In all these years and hours spent in compiler madness and dependency hell you never wondered if there had to be a better way? Keeping track of memory and pointers, or objects and threads? Compiling code? yuck. You may have to drop some acid or go off to an ashram and THEN you'll be ready to embrace the psychodelic world of callbacks and prototypes and json.
Some more serious advice: CSS and HTML are best left to specialists or you'll lose the little hair you have left. You will want a basic understanding, in particular, how they relate to the document object in js. MSDN and Mozilla have decent refrences, as does W3schools.
As for js, don't let the similarities with Java or C fool you. You'll only be wishing for native inheritance and type safety which you will never have. You'll have to embrace some new paradigms. Given your background, and after reading up on the language, I suggest you examine the sources for YUI3 or jQuery or preferably both. Then examine the source for Facebook's all.js to grok the Hacker Way to JavaScript. That will give you a good sense for the cabilities of the language and how to interact with the aforementioned document object to manipulate a webpage. You'll also have an understanding of three of the most important js libraries to know.
Economies of scale? Australia has 1/10th of the population of the US, so even though the distance is shorter the unit cost of shipping is likely to be lower when shipping goods to the US than to Australia. You also have to consider any import tariffs imposed by the respective government.
I don't understand the furor. This appears to be a case of market economics. Australia has a population of ~25 million people, while the US has a population of ~300 million. The EU, likewise has a population of about 300 million. Simple economy of scale arguments provide a rational answer: Apple's cost per unit to ship products to the US and the EU is going to be lower than its cost per unit shipping to Australia, and those savings (or burdens depending on which side of the world you are in) get passed onto consumers. Not to mention the infrastructure costs of setting up stores, corporate offices, advertising, and a market presence in country with 1/10 of the population of the US or the EU. Which again will all result in a higher cost basis per unit sold in Australia. Finally, higher tax rates on corporations in Australia, higher employee taxes on business, and other regulatory issues are likely to drive up prices. Let's not forget the dreaded GST which makes the end price for consumers even higher.
Rather than whine about it, Australian MP's may consider what they can do to create a more favorable market for high tech products in Australia by providing tax benefits to offset the higher costs of doing business in a small and over regulated market.
I love it. A good ole lets duke it out between C and C++ programmers. Such a gentleman's sport compared to the (more full of opinionated ignoramii) java vs python vs ruby vs perl debates - or even worse - the dreaded apple fanboy vs linux geek vs windows pro debates that have become the predominant news on slashdot these days.
Hardware floppy drives are indeed obsolete. Welcome to the wonderful era of virtualization where he can have as many windows 98 "boxes" as he likes, all with their very own virtual floppy disks.
I beg to differ. It is a matter of adjusting your expectations and your IDE layout - like we haven't done that before. In my case I have learned to like and prefer the advantages of wide over tall given a single screen limitation. On a 1920 wide screen it is easy to place two or three editor views side by side in eclipse - useful for example when dealing with multiple related classes like manager, entity and DAO classes for a given "object" in a typical enterprise app. (Just drag the document tab for a class sideways and off the main editor panel). It's not ideal - vertical space is still important - especially with the proliferation XML config files and chatty bean setters and getters, but getting used to using code folding and ouline views helps. In the end, enough that I prefer wide over tall.
(Disclaimer: my 'primary' desktop workstation has three widescreens with one oriented sideways for max vertical scrolling power - I never said I did not like vertical space).
The keyword in the wikipedia article is "simple kind" of jail mechanism. Yes indeed it is. As others above have pointed out, if you do not run the processes as root, and do not have setuid processes in the chroot'ed env, then it is a "simple kind" of jail mechanism. However, do silly things like run daemons as root , by all accounts not something that should be considered part of the "simple" realm in Unix, and due diligence would dictate that you re-examine your simple assumptions.
All over the web, man pages, O'Reilly books, and university courses it is said that root is dangerous and must be treated with the utmost respect and care. I think it is obvious from the very philosophy of root that that warning should supersede any other information you may read on a man page of a program.
Software defects which allow a user to "gain root" (to execute with superuser privileges code supplied by that user) are a major security issue, and the fixing of such software is a major part of maintaining a secure system. One common way of gaining root is to cause a buffer overflow in a program already running with superuser privileges. This is often subsided in modern operating systems by running critical services, such as httpd, under a unique limited account.
And in the same wikipedia article referenced, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroot, ignoring the changes from today in obvious reaction to this slashdot posting, you will read under limitations:
Only the root user can perform a chroot. This is intended to prevent users from putting a setuid program inside a specially-crafted chroot jail (for example, with a fake/etc/passwd file) that would fool it into giving out privileges.
The chroot mechanism itself is not entirely secure on all systems. On some systems, for example, chroot contexts do not stack properly and chrooted programs may perform a second chroot to break out.
If you allow patents on the genes that cause specific cancers then you do essentially allow patenting of any possible cure for the disease, short of the "nuclear" options - chemo and radio. You cannot even look into the possibility of studying agents against the cancer without incuring royalty payments because studying it would require the "licensing" of the IP from the patent holder.
I don't disagree that patents that protect the real research that goes into developing drugs are a "good", but probably not the only, way to incentivate future research. But the patent laws need to be better at distinguishing ideas and knowledge from methods and objects. One outcome might be that it will start following the spirit of the patent law that should have prevented living things from the patent realm . Yeah, technically the breast cancer gene is not alive....but it would never really exist had it not been part of something living at some point.
Agreed. And in a perfect world we would only have non-profit people and organizations. Sadly, they are not the ones funding the lobbying efforts which gave us such abberations as the DMCA, gene patents and my personal favorite: the wheel patent.
There is even an argument to say that copyrights held by non-profits are a by-product, or even an abuse, of copyright laws put in place to protect personal and corporate profits.
How do you justify the closing statement of the article? While not technically wrong it seems vastly misleading. If the new Intel Graphics Adapter uses 128Mb (or let's say even 256Mb for arguments sake), wouldn't a simple corresponding increase in main system memory suffice? Why push a 1Gb memory upgrade for the purpose of better graphics then. Sure you can break a "windows" with a rocket launcher. But wouldn't a baseball bat suffice?
Why does this get modded insightful? It is off topic and a flame bait. But insightful? Come on people: criticizing the editorial style of Slashdot posters is not insightful and adds nothing to the discussion.
Err....poor old Netscape would have something different to say about that. Consumers can pick the winners, but the process is very susceptible to abuse of power, in the MS v Netscape case monopoly power, which ensures the odds are stacked unfavorably against the incumbent.
An economic system unprottected by patents, is akin to one unprottected from monopoly abuse. Both laws are meant to prevent players with enough resources (be them financial or a monopoly grip on a precursor industry - such as desktop computing) to use those resources to unfairly usurp a market created by new innovations.
And as the relatively slow adoption of Firefox shows (at least compared to the pace at which IE dislodged Netscape) consumer choice for a better product is simply not a recipe for success in dislodging an incumbent. It sometimes takes the aid of some slightly dirtier tactics - like granting their competing product the status of OS enhacement and giving it away for free with a monopoly product - to win over the market.
MS v Netscape was never a case of patentable technology, but definitely a case of "Large companies [being] free to copy an idea, use it in their products and use their market position to crush any new ideas." Just like anti-trust laws (were supposed to) protect small players from monopolistic abuses, pantent laws (were supposed to) protect small players from more financially endowed competitors with enough resources to copy the processes of the invention.
Yes, I know these are gross oversimplifications and MS v Netscape covers an entirely different type of law... but it is yet another example of why laws that are created to protect the economic process of innovation are necessary.
Inadequate? BS. I think everyone would agree that the USPTO (US patent office) is allowing all sorts of ridiculous, obvious patents to be approved through without adequate oversight & investigation. That's a problem with the USPTO, not the law. Contentious areas of patent law include "ways of doing business" patents and patenting higher organisms (like the Harvard mouse)
Have you just come back from a trip from Mars Mr Anonymous Coward? The big topic here on earth is patent reform. Many sound minds in the software and IT industries have begun clamoring for it, primarily because a general consensus seems to be emerging that the current patent system is indeed woefully broken. Here is a recent slashdot post on the topic so you can catch up. I would encourage you to read it. At the very least read this one on ZDNET where it is reported that even MS lawyers are clamoring for it.
You may also want to update yourself on the meaning of BS. BS means outright wrong here on earth. I don't think I am outright wrong in saying that the law is inadequate, when even lawyers are wincing at the plethora of frivolous patent suits being litigated in the courts.
A patent owner can do whatever they want with their patent, including sell it, license it, burn it, or do nothing. That is basic economic freedom, that you can do whatever you want with your property.
Economic freedom has nothing to do with patent laws, in theory or applicability. And FYI, at least here in the US (arguably the most free economic system on Earth) you cannot do whatever you want with your property. You cannot for example simply burn down your house. In most states you cannot carry your gun, even if properly licensed, inside you jacket pocket - and that regardless of whether you intend to use it or not.
Back to the topic though. Patent laws were instituted to protect inventors and innovators from copy cats. What companies like NTP do is abuse that system by buying out patents and then sitting on them until they find a product that may perhaps infringe on that patent. That is not economic freedom. That is stiffling innovation. Sure it is legal, but when you can legally usurp a law and use it in a manner counter to its intended purpose, then it seems to me that the law is in fact inadequate. I am not arguing that patents are bad, I own a couple myself and I am currently developing the ideas they express. But as a patent holder, it makes me sick to think that I would sit on those patents waiting for some other person to have the same idea, go develop it and then sue them for profit.
But then again, you sound like a patent lawyer for a patent holding company, judging from the eloquence of your response.
Everybody agrees that the US patent laws are woefully inadequate, particularly when it comes to its application in information technology. And in its potential for abuse by vultures like NTP. Here is a simple clause that should fix some of the more egregious offenses to system:
What IF the patent law said that in order to enforce a patent a patent holder must show that they are actively pursuing development of the inventions described in the patent they are holding. Otherwise the patent is not enforceable. Obviously it needs to be a lot more detailed that this simple statement, but it seems to me that requiring patent holders to do more than just sit on their assets waiting for an opportunity to litigate, would go a long way to fix the perception that pantents serve to protect corporate pirates, instead of true inventors.
I am visiting Seattle and I got to watch Harvey Danger at the Freemont Octoberfest last Saturday night. They were the headlining act. Very good music and great performers. The lead singer even got someone in the front row to get him a beer. They made an otherwise uneventful night quite memorable.
Slashdot Mirror
...another tree fell without a sound
Looks like Slashdot still holds some of its power. 100,000 was reached sometime this morning 2/21/2013.
"Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American property from theft"
I wonder if recognition would have come if the Old Media Industries had not bribed - err lobbied - the policy makers in the first place.
In all these years and hours spent in compiler madness and dependency hell you never wondered if there had to be a better way? Keeping track of memory and pointers, or objects and threads? Compiling code? yuck. You may have to drop some acid or go off to an ashram and THEN you'll be ready to embrace the psychodelic world of callbacks and prototypes and json.
Some more serious advice: CSS and HTML are best left to specialists or you'll lose the little hair you have left. You will want a basic understanding, in particular, how they relate to the document object in js. MSDN and Mozilla have decent refrences, as does W3schools.
As for js, don't let the similarities with Java or C fool you. You'll only be wishing for native inheritance and type safety which you will never have. You'll have to embrace some new paradigms. Given your background, and after reading up on the language, I suggest you examine the sources for YUI3 or jQuery or preferably both. Then examine the source for Facebook's all.js to grok the Hacker Way to JavaScript. That will give you a good sense for the cabilities of the language and how to interact with the aforementioned document object to manipulate a webpage. You'll also have an understanding of three of the most important js libraries to know.
Economies of scale? Australia has 1/10th of the population of the US, so even though the distance is shorter the unit cost of shipping is likely to be lower when shipping goods to the US than to Australia. You also have to consider any import tariffs imposed by the respective government.
I don't understand the furor. This appears to be a case of market economics. Australia has a population of ~25 million people, while the US has a population of ~300 million. The EU, likewise has a population of about 300 million. Simple economy of scale arguments provide a rational answer: Apple's cost per unit to ship products to the US and the EU is going to be lower than its cost per unit shipping to Australia, and those savings (or burdens depending on which side of the world you are in) get passed onto consumers. Not to mention the infrastructure costs of setting up stores, corporate offices, advertising, and a market presence in country with 1/10 of the population of the US or the EU. Which again will all result in a higher cost basis per unit sold in Australia. Finally, higher tax rates on corporations in Australia, higher employee taxes on business, and other regulatory issues are likely to drive up prices. Let's not forget the dreaded GST which makes the end price for consumers even higher.
Rather than whine about it, Australian MP's may consider what they can do to create a more favorable market for high tech products in Australia by providing tax benefits to offset the higher costs of doing business in a small and over regulated market.
I love it. A good ole lets duke it out between C and C++ programmers. Such a gentleman's sport compared to the (more full of opinionated ignoramii) java vs python vs ruby vs perl debates - or even worse - the dreaded apple fanboy vs linux geek vs windows pro debates that have become the predominant news on slashdot these days.
Why, exactly, is using STL a greater good from a compiler side?
Same as for any other large programming project: It makes it easier to write and maintain.
How, exactly, is easier to write and maintain code a greater good from a compiler side?
++ mod for originality
Somewhere in Redmond someone is sighing a long sigh of relief. Finally they say - finally - they stopped picking on us!
Hardware floppy drives are indeed obsolete. Welcome to the wonderful era of virtualization where he can have as many windows 98 "boxes" as he likes, all with their very own virtual floppy disks.
I beg to differ. It is a matter of adjusting your expectations and your IDE layout - like we haven't done that before. In my case I have learned to like and prefer the advantages of wide over tall given a single screen limitation. On a 1920 wide screen it is easy to place two or three editor views side by side in eclipse - useful for example when dealing with multiple related classes like manager, entity and DAO classes for a given "object" in a typical enterprise app. (Just drag the document tab for a class sideways and off the main editor panel). It's not ideal - vertical space is still important - especially with the proliferation XML config files and chatty bean setters and getters, but getting used to using code folding and ouline views helps. In the end, enough that I prefer wide over tall.
(Disclaimer: my 'primary' desktop workstation has three widescreens with one oriented sideways for max vertical scrolling power - I never said I did not like vertical space).
Barring the difficulty of proving sincerity in interest, this sounds like a pragmatic solution to the patent trolling problem.
The keyword in the wikipedia article is "simple kind" of jail mechanism. Yes indeed it is. As others above have pointed out, if you do not run the processes as root, and do not have setuid processes in the chroot'ed env, then it is a "simple kind" of jail mechanism. However, do silly things like run daemons as root , by all accounts not something that should be considered part of the "simple" realm in Unix, and due diligence would dictate that you re-examine your simple assumptions.
All over the web, man pages, O'Reilly books, and university courses it is said that root is dangerous and must be treated with the utmost respect and care. I think it is obvious from the very philosophy of root that that warning should supersede any other information you may read on a man page of a program.
Also from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_user
And in the same wikipedia article referenced, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroot, ignoring the changes from today in obvious reaction to this slashdot posting, you will read under limitations:
This warning or some variant of it, has been part of the article on chroot since July of 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chroot&diff=19562594&oldid=19544086
Long Live /.
If you allow patents on the genes that cause specific cancers then you do essentially allow patenting of any possible cure for the disease, short of the "nuclear" options - chemo and radio. You cannot even look into the possibility of studying agents against the cancer without incuring royalty payments because studying it would require the "licensing" of the IP from the patent holder.
I don't disagree that patents that protect the real research that goes into developing drugs are a "good", but probably not the only, way to incentivate future research. But the patent laws need to be better at distinguishing ideas and knowledge from methods and objects. One outcome might be that it will start following the spirit of the patent law that should have prevented living things from the patent realm . Yeah, technically the breast cancer gene is not alive....but it would never really exist had it not been part of something living at some point.
Agreed. And in a perfect world we would only have non-profit people and organizations. Sadly, they are not the ones funding the lobbying efforts which gave us such abberations as the DMCA, gene patents and my personal favorite: the wheel patent.
There is even an argument to say that copyrights held by non-profits are a by-product, or even an abuse, of copyright laws put in place to protect personal and corporate profits.
You miss the point that it isn't the government's job to secure profits for any business or individual.
One can argue that the patent and copyright systems are all about the government securing profit for businesses and individuals.
Yeah right, and make me, you and Joe Taxpayer pay for their imbecility.
No thanks.
How do you justify the closing statement of the article? While not technically wrong it seems vastly misleading. If the new Intel Graphics Adapter uses 128Mb (or let's say even 256Mb for arguments sake), wouldn't a simple corresponding increase in main system memory suffice? Why push a 1Gb memory upgrade for the purpose of better graphics then. Sure you can break a "windows" with a rocket launcher. But wouldn't a baseball bat suffice?
Why does this get modded insightful? It is off topic and a flame bait. But insightful? Come on people: criticizing the editorial style of Slashdot posters is not insightful and adds nothing to the discussion.
Err....poor old Netscape would have something different to say about that. Consumers can pick the winners, but the process is very susceptible to abuse of power, in the MS v Netscape case monopoly power, which ensures the odds are stacked unfavorably against the incumbent.
... but it is yet another example of why laws that are created to protect the economic process of innovation are necessary.
An economic system unprottected by patents, is akin to one unprottected from monopoly abuse. Both laws are meant to prevent players with enough resources (be them financial or a monopoly grip on a precursor industry - such as desktop computing) to use those resources to unfairly usurp a market created by new innovations.
And as the relatively slow adoption of Firefox shows (at least compared to the pace at which IE dislodged Netscape) consumer choice for a better product is simply not a recipe for success in dislodging an incumbent. It sometimes takes the aid of some slightly dirtier tactics - like granting their competing product the status of OS enhacement and giving it away for free with a monopoly product - to win over the market.
MS v Netscape was never a case of patentable technology, but definitely a case of "Large companies [being] free to copy an idea, use it in their products and use their market position to crush any new ideas." Just like anti-trust laws (were supposed to) protect small players from monopolistic abuses, pantent laws (were supposed to) protect small players from more financially endowed competitors with enough resources to copy the processes of the invention.
Yes, I know these are gross oversimplifications and MS v Netscape covers an entirely different type of law
Inadequate? BS. I think everyone would agree that the USPTO (US patent office) is allowing all sorts of ridiculous, obvious patents to be approved through without adequate oversight & investigation. That's a problem with the USPTO, not the law. Contentious areas of patent law include "ways of doing business" patents and patenting higher organisms (like the Harvard mouse)
Have you just come back from a trip from Mars Mr Anonymous Coward? The big topic here on earth is patent reform. Many sound minds in the software and IT industries have begun clamoring for it, primarily because a general consensus seems to be emerging that the current patent system is indeed woefully broken. Here is a recent slashdot post on the topic so you can catch up. I would encourage you to read it. At the very least read this one on ZDNET where it is reported that even MS lawyers are clamoring for it.
You may also want to update yourself on the meaning of BS. BS means outright wrong here on earth. I don't think I am outright wrong in saying that the law is inadequate, when even lawyers are wincing at the plethora of frivolous patent suits being litigated in the courts.
A patent owner can do whatever they want with their patent, including sell it, license it, burn it, or do nothing. That is basic economic freedom, that you can do whatever you want with your property.
Economic freedom has nothing to do with patent laws, in theory or applicability. And FYI, at least here in the US (arguably the most free economic system on Earth) you cannot do whatever you want with your property. You cannot for example simply burn down your house. In most states you cannot carry your gun, even if properly licensed, inside you jacket pocket - and that regardless of whether you intend to use it or not.
Back to the topic though. Patent laws were instituted to protect inventors and innovators from copy cats. What companies like NTP do is abuse that system by buying out patents and then sitting on them until they find a product that may perhaps infringe on that patent. That is not economic freedom. That is stiffling innovation. Sure it is legal, but when you can legally usurp a law and use it in a manner counter to its intended purpose, then it seems to me that the law is in fact inadequate. I am not arguing that patents are bad, I own a couple myself and I am currently developing the ideas they express. But as a patent holder, it makes me sick to think that I would sit on those patents waiting for some other person to have the same idea, go develop it and then sue them for profit.
But then again, you sound like a patent lawyer for a patent holding company, judging from the eloquence of your response.
Everybody agrees that the US patent laws are woefully inadequate, particularly when it comes to its application in information technology. And in its potential for abuse by vultures like NTP. Here is a simple clause that should fix some of the more egregious offenses to system:
What IF the patent law said that in order to enforce a patent a patent holder must show that they are actively pursuing development of the inventions described in the patent they are holding. Otherwise the patent is not enforceable. Obviously it needs to be a lot more detailed that this simple statement, but it seems to me that requiring patent holders to do more than just sit on their assets waiting for an opportunity to litigate, would go a long way to fix the perception that pantents serve to protect corporate pirates, instead of true inventors.
I am visiting Seattle and I got to watch Harvey Danger at the Freemont Octoberfest last Saturday night. They were the headlining act. Very good music and great performers. The lead singer even got someone in the front row to get him a beer. They made an otherwise uneventful night quite memorable.