"Surprisingly, despite hard drives underpinning almost every aspect of modern computing (until smartphones), no one has ever carried out a study on the longevity of hard drives — or at least, no one has ever published results from such a study."
I recall reading a/. story from Google on THEIR experiences with hard drive longevity several years ago, over a much larger sampling of drives. Even linked to a PDF with the particulars....
Maybe they are to small to count, compared to an upstart backup company...
Learning how business works should be a high school basic class. If you are involved with programming beyond the "here's a spec, write code to match it" level, being able to communicate with users in their own terms will make your life SO much easier!
As others have pointed out, it will help you with the "big picture".
If you're writing software to be used by businesses, understanding what is important to them affects what you develop. It is easy for someone to write a detailed specification of what someone THINKS they want. It is easy to write software to match that spec. But, how do you deal with the aftermath of finding out what was really being asked? "Why are we generating a daily report on information that is only available on a weekly basis?" "Why are we generating a weekly report, when the data changes by the hour?" Without a background in business, those questions would not occur to you.
Software people are often isolated from the people who use software by a common language, to borrow an old line. Learning about business, even without going to get a degree, will help you understand when words don't mean what you think they mean.
"it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility."
What part of "the internet" is publicly owned, outside of a few last-mile segments in municipalities that have elected to provide that service?
Last I read, the "backbone" of internet was owned by private companies. The ISPs are private companies. All of the tiers in between them are owned by private companies.
Or, is this to imply that Americans should consider all of that privately-owned property to be "public", because some foreign governments "own" the phone companies in their countries, and we can connect to them through our privately-owned infrastructure?
I have messages coming in weekly for addresses that have not been valid since I had a dial-up bulletin board system, at the dawn of consumer email systems. If the submitter has only received a couple of messages, that's just the start of the next 20 years of spam for that address!
Unfortunately for this "distinction" to have much meaning, you need to have the alleged "average" people and clerics of Islam start denouncing the actions of these "loud attention seekers" more strongly than a token, "it wasn't us."
Do a large number of these "average" people of Islam show up at the places where these "attention seekers" go, to make a shield between them and their targets, like a lot of people (both Christian and non-Christian) do at Westboro "events"?
... to allow this page to compromise your computer....
Ever since Java started down the "this isn't last week's zero-day" road, I pulled Java from my machines. Pisses the corporate types off because they want to have "net meetings" that require Java to be installed, so we can have presentations on "computer security", but I just tell them - "MY computer security policy doesn't allow Java to be installed."
I somewhat the opposite of you - I run a system that takes requests from users, and generates a shipping label for them. It is emailed to them at the address they provide. And, if that mail bounces because they're using a whitelist, or something like your "visit this URL and fill out a form so I can know who you are" system (like Earthlink), sorry. You paid for your label and refused to accept it, it's not something we really care about.
All of our systems use SPF to validate as a legitimate sender. If that isn't good enough, tough. Have a nice life.
It sickens ME that someone would call for suppressing the opinions of others simply because they don't agree with them. Rather than supply a cogent, reasoned response to those opinions, they result to name calling and demands of censorship.
Oh, wait... I forgot how Democrats campaign nowadays, and, since they won, how the rights of others are now to be subservient to the "right" to not be offended by differing opinions...
No information on when they did this, but I got a call from the outfit just two days ago, so they were still operational on Tuesday.
Or, is this like so many other things done at the administrative level nowadays? "We shut them down, by sending a strongly worded letter to the post office box listed somewhere!"
Or you could do something silly, like NOT USING THE SAME USER ID IN MULTIPLE LOCATIONS.
For me, if it relates to money or control of a system, it has a unique user ID, password, and even email address. Break into Yahoo, and you might get my Yahoo account info, but you can't use it to figure out my eBay account information. Break into eBay, and you still don't have what you need to find my PayPal account.
"Here in the U.S. they should be forced into at least filing a Form 1099 or something, getting the state taxes comes back to the same problem as sales tax."
But... eBay isn't GIVING the seller any money. They are CHARGING the seller for their service. Why should they file any tax forms on the seller? It is the buyer that would, potentially, issue the tax document, not eBay.
And how can they say the winning bid amount was the final sale amount, anyway? Let's say I put in a winning bid of $600 on a used Widget. I arrive at the seller's location with $600 in hand... And the Widget is damaged in a way that wasn't known/documented. The seller and I agree to a reduced price of $450. Or, I discover that he has a complete set of the accessories for said Widget, and buy $1200 worth of stuff from him, in addition to the Widget. eBay doesn't know any of that.
Even neglecting the privacy issues, it's a flawed concept.
The user's personal information should require a warrant.
However, if tweets were shared with anyone (isn't that the POINT of something like Twitter?), those should not be considered "private". Ask an attorney if you can declare attorney/client privilege if you discuss your case over a PA system at a race track...
Since v7, I've lost several add-ons of various levels of importance. They didn't with break "every release"; they were broken, and won't be fixed because the authors got fed up with chasing a moving target.
The fact that the antivirus plug-in fell behind at v7 doesn't bother me that much; I just have to disable things like Flash and Java, that DO keep up with FF releases, but DON'T keep up with security problems.
But, when the only replacements for a tool are ones that require me to belong to a service to get them to work.... I get a bit upset. Fortunately, Windows and OS/X both have built-in tools that can work around the need to "share" something with the world before I can save it locally. They're a lot less convenient, but it works.
As some one else said, there are a lot of reasons why people drop out of high school. Many of the dropouts I know dropped out because they were already into criminal behavior, and school "cramped their style". Did dropping out cause their criminal activity, as these studies suggest? No, quite the opposite!
Just think - someone reports pictures, and the moderator views them. Finding them to be kiddie porn, the moderator escalates them to be reported to authorities.
But, what protects the moderator from now being arrested for viewing kiddie porn, besides common sense? We know THAT has little to do with law nowadays. Is that why they have the moderators in other countries? Countries where there might not be any legal protection for them?
I've honestly regretted allowing FF to update past 7, because every time the major version changes, another tool I have been using gets turned off. If there's an update to the add-in, there's just the time needed to install it, but... more and more of the rather limited set of tools I use are broken, with no replacement. The latest (going from 9 to 10) was a utility that the only replacements available won't save to your local hard drive - the only way to do that is to let it upload to the particular social network the tools was designed for, THEN download it to your computer. Another add-in always seems to get their update out just in time for the next incompatible update to FF...
Maybe if they actually do this "we won't break things for two years, honest, we promise!" "enterprise" version they mentioned...
The worse the pictures, the better. EPA wants reasons to increase its funding and enforcement efforts, but no excess budget to hire people to do it for them.
Comcast routinely scrambles non-premium channels. When they went digital here, we lost everything except local broadcast, and even some of the local broadcast disappeared. The channels ARE there, but they're scrambled, so the digital-cable-ready TVs just lock them out. Can only watch them through a converter... which is incredibly STUPID!
Once you join at the basic price, it is relatively simple to find out the rates for higher levels will cost, by going to your account screen and selecting "Change plan". Essentially, each additional disk out is $5 more per month.
Actually, I trust Yahoo and Hotmail slightly more than GMail... on our servers, @gmail.com has a default block on it, because the percentage of mail from that domain that is NOT spam is in the low single digits. It all went down hill when they stopped requiring invitations to join, and crashed when the success rate in mechanically breaking their CAPTCHA registration got over 10%, so it became ridiculously simple to generate thousands of real accounts a day.
Throw in the @gmail addresses that arrive via Yahoo servers (complete with Domain Key authentication), and it's about 1%.
Of course, AOL account traffic (including @aim.com and @cs.com) is running 90% compromised. And, within the last 10 days, domains in the Earthlink family have started to spike with traffic from compromised user accounts. The later is somewhat more ironic, given the problem with getting mail TO Earthlink users, because of their "superior spam and anti-virus filtering"... to become a significant source of spam from infected systems!
Actually, the toll areas have speed sensors in the ground - they know how fast you pass through the lane (it's also used to count the axles, which is what the toll is based upon). And, if you've ever been to Illinois, you know that this fact does NOT slow anyone down! Granted, we're not as bad as some states, but a lot of people think those green signs with the big "I" on them are announcing the speed limit, NOT the route number!
VLC Direct doesn't need VLC running on the desktop, as long as the content is on the phone/tablet already. It can stream to or from VLC on another machine.
I haven't looked into the licensing, because I'm still working on whether or not I'm keeping the tablet itself.
Then what am I running?
When I got the tablet last week, I chose VLC Direct from the Android Market. Works just fine.
Guess this refers to a fully-free version, since this already-working project is a paid application...
Slashdot Mirror
"Surprisingly, despite hard drives underpinning almost every aspect of modern computing (until smartphones), no one has ever carried out a study on the longevity of hard drives — or at least, no one has ever published results from such a study."
I recall reading a /. story from Google on THEIR experiences with hard drive longevity several years ago, over a much larger sampling of drives. Even linked to a PDF with the particulars....
Maybe they are to small to count, compared to an upstart backup company...
Encrypting hand-written and typed notes.... Isn't that called "shorthand"? Or maybe "bad handwriting"?
Light sensitive flash paper, maybe... Try to copy them, and POOF!
Learning how business works should be a high school basic class. If you are involved with programming beyond the "here's a spec, write code to match it" level, being able to communicate with users in their own terms will make your life SO much easier!
As others have pointed out, it will help you with the "big picture".
If you're writing software to be used by businesses, understanding what is important to them affects what you develop. It is easy for someone to write a detailed specification of what someone THINKS they want. It is easy to write software to match that spec. But, how do you deal with the aftermath of finding out what was really being asked? "Why are we generating a daily report on information that is only available on a weekly basis?" "Why are we generating a weekly report, when the data changes by the hour?" Without a background in business, those questions would not occur to you.
Software people are often isolated from the people who use software by a common language, to borrow an old line. Learning about business, even without going to get a degree, will help you understand when words don't mean what you think they mean.
If irresponsible people can print, buy, or otherwise obtain a gun, does that mean that a responsible person should be denied the right to do the same?
"it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility."
What part of "the internet" is publicly owned, outside of a few last-mile segments in municipalities that have elected to provide that service?
Last I read, the "backbone" of internet was owned by private companies. The ISPs are private companies. All of the tiers in between them are owned by private companies.
Or, is this to imply that Americans should consider all of that privately-owned property to be "public", because some foreign governments "own" the phone companies in their countries, and we can connect to them through our privately-owned infrastructure?
I have messages coming in weekly for addresses that have not been valid since I had a dial-up bulletin board system, at the dawn of consumer email systems. If the submitter has only received a couple of messages, that's just the start of the next 20 years of spam for that address!
Unfortunately for this "distinction" to have much meaning, you need to have the alleged "average" people and clerics of Islam start denouncing the actions of these "loud attention seekers" more strongly than a token, "it wasn't us."
Do a large number of these "average" people of Islam show up at the places where these "attention seekers" go, to make a shield between them and their targets, like a lot of people (both Christian and non-Christian) do at Westboro "events"?
... to allow this page to compromise your computer....
Ever since Java started down the "this isn't last week's zero-day" road, I pulled Java from my machines. Pisses the corporate types off because they want to have "net meetings" that require Java to be installed, so we can have presentations on "computer security", but I just tell them - "MY computer security policy doesn't allow Java to be installed."
I somewhat the opposite of you - I run a system that takes requests from users, and generates a shipping label for them. It is emailed to them at the address they provide. And, if that mail bounces because they're using a whitelist, or something like your "visit this URL and fill out a form so I can know who you are" system (like Earthlink), sorry. You paid for your label and refused to accept it, it's not something we really care about.
All of our systems use SPF to validate as a legitimate sender. If that isn't good enough, tough. Have a nice life.
It sickens ME that someone would call for suppressing the opinions of others simply because they don't agree with them. Rather than supply a cogent, reasoned response to those opinions, they result to name calling and demands of censorship.
Oh, wait... I forgot how Democrats campaign nowadays, and, since they won, how the rights of others are now to be subservient to the "right" to not be offended by differing opinions...
No information on when they did this, but I got a call from the outfit just two days ago, so they were still operational on Tuesday.
Or, is this like so many other things done at the administrative level nowadays? "We shut them down, by sending a strongly worded letter to the post office box listed somewhere!"
Or you could do something silly, like NOT USING THE SAME USER ID IN MULTIPLE LOCATIONS.
For me, if it relates to money or control of a system, it has a unique user ID, password, and even email address. Break into Yahoo, and you might get my Yahoo account info, but you can't use it to figure out my eBay account information. Break into eBay, and you still don't have what you need to find my PayPal account.
But people trust internet too much.
"Here in the U.S. they should be forced into at least filing a Form 1099 or something, getting the state taxes comes back to the same problem as sales tax."
But... eBay isn't GIVING the seller any money. They are CHARGING the seller for their service. Why should they file any tax forms on the seller? It is the buyer that would, potentially, issue the tax document, not eBay.
And how can they say the winning bid amount was the final sale amount, anyway? Let's say I put in a winning bid of $600 on a used Widget. I arrive at the seller's location with $600 in hand... And the Widget is damaged in a way that wasn't known/documented. The seller and I agree to a reduced price of $450. Or, I discover that he has a complete set of the accessories for said Widget, and buy $1200 worth of stuff from him, in addition to the Widget. eBay doesn't know any of that.
Even neglecting the privacy issues, it's a flawed concept.
The user's personal information should require a warrant.
However, if tweets were shared with anyone (isn't that the POINT of something like Twitter?), those should not be considered "private". Ask an attorney if you can declare attorney/client privilege if you discuss your case over a PA system at a race track...
Since v7, I've lost several add-ons of various levels of importance. They didn't with break "every release"; they were broken, and won't be fixed because the authors got fed up with chasing a moving target.
The fact that the antivirus plug-in fell behind at v7 doesn't bother me that much; I just have to disable things like Flash and Java, that DO keep up with FF releases, but DON'T keep up with security problems.
But, when the only replacements for a tool are ones that require me to belong to a service to get them to work.... I get a bit upset. Fortunately, Windows and OS/X both have built-in tools that can work around the need to "share" something with the world before I can save it locally. They're a lot less convenient, but it works.
At least, they should, until FF updates again....
I don't see why this was moderated to "funny"...
As some one else said, there are a lot of reasons why people drop out of high school. Many of the dropouts I know dropped out because they were already into criminal behavior, and school "cramped their style". Did dropping out cause their criminal activity, as these studies suggest? No, quite the opposite!
Just think - someone reports pictures, and the moderator views them. Finding them to be kiddie porn, the moderator escalates them to be reported to authorities.
But, what protects the moderator from now being arrested for viewing kiddie porn, besides common sense? We know THAT has little to do with law nowadays. Is that why they have the moderators in other countries? Countries where there might not be any legal protection for them?
I've honestly regretted allowing FF to update past 7, because every time the major version changes, another tool I have been using gets turned off. If there's an update to the add-in, there's just the time needed to install it, but... more and more of the rather limited set of tools I use are broken, with no replacement. The latest (going from 9 to 10) was a utility that the only replacements available won't save to your local hard drive - the only way to do that is to let it upload to the particular social network the tools was designed for, THEN download it to your computer. Another add-in always seems to get their update out just in time for the next incompatible update to FF...
Maybe if they actually do this "we won't break things for two years, honest, we promise!" "enterprise" version they mentioned...
The worse the pictures, the better. EPA wants reasons to increase its funding and enforcement efforts, but no excess budget to hire people to do it for them.
Comcast routinely scrambles non-premium channels. When they went digital here, we lost everything except local broadcast, and even some of the local broadcast disappeared. The channels ARE there, but they're scrambled, so the digital-cable-ready TVs just lock them out. Can only watch them through a converter... which is incredibly STUPID!
Once you join at the basic price, it is relatively simple to find out the rates for higher levels will cost, by going to your account screen and selecting "Change plan". Essentially, each additional disk out is $5 more per month.
Actually, I trust Yahoo and Hotmail slightly more than GMail... on our servers, @gmail.com has a default block on it, because the percentage of mail from that domain that is NOT spam is in the low single digits. It all went down hill when they stopped requiring invitations to join, and crashed when the success rate in mechanically breaking their CAPTCHA registration got over 10%, so it became ridiculously simple to generate thousands of real accounts a day.
Throw in the @gmail addresses that arrive via Yahoo servers (complete with Domain Key authentication), and it's about 1%.
Of course, AOL account traffic (including @aim.com and @cs.com) is running 90% compromised. And, within the last 10 days, domains in the Earthlink family have started to spike with traffic from compromised user accounts. The later is somewhat more ironic, given the problem with getting mail TO Earthlink users, because of their "superior spam and anti-virus filtering"... to become a significant source of spam from infected systems!
Actually, the toll areas have speed sensors in the ground - they know how fast you pass through the lane (it's also used to count the axles, which is what the toll is based upon). And, if you've ever been to Illinois, you know that this fact does NOT slow anyone down! Granted, we're not as bad as some states, but a lot of people think those green signs with the big "I" on them are announcing the speed limit, NOT the route number!
VLC Direct doesn't need VLC running on the desktop, as long as the content is on the phone/tablet already. It can stream to or from VLC on another machine.
I haven't looked into the licensing, because I'm still working on whether or not I'm keeping the tablet itself.
Then what am I running? When I got the tablet last week, I chose VLC Direct from the Android Market. Works just fine. Guess this refers to a fully-free version, since this already-working project is a paid application...