>And no, this is no strawman. The rough periods in which dinosaurs and humans lived are so far apart >and clearly established,
That would be where you get the arguments. A very good friend of mine is very religious and is a creationist. We have had this discussion before. The creationists do not accept uniformitarianism nor do they believe in carbon-14 dating (you can't prove that carbon didn't decay faster 200 years ago because no one was measuring it back then. So if carbon decay is faster then all those carbon-14 dates are way off...).
She is also very smart - has a masters in math, probably could easily answer trivia like how much of the Earth is covered in water. But she is firm in her beliefs and faith is always > reason.
>You're incorrect - you cannot get a refund on software that has been opened from most stores.
Yes. And if you sue the store, you will win. There is even prior case law supporting your lawsuit (do a search on Best Buy lawsuit). The problem is that it costs like 35 bucks to sue someone in small claims court. Most software isn't expensive enough to go thru the time, hassle and cost to sue the store.
>I've got the same thing happening (lived here 32 years, same phone number for at least >20, we have no clue who the person they're seeking is) and we can't get them to stop.
I had the EXACT same situation. I bought a new house, got a new phone. I got a huge number of phone calls for the guy who had the phone number before me. The phone calls dropped off after awhile but I still got 3-4 per month. Then a couple years ago, I started getting a lot of them again (usually at 8AM on Saturday). Explaining that you have had this number for 8+ years did no good. They would continue to call. I read the FTC laws and even quoted them to these guys on the phone but no go. I threatened lawsuits against them and their response was to simply hang up on me. If I asked for a mailing address or the owners name of the collection agency, they would usually refuse to give it to me. Those that did always gave me a PO box (which cannot be served a summons) and refused to give me a physical address or a name of a supervisor or owner.
I ended up solving my problem quite simply. PacBell, my telephone provider was bought out and I got a letter saying I had 30 days to select a new plan or one would be selected for me. Instead I called my cable company and went with their phone service. I transfered my phone number over so I had the same old one but I decided to LIST the number (before I was unlisted). Since I have listed it, the huge number of phone calls from collection agencies had stopped. I did get one for my name for a guy living in a town nearby but that has been it so far.
>My guess is there are few hckers conversant in COBOL, OS-360 and nine-track tapes.
Hackers can run OS-360 on their PCs using Hercules. OS-360 is freely available.
However, no one is running OS-360 in production and I doubt you could find a 9 track tape anywhere.
The reason that hackers can't hack in have more to do with RACF and the structure of the mainframe (user code can only modify itself) than anything else.
It's not hard to learn COBOL. I think there is even a COBOL for DUMMIES book. If not, I'm sure there is a SAMS learn it in 24 hrs book.
The problem is being book learned is nearly useless. You need to have a skill set to know what VSAM, flat files, etc are. What JCL and TSO is and how to use it, etc. This just to get to the point where you can actually look at the code and compile it.
Now, if your looking at a good piece of structured COBOL code, changing it isn't too hard. The problem thrown in your way are usually administrative - it takes 4 hrs to actually code the change but 4 weeks to do all the documentation of the change, QA, change control, etc to get the code into production.
Now, if your looking at a bad piece of COBOL code, then it could take a very long time to even figure out what is happening in the program. But this no different than trying to update a poorly written piece of C code.
Imagine needing to update a very complex poorly written piece of Code say of the complexity of Nethack (source is freely available). Now suppose there there is little or no doc to the code and you are fresh from a book on C. I think it would take you a long time to make a complex change to the source code.
So at that point the language is basically irrevelant.
Re:Who Cares What Language, It Reeks of Poor Desig
on
Why COBOL Could Come Back
·
· Score: 4, Informative
>I think many people missed the point of the California problem
That was part of it but reality is that it is mostly politics. According to a post on USENET (in bit.listserv.ibm-main) by a guy who actually worked on the code, it is all VSAM files for database and table driven. Trival to change to min wage and just being VSAM means you could just duplicate the files and easily maintain 2 sets of files - one with min wage and one with the real wage.
No, the answer is the politician don't want to do it so just come up with any excuse to say it is "impossible".
>Eventually the COBOL systems will be replaced simply because they run on computers that >aren't compatible with today's designs.
Completely wrong. There is Cobol code from 1960s running on todays IBM Z10 processor. IBM is almost always backward compatible. IBM ain't Microsoft where the code breaks every couple years when MS releases a new windows or a service pack.
A few years ago, California amended its overtime law - it was to give nurses overtime pay but also encompassed IT contractors the way it was worded - companies had to pay time and a half and double time if over 40 hrs. A senate bill was then introduced to take IT contractors out (or limit it to lower paid IT workers but while that bill was making its way thru the CA legislature, contractors had to be paid for overtime.
What my company did - a major auto company - was mandate that there would be no overtime for any contractors - you COULD NOT work more than 40 hrs ever, under any circumstances. This was an edict from executive management.
What this meant is that if you were close to 40 hrs and there was the possibility that you might get called on a problem at night or on the weekend, you had to go home early so the contractors affected worked more like 30 hrs a week instead of 40 on the fear that they might go over 40 if they got called. One guy who had worked on a problem the night before, came into work and was told he had to go home. Now this guy lived 60+ miles away and carpooled every day to work. He had to leave work, go call his wife (who also worked a long way away) to come pick him up because his carpool partners at work weren't sent home. The couple of months this chaos lasted caused huge confusion, you couldn't carpool with contractors because they might get sent home early and the contractors losing money due to not being able to work 40 hrs.
A number of years ago, I changed jobs and moved 500 miles. The company that hired me offered relocation so I took it. In fact, they needed me to start immediately so part of the relo package was putting me up in a furnished apt for a couple months, a service to help me find an apt or house, movers and more. It seemed like a great package to me so I took it.
Reality is that all these costs are taxable and added to your income. Further the costs were ridiculasly high. Thousands for the 30 day stay in the furnished apt, a "service" that met with me once and basically just provided a written list of available apts - charged hundreds of dollars, movers who did a great job but were very expensive, in addition since they were storing my stuff for me, the storage costs were very high. In the end, I found an apt on my own so the expensive service was no real help to me at all just a waste of hundreds of dollars.
All told, the relo bill was very high and written into my employment agreement was that I would have to reimburse the company if I left before 1 year. Fine - that seemed very reasonable at the time.
Well, it turned out this company was a nightmare to work for - that was why they had to go to a headhunting service to find someone to begin with. No one local would work for them! Within a couple weeks, I knew I had made a huge mistake but I was stuck since I didn't want to repay the thousands of dollars in all these relo charges. In addition my taxes were higher since all these costs were taxable!
When I did quit (just after 1 year) and move back 500 miles, I used U-Haul and did it for a couple hundred bucks.
Now, my rule is to NEVER ACCEPT RELOCATION. If a company offers it, I will decline. If they need me to start instantly and can't wait for me to move myself, I say NO THANKS to that company.
>So will this render all astrological predictions which took Pluto into account as invalid?
Last week the BBC interviewed an astrologer who already had an answer. She said that the non naked eye visible planets (anything beyond Saturn) control the unconscious and whether Pluto is a planet (or there are suddenly a lot of additional non naked eye visible planets) doesn't make any difference to astrology.
I know nothing about astrology so don't know if this is the "official" policy of the astrologers.
I always thought they meant a Neutron Star not a Black Hole. Neutron Stars were postulated to exist long before Star Trek (the 1930s) and Larry Niven had an award winning short story that came out in 1966 called Neutron Star so other writers probably knew about them.
There is hard SF (dealing with technology and attempting to keep everything scientifically accurate) and soft SF (dealing with the effects of tech on people and peoples usage of technology).
You only need science degrees if you are attempting to explain the technology. For Hard SF, Hal Clement is one of the best.
For character development, plot, pacing, and story telling, many scientific writers suck. There are lots of great SF writers (Ellison, Le Guin, Zelazny) who know little of hard science but can tell a great story.
Of Le Guin's, I like "The Word of World is Forest", the best. As I was reading it, I saw that she was a great writer. Her more famous books (Dispossed, Left Hand of Darkness) can be a little hard to follow. I think Earthsea is some of her weakest work.
There are already lots of laws about space launches on the books. US citizens must already have permission from the government to even launch in other countries or outside the country.
The article talks about adding lots more to Title 49 including things like passenger comfort, etc.
http://ast.faa.gov/aboutast/701complete.htm
(2) for a citizen of the United States (as defined in section
70102(1)(A) or (B) of this title) to launch a launch vehicle or to operate a launch site or reentry site, or to reenter a reentry vehicle, outside the United States.
Currently they cannot regulate Sirius (or cable). This is actually due to a court decision (Playboy vs US Government).
However, republicans in congress have been saying that profanity/indecency should not be allowed just because it occurs on cable and that the FCC should have the power to regulate cable (this would also apply to satelite radio).
Since the republicans control congress, expect to see "child protection" legislation in the next year or so to give the FCC the power to regulate cable.
I was just the opposite. I read the LOTR at 14 or so. I found the 1st book incredibly dull and hard to read. I remember really struggling to get through it. The other two were better but I was not a huge fan.
About 10 years later, I reread the LOTR. I found I enjoyed the 1st book far more than the other two. The subtle stuff in the 1st books (songs, long speeches, etc) was completely boring to me at 14 but I appreciated at 25.
It was much like Shakespeare which I detested in high school when forced to read Romeo and Juliet. It wasn't until college when I was in a creative writing class and had to write a page of iambic pentameter. I struggled mightily to write that poem. When the teacher told me that Shakespeare wrote volumes of it, my appreciation of his work increased 100 fold.
I saw it on Memorial day. Not sure when it was released. I was at some friends house and they asked me if I had seen it yet as they had already seen it multiple times. When I said no, they said, WE HAVE TO GO NOW!
So we all went and stood in line for 4 hours. It was definately a hit by Memorial day.
CGI? It was due to bad acting, directing and even worse writing. Your right that EP2 acting and directing were just as terrible but the writing was just horrible instead of complete drek making it slightly better on the razzie scale.
There is NO HOPE that EP3 will actually be a good movie.
I haven't read Star Wars stuff in 20 years but I always got the impression the force sense was more like Sonar.
If your already getting a large noise source from an area, it is pretty much impossible for Sonar to detect a small noise source next to it. The large one hides the smaller one.
"Sure it sounded bad but they didn't care. And neither did the RIAA..."
Actually they DID care. That is why a royalty is paid to record companies for every blank tape sold. To compensate them for the copying people did at home.
California passed an overtime law a year or so ago mandating overtime for all hourly workers with few exceptions (it was to please some Nurses union lobby).
For the first time, my employer had to start paying me overtime. It was a HUGE MESS!
I'm am oncall so I get calls at night. But wait, if I already have worked 40 hours that week then I would have to report overtime. Management didn't want that so instead people were being sent home early from work during the week. Played hell with carpools when one of you suddenly has to leave because he is getting too close to 40 hours or got called the night before.
Fortunately California changed its overtime laws to exempt programmers (or people making more than $43/hr from the new law and things are back to normal. But I DONT WANT OVERTIME.
Only thing I've ever watched on Tech TV was the annotated version of the Thunderbirds.
They used to have it on late at night. Not sure anymore if they still show it but the popups with comments, insights and background info was very cool.
Slashdot Mirror
>Stardock isn't handing out loans amounting to hundreds of times more money than the assets of the whole company
How do you know? You have copies of auditor reports? Please post them.
>We're talking about software development companies, here - not unregulated banks.
unregulated software development companies.
>I expect Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Blizzard, Stardock, and Valve to be around for a while yet
Sun won't exist a couple of months from now.
Yahoo still exists but its music customers are SOL so the company still existing is
meaningless on whether your DRM product still works.
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/07/drm-still-sucks-yahoo-music-going-dark-taking-keys-with-it.ars
>And no, this is no strawman. The rough periods in which dinosaurs and humans lived are so far apart >and clearly established,
That would be where you get the arguments. A very good friend of mine is very religious and is a
creationist. We have had this discussion before. The creationists do not accept uniformitarianism nor do they believe in carbon-14 dating (you can't prove that carbon didn't decay faster 200 years ago because no one was measuring it back then. So if carbon decay is faster then all those carbon-14 dates are way off...).
She is also very smart - has a masters in math, probably could easily answer trivia like how much of the Earth is covered in water. But she is firm in her beliefs and faith is always > reason.
>You're incorrect - you cannot get a refund on software that has been opened from most stores.
Yes. And if you sue the store, you will win. There is even prior case law supporting your
lawsuit (do a search on Best Buy lawsuit). The problem is that it costs like 35 bucks to sue someone in small claims court. Most software isn't expensive enough to go thru the time, hassle
and cost to sue the store.
>I've got the same thing happening (lived here 32 years, same phone number for at least >20, we have no clue who the person they're seeking is) and we can't get them to stop.
I had the EXACT same situation. I bought a new house, got a new phone. I got a huge number of phone calls for the guy who had the phone number before me. The phone calls dropped off after awhile but I still got 3-4 per month. Then a couple years ago, I started getting a lot of them again (usually at 8AM on Saturday). Explaining that you have had this number for 8+ years did no good. They would continue to call. I read the FTC laws and even quoted them to these guys on the phone but no go. I threatened lawsuits against them and their response was to simply hang up on me. If I asked for a mailing address or the owners name of the collection agency, they would usually refuse to give it to me. Those that did always gave me a PO box (which cannot be served a summons) and refused to give me a physical address or a name of a supervisor or owner.
I ended up solving my problem quite simply. PacBell, my telephone provider was bought out and I got a letter saying I had 30 days to select a new plan or one would be selected for me. Instead I called my cable company and went with their phone service. I transfered my phone number over so I had the same old one but I decided to LIST the number (before I was unlisted). Since I have listed it, the huge number of phone calls from collection agencies had stopped. I did get one for my name for a guy living in a town nearby but that has been it so far.
>My guess is there are few hckers conversant in COBOL, OS-360 and nine-track tapes.
Hackers can run OS-360 on their PCs using Hercules. OS-360 is freely available.
However, no one is running OS-360 in production and I doubt you could find a 9 track tape anywhere.
The reason that hackers can't hack in have more to do with RACF and the structure of the mainframe (user code can only modify itself) than anything else.
It's not hard to learn COBOL. I think there is even a COBOL for DUMMIES book. If not, I'm sure there is a SAMS learn it in 24 hrs book.
The problem is being book learned is nearly useless. You need to have a skill set to know what VSAM, flat files, etc are. What JCL and TSO is and how to use it, etc. This just to get to the point where you can actually look at the code and compile it.
Now, if your looking at a good piece of structured COBOL code, changing it isn't too hard. The problem thrown in your way are usually administrative - it takes 4 hrs to actually code the change but 4 weeks to do all the documentation of the change, QA, change control, etc to get the code into production.
Now, if your looking at a bad piece of COBOL code, then it could take a very long time to even figure out what is happening in the program. But this no different than trying to update a poorly written piece of C code.
Imagine needing to update a very complex poorly written piece of Code say of the complexity of Nethack (source is freely available). Now suppose there there is little or no doc to the code and you are fresh from a book on C. I think it would take you a long time to make a complex change to the source code.
So at that point the language is basically irrevelant.
>I think many people missed the point of the California problem
That was part of it but reality is that it is mostly politics.
According to a post on USENET (in bit.listserv.ibm-main) by a guy who actually worked on the code, it is all VSAM files for database and table driven. Trival to change to min wage and just being VSAM means you could just duplicate the files and easily maintain 2 sets of files - one with min wage and one with the real wage.
No, the answer is the politician don't want to do it so just come up with any excuse to say it is "impossible".
>Eventually the COBOL systems will be replaced simply because they run on computers that
>aren't compatible with today's designs.
Completely wrong. There is Cobol code from 1960s running on todays IBM Z10 processor. IBM is almost always backward compatible. IBM ain't Microsoft where the code breaks every couple years when MS releases a new windows or a service pack.
A few years ago, California amended its overtime law - it was to give nurses overtime pay but also encompassed IT contractors the way it was worded - companies had to pay time and a half and double time if over 40 hrs. A senate bill was then introduced to take IT contractors out (or limit it to lower paid IT workers but while that bill was making its way thru the CA legislature, contractors had to be paid for overtime.
What my company did - a major auto company - was mandate that there would be no overtime for any contractors - you COULD NOT work more than 40 hrs ever, under any circumstances. This was an edict from executive management.
What this meant is that if you were close to 40 hrs and there was the possibility that you might get called on a problem at night or on the weekend, you had to go home early so the contractors affected worked more like 30 hrs a week instead of 40 on the fear that they might go over 40 if they got called. One guy who had worked on a problem the night before, came into work and was told he had to go home. Now this guy lived 60+ miles away and carpooled every day to work. He had to leave work, go call his wife (who also worked a long way away) to come pick him up because his carpool partners at work weren't sent home. The couple of months this chaos lasted caused huge confusion, you couldn't carpool with contractors because they might get sent home early and the contractors losing money due to not being able to work 40 hrs.
It is a HUGE CAN OF WORMS!
NO NO NO.
A number of years ago, I changed jobs and moved 500 miles. The company that hired me offered relocation so I took it. In fact, they needed me to start immediately so part of the relo package was putting me up in a furnished apt for a couple months, a service to help me find an apt or house, movers and more. It seemed like a great package to me so I took it.
Reality is that all these costs are taxable and added to your income. Further the costs were ridiculasly high. Thousands for the 30 day stay in the furnished apt, a "service" that met with me once and basically just provided a written list of available apts - charged hundreds of dollars, movers who did a great job but were very expensive, in addition since they were storing my stuff for me, the storage costs were very high. In the end, I found an apt on my own so the expensive service was no real help to me at all just a waste of hundreds of dollars.
All told, the relo bill was very high and written into my employment agreement was that I would have to reimburse the company if I left before 1 year. Fine - that seemed very reasonable at the time.
Well, it turned out this company was a nightmare to work for - that was why they had to go to a headhunting service to find someone to begin with. No one local would work for them! Within a couple weeks, I knew I had made a huge mistake but I was stuck since I didn't want to repay the thousands of dollars in all these relo charges. In addition my taxes were higher since all these costs were taxable!
When I did quit (just after 1 year) and move back 500 miles, I used U-Haul and did it for a couple hundred bucks.
Now, my rule is to NEVER ACCEPT RELOCATION. If a company offers it, I will decline. If they need me to start instantly and can't wait for me to move myself, I say NO THANKS to that company.
>So will this render all astrological predictions which took Pluto into account as invalid?
Last week the BBC interviewed an astrologer who already had an answer. She said that the non naked eye visible planets (anything beyond Saturn) control the unconscious and whether Pluto is a planet (or there are suddenly a lot of additional non naked eye visible planets) doesn't make any difference to astrology.
I know nothing about astrology so don't know if this is the "official" policy of the astrologers.
I always thought they meant a Neutron Star not a Black Hole. Neutron Stars were postulated to exist long before Star Trek (the 1930s) and Larry Niven had an award winning short story that came out in 1966 called Neutron Star so other writers probably knew about them.
Didn't a chinese company just buy the IBM PC business?
I think it is the other way around: Will the US actually allow it's citizens to use computer hardware controlled by China?
There is hard SF (dealing with technology and attempting to keep everything scientifically accurate) and soft SF (dealing with the effects of tech on people and peoples usage of technology).
You only need science degrees if you are attempting to explain the technology. For Hard SF, Hal Clement is one of the best.
For character development, plot, pacing, and story telling, many scientific writers suck. There are lots of great SF writers (Ellison, Le Guin, Zelazny) who know little of hard science but can tell a great story.
Of Le Guin's, I like "The Word of World is Forest", the best. As I was reading it, I saw that she was a great writer. Her more famous books (Dispossed, Left Hand of Darkness) can be a little hard to follow. I think Earthsea is some of her weakest work.
There are already lots of laws about space launches on the books. US citizens must already have permission from the government to even launch in other countries or outside the country.
The article talks about adding lots more to Title 49 including things like passenger comfort, etc.
http://ast.faa.gov/aboutast/701complete.htm
(2) for a citizen of the United States (as defined in section
70102(1)(A) or (B) of this title) to launch a launch vehicle or to operate a launch site or reentry site, or to reenter a reentry vehicle, outside the United States.
Currently they cannot regulate Sirius (or cable). This is actually due to a court decision (Playboy vs US Government).
However, republicans in congress have been saying that profanity/indecency should not be allowed just because it occurs on cable and that the FCC should have the power to regulate cable (this would also apply to satelite radio).
Since the republicans control congress, expect to see "child protection" legislation in the next year or so to give the FCC the power to regulate cable.
Hmm, so the Frodo that claimed the Ring as his own at Mt Doom was exactly the same hobbit as the one back in Hobbiton?
I think you missed a lot in the books...
I was just the opposite. I read the LOTR at 14 or so. I found the 1st book incredibly dull and hard to read. I remember really struggling to get through it. The other two were better but I was not a huge fan.
About 10 years later, I reread the LOTR. I found I enjoyed the 1st book far more than the other two. The subtle stuff in the 1st books (songs, long speeches, etc) was completely boring to me at 14 but I appreciated at 25.
It was much like Shakespeare which I detested in high school when forced to read Romeo and Juliet. It wasn't until college when I was in a creative writing class and had to write a page of iambic pentameter. I struggled mightily to write that poem. When the teacher told me that Shakespeare wrote volumes of it, my appreciation of his work increased 100 fold.
I saw it on Memorial day. Not sure when it was released. I was at some friends house and they asked me if I had seen it yet as they had already seen it multiple times. When I said no, they said, WE HAVE TO GO NOW!
So we all went and stood in line for 4 hours. It was definately a hit by Memorial day.
CGI? It was due to bad acting, directing and even worse writing. Your right that EP2 acting and directing were just as terrible but the writing was just horrible instead of complete drek making it slightly better on the razzie scale.
There is NO HOPE that EP3 will actually be a good movie.
I haven't read Star Wars stuff in 20 years but I always got the impression the force sense was more like Sonar. If your already getting a large noise source from an area, it is pretty much impossible for Sonar to detect a small noise source next to it. The large one hides the smaller one.
Don't be stupid. If Bush had vetoed it, the Republican congress would have ensured that his veto was NOT OVERRIDDEN.
But, not only did he want it, lobby for it and sign it, he wants it renewed and extended.
"Sure it sounded bad but they didn't care. And neither did the RIAA..."
Actually they DID care. That is why a royalty is paid to record companies for every blank tape sold. To compensate them for the copying people did at home.
California passed an overtime law a year or so ago mandating overtime for all hourly workers with few exceptions (it was to please some Nurses union lobby).
For the first time, my employer had to start paying me overtime. It was a HUGE MESS!
I'm am oncall so I get calls at night. But wait, if I already have worked 40 hours that week then I would have to report overtime. Management didn't want that so instead people were being sent home early from work during the week. Played hell with carpools when one of you suddenly has to leave because he is getting too close to 40 hours or got called the night before.
Fortunately California changed its overtime laws to exempt programmers (or people making more than $43/hr from the new law and things are back to normal. But I DONT WANT OVERTIME.
Only thing I've ever watched on Tech TV was the annotated version of the Thunderbirds.
They used to have it on late at night. Not sure anymore if they still show it but the popups with comments, insights and background info was very cool.