The only epileptics I've ever known have a GENETIC disorder, inherited and suffered from birth. There is no way to "treat the underlying problem" as you suggest.
The same is true of migraines.
However, it turns out the reason no one has ever suffered bi-polar in my family is because in my case, it was caused by a 3-month stint of bad drug interactions that no one knew about when I was prescribed the deadly combination of SSRIs and Triptans that led to Seratonin Syndrome damage to my brain, resulting in a PERMANENT bi-polar condition.
The way I see it, I'm a literal victim of the drug war, caught in the cross-fire. I'd never have used the pharmacorp meds that caused my bi-polar if I'd known cannabis was a safer, more effective, and more reliable medication than any Triptan ever was.
And yes, I'm serious. I was literally poisoned. There may not have been any malicious intent, but I'll suffer the consequences for the rest of my life.
I know the years of blood vessel stress can lead a migraine sufferer like myself to suffer an aneurism -- a blood vessel in the brain "blowing out" and bleeding, causing stroke symptoms or even death. But the concept doesn't scare me, it's just a factual risk I live with.
My heartfelt condolences to her family. She was so young and so gifted, with such a future ahead of her.:(
Personally I think this whole "Personalized Search" concept is stupid.
Why the hell would I want to search 1-2 paragraph posts by the unwashed masses (including my own) instead of proper ARTICLES posted to the internet? The whole concept is asinine.
What's next? Searching the insightful wisdom of 140 character tweets? *LOL*
No matter how team oriented the environments I've worked with have been, no matter how much everyone was encouraged to share design and algorithm ideas at design meetings, one thing has always been true:
I wrote the code sitting at my desk, alone, either with or without the headphones blaring.
I know some have tried to do team coding, but I've never seen it in action, and the idea of someone snatching the keyboard to code a few lines would really piss me off.
I don't find even Facebook to be flooded with spam or marketing. Sure there are exceptions (like Snoop pushing his brand on G+), but for the most part it's no where near the level you get anywhere else. As long as you use the "report as spam" option PROPERLY instead of to censor people, it learns to recognize spam and after a few months you stop seeing it, at least with Facebook.
As to monitoring, all the power to them. The government is "public", too. I post publicly, so why would I beef that a public organization funded by public dollars is reviewing my public content? *shrug*
Can someone explain how a.magnet bypasses.torrent blocking? I don't see how changing the file suffix could do that.
But in practice, I'm finding it takes 50-90 seconds to download a.magnet vs. 2-3 seconds for a.torrent, so it must be a HORRIBLY inefficient protocol in the way it uses bandwidth, 'cause the end result is the same checksum and peer search data as a.torrent.
There's always the possibility a snake-oil salesman is on to something.
But without independent verification and independent PROOF that it works, everyone will continue to think it's just snake oil. There have been too many claims by "inventors" of cold fusion devices, perpetual motion machines, "free energy" theories, etc. for people to take anyone at their word.
I wouldn't give Rossi a DIME until there was independent verification.
So-called "dead" code is usually the result of some feature that has been disabled or re-implemented. But keeping the code around as an example of how not to do things can prove very helpful to future maintainers. And if the code in question is ever needed again, you don't need to rewrite it from scratch.
In my case, there are several pieces of "dead code" features I tried and abandoned in the attributes of a business application model for MSS Code Factory. But although I left them in the model and they take up memory at runtime, they're concepts that I do want to follow up on again and tackle from a different angle than the former (failed) approaches to using that information.
There are also probably still a few unused methods and classes in the core code. I went through a huge cleanup effort over the past 18 months of a 15 year project, and got some incredible performance improvements along the way. The system now runs in under 10% of the time it took 18 months ago. Not a bad payoff, even though raw performance of the system was never a key requirement.
It's nice that the price of using DNA sequencing technology is coming down, but I have a question:
So what?
Doctors aren't trained to use DNA sequencing equipment. And even if they were, how many disorders can be diagnosed by gene sequencing? Other than confirmation of genetically carried disorders, gene sequencing would never even be able to help diagnose anything.
When I worked for NorTel, we got a 3-hour "callout" if we had to deal with an issue we were paged for, so carrying a pager could actually be a nice perk if you could deal with the hassle of nightly calls for an unreliable system.
But it's been a long time since I've seen a company that would pay callouts.
Maybe the employers and customers who used to call me during off-work hours would have stopped if I'd been greedy enough to bill them a 3-hour callout when they did so, instead of letting them abuse the emergency services concept over trivial stuff that could have easily waited until tomorrow or been handled through email that I can ignore until the morning.
As a "geek" who doesn't believe in Righthaven's abusive methods of using the threat of the courts to extort money from the accused, I do believe Righthaven has repeatedly violated the ethics of being a lawyer and should be permanently disbarred. Unlike Tony, they've been engaging in such activity for years and in hundreds or thousands of cases.
Here in Regina we have a lawyer named Tony Merchant who's been under investigation by the local bar many times, and he's not been chastized by the judges and the courts nearly as often as Righthaven.
I was starting to think there was no oversight of it's members behaviour with Righthaven and a few ambulance-chasers making the news repeatedly but never being investigated.
The bar association in each district is more than qualified and bound to pull the "lawyer licenses" from it's members who abuse their priveleges and the court system overall.
Tony is still practicing, of course. There were issues that had to be resolved with his practice, and restitution made, but he learned his lesson and was allowed to continue practicing as a result. An investigation does not mean the Righthaven lawyers will be permanent disbarred, even if they are found "guilty" of something by the bar association in their state.
The article really doesn't clarify whether these are viruses that are detected by anti-virus software on the market, or something novel and malicious that could only be detected recently. However, the tone of the article suggests poor management and an utter lack of protection from assault, rather than some incredibly creative black hats at work:
Shortly before Hotchkiss arrived at City College, a new firewall was installed. Technicians set it up to block pornography sites, which are notorious for transmitting computer viruses.
Then faculty began complaining to Hotchkiss that students needed access to porn sites. For research.
Eventually, given examples of the academic necessity, Hotchkiss had to remove the porn block.
I can see the need for some sociology or psychology students to access porn, but only a very few on very specific projects. Methinks some faculty spanking material was the greater concern than student access to "research data" which could have been addressed by granting specific machines a bypass in the firewall configurations.
I'm a Canadian. My only beef with SOPA was the way the US was trying to implement bad legislation that would have seen their enforcement efforts affecting the whole world and subverting other nation's laws.
What the US does internally is America's business, not mine. The down-modders obviously don't like the fact that I'm not continuing to beat the drums of their internal battle for even more changes to SOPA, but it's not MY fight.
Were I to fight YOUR fight, I'd hope you'd be as pissed off as I was at the US attempt to interfere with Canadian policy and law.
...where freedom of speech could be severely curtailed,....
Could be, might be, possibly, if twisted and abused in the worst ways imaginable by warped and dogmatic minds.
I read the Huff often, but it's just a blog site. There is no fact checking required by their writers, so I take what they say with a HUGE grain of salt.
This article, for example, is a panic-inducing fluff piece with not a shred of evidence to support it.
We GOT our way on SOPA yesterday. Good enough for me.
Downloading isn't theft, but when you convert the download to physical media and sell it, or otherwise distribute the content for a fee, it BECOMES theft because you've applied a monetary value to the content you downloaded.
"We will continue to look for ways," Smith continued, "to ensure that foreign Web sites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers."
As are many "geeks", I'm very glad to see this. And i appreciate the way he's redirecting the issue to preventing US residents from being courted by those who sell stolen material and counterfeit goods, while working within the laws of foreign nations to pursue the guilty under their own nation's laws.
Make time in the schedule to do the documentation.
When you're already working a 50-60 hour week just to get something out the door because some moron cut your estimate in half before promising a delivery date, where are you supposed to find the TIME to document instead of code, test, and ship?
Programmers may hate doing documentation, but it's MANAGEMENT's fault it doesn't get done. Period.
Microsoft does not disclose how much revenue it's obtaining from Android, Chrome, and Linux licenses
If any of those patent licenses cover Linux kernel or any other GPL code, the vendor LOSES THE RIGHT TO DEPLOY THE SOFTWARE UNDER THE TERMS OF THE GPL.
The GPL mandates that you fight patents that affect the GPL code you're using. If you don't have the patent, the GPL license is automatically REVOKED. This was done to ensure community support in fighting patent trolls, and to prevent anyone from being able to just "pay off" a troll.
I don't know what's in the patent portfolios Microsoft is licensing. But that's why such deals should not be allowed to be done behind closed doors -- the patents involved affect important licensing terms, and by keeping the information hidden, Microsoft invites the speculation that they're trying to do an end-run to monetize GPL'd code.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry. I forgot to thank you for the REST of the info you posted, which was very well phrased and informative. So, Thanks!
The only epileptics I've ever known have a GENETIC disorder, inherited and suffered from birth. There is no way to "treat the underlying problem" as you suggest.
The same is true of migraines.
However, it turns out the reason no one has ever suffered bi-polar in my family is because in my case, it was caused by a 3-month stint of bad drug interactions that no one knew about when I was prescribed the deadly combination of SSRIs and Triptans that led to Seratonin Syndrome damage to my brain, resulting in a PERMANENT bi-polar condition.
The way I see it, I'm a literal victim of the drug war, caught in the cross-fire. I'd never have used the pharmacorp meds that caused my bi-polar if I'd known cannabis was a safer, more effective, and more reliable medication than any Triptan ever was.
I've been poisoned: How the Cannabis war made me bi-polar
And yes, I'm serious. I was literally poisoned. There may not have been any malicious intent, but I'll suffer the consequences for the rest of my life.
I had no idea epilepsy could be fatal.
I know the years of blood vessel stress can lead a migraine sufferer like myself to suffer an aneurism -- a blood vessel in the brain "blowing out" and bleeding, causing stroke symptoms or even death. But the concept doesn't scare me, it's just a factual risk I live with.
My heartfelt condolences to her family. She was so young and so gifted, with such a future ahead of her. :(
Personally I think this whole "Personalized Search" concept is stupid.
Why the hell would I want to search 1-2 paragraph posts by the unwashed masses (including my own) instead of proper ARTICLES posted to the internet? The whole concept is asinine.
What's next? Searching the insightful wisdom of 140 character tweets? *LOL*
No matter how team oriented the environments I've worked with have been, no matter how much everyone was encouraged to share design and algorithm ideas at design meetings, one thing has always been true:
I wrote the code sitting at my desk, alone, either with or without the headphones blaring.
I know some have tried to do team coding, but I've never seen it in action, and the idea of someone snatching the keyboard to code a few lines would really piss me off.
I don't find even Facebook to be flooded with spam or marketing. Sure there are exceptions (like Snoop pushing his brand on G+), but for the most part it's no where near the level you get anywhere else. As long as you use the "report as spam" option PROPERLY instead of to censor people, it learns to recognize spam and after a few months you stop seeing it, at least with Facebook.
As to monitoring, all the power to them. The government is "public", too. I post publicly, so why would I beef that a public organization funded by public dollars is reviewing my public content? *shrug*
Can someone explain how a .magnet bypasses .torrent blocking? I don't see how changing the file suffix could do that.
But in practice, I'm finding it takes 50-90 seconds to download a .magnet vs. 2-3 seconds for a .torrent, so it must be a HORRIBLY inefficient protocol in the way it uses bandwidth, 'cause the end result is the same checksum and peer search data as a .torrent.
There's always the possibility a snake-oil salesman is on to something.
But without independent verification and independent PROOF that it works, everyone will continue to think it's just snake oil. There have been too many claims by "inventors" of cold fusion devices, perpetual motion machines, "free energy" theories, etc. for people to take anyone at their word.
I wouldn't give Rossi a DIME until there was independent verification.
Damn good point. I've never caught a virus from a porn site in 20+ years.
In fact, they've only fired the anti-virus on REGULAR sites that had drive-by malware ad-banners hosted by GOOGLE of all places!
No, I'd suggest loading a VM for surfing questionable sites, and nuking it after you're done.
Good ideas come from brainstorming, but working out HOW to implement those ideas requires quiet thought.
So-called "dead" code is usually the result of some feature that has been disabled or re-implemented. But keeping the code around as an example of how not to do things can prove very helpful to future maintainers. And if the code in question is ever needed again, you don't need to rewrite it from scratch.
In my case, there are several pieces of "dead code" features I tried and abandoned in the attributes of a business application model for MSS Code Factory. But although I left them in the model and they take up memory at runtime, they're concepts that I do want to follow up on again and tackle from a different angle than the former (failed) approaches to using that information.
There are also probably still a few unused methods and classes in the core code. I went through a huge cleanup effort over the past 18 months of a 15 year project, and got some incredible performance improvements along the way. The system now runs in under 10% of the time it took 18 months ago. Not a bad payoff, even though raw performance of the system was never a key requirement.
It's nice that the price of using DNA sequencing technology is coming down, but I have a question:
So what?
Doctors aren't trained to use DNA sequencing equipment. And even if they were, how many disorders can be diagnosed by gene sequencing? Other than confirmation of genetically carried disorders, gene sequencing would never even be able to help diagnose anything.
When I worked for NorTel, we got a 3-hour "callout" if we had to deal with an issue we were paged for, so carrying a pager could actually be a nice perk if you could deal with the hassle of nightly calls for an unreliable system.
But it's been a long time since I've seen a company that would pay callouts.
Maybe the employers and customers who used to call me during off-work hours would have stopped if I'd been greedy enough to bill them a 3-hour callout when they did so, instead of letting them abuse the emergency services concept over trivial stuff that could have easily waited until tomorrow or been handled through email that I can ignore until the morning.
As a "geek" who doesn't believe in Righthaven's abusive methods of using the threat of the courts to extort money from the accused, I do believe Righthaven has repeatedly violated the ethics of being a lawyer and should be permanently disbarred. Unlike Tony, they've been engaging in such activity for years and in hundreds or thousands of cases.
Here in Regina we have a lawyer named Tony Merchant who's been under investigation by the local bar many times, and he's not been chastized by the judges and the courts nearly as often as Righthaven.
I was starting to think there was no oversight of it's members behaviour with Righthaven and a few ambulance-chasers making the news repeatedly but never being investigated.
The bar association in each district is more than qualified and bound to pull the "lawyer licenses" from it's members who abuse their priveleges and the court system overall.
Tony is still practicing, of course. There were issues that had to be resolved with his practice, and restitution made, but he learned his lesson and was allowed to continue practicing as a result. An investigation does not mean the Righthaven lawyers will be permanent disbarred, even if they are found "guilty" of something by the bar association in their state.
The article really doesn't clarify whether these are viruses that are detected by anti-virus software on the market, or something novel and malicious that could only be detected recently. However, the tone of the article suggests poor management and an utter lack of protection from assault, rather than some incredibly creative black hats at work:
I can see the need for some sociology or psychology students to access porn, but only a very few on very specific projects. Methinks some faculty spanking material was the greater concern than student access to "research data" which could have been addressed by granting specific machines a bypass in the firewall configurations.
I'm a Canadian. My only beef with SOPA was the way the US was trying to implement bad legislation that would have seen their enforcement efforts affecting the whole world and subverting other nation's laws.
What the US does internally is America's business, not mine. The down-modders obviously don't like the fact that I'm not continuing to beat the drums of their internal battle for even more changes to SOPA, but it's not MY fight.
Were I to fight YOUR fight, I'd hope you'd be as pissed off as I was at the US attempt to interfere with Canadian policy and law.
<SARCASM>I'm even PROUDER to be modded down for thanking a politician who did what we asked for. It makes me so glad I'm a slashdotter.</SARCASM>
Could be, might be, possibly, if twisted and abused in the worst ways imaginable by warped and dogmatic minds.
I read the Huff often, but it's just a blog site. There is no fact checking required by their writers, so I take what they say with a HUGE grain of salt.
This article, for example, is a panic-inducing fluff piece with not a shred of evidence to support it.
We GOT our way on SOPA yesterday. Good enough for me.
Downloading isn't theft, but when you convert the download to physical media and sell it, or otherwise distribute the content for a fee, it BECOMES theft because you've applied a monetary value to the content you downloaded.
As are many "geeks", I'm very glad to see this. And i appreciate the way he's redirecting the issue to preventing US residents from being courted by those who sell stolen material and counterfeit goods, while working within the laws of foreign nations to pursue the guilty under their own nation's laws.
It's all I could ask for. Thank you, sir.
Make time in the schedule to do the documentation.
When you're already working a 50-60 hour week just to get something out the door because some moron cut your estimate in half before promising a delivery date, where are you supposed to find the TIME to document instead of code, test, and ship?
Programmers may hate doing documentation, but it's MANAGEMENT's fault it doesn't get done. Period.
Danged typos. "If you don't fight the patent, the GPL license...", not "have the patent."
I really should edit more and correct less. Always in a hurry. :)
If any of those patent licenses cover Linux kernel or any other GPL code, the vendor LOSES THE RIGHT TO DEPLOY THE SOFTWARE UNDER THE TERMS OF THE GPL.
The GPL mandates that you fight patents that affect the GPL code you're using. If you don't have the patent, the GPL license is automatically REVOKED. This was done to ensure community support in fighting patent trolls, and to prevent anyone from being able to just "pay off" a troll.
I don't know what's in the patent portfolios Microsoft is licensing. But that's why such deals should not be allowed to be done behind closed doors -- the patents involved affect important licensing terms, and by keeping the information hidden, Microsoft invites the speculation that they're trying to do an end-run to monetize GPL'd code.