Some people will be driven to the insurgency regardless of what we do in the Middle East and across the globe, but we must take whatever steps possible (and reasonable) to limit the number of people who join the insurgency.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that the best way to do this would be by implementing a foreign policy that doesn't make so many people so angry with us in the first place? Let me throw out a couple of ideas:
1) Don't start wars against countries who have not threatened or attacked you or your allies.
2) Stop supporting groups that constitute oppressive, totalitarian regimes, just because they don't like someone whom you also don't like.
3) Participate in global efforts to address global problems. Think Kyoto.
4) Generally speaking, try to take the high ground, diplomatically and militarily, if at all possible, when dealing with your friends and enemies.
I think we'd be amazed at a) how many fewer people actively hate us, and b) how many people/countries would support us in our efforts to contain or repel the efforts of the people who still do. A little integrity goes a long way.
However, with the release of Vista, I really feel that it will be very similar to what happened with Windows Millenium Edition. Starting with beta 1, I've installed and tried out each subsequent build of Vista all the way up to the latest RC1 release. All I can say is...WHAT THE?? It's a dog...a big ole' stinkin' dog! I couldn't believe the amount of resources you really need to run it. The default install is over 6 gigs, you need at least a gig of RAM just to get by, and the new interface is pointless unless you have a fairly decent video card that is DirectX 9 compatible. All in all, lots of fluff with little substance.
This is ultimately what will keep me away from Vista. I too have run Windows at home since the release of Windows 95 (though I've had my share of dual boot systems with various Linux incarnations that whole time as well), and do software development primarily in a Windows environment (pretty exclusively.NET/C# these days). Since Windows 95, I've watched the quality of the Windows OS steadily increase with each new version (with some notable deviations *cough*WinME*cough*); getting heavy into Windows 2000 was the first time I was impressed/satisfied with the overall quality of the OS. As such, it was quite some time before I upgraded to XP, because there simply was no need: Win2k was getting it done for me in the Windows world, both at the server and client (Professional) level. Now that I've made the jump, XP has proven to be a stable, satisfactory environment for my consumer-level computing needs, just as Windows Server 2003 has proven to be a reliable extension to Windows 2000 Server for my development needs.
I haven't personally evaluated Vista by installing it and trying it out. But from what I've read, I just don't see any benefit to upgrading. It doesn't sound like there's any significant change in functionality. Just new shiny things that translate into resource hogs. Features I don't really care about, even if they weren't resource hogs. Security? Got that nailed; it's just a configuration/responsible use issue. Multimedia? I'm not really lacking there either. What else is there? 3D-ish windowing? Yeah, that's not going to do it for me.
I'm sure I'm not the prototypical Windows user, but that's my take on Vista: not enough bang for the buck, and as such I'm not going to mess with a good thing. Maybe there will be a compelling reason to change OSes by the time the next one comes out?
Decline to do business with China. Heh. You know, this holier than thou tirade of the/. masses simply reeks of hypocrisy. China had roughly 225 billion dollars worth of exported goods to the United States last year, accounting for 14.6% of total imports for the US, second only to Canada. Their total percentage of trade with the US last year (imports and exports) was 11.1% of all trade for the US, our third largest trading partner. These numbers are straight from the US Census Bureau.
Are you from the US? Do you think that you don't do business every week with China? Every day? Where did those shoes come from? That furniture? Those pots and pans? That toothpaste? The pencil you're writing with? When's the last time you went to Wal Mart? Target? Staples? Home Depot?
Supporting the Chinese government in any way goes against this value system you would so like to uphold in your mind. To single Google out when you consume Chinese-made goods throughout your life is completely hypocritical.
If you RTFSurvey, you'll see that IT covers more than just corporate network architects and maintainers. Among other positions, software developers are in there too, and last time I checked, entire businesses are based around what software developers produce.
A firewall, reasonable use restrictions (not installing Chinese software cracks), not using IE/Outlook, and running an occasional anti-virus anti-spyware scan are plenty.
It's the "reasonable use restrictions" part that encompasses too much ground for your average (computer/internet-undereducated) user to adequately cover. They don't understand what is reasonable and what is not.
That said, I have yet to see where these internet security suites make things any better. Every single machine I've had to disinfect for someone in the group above has had anti-virus software installed on it. It didn't seem to keep their machines from being completely compromised.
What's sad to me is that I know other developers and IT professionals who themselves have drunk the kool aid and use these tools religiously. I've sat and shook my head as I've watched their machines crawl, watched them click through ridiculous numbers of allow/deny pop-up windows, watched them pull their hair out wondering why this or that application won't run properly. What's the point in having a computer if you're not allowed to use it?
Education is a wonderful thing. I run no anti-virus software, and limited firewalling, in every computing environment I work in. I've never had a compromised machine, never had one virus, one trojan. Nothing. My brain and resulting discretion is the best security software I could ever ask for.
I imagine they're ditching.Net after the realization that mono is letting even more Windows apps come to Linux (they're only real threat).
They're not ditching.NET. The reason that much of Longhorn wouldn't be built on.NET is the same reason that other features have been axed from Longhorn. The timing of the release is more important than integrating those things at this time.
.NET is not ready to be an OS platform. I'm sure Microsoft will continue with their plans to make it so in a future released product, just like they'll get WinFS in there as well. They're just realizing that the time required to do so is prohibitive to them getting a timely release of Longhorn out to the masses.
I don't think it's that confusing, really. They're just scaling back their release. Pretty straightforward stuff.
Now, I'm NOT a Windows lover by any stretch of the imagination...but come on. If you're going to attack it, at least do it in an intellegent manner. This guy was just full of himself, gave no real facts or data and just spouted crap.
And that's my problem with this article. I have no particular allegiance to any specific platform (though I'm predominantly a WinTel user day-to-day at this point, as it happens), so my argument isn't based there.
The article's author says:
I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.
And then goes on to give random generalizations about the WinTel platform, never giving any real evidence to support his arguments.
This is a very poorly written article, and as such doesn't do anyone on either side of this debate any favors. How does something like this make slashdot?
Re:Hubble, Hubble, Toil and Trouble
on
Hope for Hubble
·
· Score: 1
I agree with the principle that we should keep Hubble until there is an alternative, but that alternative is not decades away. As someone posted above, JWST is just around the corner, slated to launch in six years.
I don't understand why any of this is considered a big deal. Who's going to go to some hacking site and open a link to their bank? Any scenario in which this sequence of events could happen seems pretty farfetched to me.
Don't underestimate the the gumption of the average internet tourist.:) There are users who will go to any number of sites across the gamut of secure to seedy (they wouldn't have to pose as hacker sites; they could easily be unethical porn sites, warez sites, whatever), and just as quickly use any random browser window that opened for them to go do something else. These are the same people who are always asking me to fix their virused, spywared, malwared computers every few weeks, and they are everywhere.
Yeah, it's sad, but true. I think it's extremely likely that someone could set a trap and stumble upon some hits. You don't need many.
somebody correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe window.open returns a handle to the the newly opened window, regardless of the name or use of __blank, etc. so you still have access to it, even when its not a named window.
You don't have access to the handle of the window. You're not the one doing the window.open() of the ultimate window, so you have to access it some other way.
Of course, someone else mentioned that you could potentially surf the DOM for it; my DOM experience is too antiquated to remember if that's feasible.;-)
Why haven't the laws been applied to anyone at Enron?
You know, more to the point, I want to understand why any of these companies are allowed to continue to exist in any way, shape, or form. It seems to me that there was never a better application of the federal antitrust laws that are designed to protect investors and citizens in general from this kind of thing.
So why do any of these companies continue to have charters? I don't care if they've been driven to backruptcy; they'll just restructure and come back to do the same thing. Their charters should be revoked. These companies should never be allowed to do business in America again. They haven't demonstrated any ability to do so responsibly.
...except that the Sealand site doesn't have it as good. The datahaven in Cryptonomicon was under the wing of a nation that was neutral and basically beholden to no one. If the British decide that they don't like what's going on out there, they'll bloody well shut it down.
We've written about this case before. Then STOP writing about it.
Why? It's an ongoing case, with new developments, that involves a technical subject and curiosity. Isn't that what SlashDot is supposed to write about?
As for the Mitnick angle, I don't know why some of you are getting all bent out of shape about the fact that Mitnick is one of the protagonists in this case. Yes, protagonist. He's helping in a lawsuit against a big telco that's lying about the level of security in their system. Or do you think security through obscurity and, by extension, misinformation, is actually a good thing?
Who cares which particular hacker it is that's exposing them. The idea is that, in the end, your telecommunications will be more secure as a result.
The numbers for this one (~100 meters at 10 km/sec) hitting the moon are a 15 megaton explosion, a quake of magnitude 6.4, and a new crater. This wouldn't have any impact on the earth.
Now, if you're talking destruction of the moon, that could be a problem. According to the site, it would take a rock 400km in diameter, travelling at 55km/s, to destroy the moon. A pretty unlikely occurence, in other words.
You could have it be a "dumb" device. It could communicate with the actual device a la Blue tooth and just act as a speaker and microphone.
I think it would actually have to be something along these lines. As a potential standalone unit, there's not going to be any reliable way to dial with it, and I doubt that you want something ringing in your mouth (although I guess they could develop a mouth-ring that wasn't nearly as intrusive as a normal phone-ring). Plus, how would you answer, hang up, etc.? Of course, setting options and storing numbers is right out of the question.
You're going to have to have a hand unit, and the tooth part would only represent the mouth/ear-piece. At least until they develop a direct brain interface, so you can manage everything inside your head.
I'm sure they're out there, but I don't personally know anyone who codes much client-side Java anymore, and I'm guessing it's for this reason.
But either way, I'm of the mind that if you're developing client- or server-side Java software, it's pretty easy to document what version(s) of Sun's JVM you support, as well as exactly how to get them. Then someone goes, takes five minutes, and downloads them. End of story.
Honestly, I'm sick of seeing stuff about Microsoft's anti-trust suits anymore, mostly for the reasons you've cited; namely, no one is winning in any of this. It's just turned into a giant legal mess, which the sooner I learn to ignore, the sooner I can get back to work writing in whatever language for whatever platform is needed for my current project. Hopefully that doesn't sound like a troll. I guess I can sort of see the relevance of the outcome to the open source community. But from my perspective, the eventual outcome will be a stalemate at best, and all of these ridiculous wranglings for what's included with the operating system will be for naught. The damage is already done, and it won't be corrected.
first of all your teacher does not want a compiler to check your work.. you are supposed to do it yourself...
You're supposed to write perfect code the first time around? I agree that it's an interesting test of your knowledge of a concept, but it's completely unrealistic from the standpoint of what you would do in real life (as much of academia is, I'm afraid). I can write code that is pretty close, debug through compile and runtime errors, unit test for missed functionality, etc., and have something working in half the time it would take me to attempt to do all that on paper, analyzing each statement "by hand." Is this not the way that 99% of all developers work?
and second, you should not be looking up stuff with man if you ever get a job... just wait untill the boss finds out that your spending your payed hours learning how to code when school should have taght it to you...
I use man as a reference, as I would imagine most people do. I don't keep every last detail of every function or program I'm going to have to use in my brain.
I know that both of these arguments are somewhat counter to the purpose of academia. I have an HP calculator that will do integrals for me too, but can obviously see where that wouldn't be allowed on a calculus test where you're demonstrating your ability to integrate. But as for writing code on paper, it just never made much sense to me. It's completely outside the medium for which it was intended, and completely counter to the process which most developers use to write code.
If you want to test someone's knowledge of a computer concept/algorithm/etc., have them write detailed flow charts. Get 'em used to it. Make UML requirements. These are the kinds of things that not only make for good development practices, but also will have a practical application when students actually get out of school and start working.
Just make your code totally annoying and frustrating to look at, but still correct
I don't know about you, but where I went to school, it wasn't just about making the algorithm correct; you had to demonstrate a straightforward, efficient design too. Obfuscation like that would have just cost us credit on the problem.
If you don't like what Lucas has done or is going to do (Episode 7 anyone?), just give your money to someone else.
I already made that decision after Episode I, or I should say after Episode I and hearing Mr. Lucas spout off something about DVD not being the right medium for releasing the previous Star Wars movies. Yeah, the VHS format you've already released them on is far superior. Oh, and what a surprise, the new garbage movies are on DVD.
Everything I've seen about George Lucas points to him being an arrogant, self-important asshole. I never wanted to think so, since I loved the first two Star Wars installments. But evidence is evidence. I remember when my sister bought the re-release VHS tapes of the Star Wars Trilogy, and you were subjected to this monstrously long interview with George Lucas at the beginning of each tape. So you had no choice but to watch it or fast-forward through it to get to the movie. If that isn't the most blatant example of his arrogance, I'm sure the example that is deserves the award.
So when he dished up the turd that is Episode I and expected me to eat it and enjoy it like a good little Star Wars drone, I said I'd be damned if I was going to give him anymore money. No Episode II for me; not in the theaters, not on video, not on TV, no chance. No Episode III. No Episode Anything. That cheeseball is going to have to find some other schmuck to feed him and stroke his super-ego. The sad part is, I'm sure that he will.
I don't see where linking to anything should make you liable for the contents you link to, especially as an individual. I mean, someone walks up to you and says, "Hey, do you know where I can get a gun?" You say, "Yeah, there's a pawn shop down the street." Then that guy goes there, buys a gun, and proceeds to mow down a schoolyard full of children. Are you an accessory to mass murder, because you disseminated information to him?
If you want to hold someone responsible for breaking laws, go after the person who actually broke the law. I swear, this crap is just another example of how in the United States, we have this need to displace responsibility for a person's actions. A.k.a. the land of the lawsuit.
In this particular type of case, it seems like such an easy line to draw. If anything, the people who are linking to such information are providing a service to the people who want it shut down. The more linking there is, the easier it is to find who they're looking for and go after her.
I won't speak to the legitimacy of actually hosting this data. That's another question entirely. But linking to it? There should be no question about the legitimacy of that.
They could even make a college preparatory class out of the experience: Installing Debian 201...
This may be a bit off-topic, but I don't really understand how installing an operating system would prepare you for college. As a CS graduate, I can't remember any time in my college career that being able to install an operating system (even in the early days of hand-hacked installs of Slackware) had any direct impact on my college studies. But maybe that's just me. And maybe I'm also just missing obvious humor.:)
What exactly do you think P2P is? People just randomly figuring out a way to connect to each other, then exchanging information?
Napster is pretty much the epitome of P2P: software that enables people to transact directly with each other. That's exactly what Napster does/did. If that's not P2P, could you give me a better example of it?
Given the timing, I think I must have been in the shower, or on my way to it. It was either that, or sitting on the couch watching the Sharks game. I'm in Cupertino, and didn't feel anything. The strange thing is, my girlfriend lives less than a mile from me, and she felt it.
I know this is going to sound kooky, but I feel disappointed that I didn't experience it.
Oh, and I'm originally from the midwest, and tornadoes frighten and intrigue me about the same as I figure earthquakes would, if I could ever feel one! I know, that's the wrong thing to go wishing for, so I won't.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Some people will be driven to the insurgency regardless of what we do in the Middle East and across the globe, but we must take whatever steps possible (and reasonable) to limit the number of people who join the insurgency.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that the best way to do this would be by implementing a foreign policy that doesn't make so many people so angry with us in the first place? Let me throw out a couple of ideas:
1) Don't start wars against countries who have not threatened or attacked you or your allies.
2) Stop supporting groups that constitute oppressive, totalitarian regimes, just because they don't like someone whom you also don't like.
3) Participate in global efforts to address global problems. Think Kyoto.
4) Generally speaking, try to take the high ground, diplomatically and militarily, if at all possible, when dealing with your friends and enemies.
I think we'd be amazed at a) how many fewer people actively hate us, and b) how many people/countries would support us in our efforts to contain or repel the efforts of the people who still do. A little integrity goes a long way.
This is ultimately what will keep me away from Vista. I too have run Windows at home since the release of Windows 95 (though I've had my share of dual boot systems with various Linux incarnations that whole time as well), and do software development primarily in a Windows environment (pretty exclusively .NET/C# these days). Since Windows 95, I've watched the quality of the Windows OS steadily increase with each new version (with some notable deviations *cough*WinME*cough*); getting heavy into Windows 2000 was the first time I was impressed/satisfied with the overall quality of the OS. As such, it was quite some time before I upgraded to XP, because there simply was no need: Win2k was getting it done for me in the Windows world, both at the server and client (Professional) level. Now that I've made the jump, XP has proven to be a stable, satisfactory environment for my consumer-level computing needs, just as Windows Server 2003 has proven to be a reliable extension to Windows 2000 Server for my development needs.
I haven't personally evaluated Vista by installing it and trying it out. But from what I've read, I just don't see any benefit to upgrading. It doesn't sound like there's any significant change in functionality. Just new shiny things that translate into resource hogs. Features I don't really care about, even if they weren't resource hogs. Security? Got that nailed; it's just a configuration/responsible use issue. Multimedia? I'm not really lacking there either. What else is there? 3D-ish windowing? Yeah, that's not going to do it for me.
I'm sure I'm not the prototypical Windows user, but that's my take on Vista: not enough bang for the buck, and as such I'm not going to mess with a good thing. Maybe there will be a compelling reason to change OSes by the time the next one comes out?
Decline to do business with China. Heh. You know, this holier than thou tirade of the /. masses simply reeks of hypocrisy. China had roughly 225 billion dollars worth of exported goods to the United States last year, accounting for 14.6% of total imports for the US, second only to Canada. Their total percentage of trade with the US last year (imports and exports) was 11.1% of all trade for the US, our third largest trading partner. These numbers are straight from the US Census Bureau.
Are you from the US? Do you think that you don't do business every week with China? Every day? Where did those shoes come from? That furniture? Those pots and pans? That toothpaste? The pencil you're writing with? When's the last time you went to Wal Mart? Target? Staples? Home Depot?
Supporting the Chinese government in any way goes against this value system you would so like to uphold in your mind. To single Google out when you consume Chinese-made goods throughout your life is completely hypocritical.
This was already posted yesterday. Why is it being posted again today?
It's the "reasonable use restrictions" part that encompasses too much ground for your average (computer/internet-undereducated) user to adequately cover. They don't understand what is reasonable and what is not.
That said, I have yet to see where these internet security suites make things any better. Every single machine I've had to disinfect for someone in the group above has had anti-virus software installed on it. It didn't seem to keep their machines from being completely compromised.
What's sad to me is that I know other developers and IT professionals who themselves have drunk the kool aid and use these tools religiously. I've sat and shook my head as I've watched their machines crawl, watched them click through ridiculous numbers of allow/deny pop-up windows, watched them pull their hair out wondering why this or that application won't run properly. What's the point in having a computer if you're not allowed to use it?
Education is a wonderful thing. I run no anti-virus software, and limited firewalling, in every computing environment I work in. I've never had a compromised machine, never had one virus, one trojan. Nothing. My brain and resulting discretion is the best security software I could ever ask for.
They're not ditching .NET. The reason that much of Longhorn wouldn't be built on .NET is the same reason that other features have been axed from Longhorn. The timing of the release is more important than integrating those things at this time.
I don't think it's that confusing, really. They're just scaling back their release. Pretty straightforward stuff.
And that's my problem with this article. I have no particular allegiance to any specific platform (though I'm predominantly a WinTel user day-to-day at this point, as it happens), so my argument isn't based there.
The article's author says:
And then goes on to give random generalizations about the WinTel platform, never giving any real evidence to support his arguments.
This is a very poorly written article, and as such doesn't do anyone on either side of this debate any favors. How does something like this make slashdot?
I agree with the principle that we should keep Hubble until there is an alternative, but that alternative is not decades away. As someone posted above, JWST is just around the corner, slated to launch in six years.
Don't underestimate the the gumption of the average internet tourist. :) There are users who will go to any number of sites across the gamut of secure to seedy (they wouldn't have to pose as hacker sites; they could easily be unethical porn sites, warez sites, whatever), and just as quickly use any random browser window that opened for them to go do something else. These are the same people who are always asking me to fix their virused, spywared, malwared computers every few weeks, and they are everywhere.
Yeah, it's sad, but true. I think it's extremely likely that someone could set a trap and stumble upon some hits. You don't need many.
You don't have access to the handle of the window. You're not the one doing the window.open() of the ultimate window, so you have to access it some other way.
Of course, someone else mentioned that you could potentially surf the DOM for it; my DOM experience is too antiquated to remember if that's feasible. ;-)
Why haven't the laws been applied to anyone at Enron?
You know, more to the point, I want to understand why any of these companies are allowed to continue to exist in any way, shape, or form. It seems to me that there was never a better application of the federal antitrust laws that are designed to protect investors and citizens in general from this kind of thing.
So why do any of these companies continue to have charters? I don't care if they've been driven to backruptcy; they'll just restructure and come back to do the same thing. Their charters should be revoked. These companies should never be allowed to do business in America again. They haven't demonstrated any ability to do so responsibly.
...except that the Sealand site doesn't have it as good. The datahaven in Cryptonomicon was under the wing of a nation that was neutral and basically beholden to no one. If the British decide that they don't like what's going on out there, they'll bloody well shut it down.
I'm kind of surprised this wasn't posted before (at least that I could find), but you can find Rep. Berman's comments here.
We've written about this case before. Then STOP writing about it.
Why? It's an ongoing case, with new developments, that involves a technical subject and curiosity. Isn't that what SlashDot is supposed to write about?
As for the Mitnick angle, I don't know why some of you are getting all bent out of shape about the fact that Mitnick is one of the protagonists in this case. Yes, protagonist. He's helping in a lawsuit against a big telco that's lying about the level of security in their system. Or do you think security through obscurity and, by extension, misinformation, is actually a good thing?
Who cares which particular hacker it is that's exposing them. The idea is that, in the end, your telecommunications will be more secure as a result.
If this is not a problem, how big of an asteroid would we need (roughly, of course,) to cause a problem?
A problem in terms of destroying the moon? Check out http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/impact.html and play around with numbers.
The numbers for this one (~100 meters at 10 km/sec) hitting the moon are a 15 megaton explosion, a quake of magnitude 6.4, and a new crater. This wouldn't have any impact on the earth.
Now, if you're talking destruction of the moon, that could be a problem. According to the site, it would take a rock 400km in diameter, travelling at 55km/s, to destroy the moon. A pretty unlikely occurence, in other words.
You could have it be a "dumb" device. It could communicate with the actual device a la Blue tooth and just act as a speaker and microphone.
I think it would actually have to be something along these lines. As a potential standalone unit, there's not going to be any reliable way to dial with it, and I doubt that you want something ringing in your mouth (although I guess they could develop a mouth-ring that wasn't nearly as intrusive as a normal phone-ring). Plus, how would you answer, hang up, etc.? Of course, setting options and storing numbers is right out of the question.
You're going to have to have a hand unit, and the tooth part would only represent the mouth/ear-piece. At least until they develop a direct brain interface, so you can manage everything inside your head.
I'm sure they're out there, but I don't personally know anyone who codes much client-side Java anymore, and I'm guessing it's for this reason.
But either way, I'm of the mind that if you're developing client- or server-side Java software, it's pretty easy to document what version(s) of Sun's JVM you support, as well as exactly how to get them. Then someone goes, takes five minutes, and downloads them. End of story.
Honestly, I'm sick of seeing stuff about Microsoft's anti-trust suits anymore, mostly for the reasons you've cited; namely, no one is winning in any of this. It's just turned into a giant legal mess, which the sooner I learn to ignore, the sooner I can get back to work writing in whatever language for whatever platform is needed for my current project. Hopefully that doesn't sound like a troll. I guess I can sort of see the relevance of the outcome to the open source community. But from my perspective, the eventual outcome will be a stalemate at best, and all of these ridiculous wranglings for what's included with the operating system will be for naught. The damage is already done, and it won't be corrected.
first of all your teacher does not want a compiler to check your work.. you are supposed to do it yourself...
You're supposed to write perfect code the first time around? I agree that it's an interesting test of your knowledge of a concept, but it's completely unrealistic from the standpoint of what you would do in real life (as much of academia is, I'm afraid). I can write code that is pretty close, debug through compile and runtime errors, unit test for missed functionality, etc., and have something working in half the time it would take me to attempt to do all that on paper, analyzing each statement "by hand." Is this not the way that 99% of all developers work?
and second, you should not be looking up stuff with man if you ever get a job... just wait untill the boss finds out that your spending your payed hours learning how to code when school should have taght it to you...
I use man as a reference, as I would imagine most people do. I don't keep every last detail of every function or program I'm going to have to use in my brain.
I know that both of these arguments are somewhat counter to the purpose of academia. I have an HP calculator that will do integrals for me too, but can obviously see where that wouldn't be allowed on a calculus test where you're demonstrating your ability to integrate. But as for writing code on paper, it just never made much sense to me. It's completely outside the medium for which it was intended, and completely counter to the process which most developers use to write code.
If you want to test someone's knowledge of a computer concept/algorithm/etc., have them write detailed flow charts. Get 'em used to it. Make UML requirements. These are the kinds of things that not only make for good development practices, but also will have a practical application when students actually get out of school and start working.
My $0.02
Just make your code totally annoying and frustrating to look at, but still correct
I don't know about you, but where I went to school, it wasn't just about making the algorithm correct; you had to demonstrate a straightforward, efficient design too. Obfuscation like that would have just cost us credit on the problem.
If you don't like what Lucas has done or is going to do (Episode 7 anyone?), just give your money to someone else.
I already made that decision after Episode I, or I should say after Episode I and hearing Mr. Lucas spout off something about DVD not being the right medium for releasing the previous Star Wars movies. Yeah, the VHS format you've already released them on is far superior. Oh, and what a surprise, the new garbage movies are on DVD.
Everything I've seen about George Lucas points to him being an arrogant, self-important asshole. I never wanted to think so, since I loved the first two Star Wars installments. But evidence is evidence. I remember when my sister bought the re-release VHS tapes of the Star Wars Trilogy, and you were subjected to this monstrously long interview with George Lucas at the beginning of each tape. So you had no choice but to watch it or fast-forward through it to get to the movie. If that isn't the most blatant example of his arrogance, I'm sure the example that is deserves the award.
So when he dished up the turd that is Episode I and expected me to eat it and enjoy it like a good little Star Wars drone, I said I'd be damned if I was going to give him anymore money. No Episode II for me; not in the theaters, not on video, not on TV, no chance. No Episode III. No Episode Anything. That cheeseball is going to have to find some other schmuck to feed him and stroke his super-ego. The sad part is, I'm sure that he will.
I don't see where linking to anything should make you liable for the contents you link to, especially as an individual. I mean, someone walks up to you and says, "Hey, do you know where I can get a gun?" You say, "Yeah, there's a pawn shop down the street." Then that guy goes there, buys a gun, and proceeds to mow down a schoolyard full of children. Are you an accessory to mass murder, because you disseminated information to him?
If you want to hold someone responsible for breaking laws, go after the person who actually broke the law. I swear, this crap is just another example of how in the United States, we have this need to displace responsibility for a person's actions. A.k.a. the land of the lawsuit.
In this particular type of case, it seems like such an easy line to draw. If anything, the people who are linking to such information are providing a service to the people who want it shut down. The more linking there is, the easier it is to find who they're looking for and go after her.
I won't speak to the legitimacy of actually hosting this data. That's another question entirely. But linking to it? There should be no question about the legitimacy of that.
They could even make a college preparatory class out of the experience: Installing Debian 201...
:)
This may be a bit off-topic, but I don't really understand how installing an operating system would prepare you for college. As a CS graduate, I can't remember any time in my college career that being able to install an operating system (even in the early days of hand-hacked installs of Slackware) had any direct impact on my college studies. But maybe that's just me. And maybe I'm also just missing obvious humor.
What exactly do you think P2P is? People just randomly figuring out a way to connect to each other, then exchanging information?
Napster is pretty much the epitome of P2P: software that enables people to transact directly with each other. That's exactly what Napster does/did. If that's not P2P, could you give me a better example of it?
Given the timing, I think I must have been in the shower, or on my way to it. It was either that, or sitting on the couch watching the Sharks game. I'm in Cupertino, and didn't feel anything. The strange thing is, my girlfriend lives less than a mile from me, and she felt it.
;-)
I know this is going to sound kooky, but I feel disappointed that I didn't experience it.
Oh, and I'm originally from the midwest, and tornadoes frighten and intrigue me about the same as I figure earthquakes would, if I could ever feel one! I know, that's the wrong thing to go wishing for, so I won't.