Same deal with the old E-Z-Pass system on the Turnpike.
This whole privacy issue gets to me sometimes. Where is a right to privacy when you're riding on the subway? In your house, sure. But a right to privacy in a public place? What's the big deal unless you're going to kill someone, and you're worried that they'll track your movements (They did this in New York once, with the aforementioned E-Z-Pass system--proved that a person HAD entered the city at a time when they claimed they hadn't).
If I'm doing something in public, I don't really care if someone sees it. If I cared, it wouldn't be public. This kind of stuff is only going to get worse, as methods of information gathering get more sophisticated. Might as well get used to it now.
Actually, it's kind of funny. I graduated pre-law, and then decided I'd rather program than argue. Law school has been calling ever louder for the past few months.
Heh. I wish I was a lawyer AND an Engineer. You know the first person who's going to be able to both make a rational argument in court AND understand what the hell he's talking about is going to make a mint.
Eh. Psychohistory was based on a lot of things, not the least of which was superadvanced observation and analysis.
Chaos theory will only be called chaos theory until we expand our understanding to encompass the underlying phenomena that bridge the events that today seem unconnected.
I think this work on sociology is prety unexciting. Without methodology or any concrete application, it just amounts to even yet still more academic wanking. I see no insights, and some of his theories like "Social mood temporally and logically precedes social events" I find to be laughable. It seems to me that moods radiate from a central event, spawning their own events as they go.
They probably can't catch them anyway. Spammers move on so often, it's not like you can track them to someones home address. Half the time the orginiator of spam is a compromised server anyway. They don't figure out about it until their provider starts complaining.
"We're hoping that people's weight won't vary so quickly."
It's going to go up pretty damn quick if the guy doesn't have to leave the couch for anything but the bathroom.
I can veg out with the best of them, but this? How fricking lazy do you have to be? This thing will tune to your favorite shows automatically. Wow. You don't even have to channel surf for yourself anymore. This is pretty sad.
In both cases, introspectively speaking here, it's a defense mechanisim from those widely thought stupid by their peers. Is it a wonder that most engineers look on all other people as lesser, considering how all other people look on them?
Turn that around to my own case: Do you know how much crap I've taken over the years from people who persist in regarding writing as mystical, unknowable, and snub everyone who doesn't toe to their idea of literary correctness? I made a more sweeping statement than I think was warranted, but the central fact of anti-technological dogma holds true for a vast number of members of the "Creative" community. I have no patience for people who hold to one method of doing anything, especially when it holds all the way down to a particular version of a particular piece of software, or a particular pen.
As for tools, I agree, but not completely. If the best tool for the job is a nail gun, I can accept a hammer, but not a rock with one flat side, unless there is absolutely no other choice. I can tell you flat out that if you submit a handwritten manuscript to a publisher, they will send it back INSTANTLY, unread. Writing is no longer a pen and paper world, unless you are so famous that you could sell a million copies of a book with blank pages.
As far as the attitudes go...I double majored in Philosophy and English...Graduated...Then went back and got my Masters in Comp Sci. Trust me; the english/philosophy grad students sneer just as hard at everyone who's not in their group.
I don't think everyone who doesn't write or think like me is stupid, but I think that people who utterly refuse to adapt are either stupid, or so totally arrogant that there is no real difference. No, I take that back. I don't care what they do; I don't push my way into anyone's life. But if they have the NERVE to tell me that the way I'M doing it is wrong while they are living in their stone age dreamworld...THAT makes me insane. And I get that crap all the time, usually from someone who will then have the audactiy to ask me to fix his eighteen year old computer.
I'm a writer. I'm published. I've gotten good reviews. But here's the thing:
I can't write freehand. I can't think at the paltry speed of a pencil or obsolecent ink pen. My ideas move too fast for that, and if I have to wait for my hand to catch up, they're gone.
To imagine that a computer would sap the creative process is incredible to me. How could speed and ease of revision sap the speed of your mind? But no, not to the average writer. If they're not scratching it in a journal, or onto a dirty napkin, the idea lacks pathos and originality.
The day when someone comes up with a method that allows me to move beyond the speed of my fingers or my voice, something that lets me chain my imagination to a digital muse, to move my thoughts straight to the page with no cluttered interface, then I'll be happy.
And all over the world, pretentious english majors will be whining about how that removes the essential purity of whatever level of technology they've managed to be able to accept. The greek epic poets probably screamed bloody murder when their contemporaries started writing things down to begin with.
God! I'm so tired of it! I don't care what you use to write! Just please! please! PLEASE! STOP TELLING ME ABOUT IT! I don't care! There's nothing holy about your grubby paper notebook, there's nothing pure about your ancient typewriter, and there is nothing worthy about your ancient appleII except the fact that you're too stupid to use anything NEWER!
Hmmm. Well, no, "Server" isn't an exact term. I worked on an app in visual basic, with a MS SQL server backend. We upped the server, we upped the memory, that damn app would take whatever was available and still run like crap. Far more than was justified, in my mind, considering the size of the database, and the load on the system. Hence the phrase, "Too much server" which, in my mind, means, "More processing power than can be justified by performance."
To be fair to VB, the compiled code in the application was never designed to be efficient, but again, I blame this on the so called "Ease of use" associated with VB. Yea, its easy, but I don't think coding OUGHT to be super easy, not out in the real world. I think people should have to know what the hell they're doing before they start letting their design tools write 60% of the code for them. It results in sloppy, bloated applications.
If you'd read the line about reports, you'd know that I wasn't knocking reports in general, only reports that only show W in terms of a completely unrelated Z, using outer joins on X and Y in order to relate two unrelated sets. Apples, not to oranges, but porcupines.
Second, I can show all kinds of history without resorting to huge, bloated SQL queries. Simple is elegant, and if you think bad developers prefer simple queries, you're living in a dream world. I've seen sixty-line queries that could shut down 50 node cluster. Most times hugely complex queries are the result of a schema that wasn't thought out correctly.
And memory is only cheap if you're running a few complex queries at a time. If you're running 50 or a hundred, it's not cheap, and if you're running a thousand, it's fricking expensive.
I don't know. I guess my point is that, yea, sometimes you have to use a complex query, but most times you can get by without, and making the extra effort to go without usually has positive performance benefits.
I don't see how embracing an open implementation (Linux) of a 30 year old industry standard (Unix) is going to keep someone locked out of a global marketplace. Seventy percent of the world server market isn't exactly a technical backwater.
I have to agree; the only possible reason for intel to take this stance is money from M$. Otherwise, they only stand to gain by other countries embracing the first *nix to be specifically designed to be compatible with Intel chips.
Those things sound like stuff you'd write for those useless reports the bosses always want, comparing apples to porcupines. Most database apps I've seen use pretty simple queries; it keeps your memory overhead down, and makes your app run more smoothly.
If you're using multiple outer joins for anything other than reports, your schema's probably screwy. Subselects? Talk about memory usage.
All that stuffs fine if you're working for the government, and they can buy you a billion dollars worth of hardware, but if you're putting together an app for accounting and inventory control for a relatively small company, and you're using those types of queries, you're going to make their hardware scream for mercy, and them very unhappy with the speed of your fancy new app.
If I was going to have an app where I was going to need to change the SQL all the time...Can't think what that would be, since I could run most queries straight to the database...I'd just slap my queries in an XML file, and source 'em from inside the actual app.
The performace hit is negligible, unless you're talking a couple hundred unique queries.
Usually I just put together one basic query of every type that I'm going to need, with variables in strategic places, and just "Build" the query on the fly. Nice abstraction, cuts down on the code size, and kicks ass for the all important "Code reusablity" factor.
If you could actually be held responsible, then millions of old people would now be in court being sued over their completely unsecured computers sitting on their fat cable lines even now cranking out Code Red hits.
I had a hack come in on a box I was administrating, traced it back, figured out whose box it was, realized that it was just an exploited pedestrian, called the guy on the phone, and asked him to get it looked at. Got in a screaming fight with him, while he's threatening to sue ME for the whole (admittedly quasi-legal) process of figuring out whose computer it was.
Grrrr. I finally just hung up on him, and sent the logs and transcripts of the attack on my server to the local FBI office. I'd like to think they did something to him, but I doubt they did, and this kind of thing happens all the time.
People bring up Php, but Php and Java aren't even the same kind of programming language. Php is pretty much web only, whereas Java can be used to create all the same types of apps that C can (Not saying this is a good idea, just that it can be done.), though C cannot be used in all the apps Java can (i.e Web.)
As for perl, the fact that it has to be compiled every time it is run kinds of takes away from any speed advantage over Java.
The only language in common use that does everything Java does is fricking Visual Basic, and if java is an SUV, then Visual Basic is what? A jumbo jet that can't fly, but has to taxi everywhere? A 1800 Wheeler with an engine by yugo?
Apparently, if you haven't patched explorer it CAN run itself. Windows is the filthy crack whore of the OS world. "Oooo, that program looks pretty, let me JACK IT INTO MY BRAIN!"
And I posted this fricking story yesterday. Grumble.
At ANY RATE, the file that came with the email was a simple.exe; even outlook doesn't automatically run executables. It might be able to infect other boxes once it's running (crawling the network share, etc), but as I am a) smart enough to be running linux and b) not dumb enough to double click any.exe that pops into my mailbox, I don't really know first hand what it does.
The email did look kick ass though. Doens't surprise me that people are blissfully clicking away.
You know how processor intensive that would be? I mean, if everyone looked EXACTLY the same when you took a picture of them, down to the last visible strand of hair, then it would be difficult, but possible.
Withotu that, every time someone's got their head turned or their eyes shut, or having a pint of beer dumped over their head, they'll be completly unrecognizable to the computer.
Unless they're trying some 25 point recognition system like they do with finger prints, but again, that would be majorly processor intensive.
Sure it makes you a criminal, but it's never been proven to stop the use of drugs. I think the same thing is going to happen with filesharing. I don't think it's a winnable war.
Slashdot Mirror
Same deal with the old E-Z-Pass system on the Turnpike.
This whole privacy issue gets to me sometimes. Where is a right to privacy when you're riding on the subway? In your house, sure. But a right to privacy in a public place? What's the big deal unless you're going to kill someone, and you're worried that they'll track your movements (They did this in New York once, with the aforementioned E-Z-Pass system--proved that a person HAD entered the city at a time when they claimed they hadn't).
If I'm doing something in public, I don't really care if someone sees it. If I cared, it wouldn't be public. This kind of stuff is only going to get worse, as methods of information gathering get more sophisticated. Might as well get used to it now.
Even a stopped watch can be right once a day. Unless it's a digital watch, but since he's a luddite, it doesn't seem too likely.
Actually, it's kind of funny. I graduated pre-law, and then decided I'd rather program than argue. Law school has been calling ever louder for the past few months.
Heh. I wish I was a lawyer AND an Engineer. You know the first person who's going to be able to both make a rational argument in court AND understand what the hell he's talking about is going to make a mint.
Haha. For god's sake don't listen to that.
Eh. Psychohistory was based on a lot of things, not the least of which was superadvanced observation and analysis.
Chaos theory will only be called chaos theory until we expand our understanding to encompass the underlying phenomena that bridge the events that today seem unconnected.
I think this work on sociology is prety unexciting. Without methodology or any concrete application, it just amounts to even yet still more academic wanking. I see no insights, and some of his theories like "Social mood temporally and logically precedes social events" I find to be laughable. It seems to me that moods radiate from a central event, spawning their own events as they go.
Just my opinion.
They probably can't catch them anyway. Spammers move on so often, it's not like you can track them to someones home address. Half the time the orginiator of spam is a compromised server anyway. They don't figure out about it until their provider starts complaining.
"We're hoping that people's weight won't vary so quickly."
It's going to go up pretty damn quick if the guy doesn't have to leave the couch for anything but the bathroom.
I can veg out with the best of them, but this? How fricking lazy do you have to be? This thing will tune to your favorite shows automatically. Wow. You don't even have to channel surf for yourself anymore. This is pretty sad.
In both cases, introspectively speaking here, it's a defense mechanisim from those widely thought stupid by their peers. Is it a wonder that most engineers look on all other people as lesser, considering how all other people look on them?
Turn that around to my own case: Do you know how much crap I've taken over the years from people who persist in regarding writing as mystical, unknowable, and snub everyone who doesn't toe to their idea of literary correctness? I made a more sweeping statement than I think was warranted, but the central fact of anti-technological dogma holds true for a vast number of members of the "Creative" community. I have no patience for people who hold to one method of doing anything, especially when it holds all the way down to a particular version of a particular piece of software, or a particular pen.
As for tools, I agree, but not completely. If the best tool for the job is a nail gun, I can accept a hammer, but not a rock with one flat side, unless there is absolutely no other choice. I can tell you flat out that if you submit a handwritten manuscript to a publisher, they will send it back INSTANTLY, unread. Writing is no longer a pen and paper world, unless you are so famous that you could sell a million copies of a book with blank pages.
As far as the attitudes go...I double majored in Philosophy and English...Graduated...Then went back and got my Masters in Comp Sci. Trust me; the english/philosophy grad students sneer just as hard at everyone who's not in their group.
I don't think everyone who doesn't write or think like me is stupid, but I think that people who utterly refuse to adapt are either stupid, or so totally arrogant that there is no real difference. No, I take that back. I don't care what they do; I don't push my way into anyone's life. But if they have the NERVE to tell me that the way I'M doing it is wrong while they are living in their stone age dreamworld...THAT makes me insane. And I get that crap all the time, usually from someone who will then have the audactiy to ask me to fix his eighteen year old computer.
I'm a writer. I'm published. I've gotten good reviews. But here's the thing:
I can't write freehand. I can't think at the paltry speed of a pencil or obsolecent ink pen. My ideas move too fast for that, and if I have to wait for my hand to catch up, they're gone.
To imagine that a computer would sap the creative process is incredible to me. How could speed and ease of revision sap the speed of your mind? But no, not to the average writer. If they're not scratching it in a journal, or onto a dirty napkin, the idea lacks pathos and originality.
The day when someone comes up with a method that allows me to move beyond the speed of my fingers or my voice, something that lets me chain my imagination to a digital muse, to move my thoughts straight to the page with no cluttered interface, then I'll be happy.
And all over the world, pretentious english majors will be whining about how that removes the essential purity of whatever level of technology they've managed to be able to accept. The greek epic poets probably screamed bloody murder when their contemporaries started writing things down to begin with.
God! I'm so tired of it! I don't care what you use to write! Just please! please! PLEASE! STOP TELLING ME ABOUT IT! I don't care! There's nothing holy about your grubby paper notebook, there's nothing pure about your ancient typewriter, and there is nothing worthy about your ancient appleII except the fact that you're too stupid to use anything NEWER!
Just my (unfortunately well researched) opinion.
Heh. I think all unemployed /.ers (Myself included) should get together and form either:
a) A multinational software giant
or
b) The first gathering of geeks large enough to be visible from orbit.
It's more secure than I thought.
Don't know if this is going to fly before we have some sort of method for uniquely identifying individual voters.
Hmmm. Well, no, "Server" isn't an exact term. I worked on an app in visual basic, with a MS SQL server backend. We upped the server, we upped the memory, that damn app would take whatever was available and still run like crap. Far more than was justified, in my mind, considering the size of the database, and the load on the system. Hence the phrase, "Too much server" which, in my mind, means, "More processing power than can be justified by performance."
To be fair to VB, the compiled code in the application was never designed to be efficient, but again, I blame this on the so called "Ease of use" associated with VB. Yea, its easy, but I don't think coding OUGHT to be super easy, not out in the real world. I think people should have to know what the hell they're doing before they start letting their design tools write 60% of the code for them. It results in sloppy, bloated applications.
If you'd read the line about reports, you'd know that I wasn't knocking reports in general, only reports that only show W in terms of a completely unrelated Z, using outer joins on X and Y in order to relate two unrelated sets. Apples, not to oranges, but porcupines.
Second, I can show all kinds of history without resorting to huge, bloated SQL queries. Simple is elegant, and if you think bad developers prefer simple queries, you're living in a dream world. I've seen sixty-line queries that could shut down 50 node cluster. Most times hugely complex queries are the result of a schema that wasn't thought out correctly.
And memory is only cheap if you're running a few complex queries at a time. If you're running 50 or a hundred, it's not cheap, and if you're running a thousand, it's fricking expensive.
I don't know. I guess my point is that, yea, sometimes you have to use a complex query, but most times you can get by without, and making the extra effort to go without usually has positive performance benefits.
I don't see how embracing an open implementation (Linux) of a 30 year old industry standard (Unix) is going to keep someone locked out of a global marketplace. Seventy percent of the world server market isn't exactly a technical backwater.
I have to agree; the only possible reason for intel to take this stance is money from M$. Otherwise, they only stand to gain by other countries embracing the first *nix to be specifically designed to be compatible with Intel chips.
Heh. If you check the WHOLE link, you can save your optic nerve tremendous trauma.
Those things sound like stuff you'd write for those useless reports the bosses always want, comparing apples to porcupines. Most database apps I've seen use pretty simple queries; it keeps your memory overhead down, and makes your app run more smoothly.
If you're using multiple outer joins for anything other than reports, your schema's probably screwy. Subselects? Talk about memory usage.
All that stuffs fine if you're working for the government, and they can buy you a billion dollars worth of hardware, but if you're putting together an app for accounting and inventory control for a relatively small company, and you're using those types of queries, you're going to make their hardware scream for mercy, and them very unhappy with the speed of your fancy new app.
The key is HARDCODED.
If I was going to have an app where I was going to need to change the SQL all the time...Can't think what that would be, since I could run most queries straight to the database...I'd just slap my queries in an XML file, and source 'em from inside the actual app.
The performace hit is negligible, unless you're talking a couple hundred unique queries.
Usually I just put together one basic query of every type that I'm going to need, with variables in strategic places, and just "Build" the query on the fly. Nice abstraction, cuts down on the code size, and kicks ass for the all important "Code reusablity" factor.
VB needs too much server, and it doesn't run well on any server except a windows server, which causes it's own problems.
Faster? Maybe against Java running on windows, under IIS. Faster to code? Could be. Point and Drool is hard to beat...for time.
If you could actually be held responsible, then millions of old people would now be in court being sued over their completely unsecured computers sitting on their fat cable lines even now cranking out Code Red hits.
I had a hack come in on a box I was administrating, traced it back, figured out whose box it was, realized that it was just an exploited pedestrian, called the guy on the phone, and asked him to get it looked at. Got in a screaming fight with him, while he's threatening to sue ME for the whole (admittedly quasi-legal) process of figuring out whose computer it was.
Grrrr. I finally just hung up on him, and sent the logs and transcripts of the attack on my server to the local FBI office. I'd like to think they did something to him, but I doubt they did, and this kind of thing happens all the time.
People bring up Php, but Php and Java aren't even the same kind of programming language. Php is pretty much web only, whereas Java can be used to create all the same types of apps that C can (Not saying this is a good idea, just that it can be done.), though C cannot be used in all the apps Java can (i.e Web.)
As for perl, the fact that it has to be compiled every time it is run kinds of takes away from any speed advantage over Java.
The only language in common use that does everything Java does is fricking Visual Basic, and if java is an SUV, then Visual Basic is what? A jumbo jet that can't fly, but has to taxi everywhere? A 1800 Wheeler with an engine by yugo?
Apparently, if you haven't patched explorer it CAN run itself. Windows is the filthy crack whore of the OS world. "Oooo, that program looks pretty, let me JACK IT INTO MY BRAIN!"
And I posted this fricking story yesterday. Grumble.
.exe; even outlook doesn't automatically run executables. It might be able to infect other boxes once it's running (crawling the network share, etc), but as I am a) smart enough to be running linux and b) not dumb enough to double click any .exe that pops into my mailbox, I don't really know first hand what it does.
At ANY RATE, the file that came with the email was a simple
The email did look kick ass though. Doens't surprise me that people are blissfully clicking away.
You know how processor intensive that would be? I mean, if everyone looked EXACTLY the same when you took a picture of them, down to the last visible strand of hair, then it would be difficult, but possible.
Withotu that, every time someone's got their head turned or their eyes shut, or having a pint of beer dumped over their head, they'll be completly unrecognizable to the computer.
Unless they're trying some 25 point recognition system like they do with finger prints, but again, that would be majorly processor intensive.
Sure it makes you a criminal, but it's never been proven to stop the use of drugs. I think the same thing is going to happen with filesharing. I don't think it's a winnable war.