If your goal is to spread truth (e.g. if the main reason you oppose X is that it is based on / spread by lies) you may find yourself faced with just the sort of decision you describe. But you have mischaracterized the alternatives. Your actual options are:
Continue to insist on the truth, even though your opponent's lies may give them an edge and thus you might lose.
Start lying as well, in which case you automatically lose.
Remember, winning the battle is a means to an end. If you do something to "win" the battle that prevents you from obtaining your ultimate goal, it does your cause more harm than good.
First, what's "not safe for work" varies from place to place. Not only from country to country (there are government sponsored pro-breast feeding billboards all over the place where I am that I'm sure would be considered "not safe for work" back home) but from employer to employer as well. Two jobs back (in the states) people would occasionally have risque material showing on their monitors and nothing much was said, while one co-worker got a serious dressing-down for shopping on-line for a competitors product.
And probably more importantly, in many cases no one is looking over your shoulder but IT is still logging your web traffic (e.g. at the proxy). And it often isn't just (or even mostly) boobies they're worried about. I've seen more flags raised over warz, drug-related material (don't search for "how to beat drug tests" from your desk), stock trading concerns, cracking tools, and so forth.
It's a cute idea, but I don't think it's going to go too far.
I was recently pleased to discover that our leaders have hit upon an ideal solution for the perennial problem of that pesky public eventually getting their hands on documents like this. It's so simple, I don't know why they didn't think of it sooner.
Don't produce the information that will make you look bad in the first place.
For instance:
After a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism.
A rule change at the U.S. Geological Survey restricts agency scientists from publishing or discussing research without that information first being screened by higher-ups at the agency. Special screening will be given to "findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed.
The Treasury Department stopped producing reports showing how the benefits of tax cuts were distributed by income class.
After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.
Of course, the old trick of covering up / reclassifying things is still in use as well:
The FBI attempted to retroactively classify public information regarding the case of bureau whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, including a series of letters between the Justice Department and several senators.
President Bush issued an executive order limiting the public's access to presidential records. The order undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the release of those records after 12 years. Bush's order prevented the release of "68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers," some of whom had positions in the Bush Administration.
The Federal Communications Commission blocked access to a once-public database of network outages affecting telecommunications service providers. The FCC removed public copies and exempted the information from Freedom of Information Act requests, saying it would "jeopardize national security efforts."
The Federal Communications Commission ordered destroyed all copies of an unreleased 2004 draft report concluding that media consolidation hurt local TV news coverage, which runs counter to the administration's pro-consolidation stance.
...and so on.
Still, I think the new approach is much more elegant and will probably save the taxpayers a lot in the long run.
--MarkusQ
P.S. Sources and many more examples here.
I missed an important number in your post: the cost of the large tract of land that this will sit on.
From what he said at the start I gather the idea is to put this on otherwise unusable desert land (literally dirt cheap) and thus raise the value of a great deal of surrounding land, for a net gain on the real estate side. While I'm not convinced that the ecological impact of doing this to a desert is as unimportant as he seems to be assuming, he's probably correct about the monetary picture.
The "original thesis" as you call it was about revealing personal information (hobbies, interests, etc.) that might be later held against you by an employer, etc. as you would know if you read the article. It had nothing to do with passwords, SSNs, etc., which is a strawman you introduced.
Ignoring, more or less, your pugnacious tone, your argument seems to boil down to the claim that revealing passwords, PINs, etc., or things (such as your SSN) that are effectively used as such, is somehow equivalent to revealing the sort of personal information (sexual orientation, political affiliation, taste in music, and so on and so forth) that people might reveal on MySpace. And further, you somehow assume that anyone who does things that I won't do for you on demand must lack the "ability to reason in a logical fashion" or be "an utter idiot."
I of course beg to differ.
Your first point is clearly nonsense (a claim you can easily disprove by providing links to a few dozen publicly available MySpace pages with SSN's, bank account numbers, PINs, and the like).
On your second point I would claim that anyone who would reveal password-class information to a person like you, on an open web forum or not, would be the utter idiot. On the other hand, I have no qualms about telling you that I'm a fiscally conservative life-long registered Republican who voted a straight Democratic ticket in the last election because I'm tired of seeing our country run into the ground by a pack of clueless morons, no matter which party they ran under. I like classic rock and some modern stuff, but can't stomach more than a little rap or new age. And so on and so forth.
In case you still don't get it, the point of being "effectively immunized" is to not live as if you have any personal secrets that you wouldn't tell your boss / parents / spouse anyway. If you're going to prance about in undergarments that aren't gender appropriate, put up a web site detailing the whys and wherefores, and then if anyone tries to blackmail you by threatening to "out" you say "Oh good! Give them my URL while you're at it; I could use more page hits" and that is pretty much the end of it.
I don't get what you are saying. You think I think it matters, but then you say I think it doesn't. which do you think I think?
The point seemed quite clear to me. You clearly think it matters if people are (openly) gay since, if they are there may be repercussions (e.g. acts of violence against them). But in the same post you decried as narrow-minded (in rather harsh terms) anyone who thought it mattered if people were openly gay. This is a simply logical conflict.
Further, you stated that this fact left no other option than living in the closet, despite the fact that trends noted in the article itself shows many people have discovered a rather simple other option, namely not living in the closet. Now, you may not think this is a good option, but others disagree with you. That doesn't make it an absence of other options so much as an absence of other options that you like.
As for changing culture, what you (and the author of the article) seem to be missing is that you can't change culture by trying to fit in. And, when there is a crunch coming, you have to pick sides anyway--fit in with the old or fit in with the new? Either way you are in for some pain, which is why the old saying "May you live in interesting times" is considered a curse. Now I, personally, find myself taking the side of the status quo, with modifications: I like the thought of personal privacy, resent creeping bigbrotherism, but don't think personal information should be used to discriminate against people should it become public.
But I can't quite fault those who've made the opposite call and decided to welcome our new information sharing overlords--not by trying to become big brother themselves but rather by learning to live "in the open" and shape the mores and expectations of the new wave rather than clinging to the old and trying to fix it. Yes, they are paying a price for this, but it may well be worth it to them.
In other words, they could be just as clueless as you say and still be following a rational approach to a shift in privacy norms. This could be a result of low-level tendencies to "do the right thing" in changing social conditions or even a specific evolved response to exactly this sort of societal shift. There's no reason to suppose that they have to be going though any sort of conscious analysis, any more than we have to assume that sheep start each day asking themselves "to flock, or not to flock, that is the question."
While the technology involved is new, the demands it places on individuals is not. It may well be that we have an innate sensitivity to gradual loss of privacy and a linked and equally innate desire not to be seen as "the guy with secrets" when the shift is complete. In pretty much all such cases that I can imagine occurring in pre-history there is a smaller upfront cost to "coming clean with the tribe" than the eventual cost of getting caught. Since we haven't seen this play out yet, it may well turn out to be the case here as well.
You can't tell by looking at someone if they are gay. It shouldn't matter if they are or not, but many people (who I will declare as narrow minded pricks) do think it matters. Not only will these type of people judge homosexuals unfairly, another subset of these people may commit violence upon homosexuals.
I might point out that you yourself seem to fall into your "narrow minded" category, since you obviously think it matters as well. You clearly wish it didn't, but that's neither here nor there.
And, you might be correct. But there are also those who will tell you that life in the closet is far worse than life in the open, no matter what fears say otherwise. I don't know which view is correct, but I can tell you that you are wrong when you claim that:
There is then no other choice but to hide information that close minds should not see.
Since this is clearly not the case. You may not like the other choices, but they are there whether you like them or not.
So, what's his name, date-of-birth, SSN, Driver's License Number, Address and Phone Number?
While you may keep such information on people you worked with over ten years ago, I don't. The fact that he was living in such a way that he "had no secrets" doesn't any any way imply that I (or for that matter, anyone else) followed him around collecting the information. His first name was "Dave," he would be about 40 now, and that's about all I recall.
And to forestall another line of troll-attack I can see coming: he would not reveal passwords, etc., though he did point out that working on the assumption that all his personal information was public knowledge forced him to think carefully about his password policy.
While the consequences may be as dire as you claim, this is not certain. Even if true, it may still be rational for people to tell all on the web.
In the mid nineties a friend of mine who was putting a game-theory heavy education to work as a top notch security consultant claimed that we had passed a phase boundary and that privacy was essentially dead. At which point he started "living publicly," doing things like making his daily schedule (in detail) available to the world, sending all his receipts (for everything) to the IRS,etc.
When challenged on this rather odd behavior, and asked what he was trying to prove and to whom, he replied that he wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone except perhaps himself. His thinking was that having no privacy isn't nearly as bad as having no privacy and not coming to terms with that fact. He then walked us through a few cases (such as blackmail) and showed whywhen you were better off not getting in the bind of acting as if you had secrets when in fact others knew them.
Perhaps the MySpace people are at least subconsciously reacting in the same way to the growing threats to our privacy--by getting it all out there, so if anyone tries to use it against them they are effectively immunized.
The New York Times revealed covert operation just to spite the Bush Amninistration and they should have been prosecuted for treason. This "censorship" is weak namby pamby stuff.
What I think you are referring to here is the case of the New York Time eventually revealing the administration's unconstitutional abuse of power and the president's blatant refusal to uphold his oath of office (though that still could mean you were thinking about the presidentially authorized torture in the secret prisons, unlawful detention of US citizens, or unwarranted wiretaps); far from spiting him in these cases they held off on publication until after he was re-elected, possibly giving him a second term he never would have had without there help*.
--MarkusQ
* There help didn't stop there of course. You also have to factor in their unquestioning support for his war in Iraq, including repeatedly printing baseless claims of WMD.
A similar thing might well happen to analogue electronic engineers I suspect, with everything going digital these days. Why have a filter circuit composed of discrete components when you can program a DSP to do the same thing?
Or maybe not.
Definitely not. Underneath the digital abstraction that is tractable to think about there is are actual analogue circuits that have to be carefully designed so that the digital abstraction is a reasonable approximation of their behavior under normal conditions. Analogue engineers are still needed by the people who make digital electronics, and always will be unless they change substrates (to something like MEMS, for example).
And to answer your question about the filter circuit, there are a variety of reasons why a DSP might not suit your purposes, including power consumption, real estate, operating frequency, etc.
I think the problem here is your mental model, rather than the language. Specifically, you are thinking that the value of form field, which is a string, should be treated as an integer any time you want it to be. Admittedly, JavaScript does a pretty good job of doing this sort of implicit type conversion for you, but it can't always guess correctly. And, when it doesn't (or when you suspect that it might not) you should do the conversion explicitly.
Keep in mind that the example you cited (adding an integer to a string) would not work at all in most languages. While JavaScript makes a good guess at what you want, you really should be checking the value for validity (the user might have left it blank or typed in "Bob slept here" instead of giving the integer you were expecting), converting it to an integer with parseInt(document.theform.hours.value,10), and incrementing that.
Replying to sarcasm with facts is not a troll; nor is it flamebate.
But modding something down because you don't like to have undisputed facts injected into the discussion because they sink an otherwise appealing emotional argument is moderation abuse.
Yeah, the NY Times sucks because one of their journalists did a bad job 4 years ago.
I don't see where you pulled this from. The story gives links to articles which mention several recent cases, and my post, to which you are responding, provides links to two more, and yet you conclude that this is about one jounalist? Based on what, exactly?
And even putting the counting problems aside for the moment, we aren't talking about "doing a bad job" here. We are talking about knowingly and systematically presenting a picture which is intentionally misleading or even completely fabricated in order to promote the agenda of some third party (in other words, bald-faced lying). And the editors either being asleep at the switch or (more likely, given the other cases) knowingly permitting it. This isn't just "doing a bad job," it's closer to criminal misconduct.
The funny - or sad - thing is that the paper doesn't come close to following its own advice.
What everyone seems to be missing here is that the problem isn't just restricted to tech stories; their track record is just as bad when it comes to real world news. Remember Judith Miller and the "proof" about Iraq's WMD--the one they wound up apologizing for, years after we'd gotten mired in Vietnam II? Of course, it's a step up from citing totally made up sources (e.g. Jason Blaire's "composite" sources), but not by much.
They used to be the paper of record, but now they're just another waste of dead tree pulp.
Title 18 United States Code, Section 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States Congress, for lying about Iraq
I'm not so sure that one's a morally acceptable reason to impeach. After all, do you really believe that Congress wasn't in on it? They knew Iraq wasn't a threat to us, but went along with Bush's war because it was politically expedient.
That objection held more water before we learned that the WH selectively presented intelligence, cherry picked and edited things to support their position, and then had the nerve to say, over and over, that "congress saw the same intelligence we did" when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Add to that their vicious attacks on any and all critics (many of whom later turned out to be correct) and their extensive system of planting news stories that later turned out to be incorrect, I'd say yeah, it's a morally acceptable reason to impeach. The only reason it was "politically expedient" as you say was that they had done such a overreaching job of lying to everyone that would listen.
What in the world are you going on about? In the same post as stating:
I've advocated a position with disinterest and factual support. You've responded with essentially nothing but logical fallacies, from ad hominen through hasty generalization through (faulty) guilt by association through personal attack.
without providing a single instance of me doing so to support your claim, you say:
Your arguments bear the inchoate, personal retribution and sense of entitlement of a bratty child.
And
You've failed to demonstrate any qualities of intelligence, kindness or utility in your arguments, and your expression (or lack thereof) barely merit an intellectual classification of imbecile.
For the record, I haven't (that I can see) engaged in ad hominem attacks (I haven't even "sic"ed your typos). If I have, please point them out.
Also, for the record, I didn't "describe any solution" to anything; I said (quite clearly, I thought) that for the first time I think I understood Linus's position on the issue of binary only drivers. That's it.
Perhaps you should rethink why and how you interact with others, lest you continue to be so labeled.
Why would I want to control how other people (you, specifically, since you're the only one doing it at the moment) choose to label me? I am not trying to control you in any way. Go ahead, call me whatever you wish, think of me in whatever terms you are most comfortable with. Have fun, enjoy yourself.
And I'm sorry that my claiming to understand Linus's position upsets you so, but there is very little I can do about it.
What charges? Your rant didn't mention what "high crimes and misdemeanors" he's committed to justify impeachment.
Geeze, it's so hard to choose. For starters, how about picking on a few of his more egregious violations of the law:
Title 50 United States Code, Section 1805, the FISA law, for authorizing the unconstitutional wiretaps.
Title 18 United States Code, Section 113C, the Federal Torture Act, for authorizing the extraordinary rendition program
Title 18 United States Code, Section 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States Congress, for lying about Iraq
And those of you who've been paying attention will realize that we're just scratching the surface here. These are only a few of the more obvious crimes for which there is publicly available evidence, despite complete lack of congressional oversight for the last six years.
If the Dems have any balls at all we should be swimming in viable charges by this time next year.
I have never read a Tom Clancy novel but a quick google turns up the fact that their plots typically revolve around things like CIA spies and plots to blow things up and double agents and such, none of which are being suggested here. Instead, what is being suggested is that corporate executives might funnel money to third parties to do their dirty work, defame competitors, and bring frivolous lawsuits against groups or individuals who threaten their market dominance. Where might we have read about such things? Oh right--in the newspapers. In fact, several of the stories have involved Microsoft, and some even involved Darl McBride, as well as hundreds of other companies big and small.
Unless you are going to stick to your guns claim that we can drop all the white-collar crime laws off the books because nobody actually does such things and people who claim they do are just reading too much Tom Clancy, you'll have to come uyp with a better argument than that.
The evidence certainly doesn't support this position. We already know that MS gave SCO a significant amount of money through various channels with absolutely no visible return (the licenses, the PIPE funding, underwriting the EV1 deal, etc.).
It certainly seems more reasonable to assume that Microsoft is paying SCO to do exactly what SCO is doing rather than assuming that they've decided to start just giving away money for no particular reason.
Sometimes consistency isn't the hobgoblin of little minds.
IIRC, the actual quote they were going for is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and the point he was making is that small-minded people tend to get bogged down worrying about consistency where it doesn't really matter. In other words, if your list of biggest gripes includes items like this, get a life.
Slashdot Mirror
My first thought is that this is just the 2007 update of the old Austin Powers joke:
--MarkusQ
If your goal is to spread truth (e.g. if the main reason you oppose X is that it is based on / spread by lies) you may find yourself faced with just the sort of decision you describe. But you have mischaracterized the alternatives. Your actual options are:
Remember, winning the battle is a means to an end. If you do something to "win" the battle that prevents you from obtaining your ultimate goal, it does your cause more harm than good.
--MarkusQ
I see two problems with this right of the bat.
First, what's "not safe for work" varies from place to place. Not only from country to country (there are government sponsored pro-breast feeding billboards all over the place where I am that I'm sure would be considered "not safe for work" back home) but from employer to employer as well. Two jobs back (in the states) people would occasionally have risque material showing on their monitors and nothing much was said, while one co-worker got a serious dressing-down for shopping on-line for a competitors product.
And probably more importantly, in many cases no one is looking over your shoulder but IT is still logging your web traffic (e.g. at the proxy). And it often isn't just (or even mostly) boobies they're worried about. I've seen more flags raised over warz, drug-related material (don't search for "how to beat drug tests" from your desk), stock trading concerns, cracking tools, and so forth.
It's a cute idea, but I don't think it's going to go too far.
--MarkusQ
I was recently pleased to discover that our leaders have hit upon an ideal solution for the perennial problem of that pesky public eventually getting their hands on documents like this. It's so simple, I don't know why they didn't think of it sooner.
Don't produce the information that will make you look bad in the first place.
For instance:
Of course, the old trick of covering up / reclassifying things is still in use as well:
Still, I think the new approach is much more elegant and will probably save the taxpayers a lot in the long run.
--MarkusQ P.S. Sources and many more examples here.
From what he said at the start I gather the idea is to put this on otherwise unusable desert land (literally dirt cheap) and thus raise the value of a great deal of surrounding land, for a net gain on the real estate side. While I'm not convinced that the ecological impact of doing this to a desert is as unimportant as he seems to be assuming, he's probably correct about the monetary picture.
--MarkusQ
The "original thesis" as you call it was about revealing personal information (hobbies, interests, etc.) that might be later held against you by an employer, etc. as you would know if you read the article. It had nothing to do with passwords, SSNs, etc., which is a strawman you introduced.
Nice try and farewell.
--MarkusQ
Ignoring, more or less, your pugnacious tone, your argument seems to boil down to the claim that revealing passwords, PINs, etc., or things (such as your SSN) that are effectively used as such, is somehow equivalent to revealing the sort of personal information (sexual orientation, political affiliation, taste in music, and so on and so forth) that people might reveal on MySpace. And further, you somehow assume that anyone who does things that I won't do for you on demand must lack the "ability to reason in a logical fashion" or be "an utter idiot."
I of course beg to differ.
Your first point is clearly nonsense (a claim you can easily disprove by providing links to a few dozen publicly available MySpace pages with SSN's, bank account numbers, PINs, and the like).
On your second point I would claim that anyone who would reveal password-class information to a person like you, on an open web forum or not, would be the utter idiot. On the other hand, I have no qualms about telling you that I'm a fiscally conservative life-long registered Republican who voted a straight Democratic ticket in the last election because I'm tired of seeing our country run into the ground by a pack of clueless morons, no matter which party they ran under. I like classic rock and some modern stuff, but can't stomach more than a little rap or new age. And so on and so forth.
In case you still don't get it, the point of being "effectively immunized" is to not live as if you have any personal secrets that you wouldn't tell your boss / parents / spouse anyway. If you're going to prance about in undergarments that aren't gender appropriate, put up a web site detailing the whys and wherefores, and then if anyone tries to blackmail you by threatening to "out" you say "Oh good! Give them my URL while you're at it; I could use more page hits" and that is pretty much the end of it.
--MarkusQ
The point seemed quite clear to me. You clearly think it matters if people are (openly) gay since, if they are there may be repercussions (e.g. acts of violence against them). But in the same post you decried as narrow-minded (in rather harsh terms) anyone who thought it mattered if people were openly gay. This is a simply logical conflict.
Further, you stated that this fact left no other option than living in the closet, despite the fact that trends noted in the article itself shows many people have discovered a rather simple other option, namely not living in the closet. Now, you may not think this is a good option, but others disagree with you. That doesn't make it an absence of other options so much as an absence of other options that you like.
As for changing culture, what you (and the author of the article) seem to be missing is that you can't change culture by trying to fit in. And, when there is a crunch coming, you have to pick sides anyway--fit in with the old or fit in with the new? Either way you are in for some pain, which is why the old saying "May you live in interesting times" is considered a curse. Now I, personally, find myself taking the side of the status quo, with modifications: I like the thought of personal privacy, resent creeping bigbrotherism, but don't think personal information should be used to discriminate against people should it become public.
But I can't quite fault those who've made the opposite call and decided to welcome our new information sharing overlords--not by trying to become big brother themselves but rather by learning to live "in the open" and shape the mores and expectations of the new wave rather than clinging to the old and trying to fix it. Yes, they are paying a price for this, but it may well be worth it to them.
--MarkusQ
It doesn't have to be conscious.
In other words, they could be just as clueless as you say and still be following a rational approach to a shift in privacy norms. This could be a result of low-level tendencies to "do the right thing" in changing social conditions or even a specific evolved response to exactly this sort of societal shift. There's no reason to suppose that they have to be going though any sort of conscious analysis, any more than we have to assume that sheep start each day asking themselves "to flock, or not to flock, that is the question."
While the technology involved is new, the demands it places on individuals is not. It may well be that we have an innate sensitivity to gradual loss of privacy and a linked and equally innate desire not to be seen as "the guy with secrets" when the shift is complete. In pretty much all such cases that I can imagine occurring in pre-history there is a smaller upfront cost to "coming clean with the tribe" than the eventual cost of getting caught. Since we haven't seen this play out yet, it may well turn out to be the case here as well.
--MarkusQ
I might point out that you yourself seem to fall into your "narrow minded" category, since you obviously think it matters as well. You clearly wish it didn't, but that's neither here nor there.
And, you might be correct. But there are also those who will tell you that life in the closet is far worse than life in the open, no matter what fears say otherwise. I don't know which view is correct, but I can tell you that you are wrong when you claim that:
Since this is clearly not the case. You may not like the other choices, but they are there whether you like them or not.
--MarkusQ
While you may keep such information on people you worked with over ten years ago, I don't. The fact that he was living in such a way that he "had no secrets" doesn't any any way imply that I (or for that matter, anyone else) followed him around collecting the information. His first name was "Dave," he would be about 40 now, and that's about all I recall.
And to forestall another line of troll-attack I can see coming: he would not reveal passwords, etc., though he did point out that working on the assumption that all his personal information was public knowledge forced him to think carefully about his password policy.
--MarkusQ
While the consequences may be as dire as you claim, this is not certain. Even if true, it may still be rational for people to tell all on the web.
In the mid nineties a friend of mine who was putting a game-theory heavy education to work as a top notch security consultant claimed that we had passed a phase boundary and that privacy was essentially dead. At which point he started "living publicly," doing things like making his daily schedule (in detail) available to the world, sending all his receipts (for everything) to the IRS,etc.
When challenged on this rather odd behavior, and asked what he was trying to prove and to whom, he replied that he wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone except perhaps himself. His thinking was that having no privacy isn't nearly as bad as having no privacy and not coming to terms with that fact. He then walked us through a few cases (such as blackmail) and showed whywhen you were better off not getting in the bind of acting as if you had secrets when in fact others knew them.
Perhaps the MySpace people are at least subconsciously reacting in the same way to the growing threats to our privacy--by getting it all out there, so if anyone tries to use it against them they are effectively immunized.
--MarkusQ
What I think you are referring to here is the case of the New York Time eventually revealing the administration's unconstitutional abuse of power and the president's blatant refusal to uphold his oath of office (though that still could mean you were thinking about the presidentially authorized torture in the secret prisons, unlawful detention of US citizens, or unwarranted wiretaps); far from spiting him in these cases they held off on publication until after he was re-elected, possibly giving him a second term he never would have had without there help*.
--MarkusQ
* There help didn't stop there of course. You also have to factor in their unquestioning support for his war in Iraq, including repeatedly printing baseless claims of WMD.
Definitely not. Underneath the digital abstraction that is tractable to think about there is are actual analogue circuits that have to be carefully designed so that the digital abstraction is a reasonable approximation of their behavior under normal conditions. Analogue engineers are still needed by the people who make digital electronics, and always will be unless they change substrates (to something like MEMS, for example).
And to answer your question about the filter circuit, there are a variety of reasons why a DSP might not suit your purposes, including power consumption, real estate, operating frequency, etc.
--MarkusQ
I think the problem here is your mental model, rather than the language. Specifically, you are thinking that the value of form field, which is a string, should be treated as an integer any time you want it to be. Admittedly, JavaScript does a pretty good job of doing this sort of implicit type conversion for you, but it can't always guess correctly. And, when it doesn't (or when you suspect that it might not) you should do the conversion explicitly.
Keep in mind that the example you cited (adding an integer to a string) would not work at all in most languages. While JavaScript makes a good guess at what you want, you really should be checking the value for validity (the user might have left it blank or typed in "Bob slept here" instead of giving the integer you were expecting), converting it to an integer with parseInt(document.theform.hours.value,10), and incrementing that.
--MarkusQ
Replying to sarcasm with facts is not a troll; nor is it flamebate.
But modding something down because you don't like to have undisputed facts injected into the discussion because they sink an otherwise appealing emotional argument is moderation abuse.
I'm just saying.
--MarkusQ
I don't see where you pulled this from. The story gives links to articles which mention several recent cases, and my post, to which you are responding, provides links to two more, and yet you conclude that this is about one jounalist? Based on what, exactly?
And even putting the counting problems aside for the moment, we aren't talking about "doing a bad job" here. We are talking about knowingly and systematically presenting a picture which is intentionally misleading or even completely fabricated in order to promote the agenda of some third party (in other words, bald-faced lying). And the editors either being asleep at the switch or (more likely, given the other cases) knowingly permitting it. This isn't just "doing a bad job," it's closer to criminal misconduct.
--MarkusQ
From the article:
What everyone seems to be missing here is that the problem isn't just restricted to tech stories; their track record is just as bad when it comes to real world news. Remember Judith Miller and the "proof" about Iraq's WMD--the one they wound up apologizing for, years after we'd gotten mired in Vietnam II? Of course, it's a step up from citing totally made up sources (e.g. Jason Blaire's "composite" sources), but not by much.
They used to be the paper of record, but now they're just another waste of dead tree pulp.
--MarkusQ
That objection held more water before we learned that the WH selectively presented intelligence, cherry picked and edited things to support their position, and then had the nerve to say, over and over, that "congress saw the same intelligence we did" when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Add to that their vicious attacks on any and all critics (many of whom later turned out to be correct) and their extensive system of planting news stories that later turned out to be incorrect, I'd say yeah, it's a morally acceptable reason to impeach. The only reason it was "politically expedient" as you say was that they had done such a overreaching job of lying to everyone that would listen.
If anything, this is the best reason to impeach.
--MarkusQ
What in the world are you going on about? In the same post as stating:
without providing a single instance of me doing so to support your claim, you say:
And
For the record, I haven't (that I can see) engaged in ad hominem attacks (I haven't even "sic"ed your typos). If I have, please point them out.
Also, for the record, I didn't "describe any solution" to anything; I said (quite clearly, I thought) that for the first time I think I understood Linus's position on the issue of binary only drivers. That's it.
Why would I want to control how other people (you, specifically, since you're the only one doing it at the moment) choose to label me? I am not trying to control you in any way. Go ahead, call me whatever you wish, think of me in whatever terms you are most comfortable with. Have fun, enjoy yourself.
And I'm sorry that my claiming to understand Linus's position upsets you so, but there is very little I can do about it.
--MarkusQ
Geeze, it's so hard to choose. For starters, how about picking on a few of his more egregious violations of the law:
And those of you who've been paying attention will realize that we're just scratching the surface here. These are only a few of the more obvious crimes for which there is publicly available evidence, despite complete lack of congressional oversight for the last six years.
If the Dems have any balls at all we should be swimming in viable charges by this time next year.
--MarkusQ
I have never read a Tom Clancy novel but a quick google turns up the fact that their plots typically revolve around things like CIA spies and plots to blow things up and double agents and such, none of which are being suggested here. Instead, what is being suggested is that corporate executives might funnel money to third parties to do their dirty work, defame competitors, and bring frivolous lawsuits against groups or individuals who threaten their market dominance. Where might we have read about such things? Oh right--in the newspapers. In fact, several of the stories have involved Microsoft, and some even involved Darl McBride, as well as hundreds of other companies big and small.
Unless you are going to stick to your guns claim that we can drop all the white-collar crime laws off the books because nobody actually does such things and people who claim they do are just reading too much Tom Clancy, you'll have to come uyp with a better argument than that.
--MarkusQ
The evidence certainly doesn't support this position. We already know that MS gave SCO a significant amount of money through various channels with absolutely no visible return (the licenses, the PIPE funding, underwriting the EV1 deal, etc.).
It certainly seems more reasonable to assume that Microsoft is paying SCO to do exactly what SCO is doing rather than assuming that they've decided to start just giving away money for no particular reason.
--MarkusQ
*smile* You got me dead to rights. Any defense I might try to mount would only make it worse.
--MarkusQ
IIRC, the actual quote they were going for is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and the point he was making is that small-minded people tend to get bogged down worrying about consistency where it doesn't really matter. In other words, if your list of biggest gripes includes items like this, get a life.
--MarkusQ