Quite the contrary. Vista's cost will be ever much relevant. And decisive. I'll tell you why.
You mentioned disk encryption as your single reason and then based your whole assumption on the idea that Vista is the only OS which offers it. Then you claimed that the cost will not matter because the only Microsoft Windows Vista version which will be relevant to fulfill that purpose is the "Ultimate" edition, which costs about 450$ per seat, then noting that the only way to purchase it is to buy a license for each and every laptop/workstation that is present/owned by the company, whether they will be running Vista or not.
So, to sum things up, you claimed that cost will not matter because the clients will have to spend 450$ per seat, if they use it or not, just to have disk encryption. Well, 450$ per seat is a whole lot of money and linux already comes with not one but a whole lot of disk encryption solutions. So, if a company is faced with a new need and the only options that they have is try to run a free OS or spend an extra 450$ per seat... What option do you believe will stand out?
Moreover, Vista will not run on old hardware, which will force anyone who feels the need to run Vista to purchase new hardware. So that will end up increasing the price on at least 700$++. If all that cost per seat (450$ + 700$++ = 1150$++) isn't present in OSS platforms, what do you believe the company managers will opt for? Obviously they will opt for the the solution which is cost-effective. That will not be Vista. By far.
Newton's Law of Gravity is still correct but, as with all mathematical models, we have to know under which conditions and which intervals and values it still holds. For your information, Einstein's general relativity theory is nothing more than a generalization of Newton's Law of Gravity, which expands the model's conditions and working intervals. That means that one theory doesn't go against another and both complement themselves. To put it in simpler terms in order for you to understand, the particular form of Newton's Law of Gravity that P = m.g, being m an object's mass and g the constant gravity acceleration vector which it's magnitude is equivalent to the earth's gravity pull on the ocean level (approx. 9.8m.s^-1) is still a valid, general purpose mathematical model of gravity. Yet, it only remains valid under certain conditions. Nonetheless, it is extensively used in science and engineering, returning extremely accurate results.
I'm completely clueless about what ASP.NET is and what it is supposed to do. After a bit of wikipedia (a very tiny bit) I was left with the impression that it's purpose is to serve as some kind of web development platform. Is this true? And how come does a laptop need a web development platform to perform the usual day-to-day tasks?//too clueless. sorry.
When I read this message what popped right on my mind was the existence of an administrator account which camed pre-installed on my Acer laptop. The account is called "ASP.NET Machine A..." which is protected by a password and I'm not able to uninstall it no matter what I try. Can this be another Acer backdoor installed on their systems?
P.S.: the article's backdoor was also present on my system. those bastards...
What I have written is nothing but the average opinion of historians. Furthermore, you distort what I said. I have not said every single problem is due to Portugal. However, it is just a fact the the Portugese Court kept Brazil in a very backward state, for too long. Brazilians are mostly not proud of their Portuguese heritage (a famous way of telling jokes in Brazil is the all-pervaise "jokes with a Portuguese man", where the character is invariably very stupid).
It's true that you didn't claimed that the Portuguese heritage is the source of all of Brazil's problems. Yet, that is a frequent accusation that is made by ignorant Brazilians that, for some reason or another, distill hate towards Portugal and the Portuguese people. And although you didn't claimed that, your tone was right there next to that type of bigotry. You even claimed that since Brazil's independence Portugal was "basically a fishing village (until they joined the E.U.)". What retarded, bigoted, ignorant comment is that?
Then you claim that it was the Portuguese court that kept Brazil down. You failed to notice that until Brazil's independence Brazil was a mere colony. A simple but very profitable colony and every world power which held colonies wanted the same thing: extract from them the maximum profit that they could possibly do, whereas it was from raw material extraction or from pillaging. That why the colonizers were there. They weren't there to respect the local's independence and well being. And even knowing that and although the Portuguese colonizers weren't a nice bunch, the Portuguese culture, values and way of life made it possible that their colonies would be the more humane in the world. There was still racism and bigotry but by far not to the extent of the other colonizing empires. Great Britain? France? Germany? The Netherlands? Even Spain. Their colonization was focused on white supremacy and segregation. Nonetheless, everywhere Portugal founded colonies the local culture was accepted and assimilated. The colonizers and the locals would even mix. Heck, it has been said that the biggest contribute that Portugal gave the world was the mulata. Where is Brazil's pride there?
Historians normally set an econonomic parallel between Brazil and the Southern U.S.: an economy previously based on plantation, monoculture and slave-labor, that produced a huge disenfranchised population and situation that remains to this day showing the effects of social and economic exclusion (as the world witnessed in the Katrina disaster). It is, however, as if a whole country had adopted that model and kept that state of affairs. On the Western hemisphere, Brazil was the last coutry to abolish slavery. The heirs of slavery can be seen in the black population of Rio's favelas.
The profit maximization was a the rule on the exploration of colonies and as not a single colonizing power intended to develop the colony or local infrastructure. That's why every colonized region of the world, whereas it is in America, Africa or Asia, bared extensive exploration of the region's natural resources. Brazil was no different than the rest of the colonies in the world. Why would it be? And it is funny that you mention slavery in a flame attempt at Portugal. After all, the independent Brazil, even though it didn't have nothing to profit or gain from slavery, was only capable of abolishing slavery ONLY AFTER the Portuguese Empire did, even though Portugal had every reason in the world to incentivize slave trading due to being economically ravaged and maintaining extensive colonies in Africa.
There is absolutely no question that the Portuguese rule had nefarious consequences: for instance, the oldest university is South America is the Peruvian National University of San Marcos, founded in 1551. By comparison, Brazil's oldest university is São Paulo's Law School, founded in...1827! Why is that? Because, by decree, universities were n
The problem is that law makers everywhere in the world only make laws... They hardly ever get rid of them. Perhaps we should setup a second body of government whose sole task is to review and delete laws. But I doubt that will happen. Lawmakers will continuously make laws into infinite numbers until the end of time.
I see your point. Yet, in Brazil's case, even if it started out as a carbon copy of that era's Portugal, the country already went through quite a few changes (social, geographical) and even revolutions which completely reorganized and reformed their government and law system. Why is anyone still crying about how bad the Portuguese influence over Brazil is if Brazil is solely a product of itself and their people? Why do they feel the need to dump their responsibility on a country which shared a common origin almost three centuries ago?
Right. Brazil's problems are Portugal's fault.
on
YouTube Blocked in Brazil
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You see, the thing is Brazil has an extremely convoluted legal jungle. It inherited this Portuguese culture of a love for all things legally convoluted and impenetrable. When Portugal colonized Brazil, for quite sometime the ruling elite was made of pretty much a bunch of aristocratic good-for-nothing lawyers/slackers that graduated from Coimbra University, in Portugal. The basic characteristic of such people were a basic lack of common sense as well as a despise for work. Instead of working, they made laws. And more laws. I mean, Portugal is notorious for having discovered America and then having ended up owing a huge amount of money to the Brits, as foreign debt, losing all the gold they had amassed, right? From that point on, they were basically a fishing village (until they joined the E.U.)
You are trying to blame Portugal and the Portuguese culture for Brasil's underachievements and flaws, which is a bit silly and ignorant, to say the least. For example, you claim that Brazil's legal system is "extremely convoluted" due to being inherited from the Portuguese legal system. Yet, you fail to mention that Brazil is an independent nation since 1822, that the country adopted a government and legal system from states like Great Britain and the Austrian empire and since then it already lived through three revolutions, which once more changed the country's government and legal system. If that wasn't enough, when Brazil gain it's independence it was little more than a few colonies in the coast and only after that did the colonization of the region got up on it's feet and it was only since then that the country started forming. Counting with the help of 5 million immigrants from places like Japan, European and even from arab countries. Didn't they contributed to Brazil's current situation? Of course they do and obviously more than some portuguese colonist from the 17th and 18th century.
So, in the end what you are trying to do is dump Brazil's problems and underachievements onto a whole different nation which didn't took any part on Brazil's formation and growth and only shared a common origin. Moreover, you are trying to blame a whole different nation for Brazil's problems even though it was Brazil who opted to create the mess it's in and after it's fair share of fresh starts. When will Brazil assume the responsibility for it's own state?
If that wasn't enough, some brazilians have the habit of blaming Portugal for Brazil's problems even though Portugal doesn't suffer from any of them. For example, one frequent accusation is that Brazil's crime problem is due to Portugal. Yet, Portugal is one of the safest countries in the EU. Another is that Brazil's rampant corruption is due to Portugal. Yet, Portugal is one of the world's least corrupt countries (TI ranks Portugal at 26) while not only Brazil lags behind but it is also getting worse every year (TI ranks Brazil at 70, tied with Ghana and Senegal).
Another thing which I find pathetic is that there are brazilians who blame Portugal for Brazil's shortcomings with a blink of an eye and yet they don't seem to remember Portugal's alleged overbearing influence when they talk about Brazil's success stories. When is Portugal quoted on Brazil's space program or even in Curitiba's urban planning and transportation system example to the world? Heck, even Brazil's success in sports like football. Those are prime examples of Brazil's excellence. Where is Portugal's influence there?
I may be a young whippersnapper with only a couple of years of non-MS Windows experience under my belt but if there is one thing that I really felt in love in the unixy-way of doing things then that thing is vi (or vim). Sure, it has a very steep learning curve. After a lifetime of notepad-like editors, who in their right mind finds all those modes and obscure commands palatable? Yet, after a bit of teeth cringing in front of a terminal editing text then all those obscure commands start to sink in, make sense and even getting indispensable. The vi way of editing text is such a time saver that starts to be indispensable. As I see it, anyone with a reasonable vi experience is able to become much more productive at writing text than the regular way. All the operations the user will ever need are literally a couple of keypresses away. You don't need to waste time reaching for and using a mouse, resort to finger gymnastics to use modifier keys... Everything is just there at the tips of your fingers. And even if you need any custom task you can bind any custom operation to a key shortcut and you are ready to go.
So many thanks Bill Joy. Your work is much appreciated. Kudos!
Even if it were cost feasible your drive would die in a matter of months or years because flash, especially cheap flash has a limited number of write and read cycles, very small actually, 1000-10000 on some.
The example I quoted above was to use the flash drives at mount points where the write operations are rare but read operations can be intensive, like a great part of the root directory except/tmp,/home,/var and possibly a couple of others. As you stated, using a flash drive to store swap files (much like windows vista does with it's ReadyBoost (R) technology) is a retarded idea which only ends up killing the drive. So why not use a small, regular, off the shelf, inexpensive flash card as a flash drive along a regular HD instead of shelving 600$ for a tiny, wear-vulnerable drive which may even suffer from a short life span? Moreover, why not develop a ATA/SATA/PATA/SCI flash card reader which not only can hold multiple flash cards but also use them in any RAID level combination the user whishes?
Since flash is so great for laptop HDs, why not get a small flash memory card to serve as the HD instead of that whole shebang? For example, why not mount the root and user partition on a small 2GB flash card, which in eBay goes for less than 40$, and then mount the/home partition on a regular HD? Possibly I'm missing something important here but as far as I see it, 40$ are a whole lot less than 500$.
He also claims that he works in asia as a systems administrator. He also claims that he lives in Washington and that he is planning a trip there.
TrisexualPuppy is a lying sack of shit that likes to troll. Now it seems that he added "posting as AC" to his curriculum.
TrisexualPuppy is a known slashdot troll. His method? Make big, impressive (and false) claims about what he does and try to play the authority card to make his posts fly. On the process TrisexualPuppy writes a few pure troll posts. Here is a small list of claims that TrisexualPuppy made:
in here he claims to work for google's accounting department
in here he claims to have worked "in the UK for Barklay's for 30 years"
in here he claims to "work in Washington for an Internet Security firm" (while in here he claims to be "planning on travelling to DC" to attend president Ford's funeral).
in here he claims to have met Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and also reading "few of his papers on the immune system". Then he pastes a link to a wikipedia article which doesn't even exist.
All this was extracted from TransexualPuppy's last 25 posts.
And of course, the confession right out of the wolf's mouth:
Hey, idiot. I only posted this to up my karma. Every post that I make is fake.
That is not strictly true. The idea that "anyone" can compete with any company on "equal footing" is one of those silly libertarian, "free market cures all" delusions.
In the real world, something called a "barrier to entry" exists for each of competitors in the marketplace. If those barriers are small, competition is usually flourishing and the "free market" functions as intended. Not so if the "barriers" are measured in billions of dollars or political power.
Well then, show me what are the "barriers to entry" that plague the world of search engines. What stops anyone from putting a website up and providing their own web search/directory service?
step 1: spread the word that the inhabitants of those islands are thinking about suing some state for huge gobs of cash step 2: a whole hurd of weasely frivolous lawyers stampede to get there as soon as possible step 3: they get there but there is no way out step 4: water level rises step 5: happy times!
Just because what I said goes against your obstructed notion of reality it doesn't mean it is a troll.
I do not know how the use of operators "diludes" the meaning of the operators. A mathematical operator is a symbol which represents a mathematical operation. If the operator is used to represent a type of operation which is equivalent to the "default" operator behaviour then obviously only good can arise from that. Where's the problem with that?
But how about using '+' for string concatenation? One of the basic properties of addition is that it is commutative. Therefore, string("Hello") + string("World") should give the same result as string("World") + string("Hello"). But it doesn't. The addition operator has been perverted.
Well, now you are being silly. Or at least demonstrating that you do not understand the basic concept of what an operator is. You see, in that statement you are mixing up the notion of a binary operator (which is what C++ supports) with the notion of a commutative operator, which is an operator which was designed to hold the commutative property. Probably your notion of what an operator really is was clouded by a very limited math knowledge which doesn't go beyond highschool algebra, if it goes at all that far. After all, that idea can only persist in someone's mind if that person never dealt with operators associated with any set other than the real numbers set. You see, the operator represented by the "+" character isn't always a commutative operator. For example, one of the legitimate math uses for an operator which is represented by the "+" character is topology's path concatenation operator. That operator isn't commutative and, funny enough, it is an operation which is pretty much equivalent to the string concatenation operation.
Because most programmers suck and shouldn't be allowed to play with power tools. Writing code however you feel like it is fine until somebody else has to deal with it. In the real world, programmers should be as restricted as possible in what they do and how they do it.
Oh now I see. "Programmers should be handed very narrowing, limited tools because if they aren't, they may write code which I'm not able to understand." Guess what. The world doesn't revolve around you. Just because you can't get around reading other people's code it doesn't mean that everyone should be stripped of every useful tool due to your inability to understand their use. You are the one who must get up to speed, not slow down everyone around you in order for things to become manageable by you.
What piece of code is easier to read? Not sure?
One piece of code is more verbose. That's all.
One piece of code (i.e., your example code) is needlessly cluttered, clutter which is eliminated by the use of operators. And whether you like it or not, the C++ world is packed with code which, if it wasn't for operator overloading, it would be needlessly harder to read, write, understand and debug. But just because you have a hard time following simple concepts like operator overloading no one should use that. Right.
And look at your silly example to work around my objection to left-shift IO operators:
cout += "Hello, there are" + 7 + " days in a week";
This piece of garbage just shows that you have no idea how the language works. You can't override operators for basic types. The above piece of code doesn't work, and never could be made to work.
Nice strawman but I'll bite.
Quite the contrary. Your pathetic attempt of a personal attack just went to, once again, demonstrate your limited understanding of the C++ language and also your limited capability to follow a simple, direct train of thought. You see, that example was
So, your argument is that operator overloading is helpful because of... math, math, math, math, and math?
...which comes in handy because, whether you like it or not, whenever someone writes code that person is applying mathematical concepts, whether the coder is aware of that or not.
Your examples are cute and all, but why do they justify giving the programmer such ridiculous arbitrary control over what should be very well-defined programming constructs?
I wasn't aware that enabling the programmer to write code as he sees fit is somekind of a downside. Tell me, what exactly is wrong about having the freedom to use whatever tool we believe better expresses our ideas?
Whoever came up with the idea of using > as IO operators on stream objects is insane. What's wrong with saying:
cout.write("Hello, there are ").write(7).write(" days in a week");
Oh right, it doesn't look cute enough.
It isn't a matter of "looking cute" but a way to enable coders to make their code easily readable, unlike that garbled "uncute" mess you just posted there. Let's compare the following:
cout.write("Hello, there are ").write(7).write(" days in a week");
cout << "Hello, there are" << 7 << " days in a week";
What piece of code is easier to read? Not sure? What about this piece of code:
cout += "Hello, there are" + 7 + " days in a week";
This one is also easier to read, easier to write and doesn't use the So, as it is easy to see, operator overloading is a very useful tool to have. The only downside was that C++ doesn't went far enough with it.
Indeed. And there are plenty of legitimate uses for that, too. Take tensors, for example. The tensor is a very legitimate mathematical concept with widespread use, from engineering to theoretical physics and one of it's properties is that it has two types of multiplication: the "regular" multiplication and the contracted multiplication. Another example consists of the inner and outer product from vector calculus. Due to C++s inability to define arbitrary operators it isn't possible to define both operations as operators, which ends up cluttering the source code.
That's the outflow of an inherent problem with allowing operators to be overloaded. People will inevitable make them do different things on different types, making it impossible to know what an operator does without knowing something about the types of the arguments.
You mindlessly claim that allowing people to make operators do different things on different types is a bad thing. Do you actually know what's good about supporting operator overloading? It's the ability to make operators do different things on different types. Now that's a pickle for you. Care for an example? Let's take a class that represents complex numbers. Tell me what's bad about being capable of doing something like:
Complex c1(0,1); float f = 1.0f; Complex c2 = f*c; Complex c3 = f + c; Complex c4 = f/c;
That piece of code is only possible thanks to operator overloading. The same applies to vectors, matrices, tensors, etc... Heck, what about those extended precision/range number classes? Where would they be if it wasn't possible to overload the basic algebraic operators?
So it is easy to see, at least to anyone which has at least a basic grasp on C++, that operator overloading is obviously a good thing. Heck, where's the bad thing about being capable of defining operators on a data type?
OTOH, if you have a problem about the way some coders use operator overloading (i.e., doesn't match your personal taste) then put the blame where it should be put: the coder's decisions. No one forces anyone to use, for example, a multiplication operator to concatenate strings or an addition operator to insert objects into a list. Stroustrup isn't holding a gun to that coder's head, for God's sake. Yet, to some people the use of those operators for those particular tasks is a nice thing to have.
So please don't claim that a feature is bad or broken just because you fail to realize it's usefulness and potential.
The same risks Microsoft tried to avoid by making it impossible to use WinXP home as a server: the risk of no one buying the "enterprisey" version of their OS and thus not shelving an extra 200$ per seat.
If you don't like it, do what I did and install Linux.
In a perfect world that would be possible for everyone. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world and there are factors which, to this day, hinder the migration process. We are talking about certain specialized software which doesn't have a linux version, like tailored legacy software or even fundamental tools like autoCAD (no, running it over WINE is not a serious option).
Another factor which voids that "just install linux" option is the lack of hardware support under linux. Sure, that isn't linux' fault but it still bites their users in the backside. Of course things improved quite a lot and each day we see more and more hardware firms supporting their hardware under linux but things aren't perfect yet. For example, Acer, which is cited in the article, is notorious for it's unwillingness to support linux. I have a 2 year old Acer laptop running linux and to this day it has hardware components which aren't supported under linux. Moreover, when I sent emails to Acer asking about that they specifically warned me that if I installed linux on it then the warranty was nulled.
So no, not anyone can just install linux and get rid of any Microsoft dependency. In some cases it is possible but unfortunately it isn't always possible. Maybe in the future but right now that option isn't realistic. By far.
Why should any politician step down because they are gay?
Because the party he belongs to has a strong anti-gay agenda and a strong anti-gay electorate. Politicians may not mind being blatantly hypocritical but once their election chances are jeopardized then they will scramble to avoid that.
First of all, portland cement already absorbs CO2, so this isn't new. What TFA fails to mention is that the production of portland cement produces a heck of a lot of CO2. So in effect the building materials made from that material do indeed absorb CO2 but only a fraction that it's manufacture launched into the atmosphere. TFA doesn't mention how much CO2 does the manufacture of the miraculous compound produces.
Second, TFA fails to mention that no material is capable of absorbing a constant rate of some compound for as long as anyone cares to measure. In the case of porland cement it does indeed absorb CO2 but only in the surface. The CO2 absorption doesn't penetrate more than a couple of cm beyond the element's surface and as time passes, the rate of absorption decreases until it doesn't absorb anything anymore. So TFA doesn't state what does it mean by 30%. Is it the total amount absorbed? Is it peak absorption rate? Is it the time window where the compound stays unsaturated? What is it? That information is vital to evaluate if it justifies the added cost.
Third. What effect does that compound has on the concrete's mechanical properties? Does it make it more fragile? More permeable? Less resistant?
Fourth, TFA states that it only costs 30% more. Only? How do you justify a 30% increase on building costs just because someone decided to use a useless compound due to some marketing gimmick?
As I see it, this product is useless. It is tailored to ignorant people who are willing to spend lots of money on something just because someone decided to slap a "green" sticker on it. There are far more efficient and proven ways to absorb CO2 and other greenhouse gases than using some "green" product on concrete. For example, invest on green spaces, on passive heating/cooling systems, on energy-efficient lighting solutions, etc... Heck, instead of spending 30% of the building costs on funny concrete why not invest that money on some eco-friendly project? All those suggestions do a whole lot more for the environmnet than some snake oil product to add to the concrete mixture.
but the stuff I've written, even if heavily sourced on Wikipedia is so obscure I could just make up anything about that and it would likely fly.
People frequently make the mistake of thinking that this problem is exclusive to wikipedia. That is false. That problem plagues every aspect of Academia that it isn't even funny. Everyone who spent his fair share of research hours in any university library already stumbled on contradictory information, incorrections and even outright lies on publications adopted by the libraries and in even cases by the courses themselves. These are publications which were heavily edited and in some cases even reeditions.
Moreover, academic fraud is always popping up. Things like falsifying results and messing up with the research variables pop up from time to time. If that type of fraud happens on academic circles where the scientific method is intensely applied and revered, why does it shock anyone when someone makes stuff up in a wiki? But thankfully in a wiki there may be quite a few eyes monitoring the development and, when necessary, edit the text and correct that. That doesn't happen with a book.
Actually the Wikipedia procedure for weeding out the copyrighted work is to flag the article as a possible copyright violation (add a {{copyvio}} template to the article) along with the source and then inform the editors about that problem by adding the article into the list of articles with possible copyright violations.
Regarding the article, there is already a very active community weeding out Wikipedia of possible copyright violations. I don't know how this can be considered news.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite the contrary. Vista's cost will be ever much relevant. And decisive. I'll tell you why.
You mentioned disk encryption as your single reason and then based your whole assumption on the idea that Vista is the only OS which offers it. Then you claimed that the cost will not matter because the only Microsoft Windows Vista version which will be relevant to fulfill that purpose is the "Ultimate" edition, which costs about 450$ per seat, then noting that the only way to purchase it is to buy a license for each and every laptop/workstation that is present/owned by the company, whether they will be running Vista or not.
So, to sum things up, you claimed that cost will not matter because the clients will have to spend 450$ per seat, if they use it or not, just to have disk encryption. Well, 450$ per seat is a whole lot of money and linux already comes with not one but a whole lot of disk encryption solutions. So, if a company is faced with a new need and the only options that they have is try to run a free OS or spend an extra 450$ per seat... What option do you believe will stand out?
Moreover, Vista will not run on old hardware, which will force anyone who feels the need to run Vista to purchase new hardware. So that will end up increasing the price on at least 700$++. If all that cost per seat (450$ + 700$++ = 1150$++) isn't present in OSS platforms, what do you believe the company managers will opt for? Obviously they will opt for the the solution which is cost-effective. That will not be Vista. By far.
Newton's Law of Gravity is still correct but, as with all mathematical models, we have to know under which conditions and which intervals and values it still holds. For your information, Einstein's general relativity theory is nothing more than a generalization of Newton's Law of Gravity, which expands the model's conditions and working intervals. That means that one theory doesn't go against another and both complement themselves. To put it in simpler terms in order for you to understand, the particular form of Newton's Law of Gravity that P = m.g, being m an object's mass and g the constant gravity acceleration vector which it's magnitude is equivalent to the earth's gravity pull on the ocean level (approx. 9.8m.s^-1) is still a valid, general purpose mathematical model of gravity. Yet, it only remains valid under certain conditions. Nonetheless, it is extensively used in science and engineering, returning extremely accurate results.
I'm completely clueless about what ASP.NET is and what it is supposed to do. After a bit of wikipedia (a very tiny bit) I was left with the impression that it's purpose is to serve as some kind of web development platform. Is this true? And how come does a laptop need a web development platform to perform the usual day-to-day tasks? //too clueless. sorry.
When I read this message what popped right on my mind was the existence of an administrator account which camed pre-installed on my Acer laptop. The account is called "ASP.NET Machine A..." which is protected by a password and I'm not able to uninstall it no matter what I try. Can this be another Acer backdoor installed on their systems?
P.S.: the article's backdoor was also present on my system. those bastards...
It's true that you didn't claimed that the Portuguese heritage is the source of all of Brazil's problems. Yet, that is a frequent accusation that is made by ignorant Brazilians that, for some reason or another, distill hate towards Portugal and the Portuguese people. And although you didn't claimed that, your tone was right there next to that type of bigotry. You even claimed that since Brazil's independence Portugal was "basically a fishing village (until they joined the E.U.)". What retarded, bigoted, ignorant comment is that?
Then you claim that it was the Portuguese court that kept Brazil down. You failed to notice that until Brazil's independence Brazil was a mere colony. A simple but very profitable colony and every world power which held colonies wanted the same thing: extract from them the maximum profit that they could possibly do, whereas it was from raw material extraction or from pillaging. That why the colonizers were there. They weren't there to respect the local's independence and well being. And even knowing that and although the Portuguese colonizers weren't a nice bunch, the Portuguese culture, values and way of life made it possible that their colonies would be the more humane in the world. There was still racism and bigotry but by far not to the extent of the other colonizing empires. Great Britain? France? Germany? The Netherlands? Even Spain. Their colonization was focused on white supremacy and segregation. Nonetheless, everywhere Portugal founded colonies the local culture was accepted and assimilated. The colonizers and the locals would even mix. Heck, it has been said that the biggest contribute that Portugal gave the world was the mulata. Where is Brazil's pride there?
The profit maximization was a the rule on the exploration of colonies and as not a single colonizing power intended to develop the colony or local infrastructure. That's why every colonized region of the world, whereas it is in America, Africa or Asia, bared extensive exploration of the region's natural resources. Brazil was no different than the rest of the colonies in the world. Why would it be? And it is funny that you mention slavery in a flame attempt at Portugal. After all, the independent Brazil, even though it didn't have nothing to profit or gain from slavery, was only capable of abolishing slavery ONLY AFTER the Portuguese Empire did, even though Portugal had every reason in the world to incentivize slave trading due to being economically ravaged and maintaining extensive colonies in Africa.
I see your point. Yet, in Brazil's case, even if it started out as a carbon copy of that era's Portugal, the country already went through quite a few changes (social, geographical) and even revolutions which completely reorganized and reformed their government and law system. Why is anyone still crying about how bad the Portuguese influence over Brazil is if Brazil is solely a product of itself and their people? Why do they feel the need to dump their responsibility on a country which shared a common origin almost three centuries ago?
You are trying to blame Portugal and the Portuguese culture for Brasil's underachievements and flaws, which is a bit silly and ignorant, to say the least. For example, you claim that Brazil's legal system is "extremely convoluted" due to being inherited from the Portuguese legal system. Yet, you fail to mention that Brazil is an independent nation since 1822, that the country adopted a government and legal system from states like Great Britain and the Austrian empire and since then it already lived through three revolutions, which once more changed the country's government and legal system. If that wasn't enough, when Brazil gain it's independence it was little more than a few colonies in the coast and only after that did the colonization of the region got up on it's feet and it was only since then that the country started forming. Counting with the help of 5 million immigrants from places like Japan, European and even from arab countries. Didn't they contributed to Brazil's current situation? Of course they do and obviously more than some portuguese colonist from the 17th and 18th century.
So, in the end what you are trying to do is dump Brazil's problems and underachievements onto a whole different nation which didn't took any part on Brazil's formation and growth and only shared a common origin. Moreover, you are trying to blame a whole different nation for Brazil's problems even though it was Brazil who opted to create the mess it's in and after it's fair share of fresh starts. When will Brazil assume the responsibility for it's own state?
If that wasn't enough, some brazilians have the habit of blaming Portugal for Brazil's problems even though Portugal doesn't suffer from any of them. For example, one frequent accusation is that Brazil's crime problem is due to Portugal. Yet, Portugal is one of the safest countries in the EU. Another is that Brazil's rampant corruption is due to Portugal. Yet, Portugal is one of the world's least corrupt countries (TI ranks Portugal at 26) while not only Brazil lags behind but it is also getting worse every year (TI ranks Brazil at 70, tied with Ghana and Senegal).
Another thing which I find pathetic is that there are brazilians who blame Portugal for Brazil's shortcomings with a blink of an eye and yet they don't seem to remember Portugal's alleged overbearing influence when they talk about Brazil's success stories. When is Portugal quoted on Brazil's space program or even in Curitiba's urban planning and transportation system example to the world? Heck, even Brazil's success in sports like football. Those are prime examples of Brazil's excellence. Where is Portugal's influence there?
I may be a young whippersnapper with only a couple of years of non-MS Windows experience under my belt but if there is one thing that I really felt in love in the unixy-way of doing things then that thing is vi (or vim). Sure, it has a very steep learning curve. After a lifetime of notepad-like editors, who in their right mind finds all those modes and obscure commands palatable? Yet, after a bit of teeth cringing in front of a terminal editing text then all those obscure commands start to sink in, make sense and even getting indispensable. The vi way of editing text is such a time saver that starts to be indispensable. As I see it, anyone with a reasonable vi experience is able to become much more productive at writing text than the regular way. All the operations the user will ever need are literally a couple of keypresses away. You don't need to waste time reaching for and using a mouse, resort to finger gymnastics to use modifier keys... Everything is just there at the tips of your fingers. And even if you need any custom task you can bind any custom operation to a key shortcut and you are ready to go. So many thanks Bill Joy. Your work is much appreciated. Kudos!
The example I quoted above was to use the flash drives at mount points where the write operations are rare but read operations can be intensive, like a great part of the root directory except /tmp, /home, /var and possibly a couple of others. As you stated, using a flash drive to store swap files (much like windows vista does with it's ReadyBoost (R) technology) is a retarded idea which only ends up killing the drive. So why not use a small, regular, off the shelf, inexpensive flash card as a flash drive along a regular HD instead of shelving 600$ for a tiny, wear-vulnerable drive which may even suffer from a short life span? Moreover, why not develop a ATA/SATA/PATA/SCI flash card reader which not only can hold multiple flash cards but also use them in any RAID level combination the user whishes?
Since flash is so great for laptop HDs, why not get a small flash memory card to serve as the HD instead of that whole shebang? For example, why not mount the root and user partition on a small 2GB flash card, which in eBay goes for less than 40$, and then mount the /home partition on a regular HD? Possibly I'm missing something important here but as far as I see it, 40$ are a whole lot less than 500$.
That's in part due to the fact that TrisexualPuppy copies other people's posts.
He also claims that he works in asia as a systems administrator. He also claims that he lives in Washington and that he is planning a trip there. TrisexualPuppy is a lying sack of shit that likes to troll. Now it seems that he added "posting as AC" to his curriculum.
- in here he claims to work for google's accounting department
- in here he claims to write video game reviews
- in here he claims to be a systems administrator working for a 3500-employee corporation
- in here he claims to be "an active lesbian"
- in here he claims to have worked "in the UK for Barklay's for 30 years"
- in here he claims to "work in Washington for an Internet Security firm" (while in here he claims to be "planning on travelling to DC" to attend president Ford's funeral).
- in here he claims to have met Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and also reading "few of his papers on the immune system". Then he pastes a link to a wikipedia article which doesn't even exist.
All this was extracted from TransexualPuppy's last 25 posts. And of course, the confession right out of the wolf's mouth: Taken from here Mod him accordingly.Well then, show me what are the "barriers to entry" that plague the world of search engines. What stops anyone from putting a website up and providing their own web search/directory service?
step 1: spread the word that the inhabitants of those islands are thinking about suing some state for huge gobs of cash
step 2: a whole hurd of weasely frivolous lawyers stampede to get there as soon as possible
step 3: they get there but there is no way out
step 4: water level rises
step 5: happy times!
See? Every cloud has it's silver lining.
Just because what I said goes against your obstructed notion of reality it doesn't mean it is a troll.
I do not know how the use of operators "diludes" the meaning of the operators. A mathematical operator is a symbol which represents a mathematical operation. If the operator is used to represent a type of operation which is equivalent to the "default" operator behaviour then obviously only good can arise from that. Where's the problem with that?
Well, now you are being silly. Or at least demonstrating that you do not understand the basic concept of what an operator is. You see, in that statement you are mixing up the notion of a binary operator (which is what C++ supports) with the notion of a commutative operator, which is an operator which was designed to hold the commutative property. Probably your notion of what an operator really is was clouded by a very limited math knowledge which doesn't go beyond highschool algebra, if it goes at all that far. After all, that idea can only persist in someone's mind if that person never dealt with operators associated with any set other than the real numbers set. You see, the operator represented by the "+" character isn't always a commutative operator. For example, one of the legitimate math uses for an operator which is represented by the "+" character is topology's path concatenation operator. That operator isn't commutative and, funny enough, it is an operation which is pretty much equivalent to the string concatenation operation.
Oh now I see. "Programmers should be handed very narrowing, limited tools because if they aren't, they may write code which I'm not able to understand." Guess what. The world doesn't revolve around you. Just because you can't get around reading other people's code it doesn't mean that everyone should be stripped of every useful tool due to your inability to understand their use. You are the one who must get up to speed, not slow down everyone around you in order for things to become manageable by you.
One piece of code (i.e., your example code) is needlessly cluttered, clutter which is eliminated by the use of operators. And whether you like it or not, the C++ world is packed with code which, if it wasn't for operator overloading, it would be needlessly harder to read, write, understand and debug. But just because you have a hard time following simple concepts like operator overloading no one should use that. Right.
Nice strawman but I'll bite.
Quite the contrary. Your pathetic attempt of a personal attack just went to, once again, demonstrate your limited understanding of the C++ language and also your limited capability to follow a simple, direct train of thought. You see, that example was
...which comes in handy because, whether you like it or not, whenever someone writes code that person is applying mathematical concepts, whether the coder is aware of that or not.
I wasn't aware that enabling the programmer to write code as he sees fit is somekind of a downside. Tell me, what exactly is wrong about having the freedom to use whatever tool we believe better expresses our ideas?
It isn't a matter of "looking cute" but a way to enable coders to make their code easily readable, unlike that garbled "uncute" mess you just posted there. Let's compare the following: What piece of code is easier to read? Not sure? What about this piece of code: This one is also easier to read, easier to write and doesn't use the So, as it is easy to see, operator overloading is a very useful tool to have. The only downside was that C++ doesn't went far enough with it.Indeed. And there are plenty of legitimate uses for that, too. Take tensors, for example. The tensor is a very legitimate mathematical concept with widespread use, from engineering to theoretical physics and one of it's properties is that it has two types of multiplication: the "regular" multiplication and the contracted multiplication. Another example consists of the inner and outer product from vector calculus. Due to C++s inability to define arbitrary operators it isn't possible to define both operations as operators, which ends up cluttering the source code.
You mindlessly claim that allowing people to make operators do different things on different types is a bad thing. Do you actually know what's good about supporting operator overloading? It's the ability to make operators do different things on different types. Now that's a pickle for you. Care for an example? Let's take a class that represents complex numbers. Tell me what's bad about being capable of doing something like:
That piece of code is only possible thanks to operator overloading. The same applies to vectors, matrices, tensors, etc... Heck, what about those extended precision/range number classes? Where would they be if it wasn't possible to overload the basic algebraic operators?So it is easy to see, at least to anyone which has at least a basic grasp on C++, that operator overloading is obviously a good thing. Heck, where's the bad thing about being capable of defining operators on a data type?
OTOH, if you have a problem about the way some coders use operator overloading (i.e., doesn't match your personal taste) then put the blame where it should be put: the coder's decisions. No one forces anyone to use, for example, a multiplication operator to concatenate strings or an addition operator to insert objects into a list. Stroustrup isn't holding a gun to that coder's head, for God's sake. Yet, to some people the use of those operators for those particular tasks is a nice thing to have.
So please don't claim that a feature is bad or broken just because you fail to realize it's usefulness and potential.
The same risks Microsoft tried to avoid by making it impossible to use WinXP home as a server: the risk of no one buying the "enterprisey" version of their OS and thus not shelving an extra 200$ per seat.
In a perfect world that would be possible for everyone. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world and there are factors which, to this day, hinder the migration process. We are talking about certain specialized software which doesn't have a linux version, like tailored legacy software or even fundamental tools like autoCAD (no, running it over WINE is not a serious option).
Another factor which voids that "just install linux" option is the lack of hardware support under linux. Sure, that isn't linux' fault but it still bites their users in the backside. Of course things improved quite a lot and each day we see more and more hardware firms supporting their hardware under linux but things aren't perfect yet. For example, Acer, which is cited in the article, is notorious for it's unwillingness to support linux. I have a 2 year old Acer laptop running linux and to this day it has hardware components which aren't supported under linux. Moreover, when I sent emails to Acer asking about that they specifically warned me that if I installed linux on it then the warranty was nulled.
So no, not anyone can just install linux and get rid of any Microsoft dependency. In some cases it is possible but unfortunately it isn't always possible. Maybe in the future but right now that option isn't realistic. By far.
Because the party he belongs to has a strong anti-gay agenda and a strong anti-gay electorate. Politicians may not mind being blatantly hypocritical but once their election chances are jeopardized then they will scramble to avoid that.
First of all, portland cement already absorbs CO2, so this isn't new. What TFA fails to mention is that the production of portland cement produces a heck of a lot of CO2. So in effect the building materials made from that material do indeed absorb CO2 but only a fraction that it's manufacture launched into the atmosphere. TFA doesn't mention how much CO2 does the manufacture of the miraculous compound produces.
Second, TFA fails to mention that no material is capable of absorbing a constant rate of some compound for as long as anyone cares to measure. In the case of porland cement it does indeed absorb CO2 but only in the surface. The CO2 absorption doesn't penetrate more than a couple of cm beyond the element's surface and as time passes, the rate of absorption decreases until it doesn't absorb anything anymore. So TFA doesn't state what does it mean by 30%. Is it the total amount absorbed? Is it peak absorption rate? Is it the time window where the compound stays unsaturated? What is it? That information is vital to evaluate if it justifies the added cost.
Third. What effect does that compound has on the concrete's mechanical properties? Does it make it more fragile? More permeable? Less resistant?
Fourth, TFA states that it only costs 30% more. Only? How do you justify a 30% increase on building costs just because someone decided to use a useless compound due to some marketing gimmick?
As I see it, this product is useless. It is tailored to ignorant people who are willing to spend lots of money on something just because someone decided to slap a "green" sticker on it. There are far more efficient and proven ways to absorb CO2 and other greenhouse gases than using some "green" product on concrete. For example, invest on green spaces, on passive heating/cooling systems, on energy-efficient lighting solutions, etc... Heck, instead of spending 30% of the building costs on funny concrete why not invest that money on some eco-friendly project? All those suggestions do a whole lot more for the environmnet than some snake oil product to add to the concrete mixture.
People frequently make the mistake of thinking that this problem is exclusive to wikipedia. That is false. That problem plagues every aspect of Academia that it isn't even funny. Everyone who spent his fair share of research hours in any university library already stumbled on contradictory information, incorrections and even outright lies on publications adopted by the libraries and in even cases by the courses themselves. These are publications which were heavily edited and in some cases even reeditions.
Moreover, academic fraud is always popping up. Things like falsifying results and messing up with the research variables pop up from time to time. If that type of fraud happens on academic circles where the scientific method is intensely applied and revered, why does it shock anyone when someone makes stuff up in a wiki? But thankfully in a wiki there may be quite a few eyes monitoring the development and, when necessary, edit the text and correct that. That doesn't happen with a book.
Actually the Wikipedia procedure for weeding out the copyrighted work is to flag the article as a possible copyright violation (add a {{copyvio}} template to the article) along with the source and then inform the editors about that problem by adding the article into the list of articles with possible copyright violations.
Regarding the article, there is already a very active community weeding out Wikipedia of possible copyright violations. I don't know how this can be considered news.