such action, is a proven method for avoiding unnecessary empirical results (i.e., the same mistake being made by every newbie who doesn't know any better).
Requirements are specified in design documentation.
Each instance of Error checking or Recovery must be specified, just as the format of each element of output or the formula for each calculation must be specified.
Without that specification, who cares if you think the code is wrong? You can't prove it's wrong because you don't have the spec and didn't pay for its development. You bought (or five-finger GPL'ed) a license to operate the software. On an as-is basis, for every piece of software anyone posting to/. is ever likely to run.
You want it improved? Write the Engineering Change Request specifying the improvement, and send it along with the money necessary to get it done.
Design and validation of "bug-free" code is the most expensive software process there is. Just the paperwork on the validation process will double or triple the cost of the software. The problem is provably impossible to solve, and the best efforts on nontrivial code (and sometimes on what appears to be trivial code) end up with unresolved errors that are signed-off as calculated risks the costs of which will be borne by insurance, government, lucky avoidance of catastrophe, and the bottom line.
It's really far and away the best because it's quick and does make solid hits on most of your search term. It does this because its search is less complicated and bogs down less in niggling things like getting the best hits on your whole search term. It's pages are also an order of magnitude less complicated. Need to expand on a meme fast? Google's snappy, let's go there.
McDonald's food sucks, you say, but you eat there from 1 to 90 times a month. How often do you get to Pappadeaux, or Morton's, or somewhere else where the food is gorgeous, but takes longer, and effectively costs more time (both waiting and $$=your former work hours) per unit goodness.
--Blair
"The price of freedom is that you get the freedom you price."
I like that article. I'm going to file it away. In 30 years or so, when I retire and go off to teach at some tweedy little liberal arts mosque in the New Kabul highlands of New York, I'm going to use it as a teaching aid. It's a beautiful example of the fallacy of the excluded middle. Rall fairly clangs off the rails as he careens between credulity and incredulity. I think I need a dramamine.
Putative source is listed at top of article. It looks like an About.Com entry, until you realize that's an About.Com banner ad. The second link below came from a Google search, is dated 10/19, and shows the article is meming itself around the net.
It would exercise, it, but validation suites are expected to be able to help you figure out what went wrong when it goes wrong.
Just throwing the compiler at gcc would break it in strange and unknowable ways.
And before it validates the first feature you implemented, it would break it in 500 strange and unknowable ways that you deliberately did not implement but would have to work around by hand.
You work in a (target) sensitive (target) government (target) facility (target).
If not for those (prophylaxis) searches (diligence), there's no telling (anthrax) what (ebola) might (plague) get (guns) through (bombs).
So stop your whining. I'm sure you took a low-paying government job because you like the job security and the pension plan, but you also took on a responsibility to the public--which includes you--and a risk in case of war.
You're not contracted to the military, so you have the privilege of leaving your job at your pleasure.
Eventually, when Intel is flush with cash and looking for ways to risk it, maybe.
But the whole point of diversifying is to find those businesses that are easy when you're rich and durable when you're not.
Intel is doing the right thing shaking itself out of a subsidiary business that turns less profit and leaving it to more focussed competitors.
As for your question about the bailouts, $100 billion is nothing in this economy. Most popular mutual funds have $0.5-3.0 trillion in them. And there are a bunch of those.
Lots of companies will go the way of Intel's consumer-products division.
BTW, I'm predicting that this time next decade, you'll be able to walk into Crazy Great Satan's Hi-Fi store in Tehran and get the new Sony MD players and pay $US currency. The world changes. If you stop listening to the xenophobes worldwide and change it.
If nobody can get through to the spammer, nobody can provide him profit for his spam.
He's self-defusing.
Such problems are over the moment they start.
> With the very low barrier to entry that spam presents, there's no way The Authorities could ever prosecute even a small percentage of spammers.
Almost all crime has a low barrier to entry. Militant tolerance of it creates the problem.
High-profile prosecution of the ones you can catch goes a long way toward discouraging the naff attempts. But when was the last time you saw anyone pilloried on the nightly news for UCE?
Trying to prevent spam is like trying to prevent the diffusion of flatulence through the air.
You can't.
But, human beings have the ability to reason and match patterns in history to pattern in planning. And if they see masses of spammers being investigated and tried and sentenced and punished, that's a pattern that will be strong in their history.
Spam is not a violent crime. The inability to intercept it is not a detriment to public safety. But our apathy has led to the feeling among spammers that they can get away with it. By showing them they can't, they will for the most part stop trying.
And it's very easy to enforce. Every spam necessarily includes directions on how to contact those who would profit from your participation. And they need to stay there in order to collect your request. So every spam is a notice to the authorities to go to this place and arrest these people. Their trial will sort out whether they are guilty or not.
Eric discussed sharing the profits with the community, by giving them to one of the nonprofits like EFF or GNU or something, I forget which. The propriety of it ensured cooperation from hundreds if not thousands of contributors who assisted in the fullness and correctness of the result.
But when the checks came in, he said, "hey, I did all the work, why should I share", and kept it for himself.
The rest is a guilty little history that appears to have bubbled to the top of Eric's ego and memed its way onto the net once again.
"Eric S. Raymond is a wandering anthropologist and troublemaking philosopher who happened to be in the right place at the right time and has been wondering whether he should regret it ever since."
Those of us who remember when he stole the Jargon File from the community and sold it as his own think, "Why yes. Yes he should."
Slashdot Mirror
On Tuesday the EC voted to make the value of Pi equal to 3.
This will simplify the design of capstans for cash registers in Belgian butter stores, while causing a tolerable 400% increase in the paperwork required to calculate the orbits of communications satellites when requesting permission to use public-owned gravity generated by EC member states.
No, you miss the point of my post, which is:
COMPETE OR DIE!
If you can't compete, you have no justification to complain other than envy, failure or a sense of entitlement.
Starbucks isn't a government. It doesn't have an army. All it can do is put stores next to yours and provide a better product and experience at a better value. And if it can't, you win. And if Starbucks is as bad as you say, then you can't lose, right? And if you don't compete with them, it's either because you know you can't, or because you know you can but you're scared to (which means you know you can't, because they aren't scared of you, which is also part of the free-market equation).
--Blair
If you don't like Starbucks,
START YOUR OWN FUCKING COFFEE SHOP FRANCHISE.
Globalization isn't about utter homogeneity, it's about consistency of infrastructure and interface.
--Blair
See?
That's how it works.
We export the freedom, they freedom back bits of their culture until we find those we really, really like.
That's why it's a good thing to have the power to knock off the assholes who would oppress other people. So those other people have someone to come to for that kind of help. And if we have to keep doing it again and again and again, then just think of it as a more explosion-intensive version of doing the dishes.
--Blair
Note a slightly obfuscated point in the article.
IBM doesn't send him in, the client requests it.
IBM probably sells the idea, but the guy isn't unauthorized, he's just not known by the security apparatus to be authorized.
Two companies that interact on terms that would allow them to set up this game would not be called competitors.
I mean, if you got in, and got out, and showed the other guy his "flag", should you also show him the draft 5-year plan you ran off on his mopier?
--Blair
I was gonna say. What do you do? You call up George Costanza and tell him the situation index. If he's not there, just punch it into his faxback service.
--Blair
Can't we all just thrash along?
--Blair
Court order?
What would they need that for?
They have a GPL!
Oops. Maybe they don't...
--Blair
"The net is not secure. The net is not secure. The net is not secure."
That's a good point, but I thought the problem was the damage they were causing.
If you institute a mechanical solution, you create the problem of overburdening those responsible for policing it. If you institute no solution, you still have the problem.
Making people responsible for their actions, by first telling them they have the ability but no authority to take potentially dangerous action, and then allowing some to take such action, is a proven method for avoiding unnecessary empirical results (i.e., the same mistake being made by every newbie who doesn't know any better).
--Blair
Yeah. Let's hire all the criminals.
You don't have to be a sneak to be good at what you do, and you don't have to destroy your machinery with crap downloads either.
If these people were good, we wouldn't have the problem.
--Blair
Make people receiving new accounts sign an agreement that they will not upgrade their installations with unapproved software.
Fire those who fail to comply.
Then you'll still be able to do your job without having to go around unlocking registries.
--Blair
"Are B-schools spending all their time on cultural diversity and takeover avoidance?"
Requirements are specified in design documentation.
/. is ever likely to run.
Each instance of Error checking or Recovery must be specified, just as the format of each element of output or the formula for each calculation must be specified.
Without that specification, who cares if you think the code is wrong? You can't prove it's wrong because you don't have the spec and didn't pay for its development. You bought (or five-finger GPL'ed) a license to operate the software. On an as-is basis, for every piece of software anyone posting to
You want it improved? Write the Engineering Change Request specifying the improvement, and send it along with the money necessary to get it done.
Design and validation of "bug-free" code is the most expensive software process there is. Just the paperwork on the validation process will double or triple the cost of the software. The problem is provably impossible to solve, and the best efforts on nontrivial code (and sometimes on what appears to be trivial code) end up with unresolved errors that are signed-off as calculated risks the costs of which will be borne by insurance, government, lucky avoidance of catastrophe, and the bottom line.
--Blair
"And it pays my bills, in spades."
Hey! Who modded up a First Post?
--Blair
That's why it's far and away the best.
Huh? You ask?
It's really far and away the best because it's quick and does make solid hits on most of your search term. It does this because its search is less complicated and bogs down less in niggling things like getting the best hits on your whole search term. It's pages are also an order of magnitude less complicated. Need to expand on a meme fast? Google's snappy, let's go there.
McDonald's food sucks, you say, but you eat there from 1 to 90 times a month. How often do you get to Pappadeaux, or Morton's, or somewhere else where the food is gorgeous, but takes longer, and effectively costs more time (both waiting and $$=your former work hours) per unit goodness.
--Blair
"The price of freedom is that you get the freedom you price."
I like that article. I'm going to file it away. In 30 years or so, when I retire and go off to teach at some tweedy little liberal arts mosque in the New Kabul highlands of New York, I'm going to use it as a teaching aid. It's a beautiful example of the fallacy of the excluded middle. Rall fairly clangs off the rails as he careens between credulity and incredulity. I think I need a dramamine.
--Blair
Putative source is listed at top of article. It looks like an About.Com entry, until you realize that's an About.Com banner ad. The second link below came from a Google search, is dated 10/19, and shows the article is meming itself around the net.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/reac_ter17.htm
http://minjungkim.homestead.com/101901psa.html
The question is, which carefully formatted version is the original? Is either of them?
--Blair
It would exercise, it, but validation suites are expected to be able to help you figure out what went wrong when it goes wrong.
Just throwing the compiler at gcc would break it in strange and unknowable ways.
And before it validates the first feature you implemented, it would break it in 500 strange and unknowable ways that you deliberately did not implement but would have to work around by hand.
Or was that your subtle joke?
--Blair
Um...might that be the same reason the terrorists would be interested in the place?
And these days, considering the weapons, I think many previously innocuous medical research may have become classifiable information.
--Blair
"innocuous, not innoculous"
You don't like it, quit.
You work in a (target) sensitive (target) government (target) facility (target).
If not for those (prophylaxis) searches (diligence), there's no telling (anthrax) what (ebola) might (plague) get (guns) through (bombs).
So stop your whining. I'm sure you took a low-paying government job because you like the job security and the pension plan, but you also took on a responsibility to the public--which includes you--and a risk in case of war.
You're not contracted to the military, so you have the privilege of leaving your job at your pleasure.
--Blair
Eventually, when Intel is flush with cash and looking for ways to risk it, maybe.
But the whole point of diversifying is to find those businesses that are easy when you're rich and durable when you're not.
Intel is doing the right thing shaking itself out of a subsidiary business that turns less profit and leaving it to more focussed competitors.
As for your question about the bailouts, $100 billion is nothing in this economy. Most popular mutual funds have $0.5-3.0 trillion in them. And there are a bunch of those.
Lots of companies will go the way of Intel's consumer-products division.
BTW, I'm predicting that this time next decade, you'll be able to walk into Crazy Great Satan's Hi-Fi store in Tehran and get the new Sony MD players and pay $US currency. The world changes. If you stop listening to the xenophobes worldwide and change it.
--Blair
If nobody can get through to the spammer, nobody can provide him profit for his spam.
He's self-defusing.
Such problems are over the moment they start.
> With the very low barrier to entry that spam presents, there's no way The Authorities could ever prosecute even a small percentage of spammers.
Almost all crime has a low barrier to entry. Militant tolerance of it creates the problem.
High-profile prosecution of the ones you can catch goes a long way toward discouraging the naff attempts. But when was the last time you saw anyone pilloried on the nightly news for UCE?
--Blair
...that's how people are.
You don't see everyone out there. You see the people you live with and the people you work with.
You see people driving and shopping. You don't act the same in the mall as you do at home, why think the eccentrics do?
You think because you don't see people acting strange in transitory situations you're getting the strange people in your static situations.
Engineering has pretty normal demographics.
--Blair
Trying to prevent spam is like trying to prevent the diffusion of flatulence through the air.
You can't.
But, human beings have the ability to reason and match patterns in history to pattern in planning. And if they see masses of spammers being investigated and tried and sentenced and punished, that's a pattern that will be strong in their history.
Spam is not a violent crime. The inability to intercept it is not a detriment to public safety. But our apathy has led to the feeling among spammers that they can get away with it. By showing them they can't, they will for the most part stop trying.
And it's very easy to enforce. Every spam necessarily includes directions on how to contact those who would profit from your participation. And they need to stay there in order to collect your request. So every spam is a notice to the authorities to go to this place and arrest these people. Their trial will sort out whether they are guilty or not.
--Blair
Guy didn't own it, either.
Eric discussed sharing the profits with the community, by giving them to one of the nonprofits like EFF or GNU or something, I forget which. The propriety of it ensured cooperation from hundreds if not thousands of contributors who assisted in the fullness and correctness of the result.
But when the checks came in, he said, "hey, I did all the work, why should I share", and kept it for himself.
The rest is a guilty little history that appears to have bubbled to the top of Eric's ego and memed its way onto the net once again.
--Blair
From the bottom of the article:
"Eric S. Raymond is a wandering anthropologist and troublemaking philosopher who happened to be in the right place at the right time and has been wondering whether he should regret it ever since."
Those of us who remember when he stole the Jargon File from the community and sold it as his own think, "Why yes. Yes he should."
--Blair