Why is everyone whining about thousands of taxing jurisdictions when we have computers? This is nothing more than a business opportunity for a few groups of tax lawyers and programmers who start a few companies that make software that throws a tax calculation into the point-of-sale software that most businesses, even small ones, probably already use. It will be a bit of a SNAFU to set up initially, but then will work fine, no matter how complicated various levels of government make the tax code. It will cost a bit, but it won't break the bank. Think turbotax and the dozens of other personal tax-prep software packages. Same thing.
And the benefit? There are two: 1) State and local governments can now collect taxes from all the citizens who benefit from their services in a fair manner. 2) We stop unnecessarily wasting fuel shipping things across state lines to save a few bucks in taxes.
And if you just don't like taxes, don't you at least like the ones that pay for roads, safe water, police officers and firemen more than you like the taxes that pay for bombs, warships, and subsidized corn, sugar and other nutritious foods?
You do realize that you just posted that comment/on the Internet/, right Mr. Jhon (if that really is your name)?
Jay: All these a**holes on the internet are calling us names because of this stupid f***ing movie. Banky: That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously. Stopping the flick isn't gonna stop that. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/quotes)
I'm actually very good at estimating how long a software project will take me. But if I told you the truth, you'd tell me not to do it because it's too expensive. That's not to say I'm a selfish liar. You also don't realize the benefit you'll get from this properly working software. Trust me, it truly will be well worth the cost (yes, even the real cost that I don't tell you about). And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I think most of us experienced software developers know this. Some of us don't admit it even to ourselves, but it's true. We know if the software will benefit you. We know if we can do it or not. And we know how long it will take. If it's not a net benefit, we know that and we'll talk you off that ledge. If it is, we'll say whatever it takes to help you take that leap.
> Just because you think you're being clever, doesn't mean it'll work. As a further hint, how does the SSL certificate for any page verify that you're on > www.google.com without trusting the DNS response from the network (answer, it doesn't). Sure, there are solutions (DNSSEC, etc.)
Yes, in fact, it does. The SSL cert verifies that you're on www.google.com because that's the entire point of the SSL cert. You trust the certificates of the CAs that shipped with your browser. One of those CAs has signed the cert provided by the host your connecting to. The cert itself contains 'www.google.com' in the Common Name field. You foolishly believe that the CA did some sort of meaningful verification that whoever they gave the signed cert to owns www.google.com AND that that person too the necessary precautions to protect the private key corresponding to the cert. But assuming all that is true, the MITM can't present an SSL cert for 'www.google.com' that your browser won't complain about.
So yes, you can trust that your ISP can't spoof an SSL connection even if they control DNS.
It will be interesting to see how ISPs actually do those warnings though. One would assume they will transparently route traffic like a wifi hot spot as you suggest above. But I wouldn't be too surprised if some of them just used DNS or something that smart consumers could circumvent. I would be surprised if they did the MIMT HTML injection thing though. Seems to legally risky to alter someone else's content. Plus, I think a lot of consumers would be horribly freaked out to learn that their ISP can do that, which would be bad for business.
> My home router keeps more detail than it took to debunk this story.
To be fair, your home router was designed by and for and unholy alliance between telcos, the MPAA and the RIAA to generate false evidence that you're pirating their crap content. Tesla is merely trying to protect their own reputation.
> You might. To me iterative development is where you explore different designs as you go. However you generally know whether you're building a cash register's > firmawre, a strategy game or an accounting package before you start.
Ya, the cash register's firmawre, a strategy game or an accounting package is what you figure out in the 1 hour to 1 day you spend gathering a very scant initial set of requirements. Then you go code something so you can have those same discussions again, this time with a somewhat working piece of software as a visual aid.
> I'm not sure the appearance of a fad like XP quite amounts to a discrediting... It's not fads like XP and agile that attempt to capitalize on common sense that discredit the waterfall model. It's the fact that most of us, in one way or another, do iterative development. And the fact that the dinosaurs that don't can't keep up and are slowly dieing off.
The reason it's a pain point is that those dinosaurs are dieing so slowly instead of in a mass-extinction. They feed not off of quality software and valuable contributions to the economy like they should, but off of long-standing relationships with other old geezers in charge of companies and governments who make decisions based on personal relationships rather than results and reasonable IT costs. There's lots of very expensive and inefficient software development still going on and it pains me to see it.
>...building a prototype without knowing what it's for I'm not sure if it's 'brogramming', but it turns out this is exactly how it SHOULD be done. We call it iterative development. The "specifications focused engineering" you babble about was called 'waterfall', and I'm pretty sure the 1) Develop Requirements, 2) Code, 3) ???, 4) Profit model was discredited long ago.
In the 21st century (and most of us had figured this out by the late '90s) we say fuck step 1, do #2 as quickly as possible then wash (aka refactoring), rinse, repeat. Step 3 turns out to be "get it into production" which means sales for a commercial product and internal use for something developed in-house. #4 comes after a few of those wash, rinse, repeat cycles, assuming you do it right.
Granted, you may have to replace true "production" use with some (usually expensive) simulated testing for things like medical equipment and nukes. But for non-safety stuff (and I'm guessing that's the majority of code written today), requirements development occurs only after you have real users get their hands on a real end product.
This is also why languages like C and in fact languages in general sans some middleware like Rails, Drupal or J2EE simply aren't the way to go for most projects. If you can't do #2 and have a working product for users to touch and feel really, really quickly, your project will probably be more expensive to develop than it's worth.
But if the incomings are nukes and they destroy all the farmland then the population simply starves slowly over the coming years because they have no way to grow food. Sounds like an acceptable compromise to the average terrorist/freedom fighter.
Say you're Mr. Ahmadinejad and your hackers report that they have access to all kinds of critical systems in the US and Israel. The US takes down your nuclear facility with a computer virus. Do you:
A) Take down US systems in retaliation, causing damage but revealing your enemy's weakness such that they have a chance to fix it. B) Do nothing. Keep the fact that "all U.S. bases are belongink to Iran" a secret so that if the US ever does attack militarily you can deal them a serious blow at a more opportune time.
Revenge motivates petty individuals. Nation-states are motivated by intelligence, survival and strategy.
And any good nerd knows that the answer to the question of "have you been hacked?" is always "Not that I know of".
Okay, who's the wise guy who let common sense into the court room. That judge should be severely reprimanded for ignoring the natural order of the Military-Industrial Complex.
I agree with all the "I don't want it if it comes with DRM, commercials, poor resolution and buffering delays" and "All the content is barley watchable crap anyway" comments. Except that I actually mean it. If you say that and then you pirate it, you obviously do want it and are willing to steal it. If you say that and then pay for it but bitch about it on the internet, you actually do want it and are willing to put up with the DRM and commercials. I'm not. I won't steal. I won't waste my time consuming poor quality, commercial-laden content. Instead, I go read a book. Or spend time with my family. Or bake a cake. Or post a bunch of "holier than thou" troll-comments on Slashdot.
But the rest of you don't. The rest of you pirate and pay and drool all over yourselves to consume all that poor quality, barley watchable crap produced by Hollywood (okay, Peter Jackson did a passable job). And that's why it's such crap. The rest of you consume it no matter how bad it gets.
How about this. Make a New Year's resolution not watch no more than 2 hours of TV or movies a week in 2013 -- free, paid for, pirated or otherwise. Cancel cable if you have it. Cancel your Netflix and Hulu subscriptions. On the rare occasion that there's something worth watching pay-per-view or buy an antenna if you must, but don't guarantee them ongoing monthly revenue just to see the miniscule amount of watchable content. Deprive them of their audience until only the best of the best survive. Make them come up with some actual good stories and pay only if and when you consume them. And for goodness sake can someone please just kill 3D already.
More than that, it has a downside. Ferris could have just had Cameron bring his ID card to school and saved himself a lot of trouble. Having a teacher visually recognize people while taking attendance is simply more reliable. And if my child went missing, I'd want the police to have more to go on than "his ID badge was in class this morning, but we don't know if anyone actually saw him". Of course, I don't remember them taking attendance in high school, so RFID is better than nothing.
That said, the plaintiffs are just plain stupid. Clearly schools have not only a need but a legal responsibility to keep track of students, both for safety and to make sure parents send their kids to school [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_leaving_age]. If she wanted to mount a meaningful protest, she should have invested those legal fees in a bunch of faraday bags, handed them out to all her friends, hid them when the IT guys came to troubleshoot and convinced the school administration that the system was simply a buggy and unreliable technical failure.
Morally torn? Don't be a Google fanboy -- Google is totally in the wrong on this one.
I like Google as much as the next geek, and I'm appreciative of all they do. But I'm a consumer first. I WANT Windows Phone to no suck quite so bad. I WANT lots of good options in the smart phone market. If Windows Phone dies, it should be because M$ screwed their metro-sexual UI, not because lack of Youtube kept people from buying it even though they liked the other features.
As consumers, we shouldn't play favorites or they'll walk all over us. That's what Apple does. Because they've got loads of Apple fanboys they get to overcharge for hardware with mostly the same specs and software that's just as buggy as most everything else out there.
The concept of 'brand' should be dead. Consumers should buy and use the best product without even looking at the company who made it. And we should demand that if Google wants to let us watch Youtube for free (or for sitting through commercials) it should let us do so on the device of our choice, not put up barriers to try to funnel consumers into their (often crappy) Android devices.
Is it just me, or is it somewhat strange that these celebrities would have naked photos of themselves in their e-mail in the first place? I know I don't have any naked photos of myself in my gmail account, and I'm not even someone everyone wants to see naked. If you were a young, female celebrity who knew everyone wanted to see you naked, wouldn't you think twice before a) taking a naked picture of yourself and b) e-mailing it to anyone.
Or maybe I'm just a prude who doesn't know how to put his cell phone camera to good use.
> Make static analysis much more anal, forcing the programmer to express their intent up front - static types, constraints, etc. Make the compiler a totally pedantic Nazi. Sure, it's nice to be able to hack shit up in an afternoon in Python or whatever, but then it ships, and the bugs come in, and you end up adding a pile of asserts and whatnot that should have been caught way before the product shipped.
Sometimes, but other times I write a function that I call two or three times but never gets used anywhere else. They work fine when I wrote them and they always will. Why should I have to deal with the extra time it takes to get all the types and arguments and interfaces right (and yes, those small bits of time really really really do add up). Python is faster to code that Java. Period. And because I took me 3 times as long just to get a working prototype in front of the customer and now I'm that much closer to being out of budget, we've just been pushed from iterative development right back to the waterfall model. It's all about striking a/balance/ between strict, compiler-enforced, future/change-proof coding and get-er'-done imperfect and fragile but cheap and useful software.
What we/really/ need is language that fully supports strict typing but keeps it optional and allows us to turn type checking on and off at compile-time and on a class-by-class, function-by-function basis. That way we start with quick-and-dirty working prototypes and turn on additional compile-time checks as we go.
> Make unit/integration testing a mandatory part of the build, i.e. the compiler/linker refuses to link with code that hasn't been marked as tested. Even with a good unit test framework, writing unit tests takes me just as long as writing the original code. And yes of course it/may/ save time later if my unit test catches breakage as things change, but half the time it's the unit test rather than the code that needs to change when a unit test fails. Whether unit testing has a net benefit is project dependent. Who pays for the extra time unit testing takes if it's always mandatory?
> If we learned to put the hard thinking and effort into designing APIs, and then reusing those same APIs across whole new classes of problem (because the language makes defining APIs is such a hassle that we'd rather not dream up new ones left and right), I think things would improve massively. So you're saying we should just think about our requirements a bit more up front before we go writing code? I know getting those requirements on paper before they're in code/always/ makes things go better.;) Oh, wait, that's not right. Actually, in the history of software development, no one has ever developed an even remotely useful set of requirements before writing some code and putting it in front of users. You've got to code the API, use it, find it where its design falls down, fix it, fix all the code that uses it, and eventually, over time, you end up with something that's both stable and good (not bug-free and perfect, but stable and good). It's called mature software, and short of a crystal ball, iterative development and time is the only thing I've ever seen produce it.
> None of this would stop you from writing shitty code. But at least, to do so, you'd have to knowingly subvert the compiler in a bogus way, ignoring screeds of the compiler telling you that you and your code suck goats' balls. Have you ever tried compiling anything remotely complicated with gcc? The compile logs are filled with warning this and incompatible type that, yet the resulting software works quite well. Based on compiler complaints, I don't think I've ever seen code more complicated than Hello, World! that doesn't suck goats' balls. The/real/ solution are things like the language-based buffer overflow and garbage collection fixes you mentioned above. It's simply syntactically-impossible to write a buffer overflow or me
> I'll be blunt and very pragmatic in my final reply here: Entrepreneurship doesn't count for anything if your brilliant new idea doesn't have a block of consumers who have the disposable income
You're trying to make things black and white. Entrepreneurship can be good or bad depending on what you invent.
You're right if you invented, say, a really fun video game. People want it, but there's a limit to how much they'll shell out. But say you invented a pill someone could take once that cured their diabetes forever. Even if it cost $1000 each that's way less than the cost of insulin, doctor's visits and complications over a lifetime. People would find a way to buy it because it would save money in the long run.
Lack of disposable income limits the opportunities for certain types of inventions. But it increases the opportunities for inventions that add efficiency to the economy and save people money in the long run.
Think of cars. Upon first invention, they were a luxury. Horse and buggy did just fine for most people. But those with cars got such benefits that today (unless you live in one of the few US cities with decent public transit) a car is a necessity just to get to your job.
Give me a break. I said I'm still voting Obama/Biden (and anyone else with a 'D' by their name because with a full time job and kid and dog and house I truly don't have time to learn all the things I'd need to to be a responsible voter). I just think Obama should have at least done a little prep for the first debase and Biden should have done something other than be angry to make up for Obama's poor performance.
And as for the Advantage Consultants and Rove, not a chance. I think I'm like the slight majority of Americans. I'm fiscally conservative but I vote Democratic because the republicans just 'say' they're fiscally conservative (they spend, they just do it all on military and tax breaks for the wealthy) and I understand that cutting all government spending is just short term gain/long term loss.
But can someone/please/ responsibly reform entitlements and the tax code in a way that doesn't fill the streets with old, sick homeless people or make the rich richer.
Am I the only one who though Biden lost hard? He was obviously angry and emotional, but his arguments were almost completely defensive, arguing why Ryan was lying or wrong, but very little criticism of the Romney/Ryan platform. And much of what he said seemed incoherent. Ryan on the other hand kept his cool, made compelling and reasonable-sounding (though possibly completely wrong) arguments. Biden was a cornered animal fighting for his life. Ryan was the fearless hunter who knew he would win in any case.
And I'm almost always a reliable Democratic voter.
That said, I don't believe the Romney/Ryan position. Cutting taxes may help the economy, but will disproportionately benefit the rich. Big stock portfolio? It grows with the economy. As the money trickles down, the rich keep their share before the rest of us ever see it. I also don't believe there's enough loopholes to pay for it, so it will increase the deficit in order to hand cash directly to high income earners. I do like the idea of economic growth to inflate our way out of the Social Security/Medicare/Medicade problem, but will congress really not increase payments under those programs as the economy grows? And the slash and burn attitude Romney had towards federal discretionary spending will/hurt/ the economy, possibly more than the tax cuts will help.
In the end, I think Obama is right. We're in a pickle and we'll have to endure both tax cuts and spending cuts to get out off it. If we focus those on the rich, the poor and middle class will continue to spend and at the very least they won't slow growth too much.
I still think Biden lost hard though. The only question is whether he did worse or just almost as bad as Obama. I had to do a lot of thinking to decide why I wasn't considering voting republican. I wish I'd voted for Hillary 4.5 years ago now though.
> Government is far more efficient than private industry at doing things. That's just a stupid as "the free market is always more efficient" statement your opposition makes.
The point of the free market is not that it's more efficient (sometimes it is, sometimes it's not), but that when a private company screws up only the people who choose to invest in that company loose. When the government screws up, taxpayers (who are compelled to pay under thread of jail) loose.
As for the post office, they're loosing money, so you have to calculate the cost bailouts we've already paid and will pay for through our taxes. (Those won't total up to the $15 UPS charges, but still...)
The real problem is that supposedly private businesses also get loads of taxpayer money in the form of tax breaks (oil and agriculture), cheap government backed money (crop insurance, home loans, mortgage interest deduction that only exceeds the minimum standard on $250k+ homes and that rich people can take on up to two properties) and bailouts (the financial and auto industries). So the taxpayer is on the hook when things go bad, but investors get all the profit when things go well.
And it's gets worse, because the rich have the poor and middle class by the balls. For example: * We all like cheap food and gas, so we can't cut the oil and agriculture tax breaks or crop insurance subsidies. We'd go broke and starve while the market adjusted. * The middle class have most of our net worth in the overpriced housing market, so we can't end government backed home loans or the mortgage interest deduction because we'll loose disproportionately when the housing market adjusts to free market levels. * If we hadn't bailed out the auto industry, we'd have even bigger middle-class job losses and lose our already failing foothold in an industry vital to our way of life (bad in the long run). * If we hadn't bailed out the financial industry the rich would have lost disproportionately, but our parents (who's liquid net worth is mostly in retirement accounts) would have had to sell their homes and move in with us.
Government subsidies and tax breaks seem good for the poor but really just make us dependent on government and put the power in the hand of the rich (who buy off our lawmakers). We've all got to keep working hard forever just to stay afloat.
Government's role should be to compete with private industry for vital services when private industry simply isn't doing a good job. For example: * Communication - This used to be the post office, which worked well. Now private telcos leave huge amounts of America with embarrassingly slow access and expensive costs. The feds need to run some wires like they do in other countries. (Granted, S. Korea needs much shorter wires, but...) * Energy research - Cheaper, cleaner, more diversely sourced and more efficiently used energy is obviously the #1 limiting factor in our economy. Water? With free energy we just desalinate seawater and pump it. Fertile ground? Takes energy to make and distribute fertilizer. Shipping goods where they're needed? How much do truckers spend on gas? But come one private industry? Where's our nation-wide smart grid and smart appliances? Why don't we pump water up hill when the wind is blowing and sun is shining and use hydroelectric when it's not?
Education is the counter-example though. The government has screwed that up, possibly due to teacher's unions keeping bad teachers at high costs. But educating everyone benefits everyone ('cuz that dropout will be the one robbing your house instead of designing your car or fixing your computer), so we still need a solution where everyone pays and everyone gets a good education. We just need free markets to fire bad teachers and get paid based on results (where job/salary=results).
So, if you're returning to the US, does that mean there's a computer-related job opening in somewhere in South Korea? 'cuz I've about had it with the lack of wireless and wired broadband here in the supposedly most advanced country in the world. If you could introduce me to your South Korean employer, I'd very much appreciate it.
(Actually, I have Verizon and Century Link. Speed is next to useless, but good wireless coverage, no dropped calls and my DSL line is rarely down.)
> 'faster than any microprocessor on the planet.' Okay, Larry, one of us clearly misunderstands cloud (and possibly just about all) computing. Don't we want a computer that runs it cheaper, not faster?
First, make sure it's/not/ leeds certified. We recently had a building put up that is and: * No sever room (couldn't make it happen) * Computers powered off at night (oops, there's goes our non-invasive backup strategy) * Due to some HVAC issue where the building is potentially unsafe during the non-business-hours cycle, people can't be in the building after 6 PM. There goes our ability to visit every computer after working hours (which every so often you have to do for one reason or another).
I'd say it's a lose lose. If he's violating parole, we have to arrest him, but that make the violent criminals* of the Muslim world think their crimes impact the behavior of the US government.
* No, I don't mean all Muslims, just those willing to kill and destroy property because some idiot said something mean about the Profit**.
** I wonder if Jesus and Mohamed are in heaven asking God to make with the lightning bolts every time someone makes fun of them down hear on earth?
Slashdot Mirror
Why is everyone whining about thousands of taxing jurisdictions when we have computers? This is nothing more than a business opportunity for a few groups of tax lawyers and programmers who start a few companies that make software that throws a tax calculation into the point-of-sale software that most businesses, even small ones, probably already use. It will be a bit of a SNAFU to set up initially, but then will work fine, no matter how complicated various levels of government make the tax code. It will cost a bit, but it won't break the bank. Think turbotax and the dozens of other personal tax-prep software packages. Same thing.
And the benefit? There are two:
1) State and local governments can now collect taxes from all the citizens who benefit from their services in a fair manner.
2) We stop unnecessarily wasting fuel shipping things across state lines to save a few bucks in taxes.
And if you just don't like taxes, don't you at least like the ones that pay for roads, safe water, police officers and firemen more than you like the taxes that pay for bombs, warships, and subsidized corn, sugar and other nutritious foods?
Wait, Windows has an app store? Even more surprising is that anyone bothered to advertise there.
It seems to me that for this "revenue" to plummet from $0, it must mean they're paying businesses to advertise on their site. Sounds good. Sign me up!
You do realize that you just posted that comment /on the Internet/, right Mr. Jhon (if that really is your name)?
Jay: All these a**holes on the internet are calling us names because of this stupid f***ing movie.
Banky: That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously. Stopping the flick isn't gonna stop that.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/quotes)
I'm actually very good at estimating how long a software project will take me. But if I told you the truth, you'd tell me not to do it because it's too expensive. That's not to say I'm a selfish liar. You also don't realize the benefit you'll get from this properly working software. Trust me, it truly will be well worth the cost (yes, even the real cost that I don't tell you about). And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I think most of us experienced software developers know this. Some of us don't admit it even to ourselves, but it's true. We know if the software will benefit you. We know if we can do it or not. And we know how long it will take. If it's not a net benefit, we know that and we'll talk you off that ledge. If it is, we'll say whatever it takes to help you take that leap.
Almost all good points, but...
> Just because you think you're being clever, doesn't mean it'll work. As a further hint, how does the SSL certificate for any page verify that you're on
> www.google.com without trusting the DNS response from the network (answer, it doesn't). Sure, there are solutions (DNSSEC, etc.)
Yes, in fact, it does. The SSL cert verifies that you're on www.google.com because that's the entire point of the SSL cert. You trust the certificates of the CAs that shipped with your browser. One of those CAs has signed the cert provided by the host your connecting to. The cert itself contains 'www.google.com' in the Common Name field. You foolishly believe that the CA did some sort of meaningful verification that whoever they gave the signed cert to owns www.google.com AND that that person too the necessary precautions to protect the private key corresponding to the cert. But assuming all that is true, the MITM can't present an SSL cert for 'www.google.com' that your browser won't complain about.
So yes, you can trust that your ISP can't spoof an SSL connection even if they control DNS.
It will be interesting to see how ISPs actually do those warnings though. One would assume they will transparently route traffic like a wifi hot spot as you suggest above. But I wouldn't be too surprised if some of them just used DNS or something that smart consumers could circumvent. I would be surprised if they did the MIMT HTML injection thing though. Seems to legally risky to alter someone else's content. Plus, I think a lot of consumers would be horribly freaked out to learn that their ISP can do that, which would be bad for business.
> My home router keeps more detail than it took to debunk this story.
To be fair, your home router was designed by and for and unholy alliance between telcos, the MPAA and the RIAA to generate false evidence that you're pirating their crap content. Tesla is merely trying to protect their own reputation.
> You might. To me iterative development is where you explore different designs as you go. However you generally know whether you're building a cash register's
> firmawre, a strategy game or an accounting package before you start.
Ya, the cash register's firmawre, a strategy game or an accounting package is what you figure out in the 1 hour to 1 day you spend gathering a very scant initial set of requirements. Then you go code something so you can have those same discussions again, this time with a somewhat working piece of software as a visual aid.
> I'm not sure the appearance of a fad like XP quite amounts to a discrediting...
It's not fads like XP and agile that attempt to capitalize on common sense that discredit the waterfall model. It's the fact that most of us, in one way or another, do iterative development. And the fact that the dinosaurs that don't can't keep up and are slowly dieing off.
The reason it's a pain point is that those dinosaurs are dieing so slowly instead of in a mass-extinction. They feed not off of quality software and valuable contributions to the economy like they should, but off of long-standing relationships with other old geezers in charge of companies and governments who make decisions based on personal relationships rather than results and reasonable IT costs. There's lots of very expensive and inefficient software development still going on and it pains me to see it.
Case closed. Thank you! Mod parent up. Pedantic OSI so-and-sos.
> ...building a prototype without knowing what it's for
I'm not sure if it's 'brogramming', but it turns out this is exactly how it SHOULD be done. We call it iterative development.
The "specifications focused engineering" you babble about was called 'waterfall', and I'm pretty sure the 1) Develop Requirements, 2) Code, 3) ???, 4) Profit model was discredited long ago.
In the 21st century (and most of us had figured this out by the late '90s) we say fuck step 1, do #2 as quickly as possible then wash (aka refactoring), rinse, repeat. Step 3 turns out to be "get it into production" which means sales for a commercial product and internal use for something developed in-house. #4 comes after a few of those wash, rinse, repeat cycles, assuming you do it right.
Granted, you may have to replace true "production" use with some (usually expensive) simulated testing for things like medical equipment and nukes. But for non-safety stuff (and I'm guessing that's the majority of code written today), requirements development occurs only after you have real users get their hands on a real end product.
This is also why languages like C and in fact languages in general sans some middleware like Rails, Drupal or J2EE simply aren't the way to go for most projects. If you can't do #2 and have a working product for users to touch and feel really, really quickly, your project will probably be more expensive to develop than it's worth.
But if the incomings are nukes and they destroy all the farmland then the population simply starves slowly over the coming years because they have no way to grow food. Sounds like an acceptable compromise to the average terrorist/freedom fighter.
Say you're Mr. Ahmadinejad and your hackers report that they have access to all kinds of critical systems in the US and Israel. The US takes down your nuclear facility with a computer virus. Do you:
A) Take down US systems in retaliation, causing damage but revealing your enemy's weakness such that they have a chance to fix it.
B) Do nothing. Keep the fact that "all U.S. bases are belongink to Iran" a secret so that if the US ever does attack militarily you can deal them a serious blow at a more opportune time.
Revenge motivates petty individuals. Nation-states are motivated by intelligence, survival and strategy.
And any good nerd knows that the answer to the question of "have you been hacked?" is always "Not that I know of".
Okay, who's the wise guy who let common sense into the court room. That judge should be severely reprimanded for ignoring the natural order of the Military-Industrial Complex.
WTF is wrong with you people?
I agree with all the "I don't want it if it comes with DRM, commercials, poor resolution and buffering delays" and "All the content is barley watchable crap anyway" comments. Except that I actually mean it. If you say that and then you pirate it, you obviously do want it and are willing to steal it. If you say that and then pay for it but bitch about it on the internet, you actually do want it and are willing to put up with the DRM and commercials. I'm not. I won't steal. I won't waste my time consuming poor quality, commercial-laden content. Instead, I go read a book. Or spend time with my family. Or bake a cake. Or post a bunch of "holier than thou" troll-comments on Slashdot.
But the rest of you don't. The rest of you pirate and pay and drool all over yourselves to consume all that poor quality, barley watchable crap produced by Hollywood (okay, Peter Jackson did a passable job). And that's why it's such crap. The rest of you consume it no matter how bad it gets.
How about this. Make a New Year's resolution not watch no more than 2 hours of TV or movies a week in 2013 -- free, paid for, pirated or otherwise. Cancel cable if you have it. Cancel your Netflix and Hulu subscriptions. On the rare occasion that there's something worth watching pay-per-view or buy an antenna if you must, but don't guarantee them ongoing monthly revenue just to see the miniscule amount of watchable content. Deprive them of their audience until only the best of the best survive. Make them come up with some actual good stories and pay only if and when you consume them. And for goodness sake can someone please just kill 3D already.
> It has ZERO upside.
More than that, it has a downside. Ferris could have just had Cameron bring his ID card to school and saved himself a lot of trouble. Having a teacher visually recognize people while taking attendance is simply more reliable. And if my child went missing, I'd want the police to have more to go on than "his ID badge was in class this morning, but we don't know if anyone actually saw him". Of course, I don't remember them taking attendance in high school, so RFID is better than nothing.
That said, the plaintiffs are just plain stupid. Clearly schools have not only a need but a legal responsibility to keep track of students, both for safety and to make sure parents send their kids to school [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_leaving_age]. If she wanted to mount a meaningful protest, she should have invested those legal fees in a bunch of faraday bags, handed them out to all her friends, hid them when the IT guys came to troubleshoot and convinced the school administration that the system was simply a buggy and unreliable technical failure.
Morally torn? Don't be a Google fanboy -- Google is totally in the wrong on this one.
I like Google as much as the next geek, and I'm appreciative of all they do. But I'm a consumer first. I WANT Windows Phone to no suck quite so bad. I WANT lots of good options in the smart phone market. If Windows Phone dies, it should be because M$ screwed their metro-sexual UI, not because lack of Youtube kept people from buying it even though they liked the other features.
As consumers, we shouldn't play favorites or they'll walk all over us. That's what Apple does. Because they've got loads of Apple fanboys they get to overcharge for hardware with mostly the same specs and software that's just as buggy as most everything else out there.
The concept of 'brand' should be dead. Consumers should buy and use the best product without even looking at the company who made it. And we should demand that if Google wants to let us watch Youtube for free (or for sitting through commercials) it should let us do so on the device of our choice, not put up barriers to try to funnel consumers into their (often crappy) Android devices.
Is it just me, or is it somewhat strange that these celebrities would have naked photos of themselves in their e-mail in the first place? I know I don't have any naked photos of myself in my gmail account, and I'm not even someone everyone wants to see naked. If you were a young, female celebrity who knew everyone wanted to see you naked, wouldn't you think twice before a) taking a naked picture of yourself and b) e-mailing it to anyone.
Or maybe I'm just a prude who doesn't know how to put his cell phone camera to good use.
> Make static analysis much more anal, forcing the programmer to express their intent up front - static types, constraints, etc. Make the compiler a totally pedantic Nazi. Sure, it's nice to be able to hack shit up in an afternoon in Python or whatever, but then it ships, and the bugs come in, and you end up adding a pile of asserts and whatnot that should have been caught way before the product shipped.
Sometimes, but other times I write a function that I call two or three times but never gets used anywhere else. They work fine when I wrote them and they always will. Why should I have to deal with the extra time it takes to get all the types and arguments and interfaces right (and yes, those small bits of time really really really do add up). Python is faster to code that Java. Period. And because I took me 3 times as long just to get a working prototype in front of the customer and now I'm that much closer to being out of budget, we've just been pushed from iterative development right back to the waterfall model. It's all about striking a /balance/ between strict, compiler-enforced, future/change-proof coding and get-er'-done imperfect and fragile but cheap and useful software.
What we /really/ need is language that fully supports strict typing but keeps it optional and allows us to turn type checking on and off at compile-time and on a class-by-class, function-by-function basis. That way we start with quick-and-dirty working prototypes and turn on additional compile-time checks as we go.
> Make unit/integration testing a mandatory part of the build, i.e. the compiler/linker refuses to link with code that hasn't been marked as tested. /may/ save time later if my unit test catches breakage as things change, but half the time it's the unit test rather than the code that needs to change when a unit test fails. Whether unit testing has a net benefit is project dependent. Who pays for the extra time unit testing takes if it's always mandatory?
Even with a good unit test framework, writing unit tests takes me just as long as writing the original code. And yes of course it
> If we learned to put the hard thinking and effort into designing APIs, and then reusing those same APIs across whole new classes of problem (because the language makes defining APIs is such a hassle that we'd rather not dream up new ones left and right), I think things would improve massively. /always/ makes things go better. ;) Oh, wait, that's not right. Actually, in the history of software development, no one has ever developed an even remotely useful set of requirements before writing some code and putting it in front of users. You've got to code the API, use it, find it where its design falls down, fix it, fix all the code that uses it, and eventually, over time, you end up with something that's both stable and good (not bug-free and perfect, but stable and good). It's called mature software, and short of a crystal ball, iterative development and time is the only thing I've ever seen produce it.
So you're saying we should just think about our requirements a bit more up front before we go writing code? I know getting those requirements on paper before they're in code
> None of this would stop you from writing shitty code. But at least, to do so, you'd have to knowingly subvert the compiler in a bogus way, ignoring screeds of the compiler telling you that you and your code suck goats' balls. /real/ solution are things like the language-based buffer overflow and garbage collection fixes you mentioned above. It's simply syntactically-impossible to write a buffer overflow or me
Have you ever tried compiling anything remotely complicated with gcc? The compile logs are filled with warning this and incompatible type that, yet the resulting software works quite well. Based on compiler complaints, I don't think I've ever seen code more complicated than Hello, World! that doesn't suck goats' balls. The
> I'll be blunt and very pragmatic in my final reply here: Entrepreneurship doesn't count for anything if your brilliant new idea doesn't have a block of consumers who have the disposable income
You're trying to make things black and white. Entrepreneurship can be good or bad depending on what you invent.
You're right if you invented, say, a really fun video game. People want it, but there's a limit to how much they'll shell out. But say you invented a pill someone could take once that cured their diabetes forever. Even if it cost $1000 each that's way less than the cost of insulin, doctor's visits and complications over a lifetime. People would find a way to buy it because it would save money in the long run.
Lack of disposable income limits the opportunities for certain types of inventions. But it increases the opportunities for inventions that add efficiency to the economy and save people money in the long run.
Think of cars. Upon first invention, they were a luxury. Horse and buggy did just fine for most people. But those with cars got such benefits that today (unless you live in one of the few US cities with decent public transit) a car is a necessity just to get to your job.
Give me a break. I said I'm still voting Obama/Biden (and anyone else with a 'D' by their name because with a full time job and kid and dog and house I truly don't have time to learn all the things I'd need to to be a responsible voter). I just think Obama should have at least done a little prep for the first debase and Biden should have done something other than be angry to make up for Obama's poor performance.
And as for the Advantage Consultants and Rove, not a chance. I think I'm like the slight majority of Americans. I'm fiscally conservative but I vote Democratic because the republicans just 'say' they're fiscally conservative (they spend, they just do it all on military and tax breaks for the wealthy) and I understand that cutting all government spending is just short term gain/long term loss.
But can someone /please/ responsibly reform entitlements and the tax code in a way that doesn't fill the streets with old, sick homeless people or make the rich richer.
Am I the only one who though Biden lost hard? He was obviously angry and emotional, but his arguments were almost completely defensive, arguing why Ryan was lying or wrong, but very little criticism of the Romney/Ryan platform. And much of what he said seemed incoherent. Ryan on the other hand kept his cool, made compelling and reasonable-sounding (though possibly completely wrong) arguments. Biden was a cornered animal fighting for his life. Ryan was the fearless hunter who knew he would win in any case.
And I'm almost always a reliable Democratic voter.
That said, I don't believe the Romney/Ryan position. Cutting taxes may help the economy, but will disproportionately benefit the rich. Big stock portfolio? It grows with the economy. As the money trickles down, the rich keep their share before the rest of us ever see it. I also don't believe there's enough loopholes to pay for it, so it will increase the deficit in order to hand cash directly to high income earners. I do like the idea of economic growth to inflate our way out of the Social Security/Medicare/Medicade problem, but will congress really not increase payments under those programs as the economy grows? And the slash and burn attitude Romney had towards federal discretionary spending will /hurt/ the economy, possibly more than the tax cuts will help.
In the end, I think Obama is right. We're in a pickle and we'll have to endure both tax cuts and spending cuts to get out off it. If we focus those on the rich, the poor and middle class will continue to spend and at the very least they won't slow growth too much.
I still think Biden lost hard though. The only question is whether he did worse or just almost as bad as Obama. I had to do a lot of thinking to decide why I wasn't considering voting republican. I wish I'd voted for Hillary 4.5 years ago now though.
> Government is far more efficient than private industry at doing things.
That's just a stupid as "the free market is always more efficient" statement your opposition makes.
The point of the free market is not that it's more efficient (sometimes it is, sometimes it's not), but that when a private company screws up only the people who choose to invest in that company loose. When the government screws up, taxpayers (who are compelled to pay under thread of jail) loose.
As for the post office, they're loosing money, so you have to calculate the cost bailouts we've already paid and will pay for through our taxes. (Those won't total up to the $15 UPS charges, but still...)
The real problem is that supposedly private businesses also get loads of taxpayer money in the form of tax breaks (oil and agriculture), cheap government backed money (crop insurance, home loans, mortgage interest deduction that only exceeds the minimum standard on $250k+ homes and that rich people can take on up to two properties) and bailouts (the financial and auto industries). So the taxpayer is on the hook when things go bad, but investors get all the profit when things go well.
And it's gets worse, because the rich have the poor and middle class by the balls. For example:
* We all like cheap food and gas, so we can't cut the oil and agriculture tax breaks or crop insurance subsidies. We'd go broke and starve while the market adjusted.
* The middle class have most of our net worth in the overpriced housing market, so we can't end government backed home loans or the mortgage interest deduction because we'll loose disproportionately when the housing market adjusts to free market levels.
* If we hadn't bailed out the auto industry, we'd have even bigger middle-class job losses and lose our already failing foothold in an industry vital to our way of life (bad in the long run).
* If we hadn't bailed out the financial industry the rich would have lost disproportionately, but our parents (who's liquid net worth is mostly in retirement accounts) would have had to sell their homes and move in with us.
Government subsidies and tax breaks seem good for the poor but really just make us dependent on government and put the power in the hand of the rich (who buy off our lawmakers). We've all got to keep working hard forever just to stay afloat.
Government's role should be to compete with private industry for vital services when private industry simply isn't doing a good job. For example:
* Communication - This used to be the post office, which worked well. Now private telcos leave huge amounts of America with embarrassingly slow access and expensive costs. The feds need to run some wires like they do in other countries. (Granted, S. Korea needs much shorter wires, but...)
* Energy research - Cheaper, cleaner, more diversely sourced and more efficiently used energy is obviously the #1 limiting factor in our economy. Water? With free energy we just desalinate seawater and pump it. Fertile ground? Takes energy to make and distribute fertilizer. Shipping goods where they're needed? How much do truckers spend on gas? But come one private industry? Where's our nation-wide smart grid and smart appliances? Why don't we pump water up hill when the wind is blowing and sun is shining and use hydroelectric when it's not?
Education is the counter-example though. The government has screwed that up, possibly due to teacher's unions keeping bad teachers at high costs. But educating everyone benefits everyone ('cuz that dropout will be the one robbing your house instead of designing your car or fixing your computer), so we still need a solution where everyone pays and everyone gets a good education. We just need free markets to fire bad teachers and get paid based on results (where job/salary=results).
So, if you're returning to the US, does that mean there's a computer-related job opening in somewhere in South Korea? 'cuz I've about had it with the lack of wireless and wired broadband here in the supposedly most advanced country in the world. If you could introduce me to your South Korean employer, I'd very much appreciate it.
(Actually, I have Verizon and Century Link. Speed is next to useless, but good wireless coverage, no dropped calls and my DSL line is rarely down.)
> 'faster than any microprocessor on the planet.'
Okay, Larry, one of us clearly misunderstands cloud (and possibly just about all) computing. Don't we want a computer that runs it cheaper, not faster?
First, make sure it's /not/ leeds certified. We recently had a building put up that is and:
* No sever room (couldn't make it happen)
* Computers powered off at night (oops, there's goes our non-invasive backup strategy)
* Due to some HVAC issue where the building is potentially unsafe during the non-business-hours cycle, people can't be in the building after 6 PM. There goes our ability to visit every computer after working hours (which every so often you have to do for one reason or another).
I'd say it's a lose lose. If he's violating parole, we have to arrest him, but that make the violent criminals* of the Muslim world think their crimes impact the behavior of the US government.
* No, I don't mean all Muslims, just those willing to kill and destroy property because some idiot said something mean about the Profit**.
** I wonder if Jesus and Mohamed are in heaven asking God to make with the lightning bolts every time someone makes fun of them down hear on earth?