I have problems with certain ads containing content that is so processing intensive it kills my computer's overall performance. I run a dual-headed configuration, and I tend to keep a browser running on my secondary screen for reference while playing WoW. Most of the time this isn't a problem, but certain ads on Wowhead cause a very significant drop in frame-rate. I know its the ads because if I refresh the page (same content, different ads) the situation goes away. If I keep refreshing until I get the offending ads back, my performance again falls through the floor.
The problem I see with this top-10 list is that it seems to be ignoring everything outside of the mainstream. Granted, within the world of the stereotypical desktop PC, the stereotypical office server, and the stereotypical web environment, these ten things may appear to some to be dead or dying. In other areas of the industry, however, they are very much alive and well.
Embedded systems (as others have point out) use C and assembly extensively. Their requirements can't afford the luxury of bloated runtime environments or 500-lines of superfluous wizard-generated framework code. Non-relational databases are used in scientific and engineering settings where the data are often non-tabular. Finally, many applications use non-IP networks where the feature-set of IP is unnecessary and its overhead is deemed too great. High-performance clusters and supercomputer installations are a good example.
People need to realize there is more to computing than what they see at Best Buy or on TV. Unfortunately, the vast majority of newcomers to the industry are only being taught the mainstream stuff, as evidenced by the following excerpt from a real-world conversation:
Veteran:"What is your reason for choosing a SQL database for this application?" Rookie:"It's what I know."
They're talking about doing this here in California too. My initial reaction is that if regulators really want to reduce our energy consumption, perhaps they should examine the 200+ amp service feeds that are installed in each new home. It seems pretty simple to me. If you want people to use less power, give them less. Sure, they'll bitch about not being able to run their stove and oven and dishwasher and clothes washer and clothes dryer and air-conditioner and three refrigerators and four plasma TVs and computers and video games and household lighting all simultaneously, but perhaps, just perhaps, with less power available they might learn to be more responsible about its usage.
Why does Microsoft use the term "verb" in reference to HTTP when the official term is "method" and everyone else in the world (that I've encountered anyway) uses the official term? I can only speculate in both cases as to why these companies make such terminology changes. I can, however, explain the effects of such an act.
When you have a large group of people that all learn web technology the Microsoft way, it becomes ingrained into their mind that the proper term is verb. So long as they remain in MS world all is well. However, as soon as they try to interact with someone in another part of the industry (e.g. UNIX-land), nomenclature issues arise and confusion ensues. The net result is difficulty in getting these two worlds to interact, which plays very nicely into Microsoft's way of business.
As much as I hate to say it, perhaps Google is thinking along similar lines.
I just spoke to someone I know in UC Berkeley administration about this situation and they told me the following. Please note that I am paraphrasing here and none of this is to be taken as an official statement by the University of California.
The spirit of the license is exactly as people have interpreted it. It is not intended to limit or hinder people in any way. On the contrary, it is fully intended that their products be freely used, modified, and distributed. That's what academic research is all about. Berkeley has neither the time nor energy nor desire to chase people down. They just want credit for doing the work.
In addition, most of Berkeley's projects are government-funded. As such, they are not generally permitted to make any profit from the work. It has to be made public and people have to be allowed to extend it for their own purposes. The essence of public research is to benefit society as a whole, not just the corporate sector.
As for the question of third-party derivative works being used to make a profit, there is nothing stated in the license to prohibit such acts. Thus, it would seem to be legal. However, it could be argued that doing so is against the spirit of the license. Whether or not Berkeley could enforce that spirit in a court of law (assuming they even care to do so) is another matter.
If anybody wants an official statement, they should contact Berkeley's legal department.
Would somebody please explain to me how the willful destruction of U.S. Government property is legal? I don't like RFID chips either, but I have a hard time justifying this sort of action.
It's sad but true. Your typical mass-market consumer will almost always buy the item with more bells-and-whistles over the item that is actually the better product, especially if it's cheaper. Consumers tend to care more about flash and glitter, whereas professionals tend to care more about getting a job done right. Just compare equivalent products in the consumer and professional categories. Which has more knobs and buttons? It varies by industry, but in most cases the pro-grade products are much, much simpler.
The notion of complete code-reuse and never coding anything from scratch is a very good idea in theory. The problem is that in order for it to work the components from which things are built have to be reliable and trustworthy, and such things are not always easy to find.
I've been studying errors and defects in engineering (both computers and otherwise) for many years. I was raised by an accident investigator, so I have an innate understanding of why things fail and what people can do to avoid it. The core reason for anything to fail is the assumption of correctness. In all accidents and failures, one can always find somebody somewhere that made an assumption about a component's behavior. The fact they did not know its true behavior caused them to employ the component when they should not have. Thus, the other elements of the system that depended on its assumed behavior also fail, and it just cascades from there.
In software, such assumptions of behavior often take the form of (to name a few) failing to detect null-pointers, failing to enforce buffer limits, or failing to enforce proper protocol operation. Opening the source to the world can help to detect such assumptions, but someone still has to check. As overkill as it may seem, I've been known to write unit tests for third-party libraries to ensure they behave as their documentation says. Many times I've found them to be faulty. Had I not tested them and just assumed their correctness, my product would not have worked. Even though my code may have been correct and the author of the libraries were at fault for their code not working right, I too would have been in error for making a false assumption.
Until such time as we can trust the components upon which we base our work, we cannot employ 100% code reuse. To reach such a stage, we need a radical shift in our approach to engineering. We need to ensure that our products do as they're supposed to and not just assume. Unfortunately, the rush to market often prevents us from doing what we should, and that's a shame. First to market is not always best to market.
I just had a discussion with someone about these images, and they kept insisting the geology of Cydonia is unnatural looking. No matter how much I tried to get them to understand they were basing all of their views on what they knew of Earth, they just wouldn't accept the possibility that Martian geology might be different. I'm not saying they're wrong and I'm right, I'm just trying to get them to acknowledge that there are vast differences between the planets and the conditions thereon, and that said differences could account for "unnatural" looking features.
Some may argue that because of these numbers Firefox is riddled with holes and is no more secure than IE or any other browser. Here's the thing, though. It is Firefox's open-source nature than made this analysis possible. An independent party (could have been you or me) did this analysis. Try doing that with IE. Microsoft isn't going to let you.
Good catch. The press release was issued on April Fool's Day. Did the submitter or anybody at Slashdot check to see whether this was intended as a gag?
We have to remember a fundamental rule of science is that nothing can ever truly be proved, only disproved. What is a "law" today may be debunked tomorrow with the introduction of new data. As unlikely as it is that the conservation of energy law will be struck down by this technology (or any other for that matter), as good scientists we must leave open the possibility. We're nothing but bigots if we don't.
I had a similar problem years ago here in California, where a small-town police department did nothing when a roommate wiped my hard drive in retaliation for a stupid personal matter. After a bit of digging, I uncovered the relevant piece of the state's penal code that outlaws such action and reported it to the cops. They immediately jumped into action once they realized it was a criminal offense. Law enforcement doesn't necessarily have every law memorized.
Here's a scenario. A small chiild wakes up in the middle of the night and walks into the living room where the parents are watching TV. While there, a Girls Gone Wild ad comes on the screen, which the parents decide they don't want their child to see. With this technology, they'd be screwed. One would hope the power could simply be turned off, but what if that feature is disabled too? One would hope the TV could be unplugged, but what if TV manufacturers start installing batteries or capacitor-banks to provide just enough juice to run the unit for a single commercial?
There is a rule in user-interface design that says the user must always be in control. Unfortunately, the quest for bigger profits seems to be redefining who the user is, taking control away from the consumer and giving it to the producer.
Isn't it interesting how statistics can be presented to prove anyone's point? Canada has about 1/10th the population of the U.S. Factoring that into the equation, the U.S. has about six times the number of unemployed people and about five times as many violent crimes.
That's a very good analogy, and it reminds me of a book I read many years back. It was suggesting that people view governments as service providers, and to treat them the same as any other kind of vendor. If you're dissatisfied with the level of service you're getting, find someone else that will give you what you want. We expect to have that option in business. Why should government be any different? They are, after all, doing nothing more than providing various forms of protection services (financial, physical, etc.) in exchange for our taxes.
By that logic, nobody born in a free country like America should ever leave the immediate location of their birth. Why should they move across town or to another state when they have all of those good things that you mention right where they are? Why is it acceptable to abandon a local or state government but not a national one?
You seem to be suggesting that, regardless of one's personal feelings and aspirations, they should only move under certain circumstances and not others. Who defines that criteria, and who is to say that it's equally acceptable to all?
What's your feeling about people immigrating TO the United States? If one applies your position equally to all countries of the world, nobody should ever leave their native land. Are you advocating that? This country is largely populated by immigrants and those descended from immigrants. I don't know the details of your family background, but chances are they were immigrants at some point. Should they have stayed in their home country? Should you have instead been born and grown up there instead of here?
Coming from the opposite perspective (US to Canada), I'd have to agree. I grew up around Canadians, and I've always found them to be much more relaxed, easy-going, and friendly. These days I travel to B.C. a lot on business. I go back and forth across the border frequently, and there's a noticeable difference in the way people drive, in their approaches to customer service, and just in general demeanor. In short, they seem to be less worried about life and just live it more.
While I agree that it was wrong for the AOL employee to pursue a minor in such a fashion, I think the lawsuit is completely lame. She's taking someone to task for something in which, by all apperances, she was a willing participant. That's like a kid using a fake ID to enter a bar, proceeding to get drunk off their ass, and then calling the cops on the bartender for selling alcohol to a minor. They were involved in the crime -- they shouldn't be entitled to jack.
This highlights a noticeable difference between the British and American dialects of English. Britons tend to refer to groups of people in the plural sense (e.g. marketing are good). Americans, however, tend to refer to groups of people in the singular sense (e.g. marketing is good). Neither way is more or less correct than the other -- just different.
Slashdot Mirror
I have problems with certain ads containing content that is so processing intensive it kills my computer's overall performance. I run a dual-headed configuration, and I tend to keep a browser running on my secondary screen for reference while playing WoW. Most of the time this isn't a problem, but certain ads on Wowhead cause a very significant drop in frame-rate. I know its the ads because if I refresh the page (same content, different ads) the situation goes away. If I keep refreshing until I get the offending ads back, my performance again falls through the floor.
The problem I see with this top-10 list is that it seems to be ignoring everything outside of the mainstream. Granted, within the world of the stereotypical desktop PC, the stereotypical office server, and the stereotypical web environment, these ten things may appear to some to be dead or dying. In other areas of the industry, however, they are very much alive and well.
Embedded systems (as others have point out) use C and assembly extensively. Their requirements can't afford the luxury of bloated runtime environments or 500-lines of superfluous wizard-generated framework code. Non-relational databases are used in scientific and engineering settings where the data are often non-tabular. Finally, many applications use non-IP networks where the feature-set of IP is unnecessary and its overhead is deemed too great. High-performance clusters and supercomputer installations are a good example.
People need to realize there is more to computing than what they see at Best Buy or on TV. Unfortunately, the vast majority of newcomers to the industry are only being taught the mainstream stuff, as evidenced by the following excerpt from a real-world conversation:
Veteran: "What is your reason for choosing a SQL database for this application?"
Rookie: "It's what I know."
They're talking about doing this here in California too. My initial reaction is that if regulators really want to reduce our energy consumption, perhaps they should examine the 200+ amp service feeds that are installed in each new home. It seems pretty simple to me. If you want people to use less power, give them less. Sure, they'll bitch about not being able to run their stove and oven and dishwasher and clothes washer and clothes dryer and air-conditioner and three refrigerators and four plasma TVs and computers and video games and household lighting all simultaneously, but perhaps, just perhaps, with less power available they might learn to be more responsible about its usage.
Or maybe not.
Why does Microsoft use the term "verb" in reference to HTTP when the official term is "method" and everyone else in the world (that I've encountered anyway) uses the official term? I can only speculate in both cases as to why these companies make such terminology changes. I can, however, explain the effects of such an act.
When you have a large group of people that all learn web technology the Microsoft way, it becomes ingrained into their mind that the proper term is verb. So long as they remain in MS world all is well. However, as soon as they try to interact with someone in another part of the industry (e.g. UNIX-land), nomenclature issues arise and confusion ensues. The net result is difficulty in getting these two worlds to interact, which plays very nicely into Microsoft's way of business.
As much as I hate to say it, perhaps Google is thinking along similar lines.
I just spoke to someone I know in UC Berkeley administration about this situation and they told me the following. Please note that I am paraphrasing here and none of this is to be taken as an official statement by the University of California.
The spirit of the license is exactly as people have interpreted it. It is not intended to limit or hinder people in any way. On the contrary, it is fully intended that their products be freely used, modified, and distributed. That's what academic research is all about. Berkeley has neither the time nor energy nor desire to chase people down. They just want credit for doing the work.
In addition, most of Berkeley's projects are government-funded. As such, they are not generally permitted to make any profit from the work. It has to be made public and people have to be allowed to extend it for their own purposes. The essence of public research is to benefit society as a whole, not just the corporate sector.
As for the question of third-party derivative works being used to make a profit, there is nothing stated in the license to prohibit such acts. Thus, it would seem to be legal. However, it could be argued that doing so is against the spirit of the license. Whether or not Berkeley could enforce that spirit in a court of law (assuming they even care to do so) is another matter.
If anybody wants an official statement, they should contact Berkeley's legal department.
Would somebody please explain to me how the willful destruction of U.S. Government property is legal? I don't like RFID chips either, but I have a hard time justifying this sort of action.
The guy's name isn't Bernard Shiffman by any chance, is it? :P
It's sad but true. Your typical mass-market consumer will almost always buy the item with more bells-and-whistles over the item that is actually the better product, especially if it's cheaper. Consumers tend to care more about flash and glitter, whereas professionals tend to care more about getting a job done right. Just compare equivalent products in the consumer and professional categories. Which has more knobs and buttons? It varies by industry, but in most cases the pro-grade products are much, much simpler.
Is it nice to be able to flim-flam the boss once in a while?
I'm sorry, but the fact that anyone would even consider this paints a very sad picture of society.
The notion of complete code-reuse and never coding anything from scratch is a very good idea in theory. The problem is that in order for it to work the components from which things are built have to be reliable and trustworthy, and such things are not always easy to find.
I've been studying errors and defects in engineering (both computers and otherwise) for many years. I was raised by an accident investigator, so I have an innate understanding of why things fail and what people can do to avoid it. The core reason for anything to fail is the assumption of correctness. In all accidents and failures, one can always find somebody somewhere that made an assumption about a component's behavior. The fact they did not know its true behavior caused them to employ the component when they should not have. Thus, the other elements of the system that depended on its assumed behavior also fail, and it just cascades from there.
In software, such assumptions of behavior often take the form of (to name a few) failing to detect null-pointers, failing to enforce buffer limits, or failing to enforce proper protocol operation. Opening the source to the world can help to detect such assumptions, but someone still has to check. As overkill as it may seem, I've been known to write unit tests for third-party libraries to ensure they behave as their documentation says. Many times I've found them to be faulty. Had I not tested them and just assumed their correctness, my product would not have worked. Even though my code may have been correct and the author of the libraries were at fault for their code not working right, I too would have been in error for making a false assumption.
Until such time as we can trust the components upon which we base our work, we cannot employ 100% code reuse. To reach such a stage, we need a radical shift in our approach to engineering. We need to ensure that our products do as they're supposed to and not just assume. Unfortunately, the rush to market often prevents us from doing what we should, and that's a shame. First to market is not always best to market.
I just had a discussion with someone about these images, and they kept insisting the geology of Cydonia is unnatural looking. No matter how much I tried to get them to understand they were basing all of their views on what they knew of Earth, they just wouldn't accept the possibility that Martian geology might be different. I'm not saying they're wrong and I'm right, I'm just trying to get them to acknowledge that there are vast differences between the planets and the conditions thereon, and that said differences could account for "unnatural" looking features.
Some may argue that because of these numbers Firefox is riddled with holes and is no more secure than IE or any other browser. Here's the thing, though. It is Firefox's open-source nature than made this analysis possible. An independent party (could have been you or me) did this analysis. Try doing that with IE. Microsoft isn't going to let you.
Good catch. The press release was issued on April Fool's Day. Did the submitter or anybody at Slashdot check to see whether this was intended as a gag?
We have to remember a fundamental rule of science is that nothing can ever truly be proved, only disproved. What is a "law" today may be debunked tomorrow with the introduction of new data. As unlikely as it is that the conservation of energy law will be struck down by this technology (or any other for that matter), as good scientists we must leave open the possibility. We're nothing but bigots if we don't.
I had a similar problem years ago here in California, where a small-town police department did nothing when a roommate wiped my hard drive in retaliation for a stupid personal matter. After a bit of digging, I uncovered the relevant piece of the state's penal code that outlaws such action and reported it to the cops. They immediately jumped into action once they realized it was a criminal offense. Law enforcement doesn't necessarily have every law memorized.
Here's a scenario. A small chiild wakes up in the middle of the night and walks into the living room where the parents are watching TV. While there, a Girls Gone Wild ad comes on the screen, which the parents decide they don't want their child to see. With this technology, they'd be screwed. One would hope the power could simply be turned off, but what if that feature is disabled too? One would hope the TV could be unplugged, but what if TV manufacturers start installing batteries or capacitor-banks to provide just enough juice to run the unit for a single commercial?
There is a rule in user-interface design that says the user must always be in control. Unfortunately, the quest for bigger profits seems to be redefining who the user is, taking control away from the consumer and giving it to the producer.
Isn't it interesting how statistics can be presented to prove anyone's point? Canada has about 1/10th the population of the U.S. Factoring that into the equation, the U.S. has about six times the number of unemployed people and about five times as many violent crimes.
That's a very good analogy, and it reminds me of a book I read many years back. It was suggesting that people view governments as service providers, and to treat them the same as any other kind of vendor. If you're dissatisfied with the level of service you're getting, find someone else that will give you what you want. We expect to have that option in business. Why should government be any different? They are, after all, doing nothing more than providing various forms of protection services (financial, physical, etc.) in exchange for our taxes.
You seem to be suggesting that, regardless of one's personal feelings and aspirations, they should only move under certain circumstances and not others. Who defines that criteria, and who is to say that it's equally acceptable to all?
What's your feeling about people immigrating TO the United States? If one applies your position equally to all countries of the world, nobody should ever leave their native land. Are you advocating that? This country is largely populated by immigrants and those descended from immigrants. I don't know the details of your family background, but chances are they were immigrants at some point. Should they have stayed in their home country? Should you have instead been born and grown up there instead of here?
Coming from the opposite perspective (US to Canada), I'd have to agree. I grew up around Canadians, and I've always found them to be much more relaxed, easy-going, and friendly. These days I travel to B.C. a lot on business. I go back and forth across the border frequently, and there's a noticeable difference in the way people drive, in their approaches to customer service, and just in general demeanor. In short, they seem to be less worried about life and just live it more.
While I agree that it was wrong for the AOL employee to pursue a minor in such a fashion, I think the lawsuit is completely lame. She's taking someone to task for something in which, by all apperances, she was a willing participant. That's like a kid using a fake ID to enter a bar, proceeding to get drunk off their ass, and then calling the cops on the bartender for selling alcohol to a minor. They were involved in the crime -- they shouldn't be entitled to jack.
It's called title case. Look it up in a grammar book.
This highlights a noticeable difference between the British and American dialects of English. Britons tend to refer to groups of people in the plural sense (e.g. marketing are good). Americans, however, tend to refer to groups of people in the singular sense (e.g. marketing is good). Neither way is more or less correct than the other -- just different.
DUH!!!