Virtually all modern firewall/IDP systems have SSL decryption. Given that virtually all websites use SSL nowadays, it makes no sense at all to even have an IDP if it can't handle SSL traffic.
Until you run into an app/site that breaks, then you have to disable it (at least for that site/app). Like this: "Dropbox not working when Client DPI-SSL is enabled" (link)
The "problem" is that those SSL/TLS packet inspection approaches are the functional equivalent of a man-in-the-middle attack. Given how reliant we are becoming on SSL/TLS, it is no wonder that forward thinking sites and apps are taking measures to protect against that. Of course, those same measures defeat the good guys being able to protect against more sophisticated threats.
I think Obi-Wan even spoke of this: "I felt a great disturbance in the [Windows], as if millions of [webcams] suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
Obviously, he was speaking allegorically when he said those words, with the Force representing Windows and voices representing webcams. It makes sense if you think of it, with Gates and Balmer representing Palpatine and Vader having power over the dark side of the force (the new guy is Kylo-Ren), and the webcam is the modern "voice" we use to communicate. Yes, it all makes sense. Sadly, now it has come to pass.
Very true. However, this is one of the rare instances where there exists a solid and nearly complete technological solution (telecom is regulated and it would be entirely feasible to both fix the problem you describe and then implement the solution I described) to something that is social problem (people being deceptive and abusive over telecommunications media). If the problem doesn't get fixed then it is either because institutional inertia on the part of the telecom providers or because they think it would be more profitable to maintain the status quo.
The group hopes to put in place Caller ID verification standards that would help block calls from spoofed phone numbers and to consider a "Do Not Originate" list that would block spoofers from impersonating specific phone numbers from governments, banks or others.
This is totally the wrong approach. It is why, for example, antivirus products tend to not work all that well. Instead, the phone company should not be able to legally allow phone number spoofing unless and until the entity that wants to spoof proves to the phone company that they or another legal entity they control is the legal owner of the number which will be displayed. I'm sure it will still be abused because people are sort of relentless in their desire to game the system, but it would be orders of magnitude better than what we have now.
Not only do you get people that are worse off, it tends to overcorrect to remove non-minorities.
Not only that, but then the actual best qualified minorities get looked at and they wonder to themselves, "Are they looking at me and wondering if I am actually the best qualified or of I'm here because of a quota? Am I going to have to prove myself by working 50% or 100% harder than the white guy sitting next to me at the table despite the fact that I already worked 50% or 100% harder to get here because I love what I do and this what I was born for?" As a minority who has worked very hard and has a passion for technology that has been a fear of mine. I am thankful that I have not encountered that (or at least if I have I have not taken notice of it), though I have had friends (both other minorities and women) who have experience it.
Then you wonder why your bigoted policy ends up with lots of incompetent diversity candidates.
And that's the other problem. These diversity programs actually end up becoming a drag for the minorities and women who are passionate and worked hard because they love the field and not because someone trying to fill a diversity quota recruited them.
Sadly it is much more difficult to measure these sorts of effects, so success is defined by number/percentage of minorities/women hired and pay parity/disparity, which are actually atrocious metrics to use for too many reasons to enumerate.
In my experience, 90% of security warnings are rubbish. For example, I recall when UAC came to Windows Vista. I don't ever recall clicking deny/cancel/no (or whatever it was) with the possible exception of a situation like "oops, I meant to click the executable right next to that one."
Same deal with Java applets. My bank uses a Java applet for depositing checks. I get a warning from the browser every single time, despite selecting the "always trust applets from this publisher" (or something like that option).
Of course, there are lots of software packages with instructions like "Step 1: Disable your antivirus." or, worse, "Step 1: If you get any security warning dialogs just click to accept them."
In fact, I've never encountered a single person who can actually point to an occasion where a security dialog alerted them to a real threat that was then neutralized. Even worse, one of the more common warnings (the untrusted SSL certificate/issuer) has confused people even more into thinking that "red address bar means not secure and green lock means secure", when in fact your browser's trust of the certificate's issuer has exactly zero impact on how secure the connection is. We've been conditioned to treat all these warnings as noise. Incidentally, people ignore speed limit signs at least 90% of the time for exactly the same reason: we've been taught that they're meaningless.
They're filling needed jobs and helping to keep the local economies moving by doing tough, dirty, and low-paying work that most citizens don't want.
This is what I don't get. The problem isn't that citizens won't do the jobs. The problem is that employers don't want to pay what the market demands. Do you realize that the argument you make is the exact same argument used by those support expanding the H1B program? Heck, why even bother? Just tell tech companies to start hiring illegal immigrants because citizens don't want to do the tough, dirty, low paying job of developing software or managing IT systems.
We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism.
Really? Univision is one of the reasons I came to understand how blatant the liberal bias in the US media is. For example, there are lots of (legal) immigrants and children of immigrants who believe, now brace yourselves, that people who come to the US illegally are in fact criminals and that the right thing to do is to enforce the law. However, watching Univision's coverage of immigration-related matters, you will never hear anything about those people. All you will hear is how we need amnesty now. Come to think of it, they are really no different than any other major media outlet.
Vibrant journalism indeed. I once had a great deal of respect for Univision and their news people, but they have certainly proved they are biased. For example, according to Univision hispanic/latino/a Democrat politicians are held in high regard because of how their ethnic background helps them better understand the plight of the common latino/a in this country. However, hispanic/latino/a Republicans are considered sell outs and are demonized. Come to think of it, black politicians suffer the same problem. You can't be ethnic and go against the approved group-think.
I'll probably get modded into oblivion, but it's the truth.
Just the political elites doing what they do irrespective of the skill set of people they are employing. People keep banging on about corruption in some third world nation when corruption is well and truly alive in your back yard.
Actually, this is not a political elite mindset thing, it is a government mindset thing.
About 10 years ago or so I attended a government information assurance (they didn't call it cybersecurity back then) conference. The keynote speaker was a technical high up (maybe CIO, maybe CTO) of one of the three letter agencies. He said to an auditorium full of government information assurance managers something to the effect of, "the federal government is the only large organization that will regularly take people with no technical education, no technical training, and no technical knowledge/experience and put them into the inherently technical role of being responsible for securing information systems." You could hear a pin drop.
The point is that this sort of thing has been going on forever in the government (a campaign functions in nearly the same way as the government in many respects) for a long time. It makes sense why the government gets hit with so many data breaches. In fact, it was always surprising to me that it didn't happen more often.
Remember that the huge gains of these individuals have been made during the administration of a president who had as wealth redistribution, a la Robin Hood, as a stated goal of his presidency. Now, go look at who each of these billionaires, with a b, is supporting for president, and ask yourself if that candidate is really going to "stick it to the rich, and help the middle class" or if the rich will keep getting richer.
Don't get me wrong. I am all for people being compensated for their efforts and have nothing against people taking risk and profiting from the risk taking. But, if you happen to think that these folks got where they are by acting against their own interests, you are definitely kidding yourself.
In this case, you whatch the movie and don't even see those 1-2 minutes from the trailer that were worthwhile.
Because, by the time the executives are done meddling with the movie, those scenes didn't even make it to the final cut that was released in theater.
Good point. I guess that in either case the trailer gives a deceptive view what the movie will contain. Most movies nowadays are rubbish, so I tend to be picky about what movies I watch. In 99% of the cases I wait for the movie to come out on DVD, and check out the reputable reviews (not necessarily just the IMDB star rating) so I don't waste my time/money.
I've lost count of how many "comedy" movies I've see where the movie didn't match up to the trailer. Specifically, I'm thinking of the movies where there are about 1-2 minutes of gut-busting scenes in the trailer, then you watch the movie only to find out that those 1-2 minutes were all the worthwhile comedy content in the whole movie. I've seen much the same with other movie genres. It is very disappointing.
The way Hollywood cranks out movies now it is little better than an assembly-line. Worse, perhaps, because a decent assembly-line generally produces good quality products. It is one of the reasons there is rarely more than one movie a year that makes me want to actually go to the theater.
I'd like to see the government provide relief from DRM-related laws when a company goes out of business, drops support for a product, or when the (ever lengthening) copyright term expires. In fact, I'd like to see that in order be able to assert copyright over an encumbered work that the rights holder must have on deposit with the Library of Congress all necessary software/devices/documentation/etc. to ensure that the Library of Congress can remove the encumbrances for all US citizens when it becomes appropriate under the law (e.g., the work is abandoned or its copyright term expires). The way things are going now, we are going to end up with an entire generation of creative works which will be under a, for all practical purposes, perpetual copyright. Sure the technology will eventually advance to the point that today's DRM will be breakable like a child's toy, but the cases will still have to be fought in court. The perversion of copyright needs to be fixed properly instead of leaving it as a battle for future generations.
The FBI says they're only using the planes to track specific suspects in serious crime investigations.... then why are the registered to fake companies under fake names?
That's the easiest part to explain. Not all criminals are stupid. Some of them are capable of spotting a plane with optics and looking up a tail number. The hard part to explain is why they're gathering footage from protests. Their bullshit explanations don't wash.
I agree. This is especially problematic with organized crime, cartels, etc. This sort of thing allows law enforcement to compartmentalize better. That is, not all investigators on a case need to know the when/where/why of special surveillance activities.
The more problematic part, and the part which gives me conflict about this (i.e., I believe law enforcement should have tools that allow them to do their jobs effectively, but I also believe that tools which promote/facilitate the erosion of civil liberties should be out of reach), is that while many people in the government are upstanding and law abiding, many are not. Remember, the employees of the federal government come from the same population in which we all live. There are good people and bad people. For every "good cop" who respects the rights of the average citizen and takes great care in discharging his or her responsibilities there is at least one "bad cop" who doesn't care or who willfully infringes on people's rights because he or she believes it is OK (e.g., the ends justify the means). We don't typically hear about the good cops and the cases with good outcomes, since those don't tend to make for good headlines. Rather we only hear about the bad episodes, of which there are plenty.
This is most definitely not an easy problem to solve.
How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence? I'm a pretty liberal guy, but this is liberalism going crazy. Removing characters from our language is not going to make the world more or less peaceful (and I'm sorry, but now emojis for better or worse, are part of our language). This is some crazy 1984 New Speak stuff.
I am seriously frustrated by this, same as you. When I read "dial down violence in emojii" I thought I was caught some sort of Kafkaesque tyranny of the perpetually offended. I mean seriously, the fact that people get worked up over this is about as laughable as people getting worked up over the old Looney Toons bits with Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote or with Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny (that one usually featured an actual firearm, <GASP>).
An emojii is literally a cartoon depiction. The world has much bigger problems. For example, real violence.
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person...
It's OK. They weren't trying to break the law. Their predecessors did the same thing and they only did it out of convenience. They were just careless, but they're real sorry and they promise not to do it again (and get caught).
Look, I know that I can filter stories, but the fact is I don't mind the occasional story about Microsoft. Like it or not, they are an integral piece of the tech space and what they do is important to nerds. However, I do object to the constant promotion/bashing/click-baiting with the nearly daily (sometimes multiple times daily) Windows 10 stories. Please either ease up or add a Windows 10 story tag (and then apply it to all Windows 10 stories) so that they can be filtered out specifically.
But RedMonk's methodology involves studying the prevalence of each language on both Stack Overflow and GitHub, a correlation which "we believe to be predictive of future use, hence their value.
I know smartphones are all the rage, but there are tonnes of old school embedded devices out there and tonnes more still being developed. By old school I mean run on some embedded-type CPU or ASIC, run some custom OS, and only have a C compiler available (probably the one written by the team that bootstrapped development of the initial version of the device).
I doubt that developers working on those devices regularly post their code to GitHub and fairly positive that not many of them would post to StackOverflow asking how to make a flubord close with a genie effect on Ubuntu using clang when there is a PS/2 mouse connected.
A methodology that relies on GH and SO posts is likely to be strongly biased toward new web-based and open source development.
Could it be that outside of a small number of big cities on the east coast (NYC, Boston, DC, ???) the vast overwhelming majority of US adults drive automobiles to go practically everywhere? Combine that with our inability to plan ahead (simple human nature), and it is not a stretch to think of something like this being extremely common:
Time to go drinking
OK, I'll drive myself to the bar/party/venue
Crap, I've got a bit of a buzz, but if I call a taxi/uber/catch a lift then I'll have to figure out how to get back to my car tomorrow
It's not that bad, I only had 3 shots and 2 beers, plus I ate before I got here
The way to make something like uber have a dent in impaired driving is for the party organizer/host to "enforce" it. For example, I attended a party a while back where one of the hosts was the entry/exit summoning ubers/taxis for people as they left if they had been drinking or didn't have a designated driver with them. Sadly, that's the only occasion where I witnessed that sort of diligence.
The places where uber does really well are also the places where people are accustomed to and want to get around without driving themselves or owning their own cars. This sort of thing directly correlates with population density. Certainly that some suburban areas where uber does OK and provides a good service, but the vast majority of the American population is spread out over much larger and less populous areas. In a town of 1200 people with 8 bars on a downtown strip, I doubt that you will find 50 uber drivers ready to drive people home from the bars.
The fact is, humans suck at assessing risk. We are either wilfully ignorant of the risk (i.e., we do nothing to educate ourselves) or we don't care (i.e., I can do what I want, regardless of the impact/consequences to myself and others). This is why phishing, malware, and social engineering are such problems. This is also why people die of coronary diseases from a lifetime of poor diet and poor fitness, from smoking-related illnesses, and why people still drive impaired and get themselves and/or others killed.
It depends on the volume of business and a variety of factors. For example, I was recently considering the purchase of a new automobile. There was one make which I ended up removing from consideration because their infotainment was not open for me to hack on. I felt like this was important and so I told the salesman why it was important to me and that this single factor resulted in my no longer considering any models from this manufacturer.
In another instance, a specific dealership had two different sales people contact me by phone, essentially competing with each other. I didn't like that so I didn't bother calling back either one. Several days later I received a form inquiry from the general manager (certainly an automated message). I took the time to respond, explaining that I wouldn't be doing business with them because of the poor coordination of their salesmen's activities. If I already talked with one and explained what I needed in a vehicle, why was another going to call me and try to make me go through all that again?
Granted, these are different examples, but I make this small effort in the hopes that it will either improve the situation for the person who comes along after me or for myself the next time. Of course, the larger the organization, the less likely this is to have an effect. I expect that the GM of the dealership with two salesmen could possibly do something based on my feedback. I fully expect nothing to change from the manufacturer of the car with the closed infotainment system. However, if 10,000 customers all told different dealers the same thing or bothered to write to the manufacturer directly, then something might change.
Southwest and other airlines are by necessity very large companies. If you tell a booking agent something it is almost certain no manager will hear of it. But, if you contact the execs directly, perhaps if there is a VP of customer service or an ombudsman, contact that person and let them know that you value openness and that you are specifically avoiding giving them your business because of their lack of it. If they hear this from enough people, the will get the message: we are losing out on business because of our approach to blah blah blah.
So, bottom line: companies should be as transparent as their customers demand. If you, the customer, don't demand then they won't know and won't make any change.
Economies are just a collection of processes that convert raw materials and labour into useful goods and services
You can prove anything if you start with a bad enough premise.
I know, right. Like this:
"[P]oorest members would receive a basic income that gradually increases as the economy becomes more efficient, plateauing at a level where they can afford everything they want to consume,"
I mean, seriously, even a cursory reading of the worst written history book in the world will expose this simple undeniable principle: there is no limit to human greed.
In this new Utopian economy, the de facto currency would become power and control over other people. Sort of like now, but worse.
Here is how I make the determination: if it reduces my cognitive burden now, later when I return to the same code, or other programmers who will have to maintain it, then I include it
These days, a programmers time is nearly always far and away the most expensive commodity employed in any project. Why should I spend time asking myself about minutiae rather than focusing on architecture and algorithms?
I can respect what this professor is saying. However, there are plenty of industries/careers/endeavors that have it far worse.
Take safety, for example. You can have thousands of successes, but then everything goes in smoke after an failure or two. The recent happenings with Dole and Blue Bell ice cream are good examples. Same for law enforcement. You can have a department that employs hundreds or thousands of officers who daily have positive interactions with the community and uphold the law. Then one or two officers do something stupid or malicious and all of it is called into question. There are so many ongoing examples of this that I don't think I even need to bring any up (being that nearly all are very racially charged and that isn't the point here). Military/Intelligence is the same thing as well. Foil 1000 terrorist plots and the public will never know. Let one slip through and all of a sudden... well you get the idea.
What the professor is describing is the human tendency to focus on the parts of things that we like. Ironically, the attention generated by his "failure CV" is a result of the fact that many of us understand the failing he is describing and can identify with it because we do the same thing and perhaps somewhat wish the world was a little different, more balanced.
Slashdot Mirror
Will the drones expect a gratuity?
Virtually all modern firewall/IDP systems have SSL decryption. Given that virtually all websites use SSL nowadays, it makes no sense at all to even have an IDP if it can't handle SSL traffic.
Until you run into an app/site that breaks, then you have to disable it (at least for that site/app). Like this: "Dropbox not working when Client DPI-SSL is enabled" (link)
The "problem" is that those SSL/TLS packet inspection approaches are the functional equivalent of a man-in-the-middle attack. Given how reliant we are becoming on SSL/TLS, it is no wonder that forward thinking sites and apps are taking measures to protect against that. Of course, those same measures defeat the good guys being able to protect against more sophisticated threats.
I think Obi-Wan even spoke of this: "I felt a great disturbance in the [Windows], as if millions of [webcams] suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
Obviously, he was speaking allegorically when he said those words, with the Force representing Windows and voices representing webcams. It makes sense if you think of it, with Gates and Balmer representing Palpatine and Vader having power over the dark side of the force (the new guy is Kylo-Ren), and the webcam is the modern "voice" we use to communicate. Yes, it all makes sense. Sadly, now it has come to pass.
Very true. However, this is one of the rare instances where there exists a solid and nearly complete technological solution (telecom is regulated and it would be entirely feasible to both fix the problem you describe and then implement the solution I described) to something that is social problem (people being deceptive and abusive over telecommunications media). If the problem doesn't get fixed then it is either because institutional inertia on the part of the telecom providers or because they think it would be more profitable to maintain the status quo.
The group hopes to put in place Caller ID verification standards that would help block calls from spoofed phone numbers and to consider a "Do Not Originate" list that would block spoofers from impersonating specific phone numbers from governments, banks or others.
This is totally the wrong approach. It is why, for example, antivirus products tend to not work all that well. Instead, the phone company should not be able to legally allow phone number spoofing unless and until the entity that wants to spoof proves to the phone company that they or another legal entity they control is the legal owner of the number which will be displayed. I'm sure it will still be abused because people are sort of relentless in their desire to game the system, but it would be orders of magnitude better than what we have now.
Not only do you get people that are worse off, it tends to overcorrect to remove non-minorities.
Not only that, but then the actual best qualified minorities get looked at and they wonder to themselves, "Are they looking at me and wondering if I am actually the best qualified or of I'm here because of a quota? Am I going to have to prove myself by working 50% or 100% harder than the white guy sitting next to me at the table despite the fact that I already worked 50% or 100% harder to get here because I love what I do and this what I was born for?" As a minority who has worked very hard and has a passion for technology that has been a fear of mine. I am thankful that I have not encountered that (or at least if I have I have not taken notice of it), though I have had friends (both other minorities and women) who have experience it.
Then you wonder why your bigoted policy ends up with lots of incompetent diversity candidates.
And that's the other problem. These diversity programs actually end up becoming a drag for the minorities and women who are passionate and worked hard because they love the field and not because someone trying to fill a diversity quota recruited them.
Sadly it is much more difficult to measure these sorts of effects, so success is defined by number/percentage of minorities/women hired and pay parity/disparity, which are actually atrocious metrics to use for too many reasons to enumerate.
In my experience, 90% of security warnings are rubbish. For example, I recall when UAC came to Windows Vista. I don't ever recall clicking deny/cancel/no (or whatever it was) with the possible exception of a situation like "oops, I meant to click the executable right next to that one."
Same deal with Java applets. My bank uses a Java applet for depositing checks. I get a warning from the browser every single time, despite selecting the "always trust applets from this publisher" (or something like that option).
Of course, there are lots of software packages with instructions like "Step 1: Disable your antivirus." or, worse, "Step 1: If you get any security warning dialogs just click to accept them."
In fact, I've never encountered a single person who can actually point to an occasion where a security dialog alerted them to a real threat that was then neutralized. Even worse, one of the more common warnings (the untrusted SSL certificate/issuer) has confused people even more into thinking that "red address bar means not secure and green lock means secure", when in fact your browser's trust of the certificate's issuer has exactly zero impact on how secure the connection is. We've been conditioned to treat all these warnings as noise. Incidentally, people ignore speed limit signs at least 90% of the time for exactly the same reason: we've been taught that they're meaningless.
They're filling needed jobs and helping to keep the local economies moving by doing tough, dirty, and low-paying work that most citizens don't want.
This is what I don't get. The problem isn't that citizens won't do the jobs. The problem is that employers don't want to pay what the market demands. Do you realize that the argument you make is the exact same argument used by those support expanding the H1B program? Heck, why even bother? Just tell tech companies to start hiring illegal immigrants because citizens don't want to do the tough, dirty, low paying job of developing software or managing IT systems.
We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism.
Really? Univision is one of the reasons I came to understand how blatant the liberal bias in the US media is. For example, there are lots of (legal) immigrants and children of immigrants who believe, now brace yourselves, that people who come to the US illegally are in fact criminals and that the right thing to do is to enforce the law. However, watching Univision's coverage of immigration-related matters, you will never hear anything about those people. All you will hear is how we need amnesty now. Come to think of it, they are really no different than any other major media outlet.
Vibrant journalism indeed. I once had a great deal of respect for Univision and their news people, but they have certainly proved they are biased. For example, according to Univision hispanic/latino/a Democrat politicians are held in high regard because of how their ethnic background helps them better understand the plight of the common latino/a in this country. However, hispanic/latino/a Republicans are considered sell outs and are demonized. Come to think of it, black politicians suffer the same problem. You can't be ethnic and go against the approved group-think.
I'll probably get modded into oblivion, but it's the truth.
Just the political elites doing what they do irrespective of the skill set of people they are employing. People keep banging on about corruption in some third world nation when corruption is well and truly alive in your back yard.
Actually, this is not a political elite mindset thing, it is a government mindset thing.
About 10 years ago or so I attended a government information assurance (they didn't call it cybersecurity back then) conference. The keynote speaker was a technical high up (maybe CIO, maybe CTO) of one of the three letter agencies. He said to an auditorium full of government information assurance managers something to the effect of, "the federal government is the only large organization that will regularly take people with no technical education, no technical training, and no technical knowledge/experience and put them into the inherently technical role of being responsible for securing information systems." You could hear a pin drop.
The point is that this sort of thing has been going on forever in the government (a campaign functions in nearly the same way as the government in many respects) for a long time. It makes sense why the government gets hit with so many data breaches. In fact, it was always surprising to me that it didn't happen more often.
In the most innovative, weirdest, and stupidest idea of the month ...
Give it time. We're less than half-way through the month. There's plenty more stupid out there.
Remember that the huge gains of these individuals have been made during the administration of a president who had as wealth redistribution, a la Robin Hood, as a stated goal of his presidency. Now, go look at who each of these billionaires, with a b, is supporting for president, and ask yourself if that candidate is really going to "stick it to the rich, and help the middle class" or if the rich will keep getting richer.
Don't get me wrong. I am all for people being compensated for their efforts and have nothing against people taking risk and profiting from the risk taking. But, if you happen to think that these folks got where they are by acting against their own interests, you are definitely kidding yourself.
In this case, you whatch the movie and don't even see those 1-2 minutes from the trailer that were worthwhile. Because, by the time the executives are done meddling with the movie, those scenes didn't even make it to the final cut that was released in theater.
Good point. I guess that in either case the trailer gives a deceptive view what the movie will contain. Most movies nowadays are rubbish, so I tend to be picky about what movies I watch. In 99% of the cases I wait for the movie to come out on DVD, and check out the reputable reviews (not necessarily just the IMDB star rating) so I don't waste my time/money.
I've lost count of how many "comedy" movies I've see where the movie didn't match up to the trailer. Specifically, I'm thinking of the movies where there are about 1-2 minutes of gut-busting scenes in the trailer, then you watch the movie only to find out that those 1-2 minutes were all the worthwhile comedy content in the whole movie. I've seen much the same with other movie genres. It is very disappointing.
The way Hollywood cranks out movies now it is little better than an assembly-line. Worse, perhaps, because a decent assembly-line generally produces good quality products. It is one of the reasons there is rarely more than one movie a year that makes me want to actually go to the theater.
I'd like to see the government provide relief from DRM-related laws when a company goes out of business, drops support for a product, or when the (ever lengthening) copyright term expires. In fact, I'd like to see that in order be able to assert copyright over an encumbered work that the rights holder must have on deposit with the Library of Congress all necessary software/devices/documentation/etc. to ensure that the Library of Congress can remove the encumbrances for all US citizens when it becomes appropriate under the law (e.g., the work is abandoned or its copyright term expires). The way things are going now, we are going to end up with an entire generation of creative works which will be under a, for all practical purposes, perpetual copyright. Sure the technology will eventually advance to the point that today's DRM will be breakable like a child's toy, but the cases will still have to be fought in court. The perversion of copyright needs to be fixed properly instead of leaving it as a battle for future generations.
The FBI says they're only using the planes to track specific suspects in serious crime investigations.... then why are the registered to fake companies under fake names?
That's the easiest part to explain. Not all criminals are stupid. Some of them are capable of spotting a plane with optics and looking up a tail number. The hard part to explain is why they're gathering footage from protests. Their bullshit explanations don't wash.
I agree. This is especially problematic with organized crime, cartels, etc. This sort of thing allows law enforcement to compartmentalize better. That is, not all investigators on a case need to know the when/where/why of special surveillance activities.
The more problematic part, and the part which gives me conflict about this (i.e., I believe law enforcement should have tools that allow them to do their jobs effectively, but I also believe that tools which promote/facilitate the erosion of civil liberties should be out of reach), is that while many people in the government are upstanding and law abiding, many are not. Remember, the employees of the federal government come from the same population in which we all live. There are good people and bad people. For every "good cop" who respects the rights of the average citizen and takes great care in discharging his or her responsibilities there is at least one "bad cop" who doesn't care or who willfully infringes on people's rights because he or she believes it is OK (e.g., the ends justify the means). We don't typically hear about the good cops and the cases with good outcomes, since those don't tend to make for good headlines. Rather we only hear about the bad episodes, of which there are plenty.
This is most definitely not an easy problem to solve.
How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence? I'm a pretty liberal guy, but this is liberalism going crazy. Removing characters from our language is not going to make the world more or less peaceful (and I'm sorry, but now emojis for better or worse, are part of our language). This is some crazy 1984 New Speak stuff.
I am seriously frustrated by this, same as you. When I read "dial down violence in emojii" I thought I was caught some sort of Kafkaesque tyranny of the perpetually offended. I mean seriously, the fact that people get worked up over this is about as laughable as people getting worked up over the old Looney Toons bits with Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote or with Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny (that one usually featured an actual firearm, <GASP>).
An emojii is literally a cartoon depiction. The world has much bigger problems. For example, real violence.
Wanna bet no one goes to jail?
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person ...
It's OK. They weren't trying to break the law. Their predecessors did the same thing and they only did it out of convenience. They were just careless, but they're real sorry and they promise not to do it again (and get caught).
Look, I know that I can filter stories, but the fact is I don't mind the occasional story about Microsoft. Like it or not, they are an integral piece of the tech space and what they do is important to nerds. However, I do object to the constant promotion/bashing/click-baiting with the nearly daily (sometimes multiple times daily) Windows 10 stories. Please either ease up or add a Windows 10 story tag (and then apply it to all Windows 10 stories) so that they can be filtered out specifically.
But RedMonk's methodology involves studying the prevalence of each language on both Stack Overflow and GitHub, a correlation which "we believe to be predictive of future use, hence their value.
I know smartphones are all the rage, but there are tonnes of old school embedded devices out there and tonnes more still being developed. By old school I mean run on some embedded-type CPU or ASIC, run some custom OS, and only have a C compiler available (probably the one written by the team that bootstrapped development of the initial version of the device).
I doubt that developers working on those devices regularly post their code to GitHub and fairly positive that not many of them would post to StackOverflow asking how to make a flubord close with a genie effect on Ubuntu using clang when there is a PS/2 mouse connected.
A methodology that relies on GH and SO posts is likely to be strongly biased toward new web-based and open source development.
Could it be that outside of a small number of big cities on the east coast (NYC, Boston, DC, ???) the vast overwhelming majority of US adults drive automobiles to go practically everywhere? Combine that with our inability to plan ahead (simple human nature), and it is not a stretch to think of something like this being extremely common:
The way to make something like uber have a dent in impaired driving is for the party organizer/host to "enforce" it. For example, I attended a party a while back where one of the hosts was the entry/exit summoning ubers/taxis for people as they left if they had been drinking or didn't have a designated driver with them. Sadly, that's the only occasion where I witnessed that sort of diligence.
The places where uber does really well are also the places where people are accustomed to and want to get around without driving themselves or owning their own cars. This sort of thing directly correlates with population density. Certainly that some suburban areas where uber does OK and provides a good service, but the vast majority of the American population is spread out over much larger and less populous areas. In a town of 1200 people with 8 bars on a downtown strip, I doubt that you will find 50 uber drivers ready to drive people home from the bars.
The fact is, humans suck at assessing risk. We are either wilfully ignorant of the risk (i.e., we do nothing to educate ourselves) or we don't care (i.e., I can do what I want, regardless of the impact/consequences to myself and others). This is why phishing, malware, and social engineering are such problems. This is also why people die of coronary diseases from a lifetime of poor diet and poor fitness, from smoking-related illnesses, and why people still drive impaired and get themselves and/or others killed.
The companies understand one thing: profit.
It depends on the volume of business and a variety of factors. For example, I was recently considering the purchase of a new automobile. There was one make which I ended up removing from consideration because their infotainment was not open for me to hack on. I felt like this was important and so I told the salesman why it was important to me and that this single factor resulted in my no longer considering any models from this manufacturer.
In another instance, a specific dealership had two different sales people contact me by phone, essentially competing with each other. I didn't like that so I didn't bother calling back either one. Several days later I received a form inquiry from the general manager (certainly an automated message). I took the time to respond, explaining that I wouldn't be doing business with them because of the poor coordination of their salesmen's activities. If I already talked with one and explained what I needed in a vehicle, why was another going to call me and try to make me go through all that again?
Granted, these are different examples, but I make this small effort in the hopes that it will either improve the situation for the person who comes along after me or for myself the next time. Of course, the larger the organization, the less likely this is to have an effect. I expect that the GM of the dealership with two salesmen could possibly do something based on my feedback. I fully expect nothing to change from the manufacturer of the car with the closed infotainment system. However, if 10,000 customers all told different dealers the same thing or bothered to write to the manufacturer directly, then something might change.
Southwest and other airlines are by necessity very large companies. If you tell a booking agent something it is almost certain no manager will hear of it. But, if you contact the execs directly, perhaps if there is a VP of customer service or an ombudsman, contact that person and let them know that you value openness and that you are specifically avoiding giving them your business because of their lack of it. If they hear this from enough people, the will get the message: we are losing out on business because of our approach to blah blah blah.
So, bottom line: companies should be as transparent as their customers demand. If you, the customer, don't demand then they won't know and won't make any change.
Economies are just a collection of processes that convert raw materials and labour into useful goods and services
You can prove anything if you start with a bad enough premise.
I know, right. Like this:
"[P]oorest members would receive a basic income that gradually increases as the economy becomes more efficient, plateauing at a level where they can afford everything they want to consume,"
I mean, seriously, even a cursory reading of the worst written history book in the world will expose this simple undeniable principle: there is no limit to human greed.
In this new Utopian economy, the de facto currency would become power and control over other people. Sort of like now, but worse.
When Do You Include 'Unnecessary' Code?
Here is how I make the determination: if it reduces my cognitive burden now, later when I return to the same code, or other programmers who will have to maintain it, then I include it
These days, a programmers time is nearly always far and away the most expensive commodity employed in any project. Why should I spend time asking myself about minutiae rather than focusing on architecture and algorithms?
I can respect what this professor is saying. However, there are plenty of industries/careers/endeavors that have it far worse.
Take safety, for example. You can have thousands of successes, but then everything goes in smoke after an failure or two. The recent happenings with Dole and Blue Bell ice cream are good examples. Same for law enforcement. You can have a department that employs hundreds or thousands of officers who daily have positive interactions with the community and uphold the law. Then one or two officers do something stupid or malicious and all of it is called into question. There are so many ongoing examples of this that I don't think I even need to bring any up (being that nearly all are very racially charged and that isn't the point here). Military/Intelligence is the same thing as well. Foil 1000 terrorist plots and the public will never know. Let one slip through and all of a sudden ... well you get the idea.
What the professor is describing is the human tendency to focus on the parts of things that we like. Ironically, the attention generated by his "failure CV" is a result of the fact that many of us understand the failing he is describing and can identify with it because we do the same thing and perhaps somewhat wish the world was a little different, more balanced.