... there seem to be a few of these "name related" hacks in Vista. Files with the string "setup" in their name are recognized as potential installers and are handled differently by the OS. We were able to work around an installation issue in Vista by renaming the installation.exe file something else. One look at this and I said to myself "WTF? Is this any way to secure an OS?"
But it is the job of a judge to determine whether or not the agency complied with the earlier ruling telling them to secure their systems. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with this case, the only reason why the DoI was forced off the Internet by the initial ruling was incompetence over a period of many years to secure the data on their system and willful intransigence to do anything about it. And for those of you who want to know what could be so necessary for the DoI to secure, it was the Bureau of Indian Affairs records of payments to tribal members. So, yes, the DoI was leaving personal financial information unsecured.
But s'all good, right? Because judges shouldn't determine risks of unsecured data. In fact, by not doing so, he actually said it's not a judge's job to determine whether or not an earlier ruling was complied with. I hope all of those who agree with the parent comment (and marked it insightful to boot) get this judge when it comes time to determine if its OK that (a) a bank who holds their financial information who in a continually unsecured state, (b) when the bank has been told for years to secure that data and doesn't, (c) when an earlier court has told said bank to stay off the Internet until it secures said information, and then decides that its OK to let the bank off the hook because it's not the court's job to determine the risk of unsecured data.
But, of course, to you right-wing pukes, it's the government, it's a judge, and so it's good that this decision was made to let some dumbass agency back onto the web.
I'd concur with BDB. If you don't need multi-gigabyte stores, referential integrity, more than single locking writer transactional semantics, or insanely complex general query, anything past simple ISAM strategies are overkill That goes for SQLite, too (which will probably be slower, too, given the description of the data). In fact, given the data description, using a flat file would probably be fine.
I've always wondered if they regretted that as they changed the micro-architecture, and most likely the DC ended up being farther away from the integer scheduler.
They probably just duped the alignment logic in the integer unit as it moved away from the data cache (because chip densities were growing at the same time), so it didn't bother them much at all.
... my Fujitsu Lifebook P1120. Only two pounds, running W2K Pro and still works like a champ with its blazing 633MHz Transmeta Crusoe processor and 512M of RAM. Also dual boots with Ubuntu. Great little machine.
Even though the work ethic is better, projects tend to come in late. Maybe it's language, maybe it's the distance, whatever.
Here are some reasons projects come in late:
Bad specifications. In general, most organizations do not know how to write specifications to the level of detail necessary to allow off-site teams to produce work only using the specification. This is usually discovered in the integration or installation phase of the project and thus, almost always causes lateness.
Time zones cut communication. For all of the talk of people working in other countries while you are sleeping, quite likely the scenario is actually other people waiting for answers in other countries while you are sleeping. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to offshore north-south rather than east-west. It's a lot easier on workers, too, who usually either have to com ein early or stay late (or both) to get the "face time" in.
Lack of a software engineering culture. No matter how bad you think your managers are in the US (or Europe), at least a fair number of them will have come up through the trenches and, even though they don't know how to manage people all that well, usually understand that niceties like source control systems and systematic testing are a good thing. It takes a couple of generations of people working in the industry, pushing best practices ahead, before one can reliably find these practices understood as necessary and adhered to. The software engineering cultures in India and China are not necessarily at the point where best practices in software hygiene are being followed consistently.
Poor communications technology and non-native speakers. Phone lines between here and there still suck. Your ability to be understood over noisy lines still sucks. Even though most (all?) Indian programmers do understand English, it is still painful to try to listen over sucky phone lines for long periods of time (Also, will someone please tell non-native speakers of English that speaking fast only cuts down on their intelligibility?). Chinese communication infrastructure is even worse. And most of Chinese workers (outside of project managers) are nowhere close to fluent in English.
Autocratic management. In general, it's easier to say nothing or to leave than to try to fix something that's broken. This is true every where, but it is especially true in societies that are culturally autocratic in nature. Given the growth in India's technology, would you rather try to fix something where you were or move to a new job with a 20% pay increase? They're no more stupid than we are. In China, it's a bit more difficult in switching jobs, but the issues are still similar.
It's not that any of these things are permanent, nor are they a reflection on individuals' abilities. I've worked with people in both China and India and they are just as smart and (maybe) more hard working than we are. It's just that the software engineering culture, the communications infrastructure, and the management culture isn't yet set up to produce good software without a great deal of intervention from team members with a lot more experience in software engineering practice and management. It will come... it's just not there yet. There is "no royal road" to software engineering maturity. Give them another ten to fifteen years and I expect that they'll have everything in place to make these projects succeed (probably by just sending entire projects there), but for now, it's a real gamble when you offshore development. Expect to put in a lot more effort on the US (or Europe) side to make it succeed than you expected to.
... guy rapes someone, gets his name removed from the church records, moves to another state, gets rebaptized, rapes someone else, and then someone finds out what happened at his last location.
Sorry. The Vatican has the copyright for that one.
... isn't.NET supposed to be one of the most advanced toolkits out there? why the Win32 style in WinForms?
A. Because the.Net Framework was rushed out and, as such, needed a way of doing particular low-level things, the easiest way to provide same was to place a thin wrapper over existing Win32 APIs (and DAO/ADO/flavor of the month data APIs, etc., etc.). B. Because Microsoft did not want the expense to develop, test, and document a new set of windowing APIs. C. Because Microsoft decided that a customer base familiar with WM_xxx and HWNDs would be more comfortable retaining their old knowledge. D. Because Cowboy Neal said so. E. All of the above (except D).
The only way that Google can ever have any influence in opening China's information control policies is if Google is actually operating in China.
So what are they doing? I don't think I've seen any line item on their quarterlies that say "Chinese political action" nor do I see any indication that they are doing *anything* in their annual reports. But of course! It's secret, because their Chinese masters would be upset if they actually went public with this. So, if a political action happens in a forest and you can't tell anyone, did it really happen? All-in-all, it still looks like their new motto is: Do no evil... unless it interferes with making money. Or in my own sad words - you lie down with capitalist running dogs, you get fleas.
Microsoft fanboyz who dream of having uncle Stevie squirting his melodies of love at them. People who wouldn't know style if it hit them on the head like a brick. Three year-old mentally handicapped people. You know... The usual Microsoft media customer.
we could all strip nekkid and handcuff us while on board
OK, now I know you're on Slashdot and this is the only way you'll ever get close to a live naked female, but don't you think you're going a bit far? Internets not good enough for you?
I see no one mentioning that, if idiot gamers did not give their money to this idiot company, the company would not be able to bring this idiot suit. Yes, the company is stupid. How stupid are the people who will continue to support it?
Yes, but making the hardware suck to scrape a couple of pennies off the price didn't help the BIOS. Actually, I blame IBM more for not choosing a better processor than the x86. There were sane architectures out there at the time (e.g., Motorola 68000). A lot of the craptacular nature of the BIOS (not to mention DOS and early Windows programming) came out of that particular decision. But, back then, IBM was a fairly craptacular company anyway. It seems to have improved a bit since then (although, it's hard to tell; with a company the size of IBM, you may be looking at the stern of the oil tanker and everything looks fine, while on the bow, fires are raging).
Organizational or personal incompetence has never been a defense. In fact, continuing to support incompetence may even be seen as contributory negligence.
According to the UN, outside of Africa, starvation as a systemic problem will be solved by some time early (2015-2025) this century and even in Africa it will be mostly gone. For the first time ever. By ever I mean, since we climbed down from the trees, ever. That improvement has nothing to do with UN food aid and everything to do with getting out there and trying to make something happen. Fail and fail again, and in the end the world is a better place.
You haven't been keeping pace with (really) current events. The use of feedstocks as inputs to fuel and the desire of the growing Asian middle class for meat has caused a worldwide grain shortage. It is predicted that, for this year, starvation will again be on the rise. In addition, use of plant oils for fuel has started food shortages for oil-based foods in Asian countries and even in (of all places) Japan. The notion that the world hunger will be solved in the next few years is, unfortunately, unlikely, regardless of what the UN has said - mainly because they did not factor in the use of feedstocks as fuel inputs.
Slashdot Mirror
Good morning, Guantanamo!
... there seem to be a few of these "name related" hacks in Vista. Files with the string "setup" in their name are recognized as potential installers and are handled differently by the OS. We were able to work around an installation issue in Vista by renaming the installation .exe file something else. One look at this and I said to myself "WTF? Is this any way to secure an OS?"
Well, assuming you were searching for literature, they got that one right...
I, for one, am waiting for "BJ and the Bear: The Movie".
Well, then, he doesn't have to worry, then, huh? Because they'll be suing the thieves! Right? Right?
But s'all good, right? Because judges shouldn't determine risks of unsecured data. In fact, by not doing so, he actually said it's not a judge's job to determine whether or not an earlier ruling was complied with. I hope all of those who agree with the parent comment (and marked it insightful to boot) get this judge when it comes time to determine if its OK that (a) a bank who holds their financial information who in a continually unsecured state, (b) when the bank has been told for years to secure that data and doesn't, (c) when an earlier court has told said bank to stay off the Internet until it secures said information, and then decides that its OK to let the bank off the hook because it's not the court's job to determine the risk of unsecured data.
But, of course, to you right-wing pukes, it's the government, it's a judge, and so it's good that this decision was made to let some dumbass agency back onto the web.
I'd concur with BDB. If you don't need multi-gigabyte stores, referential integrity, more than single locking writer transactional semantics, or insanely complex general query, anything past simple ISAM strategies are overkill That goes for SQLite, too (which will probably be slower, too, given the description of the data). In fact, given the data description, using a flat file would probably be fine.
They probably just duped the alignment logic in the integer unit as it moved away from the data cache (because chip densities were growing at the same time), so it didn't bother them much at all.
... my Fujitsu Lifebook P1120. Only two pounds, running W2K Pro and still works like a champ with its blazing 633MHz Transmeta Crusoe processor and 512M of RAM. Also dual boots with Ubuntu. Great little machine.
Here are some reasons projects come in late:
- Bad specifications. In general, most organizations do not know how to write specifications to the level of detail necessary to allow off-site teams to produce work only using the specification. This is usually discovered in the integration or installation phase of the project and thus, almost always causes lateness.
- Time zones cut communication. For all of the talk of people working in other countries while you are sleeping, quite likely the scenario is actually other people waiting for answers in other countries while you are sleeping. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to offshore north-south rather than east-west. It's a lot easier on workers, too, who usually either have to com ein early or stay late (or both) to get the "face time" in.
- Lack of a software engineering culture. No matter how bad you think your managers are in the US (or Europe), at least a fair number of them will have come up through the trenches and, even though they don't know how to manage people all that well, usually understand that niceties like source control systems and systematic testing are a good thing. It takes a couple of generations of people working in the industry, pushing best practices ahead, before one can reliably find these practices understood as necessary and adhered to. The software engineering cultures in India and China are not necessarily at the point where best practices in software hygiene are being followed consistently.
- Poor communications technology and non-native speakers. Phone lines between here and there still suck. Your ability to be understood over noisy lines still sucks. Even though most (all?) Indian programmers do understand English, it is still painful to try to listen over sucky phone lines for long periods of time (Also, will someone please tell non-native speakers of English that speaking fast only cuts down on their intelligibility?). Chinese communication infrastructure is even worse. And most of Chinese workers (outside of project managers) are nowhere close to fluent in English.
- Autocratic management. In general, it's easier to say nothing or to leave than to try to fix something that's broken. This is true every where, but it is especially true in societies that are culturally autocratic in nature. Given the growth in India's technology, would you rather try to fix something where you were or move to a new job with a 20% pay increase? They're no more stupid than we are. In China, it's a bit more difficult in switching jobs, but the issues are still similar.
It's not that any of these things are permanent, nor are they a reflection on individuals' abilities. I've worked with people in both China and India and they are just as smart and (maybe) more hard working than we are. It's just that the software engineering culture, the communications infrastructure, and the management culture isn't yet set up to produce good software without a great deal of intervention from team members with a lot more experience in software engineering practice and management. It will come... it's just not there yet. There is "no royal road" to software engineering maturity. Give them another ten to fifteen years and I expect that they'll have everything in place to make these projects succeed (probably by just sending entire projects there), but for now, it's a real gamble when you offshore development. Expect to put in a lot more effort on the US (or Europe) side to make it succeed than you expected to.To make sure the one with Linux costs more...
To impress the babes, dude!
Sorry. The Vatican has the copyright for that one.
Or, as we like to call it, Slashdot.
A. Because the .Net Framework was rushed out and, as such, needed a way of doing particular low-level things, the easiest way to provide same was to place a thin wrapper over existing Win32 APIs (and DAO/ADO/flavor of the month data APIs, etc., etc.).
B. Because Microsoft did not want the expense to develop, test, and document a new set of windowing APIs.
C. Because Microsoft decided that a customer base familiar with WM_xxx and HWNDs would be more comfortable retaining their old knowledge.
D. Because Cowboy Neal said so.
E. All of the above (except D).
If Google were living up to their "Do no evil" motto, there wouldn't have needed to be a vote in the first place.
So what are they doing? I don't think I've seen any line item on their quarterlies that say "Chinese political action" nor do I see any indication that they are doing *anything* in their annual reports. But of course! It's secret, because their Chinese masters would be upset if they actually went public with this. So, if a political action happens in a forest and you can't tell anyone, did it really happen? All-in-all, it still looks like their new motto is: Do no evil... unless it interferes with making money. Or in my own sad words - you lie down with capitalist running dogs, you get fleas.
Microsoft fanboyz who dream of having uncle Stevie squirting his melodies of love at them. People who wouldn't know style if it hit them on the head like a brick. Three year-old mentally handicapped people. You know... The usual Microsoft media customer.
OK, now I know you're on Slashdot and this is the only way you'll ever get close to a live naked female, but don't you think you're going a bit far? Internets not good enough for you?
I see no one mentioning that, if idiot gamers did not give their money to this idiot company, the company would not be able to bring this idiot suit. Yes, the company is stupid. How stupid are the people who will continue to support it?
Yes, but making the hardware suck to scrape a couple of pennies off the price didn't help the BIOS. Actually, I blame IBM more for not choosing a better processor than the x86. There were sane architectures out there at the time (e.g., Motorola 68000). A lot of the craptacular nature of the BIOS (not to mention DOS and early Windows programming) came out of that particular decision. But, back then, IBM was a fairly craptacular company anyway. It seems to have improved a bit since then (although, it's hard to tell; with a company the size of IBM, you may be looking at the stern of the oil tanker and everything looks fine, while on the bow, fires are raging).
One word: Seaside. Better language, too.
Organizational or personal incompetence has never been a defense. In fact, continuing to support incompetence may even be seen as contributory negligence.
You haven't been keeping pace with (really) current events. The use of feedstocks as inputs to fuel and the desire of the growing Asian middle class for meat has caused a worldwide grain shortage. It is predicted that, for this year, starvation will again be on the rise. In addition, use of plant oils for fuel has started food shortages for oil-based foods in Asian countries and even in (of all places) Japan. The notion that the world hunger will be solved in the next few years is, unfortunately, unlikely, regardless of what the UN has said - mainly because they did not factor in the use of feedstocks as fuel inputs.
Tastes like chicken!