I think that they have used Intel's CPUs for a very long time. The Apple ][ series was all Intel, for instance. The Mac was Motorola, then IBM, and now Intel - but it has changed architectures completely twice.
Huh? Apple has used Intel's CPUs for a long time? Where did you get that from?
The original Apple ][s were based on MOS Technology's 6502 processor, although MOS later licensed the technology to other manufacturers, Intel was never one of them, since they were doing quite well with their 8080 and then later the 80286 and successors in the x86 line. The Apple//c was based on the 65c02, a CMOS implementation of the 6502 standard created by Western Design Center, and the Apple//GS was based on the 65816, also by Western Design Center. The 65816 was basically a backwards compatible 6502 chip with the ability to work in either 8 or 16 bit modes rather than just 8 bit. While it's possible that there were some Intel components in some of these machines (I think I remember hearing that one of the floppy drive controllers used an Intel chip), but none of the Apple// line EVER used intel CPUs.
The original Macintosh was based on the 68000 chip from Motorola, and Macs continued to be based on that chips successors, the 68020, 68030, and 68040 for several years. Then they switched to the PowerPC family which were designed by IBM and Motorola together. I believe that most of the chips were branded IBM inside the case, but I believe the chips, at least at first, were being supplied by Motorola.
The switch to Intel didn't happen until 2006, although NextSTEP, the OS that OS X was based on, ran on multiple architectures including Intel, and Apple kept making sure that OS X could be used on Intel chips in secret to give them more bargaining power.
I highly doubt we would have seen the bunny suit ads if Apple had been using Intel chips for anything mission-critical.
The signal-to-noise ratio here isn't likely to be that much better than on the big job boards. Though undoubtedly most of us who read Slashdot think we qualify as "superstars" (even if all the evidence is to the contrary), it should be assumed that out of the hundreds of thousands of registered users, there are not more than a few thousand true stars of the sort your are looking for. From a quick read through, I'd venture a guess that about one in five or less of the posts actually gives useful information, and several contain what I would call disturbingly bad advice that sounds like it was authored by an MBA whose undergrad degree was in psychology or sociology or some other soft, unstructured major and who have never actually worked closely with geeks. I have been in and around the industry long enough and have worked with enough obvious superstars that I think I can offer some moderately good advice regardless of whether I, myself, am a superstar.
First, there are recruiters who specialize in finding 'passive', high-end talent. You will pay a fair amount of money compared to a listing on Dice (usually a percentage of first year salary), but in the long run, it'll save you money. The reputable recruiters will refund money if the person leaves or is fired for cause in the first year - make sure that your contract specifies that.
Even with that, it's really quite difficult, because so many people have entered the field. The dot-com and Y2K fueled work shortage of the late nineties drove up the rates artificially high for even mediocre programmers and, as a result, a lot of people who would have otherwise gone into other fields, decided to go into programming because it "paid well". That one fact makes it so much harder to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Although the stereotype of the high-end programmer having no social skills and poor hygiene is not completely warranted, it is also not entirely without basis. The best programmers very well may not be the one who come across the best in an interview. If social interaction and communication are an essential part of the job, then you need to look for people who can communicate well in personl, but if not, and you are looking for a real, roll-up-the-elbows coder who's going to sit at a computer ten hours a day and rarely speak to live humans, then don't put too much weight on how the person comes across in the interview, or you could unintentionally weed out some great people.
Basically, the main criterion you should look for is somebody who would be programming even if they weren't being paid to do it. You want people who are motivated by the challenge, not primarily by the money. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean you can pay them less than they are worth unless you have a project that offers truly unique challenges. Ask potential candidates about their coding experience prior to their first job; ask them why they went into programming in the first place. Ask them about the first "real" piece of software they wrote, and then gauge their enthusiasm as they tell you. If their response is a class project in a college or technical school class, there's an increased chance the person chose the field for the money. Of course, there are people who don't discover they love coding until they take a college or technical school class, so don't rule people out simply because they got a late start. Certainly, you should ask them why they went into the field; you may not get an honest answer, but you might.
To attract the type of person you claim you want, you need to set up your work environment so they have a fairly large amount of flexibility and freedom - they often do not respond well to set hours or work rules written by some MBA who just doesn't grok programmers. This is a difficult thing to manage in a large company, because non-superstars will expect the same freedom and flexibility, and most corporations seem to have a pathological desire not to give such freedom to anybody. You shouldn't, of course, bend a rule that was created for
Bullshit. Professions in the sense you speak are formed for the good of those people already in the profession. It allows them to control who can compete against them, both by giving them a say over who can join, and by getting the government to restrict what people who haven't joined can do.
Although the "professionalism" and "public good" argument you make has been used ad nauseam, and it has a certain attractive logic to it and seems like it should be true. But, there is very little quantitative evidence available, and almost all that there is indicates that government sanctioning of professions has had absolutely no positive impact on the quality of the services rendered by those professions, and there is considerable evidence to suggest that it may have degraded it (although it's difficult to determine causality given the number of factors that go into something like that). In other words, they do absolutely nothing to protect the common good over, and they may harm it.
Government sanctioning and licensing of professions is completely about control and prosperity of a particular group. That's now how they're justified and you won't find it in the charters or enabling legislation, but it's the reality of the situation. They are lobbying groups and industry associations all rolled up into one, with quasi-governmental powers to boot.
Although it means hobbyists could no longer tinker, we are at the point where that hobbyist tinkering could have significant implications for the international system of computing infrastructure. Why should unlicensed software authors be any different from unlicensed doctors?
Your statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the craft. Basically, every really incredible programmer/developer/software engineer got that way by tinkering. Not by taking 60 credit hours of programming classes. It's the countless hours of trying things out and figuring shit out that got them good. The classes, if they were even taken, provided a starting point. Anything that discourages tinkering prior to or in addition to formal training would have a dramatically negative impact on the "international system of computing infrastructure" because it would drastically reduce the ranks of those who actually make all the stuff work.
While I actually have issues with licensing of Doctors, I'll point out one very serious and very obvious difference: You an code on your own computer -- tinker if you will -- and have absolutely no chance of hurting anyone else. You can't exactly practice surgery on your friend safely. You can study anatomy all day long, but without being able to work under a doctor while cutting into a patient or diagnosing a difficult case, you're likely to do far more harm than good no matter how much knowledge you have shoved into your head. They are not comparable cases; there is some basis for licensing of doctors, absolutely no rational one for licensing of software engineers unless you are completely ignorant about how good coders become that way.
Now, if you want to talk about specific accreditations for programming in fields where there is a high risk of harm, such as coding for the FAA or NASA or military, I'm willing to be slightly more sympathetic to your argument, but am skeptical that it would guarantee or even improve the quality even in those fields.
Oy... hate to even get involved...
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ZOMG New Zunes
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Man... I should resist the urge to even get involved with a thread like this. *sigh*... okay.
Let me put up front that I'm pretty firmly in the Apple camp, though I use several Microsoft products on a daily basis, I wouldn't if there weren't a practical need. The first generation Zune's were pretty easy to laugh off, and I really think Microsoft missed a few golden opportunities here. However, to capitalize on those opportunities, they probably would have needed to know what Apple was doing before anyone outside of Apple knew, which is not necessarily an easy task. I didn't seriously expect them to have a capable touch-screen product in this generation, but I did expect them to have a 160 gig model. All-in-all, however, the 2G Zune seems like competition. Maybe not stiff competition, but not something to be laughed off at least which, in this market space, is an accomplishment.
I'm glad to see Microsoft pushing some features that Apple doesn't have - competition is good and Apple desperately needs competition in this market space. That being said, wireless syncing (even if you didn't have to plug the darn thing in) wouldn't be enough to justify charging the same amount. I mean, this is going to sound crazy, but people expect to pay more for Apple products. Why would someone go with a Zune for the same price? Oh, I know some people will, but if Microsoft wants to grab a substantial part of the market, they need to either be noticeably better or noticeably cheaper. They've decided not to go the cheaper route with the Zune, which I respect, but they're going to have to come up with some form of really kick-ass distinguishing feature to get most people to even look at their product as an alternative to an iPod.
The whole DRM-free store thing- well, they look like a Johnny-come-lately on that given that Apple did it first and that Microsoft has been such a strong proponent of DRM in the past. People are not going to notice if they have more DRM-free songs, they're just going to notice that they did it second. The subscription thing? Well... maybe, but nobody's really found a way to use that model to make an serious impact yet. It seems like a great idea, but when it comes down to it, it seems that people really want to own their music rather than have to keep paying regardless of whether they get new music in a given month. The economics may seem to favor the subscription model, but there's something about being beholden to somebody every month that I think gives people pause.
I'm willing to give the Zune a chance - software makes the device, and it's possible that they've nailed it with the interface in a way that puts Apple to shame, and if they have, my next MP3 player will be a Zune. But based on past experience, I will honestly be very surprised if they've beat Apple on that account or if they've evan managed to be more than a cut-rate copy. It's an uphill battle for a monolith like Microsoft, and Apple got quite a head start. But I'll hold out hope for Zune G3 if Zune G2 isn't an iPod killer.
Having a small government for the sake of a small government is no better than more government for the sake of more government.
Perhaps, but it sure is a lot less expensive. Not that I agree with this nutjob who wrote TFA in the slightest, but I have to say that in general, I'm in favor of much smaller government than we have now. The massive bureaucracy is rife with waste and that doesn't help anyone.
You're wrong. "Carbon" is the collective name for all native Mac OS X APIs, see http://developer.apple.com/carbon/. Quartz, Core Data, Code Audio, etc. are all parts of the umbrella technology set called "Carbon".
No, no. Actually, you're wrong. Your statement is patently not true.
Try this: http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/ind ex.html
Cocoa and Carbon are both application frameworks that sit on top of the core foundation, which includes Quartz, Core Data, Core Audio, and Core Video. It's a combination of the old Core Foundation classes from NextSTEP and some ports and rewrites of libraries from the classic mac (e.g. Quicktime), plus a smattering of new OS-X native technologies (e.g. Quartz, Core Video, Core Image).
Cocoa is the application building toolset from NextSTEP. Carbon is a re-implementation of the application building toolset that was used under the classic Mac OS. Both are "native", in that neither runs under emulation or using an interpreter, but they are fundamentally different approaches. Both have advantages over the other, although by and large, the consensus is that Cocoa is a much better choice for projects being started from scratch. Cocoa, however, is written in Objective-C, which is a language without as much cross-platform support as C and C++, so projects that came from the classic mac, or those that have been around for some time, can sometimes get running faster using Carbon because they don't have to re-write as much of their legacy C++ code.
One commonly misunderstood thing, however, is that these frameworks are not mutually exclusive. Almost all Cocoa applications call Carbon functions; some of the newer Cocoa classes are actually wrappers around Carbon functions. It's much more complicated, but it is actully possible to use Objective-C objects from Carbon, and the CF classes that many Cocoa objects wrap around can always be used from C, just without the benefits of dynamic messaging and weak typing.
I'm not really against DRM per se, but I am against how it's currently implemented.
I think Steve Jobs actually did a good job of pointing out the problem with DRM. DRM can never work unless you require the device to be networked so that it can check back with some central server for the key (and even then that's not infallible, just a bigger challenge). Without that, you HAVE to put the key to unlock the content right on the media and the player has to know how to find and use that key. This is true for DVDs and DVD-HD, protected CDs... it's inherent in the nature of the produce. Content that can't be viewed is useless to the consumer, so the device has to know how to play the content. Somebody will ALWAYS be able to crack any DRM scheme no matter how sophisticated, in less time and at less cost than was put into developing the scheme.
Every version of Macrovision has been cracked in a fairly short period of time. DVD encryption was cracked. DVD-HD hasn't been fully cracked, but enough to allow unprotected copies of HD DVDs to already exist.
This shouldn't be a moral discussion, it should be a practical one. So far, CEOs have been gullible enough to be believe Macrovision and other companies' claims that they can "protect" content. They can't, but they've made a lot of money by convincing people that they can, but unfortunately, that's all starting to unravel.
The funniest thing about Macrovision's letter is the suggestion that Macrovision can "help" Apple. Apple, despite it's public stance, has done as good a job as anybody at implementing DRM. Yes, you can get around it, but at least they evolve their DRM whenever somebody cracks it because there are actually implications to not doing so... unlike Macrovision who is still raking in gobs of money for protection schemes that have long since been cracked.
I know, I know!!!! This is a trick question isn't it Bill??? Is it Xerox?????
It's not, if Bill actually knows his history. The Alto did not have menus at all. The Lisa had file, edit, and view. I can't remember if there was a help menu back then, though, so Windows might have a legitimate claim to that one.
A woman invented COBOL? This does not surprise me. *ducks*
Actually, no, the article is wrong. Grace Hopper did many incredible things, but she didn't actually invent COBOL. She did, however, come up with the idea that computer programming languages could be designed that were more like English and, thus, be easier to use. I would say that is a much greater accomplishment. She also created a language called FLOW-MATIC that was a precursor to COBOL, and which strongly influenced the CODASYSL committe who created COBOL. So, COBOL was created by a committee (of men), but many of the basic concepts and ideas that are fundamental to most of the technology you use today was, in fact, invented by a pretty damn amazing woman.
Traditionally, the word has been spelled judgment in all forms of the English language. However, the spelling judgement (with e added) largely replaced judgment in the United Kingdom in a non-legal context. In the context of the law, however, judgment is preferred. This spelling change contrasts with other similar spelling changes made in American English, which were rejected in the UK. In the US at least, judgment is still preferred and judgement is considered incorrect by many American style guides. As with many such spelling differences, both forms are equally acceptable in Canadian English and Australian English. In New Zealand English the form judgment is the preferred spelling in dictionaries, newspapers and legislation, although the variant judgement can also be found in all three categories.
Re:And unfortunately right about YouTube
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Ballmer Sounds Off
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For better or for worse, this is illegal and somewhat unethical.
That's rather a broad generalization. Not all situations where IP is used by someone who is not the "rights owner" as Ballmer says (that should be "primary rights owner, as we ALL have rights, such as "fair use rights") is illegal or unethical. There is a lot of gray area in that regard, and certainly some of what is posted to YouTube is illegal and/or unethical, but you can't make a blanket statement like this.
Guess it goes to show that the RIAA and MPAA are doing a good job with their propaganda, though, since less and less people know or care about fair use these days.
There's a big difference between them "lacking" a business model, and you not being able to see it. 10 years ago, would you have thought that there was a "business model" around offering free internet search - a business model that would eventually lead to the juggernaut that is Google? I doubt it - I certainly didn't.
This could be a mistake on Google's part - I have no crystal ball, but I'm betting that the brains at Google gave this a little bit of thought before deciding to spend the money and have some plans (aka a "business model") for it.
What about drop-down (select) boxes? You can't tab to those, yet they take input from the keyboard (up/down to select items)...
Yes, you can. It's not set that way by default, but if you go into System Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse under the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, there's a radio button that allows you to change it so that all controls can be tabbed to. "All" controls includes Pop-up menus, drop-down lists, and combo boxes.
I don't use DreamWeaver, but unless they've implemented custom controls (possible), then it should work once you've selected this radio button. If it doesn't, then it's Macromedia's fault for not implementing a control that follows the Universal Access guidelines.
My point: why run two operating systems on the same box? Just get another PC. They're cheap these days. Buy two.
For most people, you're probably right. However, I'm a road warrior. My primary machine is a Mac, but once in a while, I have to run something that's only available on Windows. Not often, but once in a while. Virtual PC is slow, and I'm not about to lug a second laptop all over the place with me for those few situations. I'm really looking forward DarWine getting stable, but having the option to boot into Windows is great for me, even though I'll probably only log a few dozen hours a year booted into Windows.
The fact that I can do this might make me by a MBP earlier than I had intended to.
Yes, really - even when you turn on the "All controls" option in System Preferences, you still can't use the keyboard to navigate between controls in the same window, which means you have to continually reach for the mouse if that's your style of using a computer.
Sure I can. I do this all the time on my PowerBook, without using third party software. The only controls I can't get to using the tab key are those that don't accept inputs ever, like static, non-copyable text.
Again, I ask: that's different how? Old computers are still useful, we've just been indoctrinated in this disposable society to think otherwise. I know many less technically-oriented people who make computers last far more than the three years the OP stated. For what most people use them for, computers could be quite useful until they die, which can be quite a long time with a little TLC (I know of a couple of Apple ][+ computers that are still going strong). Just because most of us DON'T keep a computer longer than three years doesn't mean they aren't useful. MOST people don't keep their text books either. In both situations, it's a moot point for the vast majority of the people.
Besides that, the information you are given digitally can be transferred to your next computer, meaning you still have access to the data... without having to keep shelves full of dead-tree-ware.
The only difference between "in the wild" and "proof of concept" exploits is their propogation.
Yeah... that and the millions of dollars and productivity lost to dealing with them. Oh, yeah, and there's the trivial fact that "proof of concept" don't do anything malicious.
Windows, OTOH, is an ideal environment for fast, wide-scale propogation.
Yes, but in three years, the laptop will be so old and out of date, they'll have to purchase a new one.
Ummm and that's different how? Textbooks often become obsolete after just single year. College textbook publishers LOVE to change editions, move chapters around, etc. in order to kill the resale value of books and keep a never-ending revenue stream.
False. Indeed, Windows doesn't even *have* the equivalent of the Unix SUID concept, let alone use it by default.
Exactly the problem. The concept of true discreet roles doesn't exist in the architecture. This results in no real difference between launching a program as an Administrative user and launching it as an unprivileged user because the user mode components of the kernel (e.g., csrss.exe and lsass.exe) run under the Local System account which has complete access to all the resources of the machine. Additionally, most of the daemon programs run under this account as well.
Under Windows XP, user accounts have fairly granular privilege control that allows you to specify what the user themselves can actually do, but you always have the user mode components running with full privileges (which I would consider the equivalent of SUID root) and the executables launched by the user have the ability to interact with the user mode components, in most circumstances without needing user input or authorization. Prior to XP, you didn't even have that level of access control and the system was pretty much open. As long as this situation exists, Windows is inherently insecure. Hopefully, Vista will change this, but sticking your head in the sand doesn't make it less true.
Additionally, there are mechanisms built into the system that allow malicious code to be fired automatically without any interaction by the user.
Not by design there aren't.
Probably not by design, but true nonetheless. With a default installation using default Microsoft tools, it is possible, for example, for received e-mail atachments to be launched or launch executables, and Active X components embedded on web pages can all. In these cases, they are able to interact with the user mode components I mentioned before that run with full privileges. Spend five minutes with Google and I guarantee you can find an example of this. Bruce Schneir once showed a proof of concept exploit using an ActiveX component on a web page that, if loaded in Internet Explorer deletes your entire hard drive without any further interaction by the user!
Feel free to keep thinking I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm perfectly okay with you blindly thinking Windows is no worse than any other operating system in terms of security - it's your data and your time at risk.
It would be trivial to write malware for OS X or Linux, since 99.9% of the things malware does has no requirement for elevated privileges.
Sure, just type
rm -r * > run_me
and you have malware if you can get somebody to run it. That's annoying and inevitable - only common sense can stop trojans, but writing a true worm for OS X or Linux that can spread from machine to machine quickly? Go ahead and do a proof of concept one if it's so trivial. So far, I've seen one that comes close to being that - which is the iChat 'worm', and that is nowhere near the threat as the SQL Slammer or Blaster worms...
Only if the relationship is linear. Even a few brief thoughts about the environment should tell you it won't be.
Well, yeah... a direct correlation generally results in a linear distribution and what I said was "it's not even close to being a direct correlation", so I don't disagree with your re-statement of what I said. But the scenario is so far from linear that it's laughable. Comparing over 200,000 exploits, many of which have been exploited by malware in the wild versus somewhere around 200 with only a few actual exploits, most of which are proof-of-concept? I mean drop a few zeros and you can see that it's a lot less of a percentage than the Mac's market share, even if you use the most conservative estimates of the Mac's market share.
There's no doubt that the number of people using an OS IS a factor in the amount of malware that exists for that platform, but it's not the ONLY or even the primary factor as the OP posited.
Windows, although it's getting better, and hopefully Vista will be much better, has architectural issues that make it easier to exploit.
Such as ?
Primarily the fact that any executable running on Windows runs as the equivalent of SUID root in Unix - applications are privileged to do things the user launching them can't. Additionally, there are mechanisms built into the system that allow malicious code to be fired automatically without any interaction by the user. the combination of the ability to make code (from an e-mail, ActiveX component on a web page, etc.) run without interaction and the fact that executing code runs with super-user privileges means that there is a much greater potential for damage with Windows malware.
A trojan on my Mac, or on Linux or any Unix, or for that matter OS/2, BeOS... can only do what the user launching it can do, no more. It can't touch files or ports or processes that the user doesn't have access to, and the most sensitive stuff (by default) standard users don't have access to. Attempts to exceed the launching user's authority will either be rejected or will result in an authorization prompt. Not so on Windows, where once the code is launched, it can do just about anything, including modify the registry.
There ARE potential exploits on Mac OS X or other Unix or unix-like operating systems that can get around this, but they are much more difficult to write and are usually patched relatively quickly, often before an exploit exists in the wild.
An OS's security is directly related to its popularity.
Hardly. There's a correlation, but it's not even close to being a direct correlation. If it were, there would be somewhere in the realm of 15,000 exploits in the wild for Mac OS X.
The situation just isn't as simple as you believe it to be. Sure, the number of people who use an operating system tends to have a relation to the number of people who develop for that system and also the number who have the skills necessary to create a virus, trojan, or worm. But there's more to it than that. Windows, although it's getting better, and hopefully Vista will be much better, has architectural issues that make it easier to exploit. It also has consumer-targeted development tools which have the sole intention of lowering the bar to new programmers. Combine these two, and you have a societal petrie dish ripe for creating malware authors - not only are there more people using the OS, but there are proportionately more people capable of writing malicious software and a system that is easier to exploit.
If the Mac had 95% market share, there would certainly be more malware, but the situation would simply not be as bad as it is for Windows right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? Apple has used Intel's CPUs for a long time? Where did you get that from?
The original Apple ][s were based on MOS Technology's 6502 processor, although MOS later licensed the technology to other manufacturers, Intel was never one of them, since they were doing quite well with their 8080 and then later the 80286 and successors in the x86 line. The Apple
The original Macintosh was based on the 68000 chip from Motorola, and Macs continued to be based on that chips successors, the 68020, 68030, and 68040 for several years. Then they switched to the PowerPC family which were designed by IBM and Motorola together. I believe that most of the chips were branded IBM inside the case, but I believe the chips, at least at first, were being supplied by Motorola.
The switch to Intel didn't happen until 2006, although NextSTEP, the OS that OS X was based on, ran on multiple architectures including Intel, and Apple kept making sure that OS X could be used on Intel chips in secret to give them more bargaining power.
I highly doubt we would have seen the bunny suit ads if Apple had been using Intel chips for anything mission-critical.
The signal-to-noise ratio here isn't likely to be that much better than on the big job boards. Though undoubtedly most of us who read Slashdot think we qualify as "superstars" (even if all the evidence is to the contrary), it should be assumed that out of the hundreds of thousands of registered users, there are not more than a few thousand true stars of the sort your are looking for. From a quick read through, I'd venture a guess that about one in five or less of the posts actually gives useful information, and several contain what I would call disturbingly bad advice that sounds like it was authored by an MBA whose undergrad degree was in psychology or sociology or some other soft, unstructured major and who have never actually worked closely with geeks. I have been in and around the industry long enough and have worked with enough obvious superstars that I think I can offer some moderately good advice regardless of whether I, myself, am a superstar.
First, there are recruiters who specialize in finding 'passive', high-end talent. You will pay a fair amount of money compared to a listing on Dice (usually a percentage of first year salary), but in the long run, it'll save you money. The reputable recruiters will refund money if the person leaves or is fired for cause in the first year - make sure that your contract specifies that.
Even with that, it's really quite difficult, because so many people have entered the field. The dot-com and Y2K fueled work shortage of the late nineties drove up the rates artificially high for even mediocre programmers and, as a result, a lot of people who would have otherwise gone into other fields, decided to go into programming because it "paid well". That one fact makes it so much harder to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Although the stereotype of the high-end programmer having no social skills and poor hygiene is not completely warranted, it is also not entirely without basis. The best programmers very well may not be the one who come across the best in an interview. If social interaction and communication are an essential part of the job, then you need to look for people who can communicate well in personl, but if not, and you are looking for a real, roll-up-the-elbows coder who's going to sit at a computer ten hours a day and rarely speak to live humans, then don't put too much weight on how the person comes across in the interview, or you could unintentionally weed out some great people. Basically, the main criterion you should look for is somebody who would be programming even if they weren't being paid to do it. You want people who are motivated by the challenge, not primarily by the money. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean you can pay them less than they are worth unless you have a project that offers truly unique challenges. Ask potential candidates about their coding experience prior to their first job; ask them why they went into programming in the first place. Ask them about the first "real" piece of software they wrote, and then gauge their enthusiasm as they tell you. If their response is a class project in a college or technical school class, there's an increased chance the person chose the field for the money. Of course, there are people who don't discover they love coding until they take a college or technical school class, so don't rule people out simply because they got a late start. Certainly, you should ask them why they went into the field; you may not get an honest answer, but you might.
To attract the type of person you claim you want, you need to set up your work environment so they have a fairly large amount of flexibility and freedom - they often do not respond well to set hours or work rules written by some MBA who just doesn't grok programmers. This is a difficult thing to manage in a large company, because non-superstars will expect the same freedom and flexibility, and most corporations seem to have a pathological desire not to give such freedom to anybody. You shouldn't, of course, bend a rule that was created for
Although the "professionalism" and "public good" argument you make has been used ad nauseam, and it has a certain attractive logic to it and seems like it should be true. But, there is very little quantitative evidence available, and almost all that there is indicates that government sanctioning of professions has had absolutely no positive impact on the quality of the services rendered by those professions, and there is considerable evidence to suggest that it may have degraded it (although it's difficult to determine causality given the number of factors that go into something like that). In other words, they do absolutely nothing to protect the common good over, and they may harm it.
Government sanctioning and licensing of professions is completely about control and prosperity of a particular group. That's now how they're justified and you won't find it in the charters or enabling legislation, but it's the reality of the situation. They are lobbying groups and industry associations all rolled up into one, with quasi-governmental powers to boot. Your statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the craft. Basically, every really incredible programmer/developer/software engineer got that way by tinkering. Not by taking 60 credit hours of programming classes. It's the countless hours of trying things out and figuring shit out that got them good. The classes, if they were even taken, provided a starting point. Anything that discourages tinkering prior to or in addition to formal training would have a dramatically negative impact on the "international system of computing infrastructure" because it would drastically reduce the ranks of those who actually make all the stuff work.
While I actually have issues with licensing of Doctors, I'll point out one very serious and very obvious difference: You an code on your own computer -- tinker if you will -- and have absolutely no chance of hurting anyone else. You can't exactly practice surgery on your friend safely. You can study anatomy all day long, but without being able to work under a doctor while cutting into a patient or diagnosing a difficult case, you're likely to do far more harm than good no matter how much knowledge you have shoved into your head. They are not comparable cases; there is some basis for licensing of doctors, absolutely no rational one for licensing of software engineers unless you are completely ignorant about how good coders become that way.
Now, if you want to talk about specific accreditations for programming in fields where there is a high risk of harm, such as coding for the FAA or NASA or military, I'm willing to be slightly more sympathetic to your argument, but am skeptical that it would guarantee or even improve the quality even in those fields.
Man... I should resist the urge to even get involved with a thread like this. *sigh*... okay. Let me put up front that I'm pretty firmly in the Apple camp, though I use several Microsoft products on a daily basis, I wouldn't if there weren't a practical need. The first generation Zune's were pretty easy to laugh off, and I really think Microsoft missed a few golden opportunities here. However, to capitalize on those opportunities, they probably would have needed to know what Apple was doing before anyone outside of Apple knew, which is not necessarily an easy task. I didn't seriously expect them to have a capable touch-screen product in this generation, but I did expect them to have a 160 gig model. All-in-all, however, the 2G Zune seems like competition. Maybe not stiff competition, but not something to be laughed off at least which, in this market space, is an accomplishment. I'm glad to see Microsoft pushing some features that Apple doesn't have - competition is good and Apple desperately needs competition in this market space. That being said, wireless syncing (even if you didn't have to plug the darn thing in) wouldn't be enough to justify charging the same amount. I mean, this is going to sound crazy, but people expect to pay more for Apple products. Why would someone go with a Zune for the same price? Oh, I know some people will, but if Microsoft wants to grab a substantial part of the market, they need to either be noticeably better or noticeably cheaper. They've decided not to go the cheaper route with the Zune, which I respect, but they're going to have to come up with some form of really kick-ass distinguishing feature to get most people to even look at their product as an alternative to an iPod. The whole DRM-free store thing- well, they look like a Johnny-come-lately on that given that Apple did it first and that Microsoft has been such a strong proponent of DRM in the past. People are not going to notice if they have more DRM-free songs, they're just going to notice that they did it second. The subscription thing? Well... maybe, but nobody's really found a way to use that model to make an serious impact yet. It seems like a great idea, but when it comes down to it, it seems that people really want to own their music rather than have to keep paying regardless of whether they get new music in a given month. The economics may seem to favor the subscription model, but there's something about being beholden to somebody every month that I think gives people pause. I'm willing to give the Zune a chance - software makes the device, and it's possible that they've nailed it with the interface in a way that puts Apple to shame, and if they have, my next MP3 player will be a Zune. But based on past experience, I will honestly be very surprised if they've beat Apple on that account or if they've evan managed to be more than a cut-rate copy. It's an uphill battle for a monolith like Microsoft, and Apple got quite a head start. But I'll hold out hope for Zune G3 if Zune G2 isn't an iPod killer.
Ah, finally a post that doesn't make me seem like the only old fart on the board. :)
I think Steve Jobs actually did a good job of pointing out the problem with DRM. DRM can never work unless you require the device to be networked so that it can check back with some central server for the key (and even then that's not infallible, just a bigger challenge). Without that, you HAVE to put the key to unlock the content right on the media and the player has to know how to find and use that key. This is true for DVDs and DVD-HD, protected CDs... it's inherent in the nature of the produce. Content that can't be viewed is useless to the consumer, so the device has to know how to play the content. Somebody will ALWAYS be able to crack any DRM scheme no matter how sophisticated, in less time and at less cost than was put into developing the scheme.
Every version of Macrovision has been cracked in a fairly short period of time. DVD encryption was cracked. DVD-HD hasn't been fully cracked, but enough to allow unprotected copies of HD DVDs to already exist.
This shouldn't be a moral discussion, it should be a practical one. So far, CEOs have been gullible enough to be believe Macrovision and other companies' claims that they can "protect" content. They can't, but they've made a lot of money by convincing people that they can, but unfortunately, that's all starting to unravel.
The funniest thing about Macrovision's letter is the suggestion that Macrovision can "help" Apple. Apple, despite it's public stance, has done as good a job as anybody at implementing DRM. Yes, you can get around it, but at least they evolve their DRM whenever somebody cracks it because there are actually implications to not doing so... unlike Macrovision who is still raking in gobs of money for protection schemes that have long since been cracked.
It's not, if Bill actually knows his history. The Alto did not have menus at all. The Lisa had file, edit, and view. I can't remember if there was a help menu back then, though, so Windows might have a legitimate claim to that one.
> Legally speaking, there is no distinction. If you communicate it to non-parties, you have "published" the information.
Guess it goes to show that the RIAA and MPAA are doing a good job with their propaganda, though, since less and less people know or care about fair use these days.
There's a big difference between them "lacking" a business model, and you not being able to see it. 10 years ago, would you have thought that there was a "business model" around offering free internet search - a business model that would eventually lead to the juggernaut that is Google? I doubt it - I certainly didn't.
This could be a mistake on Google's part - I have no crystal ball, but I'm betting that the brains at Google gave this a little bit of thought before deciding to spend the money and have some plans (aka a "business model") for it.
Yes, you can. It's not set that way by default, but if you go into System Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse under the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, there's a radio button that allows you to change it so that all controls can be tabbed to. "All" controls includes Pop-up menus, drop-down lists, and combo boxes.
I don't use DreamWeaver, but unless they've implemented custom controls (possible), then it should work once you've selected this radio button. If it doesn't, then it's Macromedia's fault for not implementing a control that follows the Universal Access guidelines.
The fact that I can do this might make me by a MBP earlier than I had intended to.
Sure I can. I do this all the time on my PowerBook, without using third party software. The only controls I can't get to using the tab key are those that don't accept inputs ever, like static, non-copyable text.
Again, I ask: that's different how? Old computers are still useful, we've just been indoctrinated in this disposable society to think otherwise. I know many less technically-oriented people who make computers last far more than the three years the OP stated. For what most people use them for, computers could be quite useful until they die, which can be quite a long time with a little TLC (I know of a couple of Apple ][+ computers that are still going strong). Just because most of us DON'T keep a computer longer than three years doesn't mean they aren't useful. MOST people don't keep their text books either. In both situations, it's a moot point for the vast majority of the people.
Besides that, the information you are given digitally can be transferred to your next computer, meaning you still have access to the data... without having to keep shelves full of dead-tree-ware.
Yeah... that and the millions of dollars and productivity lost to dealing with them. Oh, yeah, and there's the trivial fact that "proof of concept" don't do anything malicious.
Hey, we do agree on something after all. =-p
Ummm and that's different how? Textbooks often become obsolete after just single year. College textbook publishers LOVE to change editions, move chapters around, etc. in order to kill the resale value of books and keep a never-ending revenue stream.
Exactly the problem. The concept of true discreet roles doesn't exist in the architecture. This results in no real difference between launching a program as an Administrative user and launching it as an unprivileged user because the user mode components of the kernel (e.g., csrss.exe and lsass.exe) run under the Local System account which has complete access to all the resources of the machine. Additionally, most of the daemon programs run under this account as well.
Under Windows XP, user accounts have fairly granular privilege control that allows you to specify what the user themselves can actually do, but you always have the user mode components running with full privileges (which I would consider the equivalent of SUID root) and the executables launched by the user have the ability to interact with the user mode components, in most circumstances without needing user input or authorization. Prior to XP, you didn't even have that level of access control and the system was pretty much open. As long as this situation exists, Windows is inherently insecure. Hopefully, Vista will change this, but sticking your head in the sand doesn't make it less true.
Probably not by design, but true nonetheless. With a default installation using default Microsoft tools, it is possible, for example, for received e-mail atachments to be launched or launch executables, and Active X components embedded on web pages can all. In these cases, they are able to interact with the user mode components I mentioned before that run with full privileges. Spend five minutes with Google and I guarantee you can find an example of this. Bruce Schneir once showed a proof of concept exploit using an ActiveX component on a web page that, if loaded in Internet Explorer deletes your entire hard drive without any further interaction by the user!
Feel free to keep thinking I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm perfectly okay with you blindly thinking Windows is no worse than any other operating system in terms of security - it's your data and your time at risk. Sure, just type and you have malware if you can get somebody to run it. That's annoying and inevitable - only common sense can stop trojans, but writing a true worm for OS X or Linux that can spread from machine to machine quickly? Go ahead and do a proof of concept one if it's so trivial. So far, I've seen one that comes close to being that - which is the iChat 'worm', and that is nowhere near the threat as the SQL Slammer or Blaster worms...
Well, yeah... a direct correlation generally results in a linear distribution and what I said was "it's not even close to being a direct correlation", so I don't disagree with your re-statement of what I said. But the scenario is so far from linear that it's laughable. Comparing over 200,000 exploits, many of which have been exploited by malware in the wild versus somewhere around 200 with only a few actual exploits, most of which are proof-of-concept? I mean drop a few zeros and you can see that it's a lot less of a percentage than the Mac's market share, even if you use the most conservative estimates of the Mac's market share.
There's no doubt that the number of people using an OS IS a factor in the amount of malware that exists for that platform, but it's not the ONLY or even the primary factor as the OP posited.
A trojan on my Mac, or on Linux or any Unix, or for that matter OS/2, BeOS... can only do what the user launching it can do, no more. It can't touch files or ports or processes that the user doesn't have access to, and the most sensitive stuff (by default) standard users don't have access to. Attempts to exceed the launching user's authority will either be rejected or will result in an authorization prompt. Not so on Windows, where once the code is launched, it can do just about anything, including modify the registry. There ARE potential exploits on Mac OS X or other Unix or unix-like operating systems that can get around this, but they are much more difficult to write and are usually patched relatively quickly, often before an exploit exists in the wild.
The situation just isn't as simple as you believe it to be. Sure, the number of people who use an operating system tends to have a relation to the number of people who develop for that system and also the number who have the skills necessary to create a virus, trojan, or worm. But there's more to it than that. Windows, although it's getting better, and hopefully Vista will be much better, has architectural issues that make it easier to exploit. It also has consumer-targeted development tools which have the sole intention of lowering the bar to new programmers. Combine these two, and you have a societal petrie dish ripe for creating malware authors - not only are there more people using the OS, but there are proportionately more people capable of writing malicious software and a system that is easier to exploit.
If the Mac had 95% market share, there would certainly be more malware, but the situation would simply not be as bad as it is for Windows right now.