Right. You know sun really wants to "help" when they put up shop in Bellville.
Belleville, population 36000. There are only 20 or so Linux/Unix users in the whole city and surrounding area. I can give you the names of ALL of them. The surrounding area includes Trenton, Picton, Bloomfield, Milford and the famous Sandbanks Provincial Park. (Largest freshwater beach in the world, largest freshwater sand dunes in the world. Its our only claim to fame)
Why Belleville is what I would like to know?
If you don't know it, its a bunch of old farmers who don't own computers and can't afford them. Cable and DSL internet are new, (ie past 8 months). Dial-Up is the standard internet, and for 90% of ppl its their only option (save satellite, but if you can't afford a decent machine, how could u afford that?)
There are no tech companies in Belleville or surrounding area. Save a small windows help desk company (Stream) where if you don't have a high school diploma, you can get a job. But if you've got an education, you can't get a job there.
I really don't know what they were thinking. The locals have absolutely no interest in computers. And why would anyone WANT to come here?
So if your boss sends you to belleville, well, i hope you like to drink yourself stupid because thats about all there is to do here.
Although this would be a bit tedious, and annoying for honest users, and even this idea isn't fool proof.
Ebay could create a system, where all users must use an online payment system. When an auction is won, the user transfers money to a "Holding Account", then the Seller is informed (but does not have access to the funds). When the bidder recieves the item and it is as said, the bidder responds to the Holding Account, releasing the funds to the seller.
If the seller did not send the correct item, the Holding Account doesn't release the funds until the buyer recieves the returned item again, and notifys of such. Here, one courier could be used with tracking numbers, to also insure that the item was recieved.
Its not perfect. But its better than the system existing.
Guns have been around for so long, knowledge of their use and who's to blame in a murder is well known. If the manufacturer hadn't made it, the criminal would have done it by another means. The same goes for file sharing. If Kazaa didn't exist, some other program would. You could say that the internet itself is a file sharing protocol? So why don't we shut down the internet?
The other issue is the the music/video industry (those pushing this) aren't entirely intelligent. They can't see past the end of their own nose, or over their money filled pockets to realize what the real source of the problem is. They see there are so many people using a program (legal, or illegaly) and assume they are all downloading a copy of copyrighted material. The only way that they can think of, is to destroy the software that allows the sharing to happen in the first place. Their desicion is highly misguided. If they want to get rid of filesharing protocols, they'll have to shut down the internet.
Perhaps what the music industry wanted was to be the first to introduce something like kazaa. Since they didn't get the first, second or even third slot, they feel the need to destroy everybody elses' software.
Fortran isn't entirely dead. At least to the scientific community. I am a Fortran programmer, working at in a research position and I'm not 50 years old, I'm not even 20. (Yeah for co-op)
Truthfully, anything that Fortran can do, C can do better. But that wasn't always the case. Fortran used to be A1 for number crunching, and thus is used and still used by many research companies. Sometimes, if you don't have a CS degree its just easier to use the language you learned when you were in University or College than spend the time learning C or Java.
Some older satellites (8-15yrs) used Fortran code. And if those satellites are still in the sky, (which they are) then those persons working on keeping and updating them need to use good 'ol Fortran to keep them up in the sky.
Each 'new' version of Fortran tries to get a little bit more object-oriented than the last. At the moment I use both 77 and 90 (neither are object oriented). Fortran also has the lovely feature of GO TO!
Fortran will probably be used for awhile longer. Even with.Net. Try it some time, its a rather amusing little language.
Its nice to see that a spammer is getting in trouble for the annoyance that they've caused. However, its one spammer, in one state, in one country. There are so many other spammers, how can destroying even one really make a difference?
If this were to start a trend however, it may help destroy spam comming from North America.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. You know sun really wants to "help" when they put up shop in Bellville.
Belleville, population 36000. There are only 20 or so Linux/Unix users in the whole city and surrounding area. I can give you the names of ALL of them. The surrounding area includes Trenton, Picton, Bloomfield, Milford and the famous Sandbanks Provincial Park. (Largest freshwater beach in the world, largest freshwater sand dunes in the world. Its our only claim to fame)
Why Belleville is what I would like to know?
If you don't know it, its a bunch of old farmers who don't own computers and can't afford them. Cable and DSL internet are new, (ie past 8 months). Dial-Up is the standard internet, and for 90% of ppl its their only option (save satellite, but if you can't afford a decent machine, how could u afford that?)
There are no tech companies in Belleville or surrounding area. Save a small windows help desk company (Stream) where if you don't have a high school diploma, you can get a job. But if you've got an education, you can't get a job there.
I really don't know what they were thinking. The locals have absolutely no interest in computers. And why would anyone WANT to come here?
So if your boss sends you to belleville, well, i hope you like to drink yourself stupid because thats about all there is to do here.
Although this would be a bit tedious, and annoying for honest users, and even this idea isn't fool proof.
Ebay could create a system, where all users must use an online payment system. When an auction is won, the user transfers money to a "Holding Account", then the Seller is informed (but does not have access to the funds). When the bidder recieves the item and it is as said, the bidder responds to the Holding Account, releasing the funds to the seller.
If the seller did not send the correct item, the Holding Account doesn't release the funds until the buyer recieves the returned item again, and notifys of such. Here, one courier could be used with tracking numbers, to also insure that the item was recieved.
Its not perfect. But its better than the system existing.
Guns have been around for so long, knowledge of their use and who's to blame in a murder is well known. If the manufacturer hadn't made it, the criminal would have done it by another means. The same goes for file sharing. If Kazaa didn't exist, some other program would. You could say that the internet itself is a file sharing protocol? So why don't we shut down the internet?
The other issue is the the music/video industry (those pushing this) aren't entirely intelligent. They can't see past the end of their own nose, or over their money filled pockets to realize what the real source of the problem is. They see there are so many people using a program (legal, or illegaly) and assume they are all downloading a copy of copyrighted material. The only way that they can think of, is to destroy the software that allows the sharing to happen in the first place. Their desicion is highly misguided. If they want to get rid of filesharing protocols, they'll have to shut down the internet.
Perhaps what the music industry wanted was to be the first to introduce something like kazaa. Since they didn't get the first, second or even third slot, they feel the need to destroy everybody elses' software.
Fortran isn't entirely dead. At least to the scientific community. I am a Fortran programmer, working at in a research position and I'm not 50 years old, I'm not even 20. (Yeah for co-op)
.Net. Try it some time, its a rather amusing little language.
Truthfully, anything that Fortran can do, C can do better. But that wasn't always the case. Fortran used to be A1 for number crunching, and thus is used and still used by many research companies. Sometimes, if you don't have a CS degree its just easier to use the language you learned when you were in University or College than spend the time learning C or Java.
Some older satellites (8-15yrs) used Fortran code. And if those satellites are still in the sky, (which they are) then those persons working on keeping and updating them need to use good 'ol Fortran to keep them up in the sky.
Each 'new' version of Fortran tries to get a little bit more object-oriented than the last. At the moment I use both 77 and 90 (neither are object oriented). Fortran also has the lovely feature of GO TO!
Fortran will probably be used for awhile longer. Even with
Its nice to see that a spammer is getting in trouble for the annoyance that they've caused. However, its one spammer, in one state, in one country. There are so many other spammers, how can destroying even one really make a difference?
If this were to start a trend however, it may help destroy spam comming from North America.