Text is unsuitable for representing structured data.
Text is, howver, excellent for describing the structure of data. Which is what a program needs to do.
1 - Languages have fixed semantics. The text files follow a syntax which cannot be changed. Consequently the semantics of the syntactical constructs are also fixed.
That's not a bug, that's a feature. Fixed semantics enhance communication. Anyone who's worked on C++ code where someone has abused operator overloading knows the danger of redefinable semantics.
2 - Automatic refactoring of code is difficult, regular expressions just are not powerfull enough to do the job. You need more structure to do it properly.
Refactoring shouldn't be automatic. Large changes to code should be the result of careful thought.
3 - You don't have first class representations of design concepts...Ever tried to recover a highlevel design from just the source code?
I wouldn't expect to be able to do so any more than I'd be able to recover the source code from the object code. You can get some idea, certainly, but they are different conceptual entities, and should be stored and represented differently.
The difficulty is in keeping the different representations in synch. If they are actually useful representations, automated tools won't do the job; programmers have to do it, and managers have to build time and motivation into the the process to ensure that it happens.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
...then there is no reason that the page should not display identically on each persons browser. I find it unfathomable that this is not the case.
There are many reasons why two correctly-functioning browsers will display the same page differently. The <p> tag, for example, without style information, just means "paragraph" - there's no reason different browsers might not have (compiled-in or user configured) different default fonts, default spacing between paragraphs, default paragraph indentation, etcetera. Even with style information, the user can override the author's preferences.
Web pages are not Postscript or PDF documents. HTML authors who try to make pages that look exactly the same in all browsers Just Don't Get It.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
So move. You do not have the right to work a particular job in a particular way for a particular amount of compensation
Very easy for the middle class to say; very hard for the poor to save up moving costs, first and last months rent and security deposits, and enough to live on while looking for work in the new location - and to get time and money to make a trip to go search out a new place to live in the first place.
And after all that, odds are that if you can afford to move there, the situation isn't any better.
The "move if you don't like your job" philosophy is also responsible for the degeneration of family and community support systems for people who find themselves in difficulty - thus requiring those government welfare programs conservatives and libertarian capitalists love to loathe.
if you don't like the terms, go elsewhere.
The core of the problem is that, in negotiating the terms, a large corporation has all the advantages - thanks largely to acts of governments, which chartered the corporation in the first place, offered tax breaks to the corporation (meaning higher taxes or less services for citizens, and unfair competition against local businesses) to get it to relocate or open a branch there, allowed the owners of the corporation to escape liability for the corporation's actions, et cetera.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I'd like to remind you that if you don't like what this company is doing you can a) not work for them, and/or b) not buy their goods or services.
And I'd like to remind you that, thanks to the concentration of economic power and obfuscation or outright destruction of responsibility and liability brought about by the existence of large corporations (entities, I remind you, that are creations of government, not of markets)
not everyone has the freedom of choice in employment that many highly skilled technical professionals enjoy right now - many towns are still reliant on a single large employer,
there are markets where people have little or no choice, where single suppliers reign, and
thanks to interlocking corporate ownership one may not be aware of who one is ultimately buying from - if you're pissed at Phillip Morris over cigarettes, unless you're in the habit of tracking down byzantine corporate structures to see that they own Miller, who owns Plank Road, how do you know that buying Red Dog beer puts money in the pockets of the Marlboro men?
...and when you live in a society such as ours certain sacrifices must be made so that corporations can continue to thrive and grow.
Thank you, no. I'd rather not make such sacrifices, let the corporations fall, and create a new society where people, not legal fictions, are of primary interest. Fsck corporations - they distort markets and destroy freedoms. Major reform is needed.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Okay, I think he is absolutely correct with this point. People do want the internet to be an interesting, whizz bang experience
And what people would that be? Most folks I know want e-mail (with maybe the occasional jpeg attachment), on-line banking and shopping, the occasional bit of research, and of course Napster, and that's about it. None of which require "immersive media".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Someone (RMS maybe?) once said "Information wants to be free." That may be true, but who's going to create the information in the first place if they aren't going to see anything for their efforts?
Your post is information. Did you get paid for creating it?
Obviously people can create more information when they are paid to do so. But that doesn't mean that no payment = no information, or that a pay-per-copy or pay-per-view scheme is practical or moral.
The solution might be patronage, where those who do have money (gov't, Bill Gates, etc) fund the development of books, art and other stuff that can be given away for free. However, they will generally reserve the right to pull the
strings of what's being developed and what it says. What kind of solution is that?
Same problem applies in a market system, though...the masses "pull the strings" by voting with their dollars for check-your-mind-upon-opening thillers and romance novels rather than "Quality Literature". (Insert your own definition of "Quality Literature" here.)
I believe that the best model for rights and payments would be similar to the current one for musical performance; I can sing any song I want, but I can't claim that I wrote songs I didn't, and if I am (or someone, like the bar owner, is) making money from it, the songwriter is owed a royalty. I would replace "copyright" with rights of recognition of authorship and royalties on for-profit copying or distribution.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Let the future gen worry about this sorta crap. We are thinking about future and we haven't even fixed our present yet. tsk tsk.
Um, it's largely BECAUSE past generations didn't think about the future that we have such problems to "fix" today.
I find such long-term thinking refreshing. Of course, in addition to a 1 billion year view, it would also be good to be thinking 10, 50, 100, and 1000 years ahead - both technologically and socially.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
They want very slow and careful application development using formal methods. (IMHO, Open Source wouldn't work. Joe Hacker may be a linux whizkid but does he know about telemetry? Thrust vectors? Navigation? Do you trust him to?)
Open Source doesn't mean you have to accept patches from every J.Random Hacker. It just means that every J. Random Hacker can get the source, look at it, learn from it, and modify it for the rocket he's building in his backyard.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Will it be a criminal offense to spin an old vinyl record on a stick and play it with a needle taped to a 3x5 card?
Why not? In a nation where growing certain plants is illegal, where some consensual sex acts are banned in many states, where the DMCA is in effect, it should be obvious that no idea is too stupid to become law.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I checked out the link to the aRts website, and it looks like a cool project. However, I noticed that they have incorrect information about the GPL on the front page. I sent them this note:
Hello! I just found your website though a link from Slashdot. Looks like a neat project! However, on your front page you have an incorrect
statement about the GNU Public Licence. You state:
"Read the COPYING-file inside the archive carefully. If you don't agree to the GPL, you aren't allowd to use and make changes on the program!"
The GPL does not restrict use of a program. In fact, it explictly states:
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the
Program is not restricted..."
Please don't spread misinformation about the GPL. Thank you.
-Tom Swiss / tms@infamous.net
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
These scientist are attempting to explain the most beautiful parts of our
consciousness - love, hate, even consciousness itself - in terms of how a bunch of neurons fire. Can anyone else see how silly this is, or is it just me?
Nonsense.
A person who is ignorant in science sees a rainbow and says, "Oh, pretty." One with knowledge of physics not only sees the colors, but knows that the view is caused by the refraction of photons produced by the fusion of hydrogen to helium 93 million miles away, light that takes years to work its way out of the sun and minutes to reach us once it escapes, light bent by millions of millions of spherical water lenses - made partly of those same sort of hydrogen atoms - hanging suspended in midair, and that each observer sees their own personal rainbow.
I submit that this is a more wonderous view that that of ignorance.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
My first job out of graduate school was at Trusted Information Systems (now swallowed by Network Associates) on the NSA-funded Trusted Mach project.
The idea was that you would run different OS sessions, each of which would provide a POSIX, or OS/2 (guess that dates the project), or whatever, "personality", at different sensitivity levels on top of the Mach microkernel. Data could be copied between sessions subject to security contraints. It was targeted (though never evaluated) to hit the B3 TCSEC critera. Interesting stuff, but it never really went anywhere.
This sounds very similar.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
"Mr. Slippery" is, of course, from Vernor Vinge's famous and most excellent story "True Names".
Other nicknames I have used, or that have been applied to me, include:
Spock - given to me by my high school physics teacher. Kinda obvious for a science/computer geek, especailly a dark-haired one. However, tucked away somewhere in my parent's attic is a school photo from 1976, of a six-year-old me in a blue Star Trek shirt. I'd like to use it for an author photo someday.
Spaceman Spiff, Cybernetic Kid - I used these on various BBSes in the late 80's. Spaceman Spiff is a reference to Calvin and Hobbs, Cybernetic Kid is my own invention.
the infamous tms - in graduate school, I was tms@cs.umd.edu, and in my first job afterwards I was tms@tis.com. I was active in USENET in those days (remember USENET pre-Cantor and Siegal?), and (unlike the quiet, bland, and throughly mainstream person I've become today) rather vocal in my opinions. Several people who met me in meatspace after encountering me on the net said something along the lines of "Ah, so you're the infamous tms." Thus, infamous.net. I usually sign code comments with "tms".
Duck Dodgers - used this one for QuakeWorld. "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century!" is a Daffy Duck cartoon.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Except that we have no idea how to speed up the growth process, so you're talking 10-15 years before your clone is ready.
I think there are - or will be - easier ways to create replacement organs than by growing a whole body. More likely, specific tissue types would be cultured from stem cells, then grown on a organic, dissolving scaffold.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?
on
Clever Girl Bess
·
· Score: 2
You are tracked in aggregate every damned day, and there is NOTHING you can do to stop it.
Of course there is. I can decline to give out demographic data, or to use payment methods which make tracking possilble. I filter my web cookies,
I answered the census (long form) with "2 people live here, that's all you need to know", I make most of my purchases in cash.
So if I'm going to be tracked, it's (usually) just as "someone was here", not as "a Caucasian male aged 25-35, single, graduate degree, two dogs, owns own home, was here".
I'm not opposed to giving out information about myself. (I just did so above, and there's a wealth of personal data on my website.) I object to having that information taken from me. I object to being surreptitiously tracked, watched, monitored, pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, briefed, debriefed, and numbered, in the name of more efficient marketing to keep per-capita consumption on the rise.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?
on
Clever Girl Bess
·
· Score: 5
It also means that advertising is better focused, which is better for the recipient (good ads will be clicked on, and might be useful).
Targeted advertizing is not good for the recipient, it's just more effective at getting the recipient to do what the advertizers want - buy more stuff they don't really want or need.
It's about psychological manipulation, in this case the psychological manipulation of children. No wonder the DOD is so interested.
The fact that advertisers know that most Economist readers are male and middle-aged is not a privacy issue, and neither is this - exactly the same thing.
No, it's not at all the same thing, because:
the information is being collected by software which is mandated by the federal government, not by "reader lifestyle" surveys in the magazine; and
these are children, not adults. They cannot give meaningful consent to be tracked, singly or in aggregate.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Please explain how those who were concerned about the Cassini lauch were profiteers. Some may have been ignorant, but "liars" is unduely harsh, and "profiteers" makes no sense.
It's amazing how you think you know my opinion on the matter when all I did was mention the claims of some commentators. If I say "Some commentators believe that George W. Bush is an intelligent human being," that makes the proposition "George W. Bush is an intelligent human being" neither fact nor my opinion. To my mind, both the degree of risk that was involved in the Cassini launch, and the ethics of exposing unwilling people to such risks, are both open questions. (Unlike the question of Dubbya's intelligence, where the truth is clear: the man is dumb as a stump.)
BTW, I got an "A" in "Statistics 400: Applied Probability and Statistics I", thank you very much. It was a required class for CS majors at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The "1 in 100,000 / 300 years between accidents" figures I mentioned come from Richard Feynman's account of the Challenger investigation in What Do You Care What Other People Think?. Feynman found a factor of more than 300 between the failure probabilities being quoted by management and the figures the engineers were giving out.
The risk in any spacecraft launch is nonzero. (If nothing else, it could fall on your house - that's why they put destruct charges on it, but there's still a possibility that these could fail.) NASA, much as I love 'em, has bullshitted in the past about risk. There needs to be more public discussion, debate, and understanding about the risks involved in scientific investigations, more than just an unquestioned environmental impact statement.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You need to be away from the machine and think out your code before you start in on it, and sometimes it helps to get a hardcopy and review the code on paper when you're debugging. "
I don't know that you need to get away from the machine to think out your code before you start; I usually make my initial notes in emacs, rather than paper and pencil.
For debugging, though, I agree; there's nothing like hardcopy and a big conference table on which to spread it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Because FedEx isn't allowed to start delivering small non-time-critical envelopes for less than the Post Office does, the Post Office can reap monopoly profits on that service.
But they pay for that monopoly with a guarantee of universal one-price service, which pretty much nullifies the ability to reap large profits.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Why then, when one of the many risks is realised as the (unfortunate) death of 7 astronauts, should anything change in our attitude to the launches?
What needed to change - and perhaps, as some commentators on the Cassini launch claim, still needs to change - is our assesment of risk. Pre-Challenger, NASA claimed the risk of such a total failure at 1 in 100,000 - i.e. you could fly the shuttle every day for an average of 300 years between accidents!
It's one thing to knowingly take a risk. It's another to be lied to about the magnitude of that risk, or to be exposed involuntarily to risk (of shuttle parts falling on your house, or toxic payloads being strewn into the atmosphere) based on bad assumptions.
Does that mean we shouldn't take risks? Hell no! But we need honest assessments.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It just confuses people, anyway MVEMJSNUP doesn't work if you kill pluto.:(
It doesn't work now, unless Neptune and Uranus swapped places while I wasn't looking.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
They're being eroded by people. The technology is simply "how" they're doing it.
It's not just a how - it's sometimes a why.
"We need your social security number. Our computer won't take a new record without it."
"Well, the computer says you owe $120. No, sir, our computers system doesn't have any bugs."
"Well, you seem like a good credit risk to me, but I'm afraid our computer program says we can't give you the loan."
Using computers often removes any opportunity for people to apply their own judgement, because the model of events that the software is based on is too limited.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Slashdot Mirror
Now if you want a degree, that's a different story.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Text is, howver, excellent for describing the structure of data. Which is what a program needs to do.
That's not a bug, that's a feature. Fixed semantics enhance communication. Anyone who's worked on C++ code where someone has abused operator overloading knows the danger of redefinable semantics.
Refactoring shouldn't be automatic. Large changes to code should be the result of careful thought.
I wouldn't expect to be able to do so any more than I'd be able to recover the source code from the object code. You can get some idea, certainly, but they are different conceptual entities, and should be stored and represented differently.
The difficulty is in keeping the different representations in synch. If they are actually useful representations, automated tools won't do the job; programmers have to do it, and managers have to build time and motivation into the the process to ensure that it happens.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
There are many reasons why two correctly-functioning browsers will display the same page differently. The <p> tag, for example, without style information, just means "paragraph" - there's no reason different browsers might not have (compiled-in or user configured) different default fonts, default spacing between paragraphs, default paragraph indentation, etcetera. Even with style information, the user can override the author's preferences.
Web pages are not Postscript or PDF documents. HTML authors who try to make pages that look exactly the same in all browsers Just Don't Get It.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Very easy for the middle class to say; very hard for the poor to save up moving costs, first and last months rent and security deposits, and enough to live on while looking for work in the new location - and to get time and money to make a trip to go search out a new place to live in the first place.
And after all that, odds are that if you can afford to move there, the situation isn't any better.
The "move if you don't like your job" philosophy is also responsible for the degeneration of family and community support systems for people who find themselves in difficulty - thus requiring those government welfare programs conservatives and libertarian capitalists love to loathe.
The core of the problem is that, in negotiating the terms, a large corporation has all the advantages - thanks largely to acts of governments, which chartered the corporation in the first place, offered tax breaks to the corporation (meaning higher taxes or less services for citizens, and unfair competition against local businesses) to get it to relocate or open a branch there, allowed the owners of the corporation to escape liability for the corporation's actions, et cetera.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
And I'd like to remind you that, thanks to the concentration of economic power and obfuscation or outright destruction of responsibility and liability brought about by the existence of large corporations (entities, I remind you, that are creations of government, not of markets)
- not everyone has the freedom of choice in employment that many highly skilled technical professionals enjoy right now - many towns are still reliant on a single large employer,
- there are markets where people have little or no choice, where single suppliers reign, and
- thanks to interlocking corporate ownership one may not be aware of who one is ultimately buying from - if you're pissed at Phillip Morris over cigarettes, unless you're in the habit of tracking down byzantine corporate structures to see that they own Miller, who owns Plank Road, how do you know that buying Red Dog beer puts money in the pockets of the Marlboro men?
Thank you, no. I'd rather not make such sacrifices, let the corporations fall, and create a new society where people, not legal fictions, are of primary interest. Fsck corporations - they distort markets and destroy freedoms. Major reform is needed.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
And what people would that be? Most folks I know want e-mail (with maybe the occasional jpeg attachment), on-line banking and shopping, the occasional bit of research, and of course Napster, and that's about it. None of which require "immersive media".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Your post is information. Did you get paid for creating it?
Obviously people can create more information when they are paid to do so. But that doesn't mean that no payment = no information, or that a pay-per-copy or pay-per-view scheme is practical or moral.
Same problem applies in a market system, though...the masses "pull the strings" by voting with their dollars for check-your-mind-upon-opening thillers and romance novels rather than "Quality Literature". (Insert your own definition of "Quality Literature" here.)
I believe that the best model for rights and payments would be similar to the current one for musical performance; I can sing any song I want, but I can't claim that I wrote songs I didn't, and if I am (or someone, like the bar owner, is) making money from it, the songwriter is owed a royalty. I would replace "copyright" with rights of recognition of authorship and royalties on for-profit copying or distribution.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I find such long-term thinking refreshing. Of course, in addition to a 1 billion year view, it would also be good to be thinking 10, 50, 100, and 1000 years ahead - both technologically and socially.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Open Source doesn't mean you have to accept patches from every J.Random Hacker. It just means that every J. Random Hacker can get the source, look at it, learn from it, and modify it for the rocket he's building in his backyard.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I checked out the link to the aRts website, and it looks like a cool project. However, I noticed that they have incorrect information about the GPL on the front page. I sent them this note:
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Nonsense.
A person who is ignorant in science sees a rainbow and says, "Oh, pretty." One with knowledge of physics not only sees the colors, but knows that the view is caused by the refraction of photons produced by the fusion of hydrogen to helium 93 million miles away, light that takes years to work its way out of the sun and minutes to reach us once it escapes, light bent by millions of millions of spherical water lenses - made partly of those same sort of hydrogen atoms - hanging suspended in midair, and that each observer sees their own personal rainbow.
I submit that this is a more wonderous view that that of ignorance.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
My first job out of graduate school was at Trusted Information Systems (now swallowed by Network Associates) on the NSA-funded Trusted Mach project.
The idea was that you would run different OS sessions, each of which would provide a POSIX, or OS/2 (guess that dates the project), or whatever, "personality", at different sensitivity levels on top of the Mach microkernel. Data could be copied between sessions subject to security contraints. It was targeted (though never evaluated) to hit the B3 TCSEC critera. Interesting stuff, but it never really went anywhere.
This sounds very similar.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
"Mr. Slippery" is, of course, from Vernor Vinge's famous and most excellent story "True Names".
Other nicknames I have used, or that have been applied to me, include:
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I think there are - or will be - easier ways to create replacement organs than by growing a whole body. More likely, specific tissue types would be cultured from stem cells, then grown on a organic, dissolving scaffold.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Of course there is. I can decline to give out demographic data, or to use payment methods which make tracking possilble. I filter my web cookies, I answered the census (long form) with "2 people live here, that's all you need to know", I make most of my purchases in cash.
So if I'm going to be tracked, it's (usually) just as "someone was here", not as "a Caucasian male aged 25-35, single, graduate degree, two dogs, owns own home, was here".
I'm not opposed to giving out information about myself. (I just did so above, and there's a wealth of personal data on my website.) I object to having that information taken from me. I object to being surreptitiously tracked, watched, monitored, pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, briefed, debriefed, and numbered, in the name of more efficient marketing to keep per-capita consumption on the rise.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's about psychological manipulation, in this case the psychological manipulation of children. No wonder the DOD is so interested.
No, it's not at all the same thing, because:Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Please explain how those who were concerned about the Cassini lauch were profiteers. Some may have been ignorant, but "liars" is unduely harsh, and "profiteers" makes no sense.
It's amazing how you think you know my opinion on the matter when all I did was mention the claims of some commentators. If I say "Some commentators believe that George W. Bush is an intelligent human being," that makes the proposition "George W. Bush is an intelligent human being" neither fact nor my opinion. To my mind, both the degree of risk that was involved in the Cassini launch, and the ethics of exposing unwilling people to such risks, are both open questions. (Unlike the question of Dubbya's intelligence, where the truth is clear: the man is dumb as a stump.)
BTW, I got an "A" in "Statistics 400: Applied Probability and Statistics I", thank you very much. It was a required class for CS majors at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The "1 in 100,000 / 300 years between accidents" figures I mentioned come from Richard Feynman's account of the Challenger investigation in What Do You Care What Other People Think?. Feynman found a factor of more than 300 between the failure probabilities being quoted by management and the figures the engineers were giving out.
The risk in any spacecraft launch is nonzero. (If nothing else, it could fall on your house - that's why they put destruct charges on it, but there's still a possibility that these could fail.) NASA, much as I love 'em, has bullshitted in the past about risk. There needs to be more public discussion, debate, and understanding about the risks involved in scientific investigations, more than just an unquestioned environmental impact statement.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
For debugging, though, I agree; there's nothing like hardcopy and a big conference table on which to spread it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's one thing to knowingly take a risk. It's another to be lied to about the magnitude of that risk, or to be exposed involuntarily to risk (of shuttle parts falling on your house, or toxic payloads being strewn into the atmosphere) based on bad assumptions.
Does that mean we shouldn't take risks? Hell no! But we need honest assessments.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Both the hackers and DirecTV seem to be on sound ethical footing in this particular case. I salute the ingenuity of both sides.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's not just a how - it's sometimes a why.
"We need your social security number. Our computer won't take a new record without it."
"Well, the computer says you owe $120. No, sir, our computers system doesn't have any bugs."
"Well, you seem like a good credit risk to me, but I'm afraid our computer program says we can't give you the loan."
Using computers often removes any opportunity for people to apply their own judgement, because the model of events that the software is based on is too limited.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/