Wouldn't the hearing be public domain with regards to copyright? You still might not be able to get the transcripts if it was a closed hearing, but that is not a copyright issue right?
Plus, if you're gonna have the thing in and around the toilet all the time anyway, why not have it in charge of cleaning, uh, everything. Who needs a bidet anyway;) Just better hope it doesn't pull a HAL at an inappropriate time.
Well obviously your right about the fact that it is designed to give the parent peace of mind (well, more than what they might without it anyway). We're not talking prevention here, we're talking about a technology that if an abduction occurs, could potentially help.
I'm not saying the technology is bad or useless--the technology may indeed play a small role in saving a life. But let's at least be truthful about whose unrealistic expectations about the world it is REALLY meant to satisfy!
You contradict yourself. If it's useful (even in a small way) then how is it satisfying unrealistic expectations? And what expectiations are those? If I think that it may one day save my kids life, is that unrealistic? And if it is, then maybe, just maybe I am smart enough to understand that and decide not to utilize the technology? I know parents that don't use car seats or even buckle their kids in. Am I unrealistic to think that their car seat might save their life? Is the technology that's designed to save kids lives or to make their parents feel better when they drive their kids. If it achieves both, then does it matter?
But seeing as this technology could also be used to make sure that she does go to school, wouldn't you feel that you might as well take advantage of that?
Absolutely not. But that's just me. Hell, this is no different than sneaking into her room and reading her diary (or monitoring her emails/websites). Some parents will think it's ok, some not.
Of course, I'm sure most parents would use a technology like this sensibly, but you know there are some that wouldn't...
True, but it's just like any other tool right? Just because people "abuse" the web doesn't mean we want anyone restricting our ability to use it (to a point). The people who blast me for taking this position are the first to cry about other trying to "limit" their options, but then they bash when something like this comes up. Oh well, that's/. for you.
I agree about the age thing (see my myriad other posts). I also have a novel idea with relationship with the teen, how about talking to them about it. I would hope that my teen would have the presence of mind that if we talked about what it's purpose was and layed ground rules for what I could use it for as a parent, that they could understand (yeah a long shot I know, but sometimes kids surprise you and do smart things, if you treat them that way).
Totally. We rely way too much on this kind of crap. Just take some reponsibility for yourself, and don't expect that you can be safe 100% of the time or rescued if something goes wrong.
A) we're not talking about YOURSELF, we're talking about a minor (and I'm not referring to 17yo's) that YOU are legally, morally, and ethically responsible for. ANOTHER life that you want to make safe as much as REASONABLY possible. What's reasonable, well that's up to the individual.
If we used more common sense and self-reliance we wouldn't need to be resuced half the time anyway.
Again, we're not talking about ME. We're talking about a 10yo, or 12yo who we know lack a great deal of common sense, esp when it concerns safety. Much of this common sense comes with age and experience and they have not had the time to gain that experience yet.
Monitoring your kids like mental patients on a walk in the park for the day is just wrong. It also tells them they're not to be trusted, they belong on a leash, and that you're not willing to give them a chance to prove that they can handle responsibility.
Again, this is about DEGREES. If my kid walked to school every day then I'd feel safer if they had a device like this. This is because the repetitive nature and the known destination makes such activities more prone to something negative happening. Would I force my kids to wear it EVERYWHERE they go, no. Would I "check up" on them to see where they went if I "knew" that they were "safe", no. It's not the tool, it's all in how it's applied.
say, give them that chance, even punish them for failing, but don't punish them (and that's what this is) without cause.
That's assuming the "failing" part isn't when they are stuffed into the back of a van. At that point I don't think punishment is foremost on your mind.
Your assertion that WWII was fought to allow you "the freedom to utilize the tool if I
think it necessary", is both ludicrous and myopic.
Whoa, put the coffee down and take a look at the bigger picture. Please, do you honestly think that I think that WWII was fought to allow me to use tools. That would indeed be amusing. The original poster talked about wars being fought for freedoms, I was just reminding him that I was also exercising a freedom (which if you go by his original statement, the war was also being fought for).
You celebrate that the government doesn't have the right to put a radio collar on you, yet you jump at the oppurtunity to put one on your own child!
You know, I agree. I'm a fool. I can legally drink alcohol, so why should I restrict my child. I can legally posses a firearm, why am I denying my child that very same right? Hell, I can have sex, why don't I allow the 46yo guy down the street to have sex with my daughter. After all, kids should share the EXACT same freedoms that adults enjoy, without exception, right?
Was world war II fought so that we could enjoy the freedoms we don't want our children to?
Like the freedom to get snatched while walking to school? As with any information utensil, it's only as invasive as you make it. Something like this appeals to me as a father of a young daughter. I wouldn't use it to track where she's going, only to alert me if something "went wrong". What they fought for in WWII is to allow me the freedom to utilize this tool if I think it necessary.
That's assuming A) the parent is dumb enough to actually TELL the kid this is what they're doing. B) kid is willing to give up his cell phone while they're goofing off/whatever. But in general, this "feature" does seem sketchy at best.
If others start following suit (read Walmart, Best Buy, etc) then this could be a very big deal indeed. Esp. if these retailers extend this thinking to their online sales. Think of it this way, Microsoft could effectively control the release dates of it's competitors products (or at least retail release dates) by controlling exactly when they are granted "certificiation". They also have the advantage of ALWAYS having at least a bit of a heads up on any products that their competitors are about to release (no springing a new Office suite on'em). Once again, having the OS company also sells apps is just a bad idea. How long before the OS will refuse to run any apps that have not been "blessed" by Redmond themselves?
No actually, Harlan Ullman coined it in his book in 1996: Shock and Awe: Acheiving Rapid Dominance.
Right, but it is a military term, not a lingo term created by the press. Ullman was very involved with the military (though yes the military did not "coin" the term).
Err, no, sorry, totally and completely different strategies. "Blitzkrieg" was a strategy to quickly strike a target. "Shock and Awe" is the aerial and bombing part of the offensive designed to be a psychological strike against the Iraqi forces/leadership to try to weaken their moral. Now a blitzkrieg _could_ be used to achieve this effect, but the two general strategies are NOT the same.
It would have been interesting to see things expressed in units sold along with revenue. Since the average 17" monitor is probably around half the price of an average 15" lcd (give or take), you can sell a lot fewer of lcd's to generate the same revenue as that of the crt's.
Now before anyone pipes up about how lame the code is (no checking for null
Checking for null after every new is very wasteful anyway. Much better to have a new handler defined. Esp. since you don't want to saddle EVERY developer by having them try to think up something creative to do when you run out of memory (which for most apps is something that is non-recoverable anyway since the most common reason for running out of memory is that you have a memory leak). FYI, this mainly applies to vertical apps where you have tighter controls over the environment, vs general userland apps where running out of virtual memory is a more natural occurance (those warez and mp3's take up a lot of space if you're not careful).
So when home routers triple in price to where Joe Sixport can no longer afford them, the DSL company wins, and Cisco also wins.
But your assuming that the Netgears and SMC's and Belkins et al of the world are going to jump right in. If Cisco triples the price of the Linksys internet router, then people will just buy the $5 more expensive Netgear (or whoever). It's hard to fathom that Cisco would be stupid enough to think that something like that would be even remotely successful.
So what were you programming? Ah - you were working on Mozilla. Still, I'm sure that is completely stable and crashpr
Well if you're referring to the various buffer overrun bugs that allow "arbitrary code" to execute, this would not be an example since the memory is allocated on the heap and guaranteeing the heap would be in the right condition to create say an overwrite of a vtable would be very difficult without explicit knowledge of the code itself and this code is not open source. Most of those issues deal with having fixed size stack buffers anyway.
This function takes a string and copies it to a working buffer. It's on the heap, its in a method that is supposed to handle arbitrarily long buffers. If it's an honest mistake (which the method can't know), then the chances of running into another 0 character are pretty high before you get too far. Either way, the worse case is that you end up absorbing all available virtual memory and the program stops with an exception (this is how we have our new handler set). In this case, having the exception is better, as it helps prevent "silent" behviours from occuring.
I assume some of this information may be "company secrets" but I'm very interested in learning what metrics are used to determine which source code is "buggier" than others.
That's what THEIR tool does (or at least is supposed to do). The original article states a few of the checks they make (using uninitialized pointers and memory, buffer overflows, etc), but is indeed lacking in telling us exactly what bugs were found in their actual comparison.
Are there checks for use of unsafe functions like gets and the str* family of functions in C?
Hey, strcpy is no buggier than anything else if you use it properly. I recently was forced to change my code as follows:
char *foo = new char[strlen(bar) + 1];
strcpy(foo,bar);
to
char *foo = new char[strlen(bar) + 1];
strncpy(foo,bar,strlen(bar));
What's the problem with this? The problem is in that both cases the code depends on strlen being run on a valid string. Utilizing strncpy adds absolutely NO addtional safety to this code. Now before anyone pipes up about how lame the code is (no checking for null, not null terminating the string, etc) it's just an example of using "safe" functions for the sake of using them, vs actually trying to make better code.
I guess Cisco is getting scared of the competition, and decided to crush them...
Huh? How is Linksys competition to Cisco. Linksys stuff is primarily aimed at the home/small office. Cisco stuff is targeted towards corps/isps/large installs. I've never heard an IT guy for a large install saying "Gee should I go with Aironet or the WAP11" or Joe Bob saying, "I wonder if it's worth it to pay 10x more for an Aironet wap vs the Linksys". Cisco apparently wants into the lowend market. Where you do have a point is to see how long Cisco keeps the Linksys name. Do you lose consumer familiarity with Linksys to push the "prestige" of the Cisco name?
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Wouldn't the hearing be public domain with regards to copyright? You still might not be able to get the transcripts if it was a closed hearing, but that is not a copyright issue right?
What's a Dyson?
;) Just better hope it doesn't pull a HAL at an inappropriate time.
Plus, if you're gonna have the thing in and around the toilet all the time anyway, why not have it in charge of cleaning, uh, everything. Who needs a bidet anyway
Control Program Supplying media 16MB Memory Stick
/.'er will avoid it.
It uses memory stick so it must suck and any decent
No, I have a feeling we ARE talking about you.
Well obviously your right about the fact that it is designed to give the parent peace of mind (well, more than what they might without it anyway). We're not talking prevention here, we're talking about a technology that if an abduction occurs, could potentially help.
I'm not saying the technology is bad or useless--the technology may indeed play a small role in saving a life. But let's at least be truthful about whose unrealistic expectations about the world it is REALLY meant to satisfy!
You contradict yourself. If it's useful (even in a small way) then how is it satisfying unrealistic expectations? And what expectiations are those? If I think that it may one day save my kids life, is that unrealistic? And if it is, then maybe, just maybe I am smart enough to understand that and decide not to utilize the technology? I know parents that don't use car seats or even buckle their kids in. Am I unrealistic to think that their car seat might save their life? Is the technology that's designed to save kids lives or to make their parents feel better when they drive their kids. If it achieves both, then does it matter?
Real programmers never die, they are simply cast into (void*)
Shouldn't that be: cast int to void* (sorry, couldn't resist being an old C phart).
But seeing as this technology could also be used to make sure that she does go to school, wouldn't you feel that you might as well take advantage of that?
/. for you.
Absolutely not. But that's just me. Hell, this is no different than sneaking into her room and reading her diary (or monitoring her emails/websites). Some parents will think it's ok, some not.
Of course, I'm sure most parents would use a technology like this sensibly, but you know there are some that wouldn't...
True, but it's just like any other tool right? Just because people "abuse" the web doesn't mean we want anyone restricting our ability to use it (to a point). The people who blast me for taking this position are the first to cry about other trying to "limit" their options, but then they bash when something like this comes up. Oh well, that's
I agree about the age thing (see my myriad other posts). I also have a novel idea with relationship with the teen, how about talking to them about it. I would hope that my teen would have the presence of mind that if we talked about what it's purpose was and layed ground rules for what I could use it for as a parent, that they could understand (yeah a long shot I know, but sometimes kids surprise you and do smart things, if you treat them that way).
Totally. We rely way too much on this kind of crap. Just take some reponsibility for yourself, and don't expect that you can be safe 100% of the time or rescued if something goes wrong.
A) we're not talking about YOURSELF, we're talking about a minor (and I'm not referring to 17yo's) that YOU are legally, morally, and ethically responsible for. ANOTHER life that you want to make safe as much as REASONABLY possible. What's reasonable, well that's up to the individual.
If we used more common sense and self-reliance we wouldn't need to be resuced half the time anyway.
Again, we're not talking about ME. We're talking about a 10yo, or 12yo who we know lack a great deal of common sense, esp when it concerns safety. Much of this common sense comes with age and experience and they have not had the time to gain that experience yet.
Monitoring your kids like mental patients on a walk in the park for the day is just wrong. It also tells them they're not to be trusted, they belong on a leash, and that you're not willing to give them a chance to prove that they can handle responsibility.
Again, this is about DEGREES. If my kid walked to school every day then I'd feel safer if they had a device like this. This is because the repetitive nature and the known destination makes such activities more prone to something negative happening. Would I force my kids to wear it EVERYWHERE they go, no. Would I "check up" on them to see where they went if I "knew" that they were "safe", no. It's not the tool, it's all in how it's applied.
say, give them that chance, even punish them for failing, but don't punish them (and that's what this is) without cause.
That's assuming the "failing" part isn't when they are stuffed into the back of a van. At that point I don't think punishment is foremost on your mind.
Your assertion that WWII was fought to allow you "the freedom to utilize the tool if I think it necessary", is both ludicrous and myopic.
Whoa, put the coffee down and take a look at the bigger picture. Please, do you honestly think that I think that WWII was fought to allow me to use tools. That would indeed be amusing. The original poster talked about wars being fought for freedoms, I was just reminding him that I was also exercising a freedom (which if you go by his original statement, the war was also being fought for).
You celebrate that the government doesn't have the right to put a radio collar on you, yet you jump at the oppurtunity to put one on your own child!
You know, I agree. I'm a fool. I can legally drink alcohol, so why should I restrict my child. I can legally posses a firearm, why am I denying my child that very same right? Hell, I can have sex, why don't I allow the 46yo guy down the street to have sex with my daughter. After all, kids should share the EXACT same freedoms that adults enjoy, without exception, right?
Was world war II fought so that we could enjoy the freedoms we don't want our children to?
Like the freedom to get snatched while walking to school? As with any information utensil, it's only as invasive as you make it. Something like this appeals to me as a father of a young daughter. I wouldn't use it to track where she's going, only to alert me if something "went wrong". What they fought for in WWII is to allow me the freedom to utilize this tool if I think it necessary.
That's assuming A) the parent is dumb enough to actually TELL the kid this is what they're doing. B) kid is willing to give up his cell phone while they're goofing off/whatever. But in general, this "feature" does seem sketchy at best.
If others start following suit (read Walmart, Best Buy, etc) then this could be a very big deal indeed. Esp. if these retailers extend this thinking to their online sales. Think of it this way, Microsoft could effectively control the release dates of it's competitors products (or at least retail release dates) by controlling exactly when they are granted "certificiation". They also have the advantage of ALWAYS having at least a bit of a heads up on any products that their competitors are about to release (no springing a new Office suite on'em). Once again, having the OS company also sells apps is just a bad idea. How long before the OS will refuse to run any apps that have not been "blessed" by Redmond themselves?
No actually, Harlan Ullman coined it in his book in 1996: Shock and Awe: Acheiving Rapid Dominance.
Right, but it is a military term, not a lingo term created by the press. Ullman was very involved with the military (though yes the military did not "coin" the term).
It used to be called "blitzkrieg"
Err, no, sorry, totally and completely different strategies. "Blitzkrieg" was a strategy to quickly strike a target. "Shock and Awe" is the aerial and bombing part of the offensive designed to be a psychological strike against the Iraqi forces/leadership to try to weaken their moral. Now a blitzkrieg _could_ be used to achieve this effect, but the two general strategies are NOT the same.
But isn't "Shock and Awe" what the US Military (oops, the Coalition Forces) coined it, NOT CNN?
Well wouldn't this fall under "Stuff that matters"? And this is news for nerds, after all, it's not "Nerd News" right?
Figures, by the time I click "submit" a million other people bring up the same point. Oh well, lay those "redundants" on me, I got karma to burn ;)
It would have been interesting to see things expressed in units sold along with revenue. Since the average 17" monitor is probably around half the price of an average 15" lcd (give or take), you can sell a lot fewer of lcd's to generate the same revenue as that of the crt's.
You apparently missed this:
Now before anyone pipes up about how lame the code is (no checking for null
Checking for null after every new is very wasteful anyway. Much better to have a new handler defined. Esp. since you don't want to saddle EVERY developer by having them try to think up something creative to do when you run out of memory (which for most apps is something that is non-recoverable anyway since the most common reason for running out of memory is that you have a memory leak). FYI, this mainly applies to vertical apps where you have tighter controls over the environment, vs general userland apps where running out of virtual memory is a more natural occurance (those warez and mp3's take up a lot of space if you're not careful).
So when home routers triple in price to where Joe Sixport can no longer afford them, the DSL company wins, and Cisco also wins.
But your assuming that the Netgears and SMC's and Belkins et al of the world are going to jump right in. If Cisco triples the price of the Linksys internet router, then people will just buy the $5 more expensive Netgear (or whoever). It's hard to fathom that Cisco would be stupid enough to think that something like that would be even remotely successful.
So what were you programming? Ah - you were working on Mozilla. Still, I'm sure that is completely stable and crashpr
Well if you're referring to the various buffer overrun bugs that allow "arbitrary code" to execute, this would not be an example since the memory is allocated on the heap and guaranteeing the heap would be in the right condition to create say an overwrite of a vtable would be very difficult without explicit knowledge of the code itself and this code is not open source. Most of those issues deal with having fixed size stack buffers anyway.
This function takes a string and copies it to a working buffer. It's on the heap, its in a method that is supposed to handle arbitrarily long buffers. If it's an honest mistake (which the method can't know), then the chances of running into another 0 character are pretty high before you get too far. Either way, the worse case is that you end up absorbing all available virtual memory and the program stops with an exception (this is how we have our new handler set). In this case, having the exception is better, as it helps prevent "silent" behviours from occuring.
I assume some of this information may be "company secrets" but I'm very interested in learning what metrics are used to determine which source code is "buggier" than others.
That's what THEIR tool does (or at least is supposed to do). The original article states a few of the checks they make (using uninitialized pointers and memory, buffer overflows, etc), but is indeed lacking in telling us exactly what bugs were found in their actual comparison.
Are there checks for use of unsafe functions like gets and the str* family of functions in C?
Hey, strcpy is no buggier than anything else if you use it properly. I recently was forced to change my code as follows:
char *foo = new char[strlen(bar) + 1];
strcpy(foo,bar);
to
char *foo = new char[strlen(bar) + 1];
strncpy(foo,bar,strlen(bar));
What's the problem with this? The problem is in that both cases the code depends on strlen being run on a valid string. Utilizing strncpy adds absolutely NO addtional safety to this code. Now before anyone pipes up about how lame the code is (no checking for null, not null terminating the string, etc) it's just an example of using "safe" functions for the sake of using them, vs actually trying to make better code.
I guess Cisco is getting scared of the competition, and decided to crush them...
Huh? How is Linksys competition to Cisco. Linksys stuff is primarily aimed at the home/small office. Cisco stuff is targeted towards corps/isps/large installs. I've never heard an IT guy for a large install saying "Gee should I go with Aironet or the WAP11" or Joe Bob saying, "I wonder if it's worth it to pay 10x more for an Aironet wap vs the Linksys". Cisco apparently wants into the lowend market. Where you do have a point is to see how long Cisco keeps the Linksys name. Do you lose consumer familiarity with Linksys to push the "prestige" of the Cisco name?