This stupidity makes me want to take a bunch of DVDs of Brasseye Pedophile Special and shove it down stupid voters' throats. Seriously, if you need a proof that "Think of the children" turns people into imbeciles, the show is what you want.
If Vendors would stop preaching that they are the next 'silver-bullet' then perhaps this would stop.
This sentence might be true, but is meaningless. Vendors will do whatever sells. Period.
It is not the techs who decides what comes in and what goes out. It is normally driven by cost.
And this is what has to change. Saying that techs should make all the decisions is of course unrealistic, but in a sane company the management lets them evaluate the solutions before deciding.
Ah well?, Ah well? This is the extent of outrage in "this new era"?!? Amazing!
In 5 years, it will be:
Like many people who get these 200 volt shocks, I don't believe I did anything wrong. Nor do I care. Please join me in this common refrain for this new era of software and hardware. Baah, baah, baaaaah....
I'd even say that you shouldn't. Escaping strings is enumerating badness. You put your backslashes before your single quotes. Secure? Ummmm... sorry, you also have to put backslashes before backslashes. Secure? Nope, your db interprets 0xd inside the sql as "empty the buffer, start new sql", even inside an open string, so you have to escape that also. (Of course you can "enumerate goodness" - only alphanumeric chars, but there is no reason to, if you have param binding)
Just don't build your query on the fly.
Bind ALL parameters to placeholders in a prebuilt query. Binding is an instant kill for any SQL injection attack. It is also much more effecient on many databases.
Paremeter binding doesn't exclude building your query on the fly. Having many optional filters that filter on joined tables practically forces you to use dynamic sql but there's no reason not to use param binding in that too.
Actually, being first to market really isn't that big of a deal. There are tons of products which were first to market which have slided away into oblivion because they were rushed out the door. Because they were rushed, they ended up sucking the big one. Then, another company comes out with a better, more polished version of the same product and everyone forgets about the first, sucky product.
The dotcom bust is littered with companies whose business model was, "be first or else", and nobody seems to remember them.
True, but they are the visible ones. The other side of the "perfect release date" are the products (and companies) that have been killed because they were too late - the silent victims that you seldom get to see.
It seems that it's best to be the first on the market with the perfect product (2 -profit, har, har, har), hence the importance of the "fast" development methods.
It's been a while since I worked on this, but these idea have been propagated through networking protocols for years. When I was in University at Dalhousie I spent quite a bit of time on a directed study of somethink called the 'AntNet Routing Protocol'.
MUTE File Sharing uses this idea to create an anonymous file sharing network. Since all the file transfer is done by ants, there's nobody to sue:-) Ok, it's actually a bit more complicated - the packets mimic ants by using only local information to find direction (i.e. the next hop), making it hard to discover the final source/destination of the packets while still maintaining decent routing properties.
Easiest way I've found- though it's begining to get a bit outdated thanks to bloatware. Charles Dicken's famous novel is about 100k. This makes it easy to estimate source code in terms of number of copies of that novel. The quarter-million lines of code project I'm currently working on takes about 25 MB to store- 25000k, or 250 copies of A Christmas Carol.
That analogy can be carried further. If you change a single letter in the Christmas Carol, probably nobody even notices, unless it's something like mistyping the first letter in 'duck'. Changing a single letter in source code has much much more probability of destroying things...
PS. I am not sure if there is a duck in Christmas Carol.
I will save us a good deal of time, by quoting Eblen Moglen...
Yeah, quoting gurus saves a good deal of time (and thought), but I prefer not to switch off my brain upon hearing the Holy Word. This said, the question posed by grandparent still remains valid: "Why dynamic linking constitutes modification of a program and calling it by a network protocol does not?".
The answer might lie in the following quote from the same article:
We reasserted that code dynamically linked to GPL code--which the GPL code is intended to require, not merely optionally incorporate--is part of the source code of the work under the GPL and must be released.
No. An implementation in software of some idea (such as adding numbers) is, on a base level, not theoretically different than an implementation in hardware. Whether you do it with levers and cogs, pipes of water, an abacus, or electrical impulses controlled by words is irrelevant. Software is an application of knowledge, just like any of these other things, it is not knowledge itself.
Ok. So (a*a)-(b*b)=(a+b)*(a-b). Knowledge or application?
Calculating (a+b)*(a-b) is better (in terms of rounding errors with fixed point arithmetic) than (a*a)-(b*b). Knowledge or application?
Suppose I was the first to notice this fact. Should I be granted a patent on calculating differences of squares this way? I have a gut feeling that this would be patenting math. And I don't see much difference between this and any other patent on algorithms. Maybe there are software patents that aren't patents on algorithms (for example GUI stuff), but again, the distinction is blurry.
Ok, this is still on the "gut feeling" level, but I think that with the software patents banning them is just simply the lesser evil than allowing them. I think that there is rather a continuum than a sharp distinction between "knowledge" and "application", and that software is close enough to "knowledge" to make it unpatentable.
To stretch it a bit: if you are for software patents, you are for patenting math.
.Wow, that's probably the most cynical thing I've ever heard. Someone got up on the wrong foot this morning...
No, it is a very valid concern. Most NGOs can share stories about local governments/militias/thugs (in some parts of the world the distincion between those groups isn't very sharp) trying to "help" distribution.
Loading up a truck with goods and sending it to a poor country is comparatively easy. "Just unload the truck here, we'll take care of the rest" is probably the biggest problem of charity orgs.
Goverment? Where does the goverment get the money for the next election? Who is it rather going to please?
I say - get organized. Why there is no decent consumer organization in the US is a mystery to me. And by 'decent' I don't mean another corp that makes profit by 'certifying' other corps 'consumer friendly'. I mean an organization of consumers. Big enough to raise a stink about a monopoly being abused. Big enough to scare the politicians. Big enough to organize a meaningful economic boycott.
Otherwise, please bend over for the almighty corporation.
I'll tell you how I got into IT. When I was 8 (early eighties), my uncle showed me a programmable calculator - I don't remember the exact model, but it had about two hundred or so 'cells' which could be used to store numbers or simple instructions like 'GTO' (goto) or 'GSB' (gosub). You couldn't nest 'gosub' calls.
The fact that you could 'program' the pi*r^2 into the calculator and reuse it for different values of r was so impressive, that I buggered my uncle to let me borrow the calculator.
The rest is history - I programmed it to play a simplified version of the Nim game, which got me interested in programming and was enough to convince my parents to buy me the famous ZX Spectrum a few years later.
I got my MSc in CS, now working on my phD. Which I probably won't finish, because the calculator had no big colourful screen and no broadband. Ok, that was a cheap shot - I am not trying to say that 10 character display should be enough for everyone. But I think that even a very modest feature set can activate a bright kid's potential, which is of course a worthy case.
If you buy something as expensive as a house without even bothering to take a look at it beforehand, you can't blame anyone but yourself. This is not a piece of bread -- you can't just shrug and throw it away.
Agreed. One shoud also bear in mind that:
Running with unprotected scissors is dangerous, especially so if wearing high heels and running downstairs.
American football is played with an oval ball.
Starting a land war in Russia during the winter leads to defeat.
You can teach a dog to do tricks, but it takes a long time for an oak tree to grow.
Hm... to be the fittest, given the current environment, a man should spend his life depositing his sperm in sperm banks all over the world.
Somehow I don't feel like doing that. Or like doing anything else at all - which brings another interesting question: is laziness hereditary, and if so, how does it contribute to the fitness function?
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, I ripped it off the famous Dilbert strip. Seemed to fit.
> On xx/xx/xxxx xx:xx The Employee <slave@thecompany> wrote:
>> On xx/xx/xxxx xx:xx The Management <lickmyboots@thecompany> wrote:
>> Knock, knock!
>>
> Who's there?
Not you anymore! Hahahahahaaaaa!
This is the pasted original
No, but it uses really sharp metaphors: "Your agenda for today is packed like the pockets of a homeless bulimic at a swedish table."
I think that the author should take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
This stupidity makes me want to take a bunch of DVDs of Brasseye Pedophile Special and shove it down stupid voters' throats. Seriously, if you need a proof that "Think of the children" turns people into imbeciles, the show is what you want.
And this is what has to change. Saying that techs should make all the decisions is of course unrealistic, but in a sane company the management lets them evaluate the solutions before deciding.
Like many people who get these 200 volt shocks, I don't believe I did anything wrong. Nor do I care. Please join me in this common refrain for this new era of software and hardware. Baah, baah, baaaaah....
It seems that it's best to be the first on the market with the perfect product (2 -profit, har, har, har), hence the importance of the "fast" development methods.
Synthesized in-vitro on a commercial scale? Look at Taxol. It took over 20 years to design a commercially viable synthesis method.
Galanthamine? To my knowledge, no commercially viable method exists.
PS. I am not sure if there is a duck in Christmas Carol.
The answer might lie in the following quote from the same article:
Ah, that explains the 40 suspicious looking toasters gathered in my basement whispering to each other.
Calculating (a+b)*(a-b) is better (in terms of rounding errors with fixed point arithmetic) than (a*a)-(b*b). Knowledge or application?
Suppose I was the first to notice this fact. Should I be granted a patent on calculating differences of squares this way? I have a gut feeling that this would be patenting math. And I don't see much difference between this and any other patent on algorithms. Maybe there are software patents that aren't patents on algorithms (for example GUI stuff), but again, the distinction is blurry.
Ok, this is still on the "gut feeling" level, but I think that with the software patents banning them is just simply the lesser evil than allowing them. I think that there is rather a continuum than a sharp distinction between "knowledge" and "application", and that software is close enough to "knowledge" to make it unpatentable.
To stretch it a bit: if you are for software patents, you are for patenting math.
Yeah.
Right.
Breaking
A sentence
Into syllables
Does not a poem make - how pointless
Loading up a truck with goods and sending it to a poor country is comparatively easy. "Just unload the truck here, we'll take care of the rest" is probably the biggest problem of charity orgs.
I say - get organized. Why there is no decent consumer organization in the US is a mystery to me. And by 'decent' I don't mean another corp that makes profit by 'certifying' other corps 'consumer friendly'. I mean an organization of consumers. Big enough to raise a stink about a monopoly being abused. Big enough to scare the politicians. Big enough to organize a meaningful economic boycott.
Otherwise, please bend over for the almighty corporation.
The rest is history - I programmed it to play a simplified version of the Nim game, which got me interested in programming and was enough to convince my parents to buy me the famous ZX Spectrum a few years later. I got my MSc in CS, now working on my phD. Which I probably won't finish, because the calculator had no big colourful screen and no broadband. Ok, that was a cheap shot - I am not trying to say that 10 character display should be enough for everyone. But I think that even a very modest feature set can activate a bright kid's potential, which is of course a worthy case.
I am contacting you with this fabulous business offer. I am selling a property at a bargain price of $50000!. I have prepared some pictures here.
Somehow I don't feel like doing that. Or like doing anything else at all - which brings another interesting question: is laziness hereditary, and if so, how does it contribute to the fitness function?