But I did something more than rant on slashdot about their complacency and circumventing our own Charter of Rights. I sent emails to my MP and to the PMO.
The main reason I'm so pissed off is I'm Canadian, and that means your three letter agencies are busy spying on me for all it's worth. Until today I didn't actively hate the US.
Your making enemies as fast as you're losing friends.
Look, the bottom line is the US is out of control on a global scale, and has caused most of it's own problems and performed actions that resulted in the hatred of so many nations and societies against them.
Al Queda was trained and supported during the cold war, but as soon as it was no longer of interest to the US, they were abandoned to their fate at the hands of the Russian army. Add in the civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and it's no wonder they hate the US.
The US anti-drug war has literally cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives in Mexico, Columbia, and throughout south america.
You spy on the entire world as if it were perfectly acceptable, ignoring diplomatic ties, diplomatic relations, and even fundamental human rights that are enshrined in your own constitution, so long as it's not an american being targetted.
You produce an obscene amount of the carbon footprint of the planet, polluting the whole globe and doing a great deal to rush us all to oblivion.
You shove your laws down everyone's throats, even over trivial industries like entertainment (SOPA.)
Right now you whine like petty children because Russia won't return Snowden to your menacing clutches.
You bomb women and children with little regard using remote drones, and don't even have the decency to put your own lives at risk while doing so.
Your country is bankrupt, both financially and morally. Your cities are cesspools of crime, corruption, and gun/drug violence. Detroit is but the first of many who will be declaring bankruptcy thanks to years of mismanagement and abuse for the sake of short term votes.
You threaten the entire globe with a nuclear arsenal that dwarfs anyone else's save Russia's, who haven't threatened an invasion of anybody in a couple of decades.
You support the abuse of the Palestinians by your Israeli "allies", turning a blind eye to decades of human and civil rights abuses and blatant flouting of international law.
I'm sick of the US on the global stage.
I swear, you deserve to have your asses handed to you by a conglomeration of the nations you've abused and mistreated these many years.
And don't give me that "Well, I didn't vote for them" bullshit. You know as well as I do that it's the left and right heads of the same two-headed hydra in power down there. Where are the protests in the street? Where are all the so-called second amendment gun nuts when it matters? Where's the revolution that is so badly needed?
But no, you've got your TV pap and your shitty beer and something that claims to be a hamburger in your hand, so you sit idly by and watch it all unfold without saying a word except on slashdot and facebook.
Hell, even your so-called "justice" system condoned the murder of a 17 year old kid because some gun-toting putz started a fight and ended up losing.
Computer Intrusion is illegal, and the FBI knows that.
So is spying on someone without a warrant, and given that they can't know who they're spying on, I don't see how they could possibly have obtained a warrant for this action.
I hope the TOR user community sues them. Very roughly. And with extreme prejudice.
The US has gotten way too fucking big for it's britches.
I used to think maybe there was justification for the anti-terrorism attitude that the US has.
I've changed my mind.
My sympathies now lie with those who rise up against these goddamn born-again Nazis in their attempt at world domination.
Not one example of developers succeeding or what they might have done to stand out in a sea of offshore contractors, but a bunch of self-congratulatory pap about how successful their own businesses are. And not ONE developer in the panel -- all pompous management taking the credit for themselves.
QA and testing on switches and server software are radically different from handset devices. Telecom server hardware undergoes testing and design reviews on par with most mil-spec development.
This constant blending of "C/C++" really bugs me. There is a world of difference in the performance of a non-class based language like C and one which requires hidden instance parameters and dynamic type checking like C++ does. While you can use a C++ compiler to write C code (all methods and variables declared static), the two languages really do not compare for performance nor for ease of use.
The big problem with C and C++ vs. Java is that it requires a lot of experience to write effective memory management with C and C++, and without effective memory management you end up leaking memory or thrashing the system allocator functions. Comparing these languages is like comparing a VW bug to a modern semi-tractor unit. They're just not equivalent in form, function, or intended market.
In the end you have to use the tools that are best suited to the requirements of the task at hand, and in the case of C and C++ code, that includes being aware of the operating system and it's memory management approach, which Java hides from your code.
I've seen no shortage of C and C++ code over the years whose performance sucked because some idiot directly used malloc/free for allocating small objects instead of writing proper allocators that would cache instance memory and reuse it. Conversely, I've seen Java code that tried to implement instance pools in order to override the garbage collector whose performance sucked as a result of the overhead.
The bottom line is an unskilled or inexperienced programmer with can shoehorn crappy performance concepts from other languages into the code at hand. Blame the coder, not the language.
Even when I worked in the telecommunications market (which is notorious for it's quality control), the ratio of programmers/developers to testers never even approached 4:1. More like 10:1 at best. (The project I'm thinking of had over 100 developers around the world and a 12 person QA department.)
If you need that kind of tester ratio, your developers suck and so do your designers. They should be fired, and you should find some competent staff who have pride in their work and test it before releasing to QA.
You can contact professor Thomas Dean at Queen's University in Kingston for details of how such graph theory applies -- he was involved with the development of this reverse engineering tool.
I know a fellow who worked on a system that would take IBM 360 machine code, convert it into graph format, and re-engineer it as C/C++ code. They made a killing on Y2K, because so many companies didn't have the source code for some of their software any more.
So yes, I call BS as well. Computationally complex, yes, as graph theory often is. But far from impossible to reverse engineer.
If it can execute, it can be reverse engineered. Only the most obtuse and purposefully warped hand-written assembler can even approach the ability to hide an algorithm from deep inspection, and even that can be largely overcome by applying graph theory to restructure the code graphs.
Throw them into modelling classes. Mentor them with people skilled at modelling and "the big picture." Ensure that they're assigned to teams whose projects encompass corporate and global scope instead of the accounting system. Give them the opportunity to learn and to grow.
I guess the true rarity is whether someone is exposed to both skill and talent training over the years to create A Programming God.
But still, I stand by my original statement, because if someone is not good at explaining their visions, they are useless, whereas a skilled programmer under the tutelage of someone with both skill and talent can be made useful, whereas the visionary without the traits necessary to explain their visions is a useless piece of shit.
And from what I've seen, if you don't have the innate ability to sling code and grok the concepts of programming, no amount of training will make you a good programmer. It may make you a competent grunt, but it will never make you what anyone else would call a star.
In the end, you need all three to be a True Programming God:
Skill at coding.
Talent at design and explaining those designs.
The persistance and dedication to hone your craft and deliver results.
That last, I've realized after a night's sleep and thought on the issue, is truly the most important quality of all, because without it all you get is an arrogant coder who thinks their God or an arrogant designer who think's they're God's Gift To The Team.
Give me someone with drive and dedication, and they can be honed and trained. But it is that drive and dedication that is the heart of their success, even more than the minimal inate skills they need to achieve the pinaccle of programming.
I think it's important to note that they used KDE for their transition. Of the desktops that are currently available and reasonably popular, KDE has the most "traditional" interface. People who've never used Linux before have sat down at my box with it's familiar set of desktop icons, double clicked on the applications they wanted (usually Firefox), and had no problem with resizing windows, maximizing them, minimizing them, or otherwise using my box.
This should be a resounding slap in the face for groups behind abortions like Unity and Gnome 3. Change for the sake of change is not progress. Give people something they're familiar with, and they'll use it. Stray from that path of familiarity and they'll revolt -- loudly.
I've known no shortage of white board artists who could sketch diagrams in a blinding flash but who were otherwise completely useless to the team. Nor could they explain their white board diagrams in terminology that enabled those who were skilled at coding to be able to implement their grand visions.
Visionaries are a dime a dozen. But without the skill to put those visions in practice, they're just dead weight.
It's interesting to note that there is virtually no price difference between commercial and residential services with SaskTel's DSL offerings here in Saskatchewan; it's primarily a question of whether you're allowed to run servers or not. My understanding is the distinction is maintained mainly so they can budget their bandwidth when allocating hardware slices.
Net neutrality means that content is freely available to all. It does not mean that an ISP has to provide the same services to all of it's users. At best it means that everyone has the opportunity to purchase or lease said services without bias or prejudice.
I don't see Google as having shifted their stance at all. They're merely talking from a different viewpoint on the issue, and just so happen to agree with pretty much every other ISP on the planet: if you want to run servers, you pay for business class services.
Slashdot Mirror
But I did something more than rant on slashdot about their complacency and circumventing our own Charter of Rights. I sent emails to my MP and to the PMO.
The main reason I'm so pissed off is I'm Canadian, and that means your three letter agencies are busy spying on me for all it's worth. Until today I didn't actively hate the US.
Your making enemies as fast as you're losing friends.
Ok, so maybe the Al Queda line was over the top. But I do sympathize with their anti-American stance.
The same as I sympathize with Palestinian kids throwing rocks at the heavily armed Israeli army troops.
Look, the bottom line is the US is out of control on a global scale, and has caused most of it's own problems and performed actions that resulted in the hatred of so many nations and societies against them.
Al Queda was trained and supported during the cold war, but as soon as it was no longer of interest to the US, they were abandoned to their fate at the hands of the Russian army. Add in the civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and it's no wonder they hate the US.
The US anti-drug war has literally cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives in Mexico, Columbia, and throughout south america.
You spy on the entire world as if it were perfectly acceptable, ignoring diplomatic ties, diplomatic relations, and even fundamental human rights that are enshrined in your own constitution, so long as it's not an american being targetted.
You produce an obscene amount of the carbon footprint of the planet, polluting the whole globe and doing a great deal to rush us all to oblivion.
You shove your laws down everyone's throats, even over trivial industries like entertainment (SOPA.)
Right now you whine like petty children because Russia won't return Snowden to your menacing clutches.
You bomb women and children with little regard using remote drones, and don't even have the decency to put your own lives at risk while doing so.
Your country is bankrupt, both financially and morally. Your cities are cesspools of crime, corruption, and gun/drug violence. Detroit is but the first of many who will be declaring bankruptcy thanks to years of mismanagement and abuse for the sake of short term votes.
You threaten the entire globe with a nuclear arsenal that dwarfs anyone else's save Russia's, who haven't threatened an invasion of anybody in a couple of decades.
You support the abuse of the Palestinians by your Israeli "allies", turning a blind eye to decades of human and civil rights abuses and blatant flouting of international law.
I'm sick of the US on the global stage.
I swear, you deserve to have your asses handed to you by a conglomeration of the nations you've abused and mistreated these many years.
And don't give me that "Well, I didn't vote for them" bullshit. You know as well as I do that it's the left and right heads of the same two-headed hydra in power down there. Where are the protests in the street? Where are all the so-called second amendment gun nuts when it matters? Where's the revolution that is so badly needed?
But no, you've got your TV pap and your shitty beer and something that claims to be a hamburger in your hand, so you sit idly by and watch it all unfold without saying a word except on slashdot and facebook.
Hell, even your so-called "justice" system condoned the murder of a 17 year old kid because some gun-toting putz started a fight and ended up losing.
I judge as quickly as I am judged.
Already modded down in 30 seconds.
Fuck you Americans.
Fuck you all.
Computer Intrusion is illegal, and the FBI knows that.
So is spying on someone without a warrant, and given that they can't know who they're spying on, I don't see how they could possibly have obtained a warrant for this action.
I hope the TOR user community sues them. Very roughly. And with extreme prejudice.
The US has gotten way too fucking big for it's britches.
I used to think maybe there was justification for the anti-terrorism attitude that the US has.
I've changed my mind.
My sympathies now lie with those who rise up against these goddamn born-again Nazis in their attempt at world domination.
You go, Al Queda!
You seriously underestimate the number of small and medium sized businesses who run their own email servers.
Zieg Hiel, Mein Fuhrer!
Film at 11.
Not one example of developers succeeding or what they might have done to stand out in a sea of offshore contractors, but a bunch of self-congratulatory pap about how successful their own businesses are. And not ONE developer in the panel -- all pompous management taking the credit for themselves.
QA and testing on switches and server software are radically different from handset devices. Telecom server hardware undergoes testing and design reviews on par with most mil-spec development.
So you expect QA to be running the debuggers for new code?
Sprout a brain!
This constant blending of "C/C++" really bugs me. There is a world of difference in the performance of a non-class based language like C and one which requires hidden instance parameters and dynamic type checking like C++ does. While you can use a C++ compiler to write C code (all methods and variables declared static), the two languages really do not compare for performance nor for ease of use.
The big problem with C and C++ vs. Java is that it requires a lot of experience to write effective memory management with C and C++, and without effective memory management you end up leaking memory or thrashing the system allocator functions. Comparing these languages is like comparing a VW bug to a modern semi-tractor unit. They're just not equivalent in form, function, or intended market.
In the end you have to use the tools that are best suited to the requirements of the task at hand, and in the case of C and C++ code, that includes being aware of the operating system and it's memory management approach, which Java hides from your code.
I've seen no shortage of C and C++ code over the years whose performance sucked because some idiot directly used malloc/free for allocating small objects instead of writing proper allocators that would cache instance memory and reuse it. Conversely, I've seen Java code that tried to implement instance pools in order to override the garbage collector whose performance sucked as a result of the overhead.
The bottom line is an unskilled or inexperienced programmer with can shoehorn crappy performance concepts from other languages into the code at hand. Blame the coder, not the language.
Even when I worked in the telecommunications market (which is notorious for it's quality control), the ratio of programmers/developers to testers never even approached 4:1. More like 10:1 at best. (The project I'm thinking of had over 100 developers around the world and a 12 person QA department.)
If you need that kind of tester ratio, your developers suck and so do your designers. They should be fired, and you should find some competent staff who have pride in their work and test it before releasing to QA.
You can contact professor Thomas Dean at Queen's University in Kingston for details of how such graph theory applies -- he was involved with the development of this reverse engineering tool.
I know a fellow who worked on a system that would take IBM 360 machine code, convert it into graph format, and re-engineer it as C/C++ code. They made a killing on Y2K, because so many companies didn't have the source code for some of their software any more.
So yes, I call BS as well. Computationally complex, yes, as graph theory often is. But far from impossible to reverse engineer.
If it can execute, it can be reverse engineered. Only the most obtuse and purposefully warped hand-written assembler can even approach the ability to hide an algorithm from deep inspection, and even that can be largely overcome by applying graph theory to restructure the code graphs.
Mis-shapen plastic Yoda's must be worth a mint.
I really should proof-read and edit before hitting submit.
True. You cannot teach someone to have a vision.
Or can you?
Throw them into modelling classes. Mentor them with people skilled at modelling and "the big picture." Ensure that they're assigned to teams whose projects encompass corporate and global scope instead of the accounting system. Give them the opportunity to learn and to grow.
I guess the true rarity is whether someone is exposed to both skill and talent training over the years to create A Programming God.
But still, I stand by my original statement, because if someone is not good at explaining their visions, they are useless, whereas a skilled programmer under the tutelage of someone with both skill and talent can be made useful, whereas the visionary without the traits necessary to explain their visions is a useless piece of shit.
And from what I've seen, if you don't have the innate ability to sling code and grok the concepts of programming, no amount of training will make you a good programmer. It may make you a competent grunt, but it will never make you what anyone else would call a star.
In the end, you need all three to be a True Programming God:
Skill at coding.
Talent at design and explaining those designs.
The persistance and dedication to hone your craft and deliver results.
That last, I've realized after a night's sleep and thought on the issue, is truly the most important quality of all, because without it all you get is an arrogant coder who thinks their God or an arrogant designer who think's they're God's Gift To The Team.
Give me someone with drive and dedication, and they can be honed and trained. But it is that drive and dedication that is the heart of their success, even more than the minimal inate skills they need to achieve the pinaccle of programming.
I think it's important to note that they used KDE for their transition. Of the desktops that are currently available and reasonably popular, KDE has the most "traditional" interface. People who've never used Linux before have sat down at my box with it's familiar set of desktop icons, double clicked on the applications they wanted (usually Firefox), and had no problem with resizing windows, maximizing them, minimizing them, or otherwise using my box.
This should be a resounding slap in the face for groups behind abortions like Unity and Gnome 3. Change for the sake of change is not progress. Give people something they're familiar with, and they'll use it. Stray from that path of familiarity and they'll revolt -- loudly.
I've known no shortage of white board artists who could sketch diagrams in a blinding flash but who were otherwise completely useless to the team. Nor could they explain their white board diagrams in terminology that enabled those who were skilled at coding to be able to implement their grand visions.
Visionaries are a dime a dozen. But without the skill to put those visions in practice, they're just dead weight.
Data in, nothing out.
Which is what you get with a commercial service.
It's interesting to note that there is virtually no price difference between commercial and residential services with SaskTel's DSL offerings here in Saskatchewan; it's primarily a question of whether you're allowed to run servers or not. My understanding is the distinction is maintained mainly so they can budget their bandwidth when allocating hardware slices.
Net neutrality means that content is freely available to all. It does not mean that an ISP has to provide the same services to all of it's users. At best it means that everyone has the opportunity to purchase or lease said services without bias or prejudice.
I don't see Google as having shifted their stance at all. They're merely talking from a different viewpoint on the issue, and just so happen to agree with pretty much every other ISP on the planet: if you want to run servers, you pay for business class services.