Also, you'll get yourself blocklisted by every major DNSBL very soon
Not to mention be opening a potential way for someone to get into your machine. Once in, there's no reason they can't just run something to relay spam.
At the best, the spammers detect the signature of such a product and ignore them. At worst, they utilize holes in it to take over your machine and initiate spam directly form it. Neither is good for you and neither hurts them.
as if Open Source (TM) is some kind of software development corporation. It is not, it is a process.
It isn't a corporation, but that's the kind of organizations that the people making the decisions about whether to go with an OSS alternative understand. OSS can't make it in the big corporate world unless it can compete on that playing field.
Open Source is guided by it's market of user-developers
Yes, OSS is definately "by hackers, for hackers". But as soon as a development community starts to respond to the non-developer users of a product, it starts shifting away from the "by hackers for hackers" and over to the a more traditional model of "by developers for users".
In conventional private development, [forking] rarely happens unless a market is large enough of a cusomter's need is enough to fund development
I define "fork" as a branching of an existing codebase, and this almost never happens. Especially in a market large enough to support the competition. The owners of a code base vigorously defend their rights to it from all who might try to abscond with a copy and start an independent development path from it (i.e. "fork" the code). The larger the market, the more money is at stake and the more lawyers are used to prevent this from happening.
The only time this does happen is if the owners don't see any way to profit from a code base and don't see any way for the receivers of a copy to profit either. Since these are typically internal-only technologies, I discount them.
open source products more quickly diversify
Yes. And this is one of the strengths, and weaknesses, of OSS. It is a strength because it alows parallel evolution of a product to occur, which, over the long term, should bring us the most fit product. It is a weakness because a user of a given product must accept that they will periodically (far more often than with closed source) have to migrate to a new product that may, or may not, be compatible with their exisiting data and usage models.
FYI, please don't confuse product "fitness" with meaning technically superior.. market (and marketing) superiority is the only thing that matters.
Open Source allows for the market to take control of a product
I'm not so sure of this. The developers, or whoever tells them what to do and can make it stick, has control of the product. In closed source, people "vote" for software by paying for it and, hopefully, the company responds by improving it to get the most "votes".
In OSS nobody tells the developers where to take a product. There is no way for the users to "vote" for a product or implementation except by using it. Maybe I've missed it, but I've also never seen any case where the developers did any "market research" (i.e. asked the users of a product where they want to see if go). Therefore, the developers are self-motivated to take the product in any direction they see fit. When groups of developers disagree, there is nobody to resolve the conflict, and with the source openly available to all, the product forks.
The really important question, is which of these two models is better for the users? I think it depends on what the users want and need of the product. If they need it to remain stable and upgradable, then closed source is probably a better alternative. If they need the product to evolve to fit their needs quickly, then OSS is probably the better choice.
Most users view their computer and the software that it runs as tools to get their work done. Tools are most useful when their UI doesn't change radically between versions and when they remain compatible with old data.
I agree that Mars is an interesting place. I also agree that NASA needs a goal. But Mars as a permanent settlement destination at this time in our technology is just too far of a stretch goal to be really attainable.
What happens if some catastrophe happens at a Mars settelment. Unless they happen to be very, very lucky, there is no chance of help arriving in time to be worth the effort. All we get to do from Earth is sit and watch them try to deal with the problem on their own. After one incident like that, how many people will ever support anybody going to Mars, or the Moon, or maybe even anywhere in space, ever again?
On the other hand, the Moon is close enough that there might be a chance to get a ship there in time to help. Yeah, a slim one, but days rather than months of travel time means there is still a chance. If there's an emergency contingency plan, like always keeping the next scheduled supply ship prepped and ready to launch on short notice, then there's an even better chance.
And just consider what kinds of catestrophies they might run into.
Their habitat could suffer an unrepairable (by them) breakdown. Biosphere spectacularily showed that we don't know how to make a completely contained habitat that works, even with all the land, habitats and biodiversity they were able to include. What makes anybody think we know how to make one that works that is smaller? The obvious answer is an open ended habitat system, but either the imports come from earth, or they manufacture them on site. Both assume the technology won't fail in some way, or that they have enough complete duplicates of everything to last them until they can be resupplied.
So let's talk about our technology. The first time out, we didn't make fission power plants that didn't suffer unexpected, premature failure (I'm thinking specifically of the metal fatigue that have plagued some (all?) of them). And that's with physics and an environment we more or less understand, but clearly not well enough to predict such types of failure. Or what about the international space station? its only been up there a few years and already people are talking about the possibility of premature failures. Do we really beleive we understand all the forces and environmental conditions that equipment on the Moon or Mars is likely to run into? I think it is safe to assume we'll get some of it wrong and have to fix and replace as we go. The closer the initial attempt is to earth, the easier it will be to ship up replacement technology or bring everyone back if we give up entirely and want to have a clean-slate reattempt.
I agree that the Moon isn't an ideal place to start our attempts. I for one vote that we swap Mars and the Moon so the initial attempts can be done on a body with an atmosphere that's reasonably close to home. However, given a choice between the Moon or Mars in our current reality, I think it is a better choice to "walk" to the Moon rather than "run" to Mars.
Just my 2 cents.. probably an unpopular and not well supported comment:-)
The tool is licensed, not sold, and customers cannot sell it or lend it to others
Sure only the original purchaser can use the tool. Sure they are not allowed to resell the tool. Of course, who's to stop a company from buying the tool. And I somehow don't think makers of such a tool could hold up the sale of a company over their tool. Well, perhaps a small wholly-owned holding company owned by an individual, but not a large conglomerate:-)
So now you don't sell the tool, you sell the holding company that owns the tool.
The original article talked about one giant bubble, but I think you have it here.. one needs just enough small ones to lower the density of the water sufficiently to cause the ship to sink in. Ships operate at pretty tight tolerances against the density of the water since it tends not to change too much. Probably only a 10% density difference would be enough to make the ship sink in until the deck was under water.
Hmmm.. sounds like an interesting way for a submarine to sink a battleship:-) Duh.. that's it! The Al Qaeda (sp?) Navy subs have been testing just this sort of weapon in the Bermuda Triangle for years now, just so they can try and sink lots of cargo ships, thus putting the US economy in a total shambles. Of Course!
this same tactic was tried 100 years ago against Henry Ford. It didn't work then, and it won't work today
The association launched hundreds of lawsuits against Ford's customers to scare them away form his showrooms for buying "unlicensed vehicles."
I think the intersting question is: why did the association sue Ford Co. customers? Ford motor company was the one violating the patent, yet the association chose not to sue the company and leave things at that, but to attempt to sue individual purchasers of the company's products.
There is only one reason I can think of.. the association wanted to sow a bit of fear, uncertainty and doubt around Ford's products because they knew the patent was weak or not applicable. This says to me that the association was basically not in the legal right and they knew it.
In the RIAA's case however, rationalizations aside, they really are in the legal right. Their members own all rights to the songs and none of them have granted purchasers of the songs the right to reistribute the songs without paying royalties. Furthermore, none of the people distributing the songs (via download) have gotten permission from the owner of the copyrights to distrubute the songs without paying royalties. Lastly, the law clearly states that if you don't have rights to distribute someone else's intellectual property, you can't. It is kind of interesting that they are suing the holders of illegally-obtained songs as well as those that are redistributing them, but again, still on firm legal ground -- for example, if you stuffed your house or apartment with stolen goods that you knew were stolen, you do have to fear legal reprecussions when the law comes knocking.
The worse part about this whole mess is the precedent that is being set. Both in public opinion as well as legally. Individuals are being conditions to accept mass legal proceedings by companies perpetrated against individuals (with shallower pockets).. and by caving and admitting wrongdoing, the legal precedent is being set that this is a normal way of doing business. After all, just look at SCO's lawsuits and realize we'll soon be seeing more of that kinds of thing.
Well, I didn't think it was me alone:-). I kinda figured I and a few hundred thousand of my slashdot compatriots might have collectively done 'em in.
Come to think of it.. didn't someone express some concern that a factor in the US east coast blackout was some virus making computers suck more power than normal.. I wonder..:-)
The idea sounds frightening.. having to modify your kernels just to run it as a VM
This shouldn't be too frightening, after all, most payroll systems run on IBM OSs running on top of a VM layer, and the OS kernel was modified to play well with that VM layer many years ago. It can be both very reliable AND reasonably performant.
Really, the only other way to run virtual machines is to emulate the hardware. Making the OS be a client of a lower level resource services layer is a way better solution that trying to emulate the idiosyncricies of hardware just to avoid a refactoring of the kernel functionality.
If these folks have speced the resource layer out correctly, it may be possible to implement the kernel with the interface built in.. sort of like MS's HAL (oops.. using MS as an example.. was that a bad thing?:-), and an own-the-harware default resource layer implementation. With a little luck, they even thought ahead and abstracted the device driver interface to their hypervisor, allowing new devices to be easily integrated into it.
Of course, doing this does sort of commoditize the OS kernel and kernel device drivers, which probably won't sit too well with some.
My ISP allows the whole world to knock on my IP door anytime it wants to. OK, if I were running a server it makes sense. However, I'm on a dialup service.. I'm prohibited from running a server, and it wouldn't make sense anyway since the IP address wouldn't always be available nor the same.. so I have to ask the question.. Why do ISPs allow the whole world to attempt entry into their dialup user's computers? Furthermore, why does it make sense for an (end user) ISP to have to have N globally-unique IP addresses, one for every dialup line?
Wouldn't it make sense for the ISP to masquerade all their dialup users? Sure, there are exploits available, but wouldn't that allow most dialup users an extra measure of security and the access they want without port blocking? As a dialup user, any legitimate connections back to my machine have to be initiated by me in the first place, so there is a chance for my machine to either inform the masquerade server at the ISP to allow the connections inward, or to have the remote box use the connection I established to it to communicate back to me.
Do you think the evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating is concrete?
No.. there is still a lot about the universe we don't know so there might yet be loop holes we have not yet thought to go looking for. Therefore, I consider this a bit more squishy than concrete.. probably more like Jello or pudding.
And, what effect do you think this conclusion should/will have on humans?
Since nothing will matter in the long run (the very long run), then he (or she) with the most computers at the end wins!
And if the students' life savings get sucked up by the RIAA, how will they pay for school?
Students don't pay for school, their parents do...And those that do pay their own way don't have a life savings to worry about anyway....And even if they did, and they had to quit shcool because they lost it, there's more potential students waiting to replace them. So no matter how it works out, the college's tuition stream is safe.
Nope, the colleges are not doing this for the benefits of the students. They are just doing it to protect themselves from the students. If the college helps and illegally offers the RIAA the info, or if they don't follow their own privacy policy to the letter on this, the students will sue them.
"how long will the schools be able to justify spending thousands of dollars to protect the identities of students breaking the law."
Probably about as long as Joe Q. Public out there is willing to help pay their laywers. If this issue is as far reaching as everyone here makes it, where's the defense chest we all send our $10 to?
This actually worries me.. about Linux. Not only did MS have fewer patches, but there's more people trying to break MS than Linux out there. Even if one only considers the OS ones, and assumes that all of MS's are OS patches (doubtful) and only 3 of the RedHat ones are OS patches, we still need 6X more people looking for MS holes than Linux ones. That still seems too low a ratio to me.. but what do I know... maye even the bad guys are switching to Linux:-)
I understand they are taking from the community without giving back that that's "bad".
However, doesn't it make them more and more like unix (BSD, Linux, etc.). Isn't it the case that the more like unix they become, the easier it will become to replace them with unix outright. Taking from the community without giving back isn't beneficial to the community, but being able to flat out swap out windows and put unix underneath their apps surely would be good for the community. If only MS would adopt the system call API that unix uses, their fate would be sealed.
What are some of the things that the DoJ lawyers that are working on this case have done to prevent their own famlies from becoming part of the problem they are now prosecuting people for?
I've been married for five years, and I'm more creative than ever.
I had the same experience.. married five years and no problems being creative. Then I had a kid. Kids and mothers don't understand the concept that their partner wants to ignore them for hours on end and never be interrupted with (important) things. Now I find it very difficult to be really creative except when and where I can gather a few contiguous, distraction-free hours.
So I disagree, that it isn't "bad choices in interpersonal relationships" that cause "brain impotence", but rather distractions that do it. Bad relationships, kids and a number of other things can all be causes of that. The trick is to use what little creativity remains to figure out a way to get that distraction-free time so necessary for creativity. At least, that's been the formula that has worked for me.
Why not? Nobody is suggesting developers do the marketing, just that it is beneficial if they understand about that aspect of the business. The wider their view of the whole process, the better decisions they will make, which will result in a product that is more marketable. No matter what your process or how high quality it is, no product specification from marketing will ever be so detailed that the developers never have to make any decisions during design and implementation that influence the marketability of the product.
Your grocery store does this already. Those coupon dispensors in the aisles are not there simply to save you a little money.
what stores you went to?
Every store using RFID will undoubtedly have a reader at the entrances and exits. Simple matter for a mall owner to find a buyer for the data and provide each store with mall-owned readers for their entrances and exits. Since the mall owns them, simple matter to ook them all into a central database.
You've probably bought shoes
Which brand did you buy? Which model? How much were you willing to pay? What else did you buy on your trip? What stores did you browse at? What was you path past the entrances of the other stores in the mall? Did you dash in for something then dash out again, or did you stay for a while? What did you do in the mall before you bought those shoes? What do people who buy those kinds of shoes also like to buy? Connect it up with other databases, and whay kinds of spam should they send to you? How often do you return to that mall? What other kinds of things do you buy at that mall? Do your purchases follow any kinds of cycles? Did they suddenly increase or decrease? Did you suddenly start buying good you would never be able to afford on your above-the-table income? Should they sell your name to the IRS as a potential audit target because of it? Or to credit card outfits as someone needing more credit?
As I get older I find that I am less able to code at the same pase that I did 5 years ago
Same here. I too have found that I more than make up for it by not having to waste as much time debugging my code. If one counts debugged lines per day, then I produce even faster. What's more, my undebugged code branches have fewer errors nowdays, so if one also factors in the number of bugs to the lines of code per day, then I'm even farther ahead. I can say these things with some certainty because I track them nowdays and work to improve over time -- yet another thing I didn't know to do when I was 18-25.
While the above is an example that applies to me, this is true in some way or another for every experienced programmer I've ever worked with. Based on my experience, if I have a hot, long-term development task where there wouldn't be time to do it over, I'd trust a smaller team of experienced developers to pull it off over a larger team of inexperienced ones any day.
We can keep all the channels we've got, reserve some for future growth, and STILL reclaim 30 TV channels worth of bandwidth..
And if we push for laws allowing large media conglomerates to own even more stations in a given coverage area, then we can be even more aggressive and allow the FCC to sell off all but 2 or 3 free-air TV channels:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention be opening a potential way for someone to get into your machine. Once in, there's no reason they can't just run something to relay spam.
At the best, the spammers detect the signature of such a product and ignore them. At worst, they utilize holes in it to take over your machine and initiate spam directly form it. Neither is good for you and neither hurts them.
It isn't a corporation, but that's the kind of organizations that the people making the decisions about whether to go with an OSS alternative understand. OSS can't make it in the big corporate world unless it can compete on that playing field.
Open Source is guided by it's market of user-developers
Yes, OSS is definately "by hackers, for hackers". But as soon as a development community starts to respond to the non-developer users of a product, it starts shifting away from the "by hackers for hackers" and over to the a more traditional model of "by developers for users".
In conventional private development, [forking] rarely happens unless a market is large enough of a cusomter's need is enough to fund development
I define "fork" as a branching of an existing codebase, and this almost never happens. Especially in a market large enough to support the competition. The owners of a code base vigorously defend their rights to it from all who might try to abscond with a copy and start an independent development path from it (i.e. "fork" the code). The larger the market, the more money is at stake and the more lawyers are used to prevent this from happening.
The only time this does happen is if the owners don't see any way to profit from a code base and don't see any way for the receivers of a copy to profit either. Since these are typically internal-only technologies, I discount them.
open source products more quickly diversify
Yes. And this is one of the strengths, and weaknesses, of OSS. It is a strength because it alows parallel evolution of a product to occur, which, over the long term, should bring us the most fit product. It is a weakness because a user of a given product must accept that they will periodically (far more often than with closed source) have to migrate to a new product that may, or may not, be compatible with their exisiting data and usage models.
FYI, please don't confuse product "fitness" with meaning technically superior.. market (and marketing) superiority is the only thing that matters.
Open Source allows for the market to take control of a product
I'm not so sure of this. The developers, or whoever tells them what to do and can make it stick, has control of the product. In closed source, people "vote" for software by paying for it and, hopefully, the company responds by improving it to get the most "votes".
In OSS nobody tells the developers where to take a product. There is no way for the users to "vote" for a product or implementation except by using it. Maybe I've missed it, but I've also never seen any case where the developers did any "market research" (i.e. asked the users of a product where they want to see if go). Therefore, the developers are self-motivated to take the product in any direction they see fit. When groups of developers disagree, there is nobody to resolve the conflict, and with the source openly available to all, the product forks.
The really important question, is which of these two models is better for the users? I think it depends on what the users want and need of the product. If they need it to remain stable and upgradable, then closed source is probably a better alternative. If they need the product to evolve to fit their needs quickly, then OSS is probably the better choice.
Most users view their computer and the software that it runs as tools to get their work done. Tools are most useful when their UI doesn't change radically between versions and when they remain compatible with old data.
I agree that Mars is an interesting place. I also agree that NASA needs a goal. But Mars as a permanent settlement destination at this time in our technology is just too far of a stretch goal to be really attainable.
What happens if some catastrophe happens at a Mars settelment. Unless they happen to be very, very lucky, there is no chance of help arriving in time to be worth the effort. All we get to do from Earth is sit and watch them try to deal with the problem on their own. After one incident like that, how many people will ever support anybody going to Mars, or the Moon, or maybe even anywhere in space, ever again?
On the other hand, the Moon is close enough that there might be a chance to get a ship there in time to help. Yeah, a slim one, but days rather than months of travel time means there is still a chance. If there's an emergency contingency plan, like always keeping the next scheduled supply ship prepped and ready to launch on short notice, then there's an even better chance.
And just consider what kinds of catestrophies they might run into. Their habitat could suffer an unrepairable (by them) breakdown. Biosphere spectacularily showed that we don't know how to make a completely contained habitat that works, even with all the land, habitats and biodiversity they were able to include. What makes anybody think we know how to make one that works that is smaller? The obvious answer is an open ended habitat system, but either the imports come from earth, or they manufacture them on site. Both assume the technology won't fail in some way, or that they have enough complete duplicates of everything to last them until they can be resupplied.
So let's talk about our technology. The first time out, we didn't make fission power plants that didn't suffer unexpected, premature failure (I'm thinking specifically of the metal fatigue that have plagued some (all?) of them). And that's with physics and an environment we more or less understand, but clearly not well enough to predict such types of failure. Or what about the international space station? its only been up there a few years and already people are talking about the possibility of premature failures. Do we really beleive we understand all the forces and environmental conditions that equipment on the Moon or Mars is likely to run into? I think it is safe to assume we'll get some of it wrong and have to fix and replace as we go. The closer the initial attempt is to earth, the easier it will be to ship up replacement technology or bring everyone back if we give up entirely and want to have a clean-slate reattempt.
I agree that the Moon isn't an ideal place to start our attempts. I for one vote that we swap Mars and the Moon so the initial attempts can be done on a body with an atmosphere that's reasonably close to home. However, given a choice between the Moon or Mars in our current reality, I think it is a better choice to "walk" to the Moon rather than "run" to Mars.
Just my 2 cents.. probably an unpopular and not well supported comment :-)
Sure only the original purchaser can use the tool. Sure they are not allowed to resell the tool. Of course, who's to stop a company from buying the tool. And I somehow don't think makers of such a tool could hold up the sale of a company over their tool. Well, perhaps a small wholly-owned holding company owned by an individual, but not a large conglomerate :-)
So now you don't sell the tool, you sell the holding company that owns the tool.
The original article talked about one giant bubble, but I think you have it here.. one needs just enough small ones to lower the density of the water sufficiently to cause the ship to sink in. Ships operate at pretty tight tolerances against the density of the water since it tends not to change too much. Probably only a 10% density difference would be enough to make the ship sink in until the deck was under water.
Hmmm.. sounds like an interesting way for a submarine to sink a battleship :-) Duh.. that's it! The Al Qaeda (sp?) Navy subs have been testing just this sort of weapon in the Bermuda Triangle for years now, just so they can try and sink lots of cargo ships, thus putting the US economy in a total shambles. Of Course!
The association launched hundreds of lawsuits against Ford's customers to scare them away form his showrooms for buying "unlicensed vehicles."
I think the intersting question is: why did the association sue Ford Co. customers? Ford motor company was the one violating the patent, yet the association chose not to sue the company and leave things at that, but to attempt to sue individual purchasers of the company's products.
There is only one reason I can think of.. the association wanted to sow a bit of fear, uncertainty and doubt around Ford's products because they knew the patent was weak or not applicable. This says to me that the association was basically not in the legal right and they knew it.
In the RIAA's case however, rationalizations aside, they really are in the legal right. Their members own all rights to the songs and none of them have granted purchasers of the songs the right to reistribute the songs without paying royalties. Furthermore, none of the people distributing the songs (via download) have gotten permission from the owner of the copyrights to distrubute the songs without paying royalties. Lastly, the law clearly states that if you don't have rights to distribute someone else's intellectual property, you can't. It is kind of interesting that they are suing the holders of illegally-obtained songs as well as those that are redistributing them, but again, still on firm legal ground -- for example, if you stuffed your house or apartment with stolen goods that you knew were stolen, you do have to fear legal reprecussions when the law comes knocking.
The worse part about this whole mess is the precedent that is being set. Both in public opinion as well as legally. Individuals are being conditions to accept mass legal proceedings by companies perpetrated against individuals (with shallower pockets).. and by caving and admitting wrongdoing, the legal precedent is being set that this is a normal way of doing business. After all, just look at SCO's lawsuits and realize we'll soon be seeing more of that kinds of thing.
Well, I didn't think it was me alone :-). I kinda figured I and a few hundred thousand of my slashdot compatriots might have collectively done 'em in.
Come to think of it.. didn't someone express some concern that a factor in the US east coast blackout was some virus making computers suck more power than normal.. I wonder.. :-)
Thanks for posting the bittorrent link. I'm beginning to hate hosing sites, especially for a large download like this.
This shouldn't be too frightening, after all, most payroll systems run on IBM OSs running on top of a VM layer, and the OS kernel was modified to play well with that VM layer many years ago. It can be both very reliable AND reasonably performant.
Really, the only other way to run virtual machines is to emulate the hardware. Making the OS be a client of a lower level resource services layer is a way better solution that trying to emulate the idiosyncricies of hardware just to avoid a refactoring of the kernel functionality.
If these folks have speced the resource layer out correctly, it may be possible to implement the kernel with the interface built in.. sort of like MS's HAL (oops.. using MS as an example.. was that a bad thing? :-), and an own-the-harware default resource layer implementation. With a little luck, they even thought ahead and abstracted the device driver interface to their hypervisor, allowing new devices to be easily integrated into it.
Of course, doing this does sort of commoditize the OS kernel and kernel device drivers, which probably won't sit too well with some.
denial -- Linux isn't a threat
anger -- they are and we're gonna squash them
bargaining -- we'll interoperate with them
and yet to come...
depression & acceptance
It's a joke.. laugh :-)
Wouldn't it make sense for the ISP to masquerade all their dialup users? Sure, there are exploits available, but wouldn't that allow most dialup users an extra measure of security and the access they want without port blocking? As a dialup user, any legitimate connections back to my machine have to be initiated by me in the first place, so there is a chance for my machine to either inform the masquerade server at the ISP to allow the connections inward, or to have the remote box use the connection I established to it to communicate back to me.
No.. there is still a lot about the universe we don't know so there might yet be loop holes we have not yet thought to go looking for. Therefore, I consider this a bit more squishy than concrete.. probably more like Jello or pudding.
And, what effect do you think this conclusion should/will have on humans?
Since nothing will matter in the long run (the very long run), then he (or she) with the most computers at the end wins!
Students don't pay for school, their parents do. ..And those that do pay their own way don't have a life savings to worry about anyway. ...And even if they did, and they had to quit shcool because they lost it, there's more potential students waiting to replace them. So no matter how it works out, the college's tuition stream is safe.
Nope, the colleges are not doing this for the benefits of the students. They are just doing it to protect themselves from the students. If the college helps and illegally offers the RIAA the info, or if they don't follow their own privacy policy to the letter on this, the students will sue them.
Probably about as long as Joe Q. Public out there is willing to help pay their laywers. If this issue is as far reaching as everyone here makes it, where's the defense chest we all send our $10 to?
Hmm.. wonder what we can classify as "music" so we can all supoena the RIAA and cronies? Or do we need to form a small music company first?
[Windows]18 patches and counting since March 31
This actually worries me.. about Linux. Not only did MS have fewer patches, but there's more people trying to break MS than Linux out there. Even if one only considers the OS ones, and assumes that all of MS's are OS patches (doubtful) and only 3 of the RedHat ones are OS patches, we still need 6X more people looking for MS holes than Linux ones. That still seems too low a ratio to me.. but what do I know... maye even the bad guys are switching to Linux :-)
However, doesn't it make them more and more like unix (BSD, Linux, etc.). Isn't it the case that the more like unix they become, the easier it will become to replace them with unix outright. Taking from the community without giving back isn't beneficial to the community, but being able to flat out swap out windows and put unix underneath their apps surely would be good for the community. If only MS would adopt the system call API that unix uses, their fate would be sealed.
What are some of the things that the DoJ lawyers that are working on this case have done to prevent their own famlies from becoming part of the problem they are now prosecuting people for?
I had the same experience.. married five years and no problems being creative. Then I had a kid. Kids and mothers don't understand the concept that their partner wants to ignore them for hours on end and never be interrupted with (important) things. Now I find it very difficult to be really creative except when and where I can gather a few contiguous, distraction-free hours.
So I disagree, that it isn't "bad choices in interpersonal relationships" that cause "brain impotence", but rather distractions that do it. Bad relationships, kids and a number of other things can all be causes of that. The trick is to use what little creativity remains to figure out a way to get that distraction-free time so necessary for creativity. At least, that's been the formula that has worked for me.
Why not? Nobody is suggesting developers do the marketing, just that it is beneficial if they understand about that aspect of the business. The wider their view of the whole process, the better decisions they will make, which will result in a product that is more marketable. No matter what your process or how high quality it is, no product specification from marketing will ever be so detailed that the developers never have to make any decisions during design and implementation that influence the marketability of the product.
Your grocery store does this already. Those coupon dispensors in the aisles are not there simply to save you a little money.
what stores you went to?
Every store using RFID will undoubtedly have a reader at the entrances and exits. Simple matter for a mall owner to find a buyer for the data and provide each store with mall-owned readers for their entrances and exits. Since the mall owns them, simple matter to ook them all into a central database.
You've probably bought shoes
Which brand did you buy? Which model? How much were you willing to pay? What else did you buy on your trip? What stores did you browse at? What was you path past the entrances of the other stores in the mall? Did you dash in for something then dash out again, or did you stay for a while? What did you do in the mall before you bought those shoes? What do people who buy those kinds of shoes also like to buy? Connect it up with other databases, and whay kinds of spam should they send to you? How often do you return to that mall? What other kinds of things do you buy at that mall? Do your purchases follow any kinds of cycles? Did they suddenly increase or decrease? Did you suddenly start buying good you would never be able to afford on your above-the-table income? Should they sell your name to the IRS as a potential audit target because of it? Or to credit card outfits as someone needing more credit?
I could go on forever.
Same here. I too have found that I more than make up for it by not having to waste as much time debugging my code. If one counts debugged lines per day, then I produce even faster. What's more, my undebugged code branches have fewer errors nowdays, so if one also factors in the number of bugs to the lines of code per day, then I'm even farther ahead. I can say these things with some certainty because I track them nowdays and work to improve over time -- yet another thing I didn't know to do when I was 18-25.
While the above is an example that applies to me, this is true in some way or another for every experienced programmer I've ever worked with. Based on my experience, if I have a hot, long-term development task where there wouldn't be time to do it over, I'd trust a smaller team of experienced developers to pull it off over a larger team of inexperienced ones any day.
And if we push for laws allowing large media conglomerates to own even more stations in a given coverage area, then we can be even more aggressive and allow the FCC to sell off all but 2 or 3 free-air TV channels :-)