I managed to not actually do any COBOL programming back when (early 1980s). I did get to experience the joy of getting a COBOL program to call a FORTRAN program with some significant data structures in common blocks (thankfully, I forget what COBOL called them). I just remember that arrays were handled differently internally. This was all on an IBM System 370.
If PERL was a decent language, there would have been no need to develop alternative scripting languages. The fact that one programmer cannot read something written by another when they're both prefoessionals in the same language is pretty damning, only PERL has that claim to fame in over 40 years of languages.
perl is a decent language. The problem isn't the language; it's the programmers. My bet is that it's possible to write unreadable code in any programming language (except maybe COBOL but then you just write enough of it that it bores anyone to death who tries to read it). As an example, take a look at something like what comes out of the Obfuscated C Contest. But I don't hear anyone saying we should junk C because it's possible to write C code that is almost completely impossible to understand.
perl gets a nasty reputation for being unreadable because:
1) People who have never used get told that the way to do what they want to get done is to do it in perl instead of doing it in bash, awk, grep, sed, etc. They have no idea how to use perl but muddle their way through to something that works but which should be burried.
2) The opposite extreme are the perl experts who seem to delight in using obscure perl features in obscure ways rather than write something that a mere human can understand. I had one of these complain that my perl wasn't "perlish" enough.
3) "Dave the web server is down!!! Can you write a quick perl script to fix the data coming out of the database so it doesn't crash the application? It's costing us $$$$ in lost revenue while the server is down."
4) Take the perl that results from any of the above and then maintain it in production for a few years.
Of course NASA doesn't know that the Vogons will destroy the Earth on 22 December 2012 to make way for an intergalactic bypass. They missed the notification. The Vogons will miss their originally scheduled date of the 21st because, as usual, the construction project is behind schedule. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Yes. Several court cases have found for the homeowner under pretty much precisely those circumstances. Latest was a drunk chick in Boulder who came in to the wrong house through an unlocked door. She was lucky. The homeowner only wounded her.
Hint: don't get so drunk that you can't find your own home.
I live in Colorado. A few years back the state legislature passed what has become know as the "Make my day law." Without going into the legal specifics, anyone who enters your home without your permission can be legally shot (or taken out with any other weapon of choice). This includes someone wandering in through an unlocked door let alone picking a lock to enter through a locked door.
Security layers:
1) Door lock (keeps honest people honest and alive). 2) Large dog (probably wouldn't hurt a flea but will bark if someone tries to enter). 3) Semi-automatic rifle (WW II era infantry weapon).
Lots of hunters in the state so lots of people have a similar level of security. People stupid enough to attempt to break into a house usually don't live long enough to either become good at it or pass on their genes.
Those who volunteer are clearly stupid or suicidal. Both disqualify them for participation.
I have a solution to this dilema. I can think of several politicians, ex-coworkers and other people I know who I would gladly "volunteer" for such a mission.
Regulated services at best provide consistent, mediocre service at the highest rate the regulator will let them charge; usually they provide the minimum they can get away without getting fined too much. Ask yourself how happy are you with the other regulated services in your life like land-line phone carrier, cable television provider, electric company, natural gas company, etc.?
To qualify for the diagnosis, not only do the criteria have to be met, but it must cause clinically significant impairment in functioning. People always seem to overlook that part.
If you don't include the "significant impairment in functioning" part of the criteria, pretty much everyone who is working toward or has worked toward an advanced degree in a hard science or math fits the definition. Or at least they did while they were in their degree program. And, yeah, I have a M.S. in math.
I haven't been to the great white north for a while but the images I get from a Google search show both round and multi-sided coins. Don't know which is currently in circulation or if it's both.
Getting a vending machine to take a different size round coin is easy. Getting it to take an almost round but muti-sided coin is a tad harder if it also still has to accept round coins. Getting it to take coins with distinct facets around the perimeter is even harder.
....The only place I ever saw dollar coins in actual use was the Miami metrorail system.
Denver light rail uses them for change from their ticket vending machines, too. Got stuck with only a $20 and needed a ticket. Took me forever to get rid of all the $1 coins I got in change.
The problem with the $1 coins the mint issued recently (Susan B.s and Sacagaweas) is they were almost indistiguishable from a quarter. If they made them big like the old "Liberty" silver dollars, noone would want them because they're too big and heavy. If they do something like make them multi-sided instead of round, all of the vending machines choke on them. If you make them anywhere close to the size of a quarter, people confuse them with quarters and don't want them.
The government has a duty to step in when parents abuse their children. This is not up for debate, we do it all the time when we remove children from dangerous households.
The only question is if this meets that bar or not.
You are on a very slippery slope. What other forms of "abuse" do you wish to prevent? Teaching bigotry? Ethnic or racial prejudice? How about teaching them that females shouldn't be educated? Simply telling ethnic jokes? How about teaching your children that homosexuality is wrong? Teaching them that individual responsibility is "good" and reliance on government programs is "bad"? Teaching them not to trust politicians/the government? Teaching them to question authority? Teaching them that vacines are bad/a plot?
Pretty soon you end up with a "1984" world where children can simply report their parents for teaching some sort of socially unacceptable idea and the parents are off to a re-education camp and the children get raised by state (and obviously are only taught things the state wants them to learn).
Unfortunately, freedom means being free to be stupid. Sadly, this stupidity sometimes gets inflicted on children. It also means that some children don't grow up to be politically correct sheeple.
Ah, but this is the kind of research that gets at least nominated for an ig Nobel prize. I'd rather my tax dollars not go for either. Real basic research like NASA interplanetary probes, SCRAM jets, high temperature superconductivity, or quantum computing is a different animal.
Why didn't Wired ask her how she paid to live for 3 years in one of the most expensive cities in the world?
Seriously, I'd like to know.
None of the guidebooks I've ever read say anything about how getting an eff.org email address is a substitute for avg. $2K@month in rent. (Highest in the USA.)
Easy. Governent grant. Yours and my tax dollars at work. Think about this next April 15th.
I figure that she drew the short straw. The other anthropologists got to go live with various aboriginal tribes, live in mud huts or tents, risk various tropical diseases, eat bugs and/or various animal parts not usually considered as edible in the west, whitness cruel ritual sacrifices, not bathe for weeks on end, live without almost any technology or modern convenience, etc. And she got the short straw. Poor girl. I hope she recovers.
A common quote of combat pilots goes something like, "Combat flying is hours of boredom punctuated with a few seconds of complete terror." I've read something like this quote from several sources but most commonly from WWII pilots (and crew). Why should drone pilots expect it to be different?
At least the drone pilots get to go home even if the drone itself crashes, gets shot down, etc. I can imagine what a ball turret gunner from a B-17 or B-24 would say about the drone pilots being bored when they spent hours in a cramped, unpressurized, freezing cold turret scanning the airspace below the plane for approaching enemy interceptors; trying to stay alert and alive.
Even harder: Step 2: Ensure your definition of moral stays valid over time.
It's not a bad idea that someone should consider this question but I think we need to get some agreement among ourselves before we start trying to program "morals" into a machine.
Not really. One of the key reasons why the Iron Dome works for Israel is because the rocket attacks aren't coordinated. If Hamas launched ALL of its rockets/artillery AT THE SAME TIME, the Israeli Iron Dome system would simply be overwhelming. Don't forget, about 10% of the rockets/artillery are getting through and thats with staggered/uncoordinated attacks. If they were all launched at the same time (which, the North Korean military is surely trained to do), the failure rate would easily double or triple simply because reload times would create opening in the defense.
Another reason Iron Dome is working with a limited deployment is that there are only a very few trajectories out of Gaza that line up on anything valuable in Israel. Put your radars and interceptors where they can engage anything on those trajectories and you have a much easier problem to solve.
Also, actually, it's more like about 50% of the rockets are getting through. It's just that Iron Dome calculates the probable impact area before deciding whether or not to engage a particular rocket. If it's headed for some sand in the Negev, they let it make a hole in the ground that nobody cares about. I wonder if they would still engage if the probable impact zone was Ramallah, Hebron or some other place in the West Bank.
Could be "we're both right" with 10% of the engaged rockets still getting through. Sort of bad given these are armed with at best high explosives but would ruin your day if they were nules.
1) My comment was supposed to be funny (see parent comment that I was replying to).
2) Underneath my attempt at humor was the serious message that there are hardliners *on both sides* who make finding a reasonable solution even more difficult. We need only look at what happened to Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin.
Yeah, I kind of figured that. Someone else pointed out that the Israelis can turn their small size into an asset by implementing filtering on the external connections to their backbone. DDoS isn't subtle so a lot of the low skill level attacks never get close to the intended target. Wouldn't surprise me if they're not doing the same for scans.
Couldn't agree with you more with regard to both the TSA and most corporate IT security. Everybody wants a magic box that they can plug into their network and it somehow protects the organization from all attacks. Sadly, there are lots of people who will claim they can sell them such a box. When it doesn't work, management will just buy a different ("new" and "improved") magic box.
With any luck the scattering of crushed pork rinds would render the area selectively uninhabitable to the worst fanatics on both sides (both Jews and Muslims avoid pork). It would be alomost like setting off a dirty bomb but the "contamination" would only affect the hard liners. The hard liners all have to leave since they deeply believe that they can't have pork in any way shape or form and the more reasonable people who remain then sort out the mess.
When your defenses are tested on a regular and ongoing basis, they become very good. It's not like the attacks from Anonymous were the first nor will they be the last. Kudos to the people who created and maintain these systems.
It would be interesting to know if the Iraelis are doing something the rest of the world doesn't know about (chances are they wouldn't tell us but who could blame them?) or are just rigorously implementing standard computer and network security measures.
I spend a lot of time playing solitaire instead of doing something useful. Yeah, it's the Linux version but I don't consider playing Solitaire to be "using Linux."
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I managed to not actually do any COBOL programming back when (early 1980s). I did get to experience the joy of getting a COBOL program to call a FORTRAN program with some significant data structures in common blocks (thankfully, I forget what COBOL called them). I just remember that arrays were handled differently internally. This was all on an IBM System 370.
Cheers,
Dave
If PERL was a decent language, there would have been no need to develop alternative scripting languages. The fact that one programmer cannot read something written by another when they're both prefoessionals in the same language is pretty damning, only PERL has that claim to fame in over 40 years of languages.
perl is a decent language. The problem isn't the language; it's the programmers. My bet is that it's possible to write unreadable code in any programming language (except maybe COBOL but then you just write enough of it that it bores anyone to death who tries to read it). As an example, take a look at something like what comes out of the Obfuscated C Contest. But I don't hear anyone saying we should junk C because it's possible to write C code that is almost completely impossible to understand.
perl gets a nasty reputation for being unreadable because:
1) People who have never used get told that the way to do what they want to get done is to do it in perl instead of doing it in bash, awk, grep, sed, etc. They have no idea how to use perl but muddle their way through to something that works but which should be burried.
2) The opposite extreme are the perl experts who seem to delight in using obscure perl features in obscure ways rather than write something that a mere human can understand. I had one of these complain that my perl wasn't "perlish" enough.
3) "Dave the web server is down!!! Can you write a quick perl script to fix the data coming out of the database so it doesn't crash the application? It's costing us $$$$ in lost revenue while the server is down."
4) Take the perl that results from any of the above and then maintain it in production for a few years.
Cheers,
Dave
Don't for get your towel!
Cheers,
Dave
Of course NASA doesn't know that the Vogons will destroy the Earth on 22 December 2012 to make way for an intergalactic bypass. They missed the notification. The Vogons will miss their originally scheduled date of the 21st because, as usual, the construction project is behind schedule. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Cheers,
Dave
How about we just eliminate all of the Prophet Mohammed's followers from the face of the earth?
...
So, I guess that means you're part of a non-Prophet organization.
(Nothing like a bad pun)
Cheers,
Dave
Yes. Several court cases have found for the homeowner under pretty much precisely those circumstances. Latest was a drunk chick in Boulder who came in to the wrong house through an unlocked door. She was lucky. The homeowner only wounded her.
Hint: don't get so drunk that you can't find your own home.
Cheers,
Dave
I live in Colorado. A few years back the state legislature passed what has become know as the "Make my day law." Without going into the legal specifics, anyone who enters your home without your permission can be legally shot (or taken out with any other weapon of choice). This includes someone wandering in through an unlocked door let alone picking a lock to enter through a locked door.
Security layers:
1) Door lock (keeps honest people honest and alive).
2) Large dog (probably wouldn't hurt a flea but will bark if someone tries to enter).
3) Semi-automatic rifle (WW II era infantry weapon).
Lots of hunters in the state so lots of people have a similar level of security. People stupid enough to attempt to break into a house usually don't live long enough to either become good at it or pass on their genes.
Cheers,
Dave
Those who volunteer are clearly stupid or suicidal. Both disqualify them for participation.
I have a solution to this dilema. I can think of several politicians, ex-coworkers and other people I know who I would gladly "volunteer" for such a mission.
Cheers,
Dave
Regulated services at best provide consistent, mediocre service at the highest rate the regulator will let them charge; usually they provide the minimum they can get away without getting fined too much. Ask yourself how happy are you with the other regulated services in your life like land-line phone carrier, cable television provider, electric company, natural gas company, etc.?
I thought not.
Cheers,
Dave
To qualify for the diagnosis, not only do the criteria have to be met, but it must cause clinically significant impairment in functioning. People always seem to overlook that part.
If you don't include the "significant impairment in functioning" part of the criteria, pretty much everyone who is working toward or has worked toward an advanced degree in a hard science or math fits the definition. Or at least they did while they were in their degree program. And, yeah, I have a M.S. in math.
Cheers,
Dave
I haven't been to the great white north for a while but the images I get from a Google search show both round and multi-sided coins. Don't know which is currently in circulation or if it's both.
Getting a vending machine to take a different size round coin is easy. Getting it to take an almost round but muti-sided coin is a tad harder if it also still has to accept round coins. Getting it to take coins with distinct facets around the perimeter is even harder.
Cheers,
Dave
....The only place I ever saw dollar coins in actual use was the Miami metrorail system.
Denver light rail uses them for change from their ticket vending machines, too. Got stuck with only a $20 and needed a ticket. Took me forever to get rid of all the $1 coins I got in change.
The problem with the $1 coins the mint issued recently (Susan B.s and Sacagaweas) is they were almost indistiguishable from a quarter. If they made them big like the old "Liberty" silver dollars, noone would want them because they're too big and heavy. If they do something like make them multi-sided instead of round, all of the vending machines choke on them. If you make them anywhere close to the size of a quarter, people confuse them with quarters and don't want them.
Cheers,
Dave
The government has a duty to step in when parents abuse their children. This is not up for debate, we do it all the time when we remove children from dangerous households.
The only question is if this meets that bar or not.
You are on a very slippery slope. What other forms of "abuse" do you wish to prevent? Teaching bigotry? Ethnic or racial prejudice? How about teaching them that females shouldn't be educated? Simply telling ethnic jokes? How about teaching your children that homosexuality is wrong? Teaching them that individual responsibility is "good" and reliance on government programs is "bad"? Teaching them not to trust politicians/the government? Teaching them to question authority? Teaching them that vacines are bad/a plot?
Pretty soon you end up with a "1984" world where children can simply report their parents for teaching some sort of socially unacceptable idea and the parents are off to a re-education camp and the children get raised by state (and obviously are only taught things the state wants them to learn).
Unfortunately, freedom means being free to be stupid. Sadly, this stupidity sometimes gets inflicted on children. It also means that some children don't grow up to be politically correct sheeple.
Cheers,
Dave
Ah, but this is the kind of research that gets at least nominated for an ig Nobel prize. I'd rather my tax dollars not go for either. Real basic research like NASA interplanetary probes, SCRAM jets, high temperature superconductivity, or quantum computing is a different animal.
Cheers,
Dave
Why didn't Wired ask her how she paid to live for 3 years in one of the most expensive cities in the world?
Seriously, I'd like to know.
None of the guidebooks I've ever read say anything about how getting an eff.org email address is a substitute for avg. $2K@month in rent. (Highest in the USA.)
Easy. Governent grant. Yours and my tax dollars at work. Think about this next April 15th.
Cheers,
Dave
I figure that she drew the short straw. The other anthropologists got to go live with various aboriginal tribes, live in mud huts or tents, risk various tropical diseases, eat bugs and/or various animal parts not usually considered as edible in the west, whitness cruel ritual sacrifices, not bathe for weeks on end, live without almost any technology or modern convenience, etc. And she got the short straw. Poor girl. I hope she recovers.
Cheers,
Dave
Gives a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death.
Cheers,
Dave
A common quote of combat pilots goes something like, "Combat flying is hours of boredom punctuated with a few seconds of complete terror." I've read something like this quote from several sources but most commonly from WWII pilots (and crew). Why should drone pilots expect it to be different?
At least the drone pilots get to go home even if the drone itself crashes, gets shot down, etc. I can imagine what a ball turret gunner from a B-17 or B-24 would say about the drone pilots being bored when they spent hours in a cramped, unpressurized, freezing cold turret scanning the airspace below the plane for approaching enemy interceptors; trying to stay alert and alive.
Cheers,
Dave
So:
Step 1: Define moral.
Even harder:
Step 2: Ensure your definition of moral stays valid over time.
It's not a bad idea that someone should consider this question but I think we need to get some agreement among ourselves before we start trying to program "morals" into a machine.
Cheers,
Dave
Not really. One of the key reasons why the Iron Dome works for Israel is because the rocket attacks aren't coordinated. If Hamas launched ALL of its rockets/artillery AT THE SAME TIME, the Israeli Iron Dome system would simply be overwhelming. Don't forget, about 10% of the rockets/artillery are getting through and thats with staggered/uncoordinated attacks. If they were all launched at the same time (which, the North Korean military is surely trained to do), the failure rate would easily double or triple simply because reload times would create opening in the defense.
Another reason Iron Dome is working with a limited deployment is that there are only a very few trajectories out of Gaza that line up on anything valuable in Israel. Put your radars and interceptors where they can engage anything on those trajectories and you have a much easier problem to solve.
Also, actually, it's more like about 50% of the rockets are getting through. It's just that Iron Dome calculates the probable impact area before deciding whether or not to engage a particular rocket. If it's headed for some sand in the Negev, they let it make a hole in the ground that nobody cares about. I wonder if they would still engage if the probable impact zone was Ramallah, Hebron or some other place in the West Bank.
Could be "we're both right" with 10% of the engaged rockets still getting through. Sort of bad given these are armed with at best high explosives but would ruin your day if they were nules.
Cheers,
Dave
1) My comment was supposed to be funny (see parent comment that I was replying to).
2) Underneath my attempt at humor was the serious message that there are hardliners *on both sides* who make finding a reasonable solution even more difficult. We need only look at what happened to Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin.
Cheers,
Dave
Yeah, I kind of figured that. Someone else pointed out that the Israelis can turn their small size into an asset by implementing filtering on the external connections to their backbone. DDoS isn't subtle so a lot of the low skill level attacks never get close to the intended target. Wouldn't surprise me if they're not doing the same for scans.
Couldn't agree with you more with regard to both the TSA and most corporate IT security. Everybody wants a magic box that they can plug into their network and it somehow protects the organization from all attacks. Sadly, there are lots of people who will claim they can sell them such a box. When it doesn't work, management will just buy a different ("new" and "improved") magic box.
Cheers,
Dave
With any luck the scattering of crushed pork rinds would render the area selectively uninhabitable to the worst fanatics on both sides (both Jews and Muslims avoid pork). It would be alomost like setting off a dirty bomb but the "contamination" would only affect the hard liners. The hard liners all have to leave since they deeply believe that they can't have pork in any way shape or form and the more reasonable people who remain then sort out the mess.
I'll start grinding pork rinds.
Cheers,
Dave
When your defenses are tested on a regular and ongoing basis, they become very good. It's not like the attacks from Anonymous were the first nor will they be the last. Kudos to the people who created and maintain these systems.
It would be interesting to know if the Iraelis are doing something the rest of the world doesn't know about (chances are they wouldn't tell us but who could blame them?) or are just rigorously implementing standard computer and network security measures.
Cheers,
Dave
I spend a lot of time playing solitaire instead of doing something useful. Yeah, it's the Linux version but I don't consider playing Solitaire to be "using Linux."
Cheers,
Dave