I agree with you and I think a few people do recognize the problem. What we need is a system that allows the app companies like Dropbox and kindles to innovate and make money but without the lock-in.
For example Dropbox. Much of there success is just because of the lock-in. They are expensive and lack features like real encryption but because they built the most user friendly interface and spent lots of money for integration with other parties, the only people that can compete are Microsoft and Google.
It's a hard problem to solve because the market seems to go in the opposite direction - openness just isn't attractive.
I would guess the best way to break out of this situation is to develop a ecosystem where the advantages of openness are accessible by the general public. But that means user friendly, not here are 100 apps that support rsync, another 100 service providers and go figure out which combination is best for you then install, sign-up, configure and pay.
I'm really surprised how many highly rated comments claim extradition from the UK would be easier. Extradition from Sweden to the US would almost certainly happen. Take for example this fact:
Sweden has a bilateral agreement with the United States which would allow it to surrender Julian Assange without going through the traditional tests and standards of regular, lengthy extradition procedures.
How could anyone reasonably expect him to willfully submit to that? It seems highly likely he would end up rotting in a US jail for life, unheard and unseen.
Nice comment. Of course, it's not just calendars but basically everything; finding something as simple as a reliable and scalable email client is a challenge.
If you (or other posters) have some thoughts about how we might be able to fix this I'd love to hear it. Next month I'm going to start working full-time on trying to solve this problem because I hope the lack of success is just due too few attempts. Judging by your other replies, the issue is barely even recognized.
;; ANSWER SECTION: www.healthcare.gov. 28 IN CNAME www.geodirector.hc.gov.akadns.net. www.geodirector.hc.gov.akadns.net. 28 IN CNAME bh.georedirector.akadns.net. bh.georedirector.akadns.net. 11649 IN A 127.0.0.1
;; Query time: 47 msec ;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8) ;; WHEN: Sun Dec 1 09:18:17 2013 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 130
There's a lot of value in having an experienced person doing basic tasks, but we've forgotten that. Go to Europe, or Japan, and see what level of service you get there.
I agree with the rest of your comment, but I don't get this part. Service in Europe is horrible; it's one of the few things I miss about the states.
It sounds like homebrew provides a good solution. Perl (and Ruby and Python) already have mature packaging systems and they really don't need to interact with each other. So homebrew is a smart packaging system that plays nice with others.
Use unison (free) or Super Flexible File Synchronizer (better). Keeping several hosts synchronized is tough because of conflicting changes, temporary files, large stuff you don't want to transfer and moving files. You need a good UI and smart change tracking, which is what these programs provide.
As a developer, and I realize this is a very silly and irrational, I tend to avoid using programs written in languages I don't understand. True, I almost never look at the source for the program. But take Gentoo emerge for example. The fact that it is written in Python instead of C, awk, shell script, Tcl, Lua, or Java is mainly why I don't run Gentoo.
I agree with most of your post, but Python, C, Lua, and Java are so similar, you shouldn't have any trouble reading through python code if you know one of the others. Especially with a searchable manual by your side.
Hacking on emerge would be harder, but all these langs are basically interchangable. If only they shared a reasonable ABI and VM so they could be mixed freely. But we are stuck with bloated crap like Java and Mono.
I see a dozen comments applauding your idea, but I think we need some counter arguments. Unless your hashing function is time consuming or you're a robot, it must be simple enough that a few examples and brute forcing would allowing guessing other passwords.
Just use the same set of passwords for all sites - it's simpler and as secure, more or less.
I also had a good experience like this in college. My iBook screen broke. I mailed it in and they fixed it. After a few weeks it stopped powering on. So they fixed it again.
Then I was sitting cross-legged with my notebook and the angle put too much strain on the ethernet, snapping it off the motherboard.
I tried to fix it myself with a soldering iron and after I put it back together it didn't work at all.
So I called and said it was broke - no questions asked, they sent me the latest model. They even let me downgrade from the 14 inch (which was just too big) to the 12 inch and they let me use the difference to get RAM and hard-disk upgrades.
if (!flag)// looks like I'm testing a pointer?? if (!count)// looks like I'm testing a flag?? if (!ptr)// looks like I'm testing a counter??
Not only should the name give a clue, but the type of the variable should be available within the past 50 lines or so. I have a bigger problem with the readability of complex conditionals and the !ptr syntax helps. Actually I'm interested if you can give an example of good code where ptr == NULL is more clear than !ptr.
Hi. Thanks for your comment - the replies make this one of the most insightful threads I've read on/.. People get so angry at just the mention of raising gas taxes without even considering the evidence for it.
I support raising gas prices because I don't trust anyone, especially government, to micromanage production without the help of a free market. Small government means simple rules.
You might want to look up a book called 'Natural Capitalism'. It reasons that government is responsible for (1) protecting the environment and (2) raising capitol. Both these goals can be achieved by taxing natural resources, like oil or clean air.
Now when government taxes resources they can reduce income tax. Corporations that now choose to high one guy to run a oil-burning machine will be able to hire two workers instead, since lower income tax means workers can make the same, but cost the company less. This kind of affect cannot be found by mandating car efficiency, but it's exactly the thing we need.
And RedHat just represents *ONE* Linux company. There are many out there. IBM and Oracle both support Linux. Linux has a much larger commercial support base than does Solaris or OpenSolaris.
You seem to have ignored your own reasoning that we shouldn't think of "Linux" as a whole, but just one distro at a time. Oracle doesn't support "Linux", they support one distribution: "Oracle Unbreakable Linux". Now the market penetration and package availability of their distro is not comparable to RedHat. Hence, Solaris has a much larger "commercial support base" for people who care about Oracle.
Is this a joke? I've just finished reading the DOI FAQ and from what I can tell it doesn't provide any benefit over URLs.
Take your example: keeping track of articles. Couldn't the person assigning those DOI's just as easily assign a URL, and at that url place a metadata and a link to the article's content?
In either case it still depends on the link to the content being kept up to date.
Over the past few years I've been getting myself into the programming job market. I have done lots of personal projects but it's still difficult to land a job. Where I've had the most luck is doing contract programming. Somebody is more likely to hire you for a short job where they don't pay if you don't deliver and then you build up a reputation others can easily see.
I recommend going to http://rentacoder.com/ and bidding low on a few easy projects and anything that interests you. What has happened to me twice is that while discussing the project with the buyer I'm offered a real job to work full time on it - before even putting in a bid. In fact, I now think this is the best way to find a programming job - way better then responding to ads on job sites, which gets tons of replies.
As far as job sites go, I highly recommend http://www.careerjet.com/ which is a very-inclusive meta-search.
You are missing the point. When humans have to find items moving them around frequently will slow things down. But robots have no trouble keeping track of any number of items and their location. So the "locating an item" time becomes constant and small. Now only transport time becomes important and minimizing it is the goal. So the item locations are decided just to minimize that time. Notice the workers don't need to find the items in this warehouse - the robots do it for them.
Thanks for finding the information I was just going to lookup on their website. 50 years may not be optimal, but it's a lot better then the only competitors, hard drives or burned DVDs, which usually fail under 10 years. The fact that it's write-once is another plus, since even software bugs can't damage the data.
Your other point is valid, but secondary. If your DVDs or HDDs have degraded beyond readability, they're useless no matter how many readers you have. And if the life-span of the reader is longer then the life-span of a DVD or HDD, then you don't even need to worry about availability, since you store a few readers along with the disc. With a standard interface like USB mass storage or SATA it'll surely still be usable for decades.
Some clarifications are due. For flash disks with built in IDE controllers, they don't really distribute the writes across the disk. This is because they can't since IDE gives no indication when a sector is deleted. So if you write to 100 sectors of a 100 sector disk, then all further writes will either have to:
overwrite the logically overwritten sector
write to a different sector, but move that different sector to the logically overwitten sector
So as you see, it's not possible. The only way they can save your disk is if you don't use the whole thing. Normally they don't let you access the whole space, but that's just like spinning drives, which has reserved sectors for failures.
And the flash disks that allow direct access, without IDE controllers, don't do any load balancing. But normally one will use a load-balancing filesystem designed for flash, like JFFS.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. When you shop in a state with no sales tax you still need lots of pennies and nickels. It's because stores price almost everything like $0.99 or $0.95. Sales tax mearly reverses the exchange of pennies between the cashier and customer.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have a link to this specific research or an article about it?
There is http://www.bewelcome.org/ which was started around the time couchsurfing became commercial.
It's not as big, but still usable. And fewer surfers means less competition for couches.
Don't forget they were the first to really embrace USB.
I agree with you and I think a few people do recognize the problem. What we need is a system that allows the app companies like Dropbox and kindles to innovate and make money but without the lock-in.
For example Dropbox. Much of there success is just because of the lock-in. They are expensive and lack features like real encryption but because they built the most user friendly interface and spent lots of money for integration with other parties, the only people that can compete are Microsoft and Google.
It's a hard problem to solve because the market seems to go in the opposite direction - openness just isn't attractive.
I would guess the best way to break out of this situation is to develop a ecosystem where the advantages of openness are accessible by the general public. But that means user friendly, not here are 100 apps that support rsync, another 100 service providers and go figure out which combination is best for you then install, sign-up, configure and pay.
I'm really surprised how many highly rated comments claim extradition from the UK would be easier. Extradition from Sweden to the US would almost certainly happen. Take for example this fact:
How could anyone reasonably expect him to willfully submit to that? It seems highly likely he would end up rotting in a US jail for life, unheard and unseen.
Nice comment. Of course, it's not just calendars but basically everything; finding something as simple as a reliable and scalable email client is a challenge.
If you (or other posters) have some thoughts about how we might be able to fix this I'd love to hear it. Next month I'm going to start working full-time on trying to solve this problem because I hope the lack of success is just due too few attempts. Judging by your other replies, the issue is barely even recognized.
There's a lot of value in having an experienced person doing basic tasks, but we've forgotten that. Go to Europe, or Japan, and see what level of service you get there.
I agree with the rest of your comment, but I don't get this part. Service in Europe is horrible; it's one of the few things I miss about the states.
I think you get that message because your apps admin didn't enable profiles.
Anyway, I have an apps domain and got invited to google+ with my apps email and everything worked fine. I'm using it now.
It sounds like homebrew provides a good solution. Perl (and Ruby and Python) already have mature packaging systems and they really don't need to interact with each other. So homebrew is a smart packaging system that plays nice with others.
Use unison (free) or Super Flexible File Synchronizer (better). Keeping several hosts synchronized is tough because of conflicting changes, temporary files, large stuff you don't want to transfer and moving files. You need a good UI and smart change tracking, which is what these programs provide.
As a developer, and I realize this is a very silly and irrational, I tend to avoid using programs written in languages I don't understand. True, I almost never look at the source for the program. But take Gentoo emerge for example. The fact that it is written in Python instead of C, awk, shell script, Tcl, Lua, or Java is mainly why I don't run Gentoo.
I agree with most of your post, but Python, C, Lua, and Java are so similar, you shouldn't have any trouble reading through python code if you know one of the others. Especially with a searchable manual by your side.
Hacking on emerge would be harder, but all these langs are basically interchangable. If only they shared a reasonable ABI and VM so they could be mixed freely. But we are stuck with bloated crap like Java and Mono.
I see a dozen comments applauding your idea, but I think we need some counter arguments. Unless your hashing function is time consuming or you're a robot, it must be simple enough that a few examples and brute forcing would allowing guessing other passwords.
Just use the same set of passwords for all sites - it's simpler and as secure, more or less.
I also had a good experience like this in college. My iBook screen broke. I mailed it in and they fixed it. After a few weeks it stopped powering on. So they fixed it again.
Then I was sitting cross-legged with my notebook and the angle put too much strain on the ethernet, snapping it off the motherboard.
I tried to fix it myself with a soldering iron and after I put it back together it didn't work at all.
So I called and said it was broke - no questions asked, they sent me the latest model. They even let me downgrade from the 14 inch (which was just too big) to the 12 inch and they let me use the difference to get RAM and hard-disk upgrades.
Not only should the name give a clue, but the type of the variable should be available within the past 50 lines or so. I have a bigger problem with the readability of complex conditionals and the !ptr syntax helps. Actually I'm interested if you can give an example of good code where ptr == NULL is more clear than !ptr.
Hi. Thanks for your comment - the replies make this one of the most insightful threads I've read on /.. People get so angry at just the mention of raising gas taxes without even considering the evidence for it.
I support raising gas prices because I don't trust anyone, especially government, to micromanage production without the help of a free market. Small government means simple rules.
You might want to look up a book called 'Natural Capitalism'. It reasons that government is responsible for (1) protecting the environment and (2) raising capitol. Both these goals can be achieved by taxing natural resources, like oil or clean air.
Now when government taxes resources they can reduce income tax. Corporations that now choose to high one guy to run a oil-burning machine will be able to hire two workers instead, since lower income tax means workers can make the same, but cost the company less. This kind of affect cannot be found by mandating car efficiency, but it's exactly the thing we need.
And RedHat just represents *ONE* Linux company. There are many out there. IBM and Oracle both support Linux. Linux has a much larger commercial support base than does Solaris or OpenSolaris.
You seem to have ignored your own reasoning that we shouldn't think of "Linux" as a whole, but just one distro at a time. Oracle doesn't support "Linux", they support one distribution: "Oracle Unbreakable Linux". Now the market penetration and package availability of their distro is not comparable to RedHat. Hence, Solaris has a much larger "commercial support base" for people who care about Oracle.
Is this a joke? I've just finished reading the DOI FAQ and from what I can tell it doesn't provide any benefit over URLs.
Take your example: keeping track of articles. Couldn't the person assigning those DOI's just as easily assign a URL,
and at that url place a metadata and a link to the article's content?
In either case it still depends on the link to the content being kept up to date.
It is easier than that - in Software Update just select "Download Only" from the menubar.
Over the past few years I've been getting myself into the programming job market. I have done lots of personal projects but it's still difficult to land a job. Where I've had the most luck is doing contract programming. Somebody is more likely to hire you for a short job where they don't pay if you don't deliver and then you build up a reputation others can easily see.
I recommend going to http://rentacoder.com/ and bidding low on a few easy projects and anything that interests you. What has happened to me twice is that while discussing the project with the buyer I'm offered a real job to work full time on it - before even putting in a bid. In fact, I now think this is the best way to find a programming job - way better then responding to ads on job sites, which gets tons of replies.
As far as job sites go, I highly recommend http://www.careerjet.com/ which is a very-inclusive meta-search.
That's not quite what wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_signaling
You are missing the point. When humans have to find items moving them around frequently will slow things down. But robots have no trouble keeping track of any number of items and their location. So the "locating an item" time becomes constant and small. Now only transport time becomes important and minimizing it is the goal. So the item locations are decided just to minimize that time. Notice the workers don't need to find the items in this warehouse - the robots do it for them.
Thanks for finding the information I was just going to lookup on their website. 50 years may not be optimal, but it's a lot better then the only competitors, hard drives or burned DVDs, which usually fail under 10 years. The fact that it's write-once is another plus, since even software bugs can't damage the data.
Your other point is valid, but secondary. If your DVDs or HDDs have degraded beyond readability, they're useless no matter how many readers you have. And if the life-span of the reader is longer then the life-span of a DVD or HDD, then you don't even need to worry about availability, since you store a few readers along with the disc. With a standard interface like USB mass storage or SATA it'll surely still be usable for decades.
- overwrite the logically overwritten sector
- write to a different sector, but move that different sector to the logically overwitten sector
So as you see, it's not possible. The only way they can save your disk is if you don't use the whole thing. Normally they don't let you access the whole space, but that's just like spinning drives, which has reserved sectors for failures.And the flash disks that allow direct access, without IDE controllers, don't do any load balancing. But normally one will use a load-balancing filesystem designed for flash, like JFFS.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. When you shop in a state with no sales tax you still need lots of pennies and nickels. It's because stores price almost everything like $0.99 or $0.95. Sales tax mearly reverses the exchange of pennies between the cashier and customer.