But software is more like a creative work than a physical object, so you might want to compare it to books. You get a copyright on a book, so that people can't print off copies of your book and make money off it. Imagine if you could get a patent on a book, such that nobody else could write a book with a similar plot. We'd have a lot less books, or a lot more litigation going on in the book making industry. You couldn't even start to sit down and write a book without reading through thousands of patents on books that people had written. It would be fairly impossible for two authors to come up with exactly the same book, but you could probably find lots of books with similar plots, and similar pieces of text. Just like with software. Presented with the same problem, most programmers will probably come up with very similar methods of solving the problem. I guess it's more of a problem with patents in general than with software patents. With so many patents out there, how are you supposed to know if you are infringing on something, and if you take the time to do the research, to see if you are infringing, then it will take you years before you can even start developing something.
This is my biggest beef with software patents. Software already has copyright protecting it. It also has trade secrets protecting it (at least in closed source software). And it has patents. And in all the patents i've seen, I've never seen a full source code disclosure of a working model. So, now when the patent expires, you still can't dupicate it (assuming it's not trivial) because you have to figure out all the source code on your own. As far as I'm concerned, copyright and trade secrets should be enough to keep your software safe.
Some text books are pretty thick too. You could probably get away with not bringing those too. Or at least stopping the teachers from handing them out. Also, I remember when a kid got a compass (for drawing circles) in the eye. Although it was just because they were fooling around, and there was no harm intended. Maybe we can stop doing geometry. Or even get pencils and pens labelled as weapons. On a more serious note, I've heard stories of kids getting expelled for bringing forks and knives (butter knives or the plastic knives) to school to eat their lunch.
Set the password strength policy too strong, and make them change it too frequently and the following will happen
Dictionary attacks become easy because it's easy to guess how users will pick passwords to conform to "rules". For instance, if it must have 1 symbol, and 1 letter, then you can bet that those characters will be at the end or the beginning of the password. Also, if the minimum length is 8 characters, then you can bet that most passwords will be exactly 8 characters.
Users will forget their passwords
Users will write their password down on a post-it beside their monitor so they don't forget it.
If the only criteria you're judging "better" is on in how good it looks, then yes, Beta was the "Better" technology. By that logic, the PS3 is the best console, even though sales show otherwise. And although MiniDisk wasn't better in terms of quality, the small form factor was definitely a plus, as well as the protective casing. But again they screwed up the marketing and implementation.
I've seen many places that accept debit but don't accept credit. Also, some places charge extra for using credit cards because of the high transaction costs and the fact that some people will do a chargeback against them, even when they don't have a good reason to. All the extra warranty stuff is just extra incentive to get you to buy big ticket items. I'm not saying that I never use a credit card, or that they aren't convenient at times, I can't actually see much justification for them. If you had to go to the bank and get a consumer loan for each purchase you couldn't afford to make, you'd see a lot less people with bankruptcy problems.
However, if they catch a non-native for poaching (catching too many fish), they generally seize your rods, tackle, boat, truck used to tow the boat to the lake, and just about anything else they can think of that my have been involved in the entire fishing expedition.
Why would he bother even using credit? Couldn't he just get a very high daily limit debit card and use that? Doesn't using credit decrease your wealth? Although I'm sure he would have enough to pay the card(s) off at the end of the month, what advantage does somebody like Gates get from using credit? Does he like collecting the Airmiles? Credit should only be used if you don't have the cash to pay for something. Unless you have some weird credit card where the interest rate is lower than what the bank pays you on savings (very unlikely), then paying on credit is always a bad choice.
Better in what sense? Better in the sense that you couldn't fit most movies on 1 tape, so you had to switch tapes halfway through, or better in the sense that there was only one manufacturer of the devices to play the tapes, so you had to pay more for them. Or better in the sense that the people in control of the technology tried to control which types of films got distributed using that technology.
Didn't the natives have arrows which traveled through said "resource". They also breathed in the resource. I'm pretty sure they can say they were using the airspace as resource. Not necessarily the radio spectrum transmitting capabilities of the resource, but they definitely used the resource. In find it interesting that they can't dynamite fish, but they can use motor boats, guns, and four wheelers to do their hunting and fishing.
How about a computer that recognizes that I don't have a floppy drive. Even if you don't have one, it still shows up in windows Explorer, and Linux still has/dev/floppy. Trying to access either one of those makes the computer hang for about 10 seconds. I've even tried disabling the floppy controller in the BIOS and it doesn't work.
Yes, because telling people to not open attachments from unknown people or download and install programs from unknown entities has completely eradicated the computer world of viruses. And telling people about the dangers of leaving an unencrypted wifi access point open to the public has completely stopped them from doing so.
If your pine woods turned into a burned out pile of ash, I'm sure the property value would decrease quite a bit. It may not harm you physically, but financially you would take quite a blow.
The problem becomes how do you "flash" an image at a computer. A computer has a perfect memory. So you can't compare humans and computers in this way. A computer could completely memorize millions of faces, or even all the faces in the world, given enough storage space. 6 Billion people x 1 MB (exaggeration) per picture is only 6 petabytes. It's a lot of data, but not out of reach. So if computers get good enough at recognizing faces, it could become a useful too in security. Think about the security guard sitting at the front desk of 20 story building. Do you think he could identify every person who walks through those doors. Would he know if you were just using a stolen security badge?
I'm not sure which CDs you're buying but my CDS are about 1440 kbps. While they may sound very close to the same, one takes up a lot more space on my hard disk. Even compared to lossless compression which would give you a bitrate of 800 - 950 kbit/s, encoding at 256 kbps saves quite a bit of space.
Maybe they don't have any intentions of sharing the music they bought, but here's a scenario. User installs P2P application via the "click on next 12 times" method. Their entire hard drive ends up shared (or at least all the media files on it). User downloads music from iTunes. Normally this isn't a problem, because the encrypted AAC music isn't of use to anyone. Now they start downloading MP3s or other unencrypted music from iTunes. User's music gets spread all over P2p network. User gets sued by RIAA. I can seriously see this kind of thing happening.
Nintendo was number 3, and pretty far behind Sony according to this chart . That didn't stop them from making a pretty heavy profit off their sales, and having a lot of fans around the world. It also didn't stop them from selling tons of Wii's in the first six month (chart) when it became apparent that their competitors just weren't getting it.
Maybe I just don't remember correctly, but I remember that java supported the "throws" keyword, which when put after the method, let the compiler know that your method was capable of throwing an exception. Also, when that method was called, it would require that you catch the error, and do something about it. Or at least continue throwing it up the chain. I would like to know when changes are made to the API such that an exception would be thrown so that I could at least handle it correctly. As it stands with VB, you have no way of knowing which exceptions are to be thrown, and therefore you can catch everything at the GUI level, but if you don't know what types of errors to expect, then it's hard to handle them properly. Also, it stops you from doing any proper clean-up in the immediate area where the error occured.
While it's not a good idea to go around changing everything all the time, it might be a good idea to rewrite certain sections if you have to do any extensive work on them. You have to ask yourself, am I going to create more bugs by rewriting the code, or by trying to change the code that I don't understand. And since bugs will be there anyway, is it going to be easier to fix the bugs that do show up when they are in well managed code than in the spaghetti code you inherited from someone else. And when you fix the bugs you introduced into the spaghetti code, will you generate even more bugs. It's a decision you have to reach for yourself. But if the code is really terrible, and you will have to be making changes to it for some time, it may be easier to rewrite the code, and fix the resulting bugs, then deal with the spaghetti code forever.
I missed out on that. I'll definitely have to start trying it. However, once one of your addresses (ex. foo@bar.example.com) gets on a spam list, what's to stop them from sending mail to foo2@bar.example.com,jsmith@bar.example.com and other randomly generated addresses?
Before add any new features or fix old bugs go through the code and comment everything you can. It may not be feasible for a large project, but at least go through and comment the stuff you're going to work on before you change anything. Don't be afraid to write down comments stating that you have no idea what's going on, and some kind of easily searchable tag so that you can go back later to figure out what's going on. Also, don't be afraid to rewrite large sections of code if you really think it will make it a lot cleaner and easier to understand. Oh, and always use source control so you can go back and see what the original code was doing.
This relates to my biggest gripe about VB.Net. Any function can throw any exception, and you have no way of knowing, apart from looking at source code or documentation what kind of errors any specific function might throw. So basically all errors become runtime errors. This is one place where I wish VB.Net would copy from Java. If the function is going to throw an exception, it should be an compilation error if you aren't catching it. Also, related to this, when using ASP.Net, the debugger never breaks on uncaught exceptions, because effectively they are all caught at some level by the web server, so you have to break on all errors which causes a lot of wasted time as it breaks on internal errors in the.Net framework that are caught internally.
Are you surprised? I for one can say that I'm not at all surprised. Stuff like this is bound to happen. It's the reason why MySpace should take a stance that their site is an open forum, and they do not control what goes on there. Otherwise, if Myspace starts saying they are sex-offender-free, and then some still slip by, they are in for a huge lawsuit.
Slashdot Mirror
But software is more like a creative work than a physical object, so you might want to compare it to books. You get a copyright on a book, so that people can't print off copies of your book and make money off it. Imagine if you could get a patent on a book, such that nobody else could write a book with a similar plot. We'd have a lot less books, or a lot more litigation going on in the book making industry. You couldn't even start to sit down and write a book without reading through thousands of patents on books that people had written. It would be fairly impossible for two authors to come up with exactly the same book, but you could probably find lots of books with similar plots, and similar pieces of text. Just like with software. Presented with the same problem, most programmers will probably come up with very similar methods of solving the problem. I guess it's more of a problem with patents in general than with software patents. With so many patents out there, how are you supposed to know if you are infringing on something, and if you take the time to do the research, to see if you are infringing, then it will take you years before you can even start developing something.
This is my biggest beef with software patents. Software already has copyright protecting it. It also has trade secrets protecting it (at least in closed source software). And it has patents. And in all the patents i've seen, I've never seen a full source code disclosure of a working model. So, now when the patent expires, you still can't dupicate it (assuming it's not trivial) because you have to figure out all the source code on your own. As far as I'm concerned, copyright and trade secrets should be enough to keep your software safe.
Some text books are pretty thick too. You could probably get away with not bringing those too. Or at least stopping the teachers from handing them out. Also, I remember when a kid got a compass (for drawing circles) in the eye. Although it was just because they were fooling around, and there was no harm intended. Maybe we can stop doing geometry. Or even get pencils and pens labelled as weapons. On a more serious note, I've heard stories of kids getting expelled for bringing forks and knives (butter knives or the plastic knives) to school to eat their lunch.
If the only criteria you're judging "better" is on in how good it looks, then yes, Beta was the "Better" technology. By that logic, the PS3 is the best console, even though sales show otherwise. And although MiniDisk wasn't better in terms of quality, the small form factor was definitely a plus, as well as the protective casing. But again they screwed up the marketing and implementation.
I've seen many places that accept debit but don't accept credit. Also, some places charge extra for using credit cards because of the high transaction costs and the fact that some people will do a chargeback against them, even when they don't have a good reason to. All the extra warranty stuff is just extra incentive to get you to buy big ticket items. I'm not saying that I never use a credit card, or that they aren't convenient at times, I can't actually see much justification for them. If you had to go to the bank and get a consumer loan for each purchase you couldn't afford to make, you'd see a lot less people with bankruptcy problems.
However, if they catch a non-native for poaching (catching too many fish), they generally seize your rods, tackle, boat, truck used to tow the boat to the lake, and just about anything else they can think of that my have been involved in the entire fishing expedition.
Why would he bother even using credit? Couldn't he just get a very high daily limit debit card and use that? Doesn't using credit decrease your wealth? Although I'm sure he would have enough to pay the card(s) off at the end of the month, what advantage does somebody like Gates get from using credit? Does he like collecting the Airmiles? Credit should only be used if you don't have the cash to pay for something. Unless you have some weird credit card where the interest rate is lower than what the bank pays you on savings (very unlikely), then paying on credit is always a bad choice.
Better in what sense? Better in the sense that you couldn't fit most movies on 1 tape, so you had to switch tapes halfway through, or better in the sense that there was only one manufacturer of the devices to play the tapes, so you had to pay more for them. Or better in the sense that the people in control of the technology tried to control which types of films got distributed using that technology.
Didn't the natives have arrows which traveled through said "resource". They also breathed in the resource. I'm pretty sure they can say they were using the airspace as resource. Not necessarily the radio spectrum transmitting capabilities of the resource, but they definitely used the resource. In find it interesting that they can't dynamite fish, but they can use motor boats, guns, and four wheelers to do their hunting and fishing.
I'm pretty sure that they'll be able to show that their pre-European native culture consisted of an airspace without radio waves.
It's said that the natives are the only people who got more out of losing a war than the winners.
How about a computer that recognizes that I don't have a floppy drive. Even if you don't have one, it still shows up in windows Explorer, and Linux still has /dev/floppy. Trying to access either one of those makes the computer hang for about 10 seconds. I've even tried disabling the floppy controller in the BIOS and it doesn't work.
Yes, because telling people to not open attachments from unknown people or download and install programs from unknown entities has completely eradicated the computer world of viruses. And telling people about the dangers of leaving an unencrypted wifi access point open to the public has completely stopped them from doing so.
If your pine woods turned into a burned out pile of ash, I'm sure the property value would decrease quite a bit. It may not harm you physically, but financially you would take quite a blow.
The problem becomes how do you "flash" an image at a computer. A computer has a perfect memory. So you can't compare humans and computers in this way. A computer could completely memorize millions of faces, or even all the faces in the world, given enough storage space. 6 Billion people x 1 MB (exaggeration) per picture is only 6 petabytes. It's a lot of data, but not out of reach. So if computers get good enough at recognizing faces, it could become a useful too in security. Think about the security guard sitting at the front desk of 20 story building. Do you think he could identify every person who walks through those doors. Would he know if you were just using a stolen security badge?
Maybe they don't have any intentions of sharing the music they bought, but here's a scenario. User installs P2P application via the "click on next 12 times" method. Their entire hard drive ends up shared (or at least all the media files on it). User downloads music from iTunes. Normally this isn't a problem, because the encrypted AAC music isn't of use to anyone. Now they start downloading MP3s or other unencrypted music from iTunes. User's music gets spread all over P2p network. User gets sued by RIAA. I can seriously see this kind of thing happening.
Nintendo was number 3, and pretty far behind Sony according to this chart . That didn't stop them from making a pretty heavy profit off their sales, and having a lot of fans around the world. It also didn't stop them from selling tons of Wii's in the first six month (chart) when it became apparent that their competitors just weren't getting it.
Maybe I just don't remember correctly, but I remember that java supported the "throws" keyword, which when put after the method, let the compiler know that your method was capable of throwing an exception. Also, when that method was called, it would require that you catch the error, and do something about it. Or at least continue throwing it up the chain. I would like to know when changes are made to the API such that an exception would be thrown so that I could at least handle it correctly. As it stands with VB, you have no way of knowing which exceptions are to be thrown, and therefore you can catch everything at the GUI level, but if you don't know what types of errors to expect, then it's hard to handle them properly. Also, it stops you from doing any proper clean-up in the immediate area where the error occured.
While it's not a good idea to go around changing everything all the time, it might be a good idea to rewrite certain sections if you have to do any extensive work on them. You have to ask yourself, am I going to create more bugs by rewriting the code, or by trying to change the code that I don't understand. And since bugs will be there anyway, is it going to be easier to fix the bugs that do show up when they are in well managed code than in the spaghetti code you inherited from someone else. And when you fix the bugs you introduced into the spaghetti code, will you generate even more bugs. It's a decision you have to reach for yourself. But if the code is really terrible, and you will have to be making changes to it for some time, it may be easier to rewrite the code, and fix the resulting bugs, then deal with the spaghetti code forever.
I missed out on that. I'll definitely have to start trying it. However, once one of your addresses (ex. foo@bar.example.com) gets on a spam list, what's to stop them from sending mail to foo2@bar.example.com,jsmith@bar.example.com and other randomly generated addresses?
Before add any new features or fix old bugs go through the code and comment everything you can. It may not be feasible for a large project, but at least go through and comment the stuff you're going to work on before you change anything. Don't be afraid to write down comments stating that you have no idea what's going on, and some kind of easily searchable tag so that you can go back later to figure out what's going on. Also, don't be afraid to rewrite large sections of code if you really think it will make it a lot cleaner and easier to understand. Oh, and always use source control so you can go back and see what the original code was doing.
This relates to my biggest gripe about VB.Net. Any function can throw any exception, and you have no way of knowing, apart from looking at source code or documentation what kind of errors any specific function might throw. So basically all errors become runtime errors. This is one place where I wish VB.Net would copy from Java. If the function is going to throw an exception, it should be an compilation error if you aren't catching it. Also, related to this, when using ASP.Net, the debugger never breaks on uncaught exceptions, because effectively they are all caught at some level by the web server, so you have to break on all errors which causes a lot of wasted time as it breaks on internal errors in the .Net framework that are caught internally.
Are you surprised? I for one can say that I'm not at all surprised. Stuff like this is bound to happen. It's the reason why MySpace should take a stance that their site is an open forum, and they do not control what goes on there. Otherwise, if Myspace starts saying they are sex-offender-free, and then some still slip by, they are in for a huge lawsuit.