If employees do X, the company may be liable. There's no justification in that reasoning for not telling the employees you're doing the scanning.
A company policy that says, "Hey, we have hired experts to watch all your traffic to protect the company" is pretty different from one that reads, "Hey, don't use the company resources for private things."
I'm glad you mentioned this book - it's what I follow now too.
The post says there's no penalty for a full explanation of the code, but there are lots of penalties:
1: The explanation is a translation from one language to another, and there will be inconsistencies
2: When the code changes, the comment might not change, which can be misleading, and
3: When the code changes, that's a ton of work to update every comment! If I use a refactoring tool to change the names of a function, that might be dozens of places automatically changed... I'm going to read each one to see if a comment needs changing?
It could be that your coworkers don't want to spend time learning new things. It could also be that they understand the magnitude of effort required to change systems more than you do. It sounds like, in the case of the new computers, you solved a problem they didn't solve - good job! In general, there may be circumstances in which it does not make business sense to invest in new systems.
When you write things like "after almost 30 seconds I fixed the problem" you sound cocky. When you say things like "I'm young and learn stuff and old people don't learn stuff, what's up with that?" you sound cocky and naive. You could be RIGHT... but I recommend you work on your communication skills.
0.7% is the lowest rate I can get to turn the bitcoins into dollars. The transaction fee for transferring bitcoins is extremely low (0% right now), but everyone's charging to get DOLLARs.
It costs us (activegrade.com) about 3% to accept dollars, and about 0.7% to accept bitcoin. I can't afford to hoard bitcoin - I turn them into dollars right away.
So far, this hasn't been a myth - I have actual dollars, and saved 2.3% getting them.
"Bitcoin is the first digital currency that is completely distributed. The network is made up of users like yourself so no bank or payment processor is required between you and whoever you're trading with. This decentralization is the basis for Bitcoin's security and freedom."
I am getting all of my data about this system from http://openid.net/about.bml. There it says that the foreign server B asks my local server A if server B is designated as "allowed." If A says that B is allowed, B believes that I'm me and lets me continue. Otherwise B says, "Uhm, A doesn't know wtf you're talking about. You'd better go register me on A."
So I go register B on A, right? And now all I have to do to login is type larko.A.com into the little login box on B?
Why can't SpammerX type in larko.A.com now?
Maybe there's more information about this deeper in the site that I didn't see, or maybe I'm an idiot. Anyone know?
Re:Spam IS a problem for site owners! What to do?
on
The Case for OpenID
·
· Score: 1
There's nothing in the desription that would stop you from using those visual recognition techniques ("what letters do you see in this noisy field?") or any other further authentication. You could require an OpenID AND a local password that would be stored on your server if you wanted (though this extreme example would defeat the point entirely).
My impression is that Microsoft is doing this because it knows there are people that cannot afford XP at the full price, not because it is trying to become competetive "again" with linux. If a town of people in a very poor area can put up enough money to run 2 public terminals, that's $80 MSFT didn't have before. And now, 100 more people have used Windows.
If they cut prices in the US, it'll be because everyone who will pay $300 for XP has paid $300 for XP, not because they're afraid of Linux. I think MSFT views the two different markets entirely separately, and I don't think you can take what they do in one (the "emerging markets") and use it to infer anything they might do in the other (ours).
In terms of profit, I think it's rather genius. And best of all is that now it sort of looks to the media like MSFT cares about bringing third-world countries up to speed, slicing prices dramatically so that everyone can experience the glory of technology.
All the people that I know that got started with programming on their own did so with QBasic, which came on windows 95 (the new operating system when I was 12). They couldn't get enough of their computer, and searched through it until they found the QBasic IDE and accompanying sample game programs.
The benefit of this sort of "buried" programming treasure is that the kids interested in their computer will always find it, and really feel like they discovered something great - I know I did. It doesn't even require a tutorial, just some sample games, maybe.. but for sure, all of those true-born geeks will get hooked and start learning as much as they can (I know I did).
The motivation for the OS packagers? What better way to get people hooked on your system than to give them their first bit of cocaine?;) If an educational version of VB had been on my first computer, I never would have gotten off of it.
I really like the idea, but it is going to need a *LOT* more people before it becomes useful. I just registered on a whim, and there are 30 people showing up in my list.. some from Texas, one from Holland, a couple from MA... and I'm in MD, USA. I can only guess that I'm getting these people because there are no people signed on within a thousand miles of me. It needs at least a couple of people for every 20 square miles in an area before it will be effective in that area, IMO.
I'm not sure about picking up women with online methods, but it would at least be a great way to find video gaming buddies, or people interested in specific hobby X. I find it rather embarassing to ask a stranger if he/she plays Counter-Strike in person..
I work at a computer lab at my school doing basic things like helping people save (seriously) and sorting what people print so that they don't have to separate it from the hundreds of other pages that other users have printed.
This is not hyperbole. The printer we have here is an hp laserjet 9000, and it prints about 50 pages a minute. At peak usage here (there are 60 total computers in the lab) it will print for 2 straight hours, stopping only when it jams. Many of these print outs are annoyingly wasteful - powerpoint presentations printed out 1 slide to a page, with 72 pt font, instead of 6 to a page or an outline view, or huge volumes of online textbooks that you just KNOW this person isn't going to read. My record is 1000 pages, counted by the number of times I've had to put new paper in, for one user. Ironically enough, I'm at this job right now, watching people get angry as the stack of paper on top of the printer gets bigger with no lab assistant to distribute it;) Posting on slashdot is significantly more stimulating than sorting printouts, believe it or not.
So, I got a little off track, but what I'm trying to show is that people with computers are perfectly capable of wasting paper.
Furthermore, how often do you really WASTE a piece of hand-written paper? All of the paper I actually write on (who, me, pencil?) is used for notes and scribbling diagrams or algorithms, which I do on paper even though I have a computer. It takes effort to waste writing, so I don't do much of it. But all it takes is the click of a button to print a webpage or someone else's class notes;)
I would imagine that the school thought of this when some teacher or professor said "hey, I've handed out like 500 xeroxes this week alone, let's just make the students get computers so I can email it to them instead." THAT is where the wastage probably came in, not with student's papers and such. I don't have any insight on that, particularly, but it seems like the validity of the argument would really depend on how much paper they distribute.
And so, the point!
When you're doing your study, make sure to find out the school's current paper distrobution rate.
..there is certainly the possibility of it being essential to our survival as a race - but the fact is that people are dying and whenever that happens we have to consider our priorities..
Thats known as "Short Term-ism" and is almost always a bad thing. If people never did anything slightly dangerous on the basis that they may be hurt then we'd still be flinging mud at each other.
I didn't mean "we have to consider our priorities" as "we shouldn't do it," I meant "we should consider whether or not it is worth it."
What you said is known as a "fallacy." If people always did everything on the principle that they shouldn't NOT do things because they're slightly dangerous, we wouldn't exactly have come far either.
Sorry, I don't mean to flame or whatever, but I think your logic is flawed. Considering the risks of a proposition is always important. I'm not suggesting that we never do things involving risk, but you seem to be suggesting that we never even think about it - and I disagree.
I didn't mean to use that analogy to talk about the validity of the statistics of the matter - I was trying to show that, depending on how much value you place on what your after, statistics are not valid measures of risk when used absolutely.
Roller coasters are obviously not important to many people, and so 1 / 62.5 deaths is very much unacceptable. What if space flight is just as unimportant to this guy? All I'm trying to say is that a) don't judge his intelligence by his values, and b) we need to think about whether or not loss of life immediately is worth eventual gains from space exploration.
"The fine gentleman from Texas displays his outstanding grasp of statistics and engineering stating that 1 failure in ever 62.5 flights is NOT acceptable."
I don't think there's any need to call him stupid just because you disagree with him. That is, the fact that he thinks 1 / 62.5 is too big does NOT mean he thinks that it's not small.. it just means he either places less value on space exploration or more value on human safety than you do.
1 death per 62.5 roller coaster riders is much too high...
I'm not sure where I stand on space exploration right now myself - I think it's very interesting, and there is certainly the possibility of it being essential to our survival as a race - but the fact is that people are dying and whenever that happens we have to consider our priorities in terms that cannot, perhaps, be described with things you learn in high school math.
Slashdot Mirror
If employees do X, the company may be liable. There's no justification in that reasoning for not telling the employees you're doing the scanning. A company policy that says, "Hey, we have hired experts to watch all your traffic to protect the company" is pretty different from one that reads, "Hey, don't use the company resources for private things."
How much electricity does the credit card network require?
I'm glad you mentioned this book - it's what I follow now too. The post says there's no penalty for a full explanation of the code, but there are lots of penalties: 1: The explanation is a translation from one language to another, and there will be inconsistencies 2: When the code changes, the comment might not change, which can be misleading, and 3: When the code changes, that's a ton of work to update every comment! If I use a refactoring tool to change the names of a function, that might be dozens of places automatically changed... I'm going to read each one to see if a comment needs changing?
1 BTC = 9.93 USD
It could be that your coworkers don't want to spend time learning new things. It could also be that they understand the magnitude of effort required to change systems more than you do. It sounds like, in the case of the new computers, you solved a problem they didn't solve - good job! In general, there may be circumstances in which it does not make business sense to invest in new systems.
When you write things like "after almost 30 seconds I fixed the problem" you sound cocky. When you say things like "I'm young and learn stuff and old people don't learn stuff, what's up with that?" you sound cocky and naive. You could be RIGHT... but I recommend you work on your communication skills.
0.7% is the lowest rate I can get to turn the bitcoins into dollars. The transaction fee for transferring bitcoins is extremely low (0% right now), but everyone's charging to get DOLLARs.
It costs us (activegrade.com) about 3% to accept dollars, and about 0.7% to accept bitcoin. I can't afford to hoard bitcoin - I turn them into dollars right away. So far, this hasn't been a myth - I have actual dollars, and saved 2.3% getting them.
"Bitcoin is the first digital currency that is completely distributed. The network is made up of users like yourself so no bank or payment processor is required between you and whoever you're trading with. This decentralization is the basis for Bitcoin's security and freedom."
All I need is this new gadget!
Hopefully it closes automatically if I try to buy another one.
I am getting all of my data about this system from http://openid.net/about.bml. There it says that the foreign server B asks my local server A if server B is designated as "allowed." If A says that B is allowed, B believes that I'm me and lets me continue. Otherwise B says, "Uhm, A doesn't know wtf you're talking about. You'd better go register me on A."
So I go register B on A, right? And now all I have to do to login is type larko.A.com into the little login box on B?
Why can't SpammerX type in larko.A.com now?
Maybe there's more information about this deeper in the site that I didn't see, or maybe I'm an idiot. Anyone know?
There's nothing in the desription that would stop you from using those visual recognition techniques ("what letters do you see in this noisy field?") or any other further authentication. You could require an OpenID AND a local password that would be stored on your server if you wanted (though this extreme example would defeat the point entirely).
My impression is that Microsoft is doing this because it knows there are people that cannot afford XP at the full price, not because it is trying to become competetive "again" with linux. If a town of people in a very poor area can put up enough money to run 2 public terminals, that's $80 MSFT didn't have before. And now, 100 more people have used Windows.
If they cut prices in the US, it'll be because everyone who will pay $300 for XP has paid $300 for XP, not because they're afraid of Linux. I think MSFT views the two different markets entirely separately, and I don't think you can take what they do in one (the "emerging markets") and use it to infer anything they might do in the other (ours).
In terms of profit, I think it's rather genius. And best of all is that now it sort of looks to the media like MSFT cares about bringing third-world countries up to speed, slicing prices dramatically so that everyone can experience the glory of technology.
> (why they chose a convertible i`ll never know). So they could call it a car that turns into a boat and not a car that turns into a deathbox!
If you want him or her to really play... make sure it's not the computer YOU use ;)
All the people that I know that got started with programming on their own did so with QBasic, which came on windows 95 (the new operating system when I was 12). They couldn't get enough of their computer, and searched through it until they found the QBasic IDE and accompanying sample game programs.
;) If an educational version of VB had been on my first computer, I never would have gotten off of it.
The benefit of this sort of "buried" programming treasure is that the kids interested in their computer will always find it, and really feel like they discovered something great - I know I did. It doesn't even require a tutorial, just some sample games, maybe.. but for sure, all of those true-born geeks will get hooked and start learning as much as they can (I know I did).
The motivation for the OS packagers? What better way to get people hooked on your system than to give them their first bit of cocaine?
I really like the idea, but it is going to need a *LOT* more people before it becomes useful. I just registered on a whim, and there are 30 people showing up in my list.. some from Texas, one from Holland, a couple from MA... and I'm in MD, USA. I can only guess that I'm getting these people because there are no people signed on within a thousand miles of me. It needs at least a couple of people for every 20 square miles in an area before it will be effective in that area, IMO.
I'm not sure about picking up women with online methods, but it would at least be a great way to find video gaming buddies, or people interested in specific hobby X. I find it rather embarassing to ask a stranger if he/she plays Counter-Strike in person..
I work at a computer lab at my school doing basic things like helping people save (seriously) and sorting what people print so that they don't have to separate it from the hundreds of other pages that other users have printed.
;) Posting on slashdot is significantly more stimulating than sorting printouts, believe it or not.
;)
This is not hyperbole. The printer we have here is an hp laserjet 9000, and it prints about 50 pages a minute. At peak usage here (there are 60 total computers in the lab) it will print for 2 straight hours, stopping only when it jams. Many of these print outs are annoyingly wasteful - powerpoint presentations printed out 1 slide to a page, with 72 pt font, instead of 6 to a page or an outline view, or huge volumes of online textbooks that you just KNOW this person isn't going to read. My record is 1000 pages, counted by the number of times I've had to put new paper in, for one user. Ironically enough, I'm at this job right now, watching people get angry as the stack of paper on top of the printer gets bigger with no lab assistant to distribute it
So, I got a little off track, but what I'm trying to show is that people with computers are perfectly capable of wasting paper.
Furthermore, how often do you really WASTE a piece of hand-written paper? All of the paper I actually write on (who, me, pencil?) is used for notes and scribbling diagrams or algorithms, which I do on paper even though I have a computer. It takes effort to waste writing, so I don't do much of it. But all it takes is the click of a button to print a webpage or someone else's class notes
I would imagine that the school thought of this when some teacher or professor said "hey, I've handed out like 500 xeroxes this week alone, let's just make the students get computers so I can email it to them instead." THAT is where the wastage probably came in, not with student's papers and such. I don't have any insight on that, particularly, but it seems like the validity of the argument would really depend on how much paper they distribute.
And so, the point!
When you're doing your study, make sure to find out the school's current paper distrobution rate.
..there is certainly the possibility of it being essential to our survival as a race - but the fact is that people are dying and whenever that happens we have to consider our priorities..
Thats known as "Short Term-ism" and is almost always a bad thing. If people never did anything slightly dangerous on the basis that they may be hurt then we'd still be flinging mud at each other.
I didn't mean "we have to consider our priorities" as "we shouldn't do it," I meant "we should consider whether or not it is worth it."
What you said is known as a "fallacy." If people always did everything on the principle that they shouldn't NOT do things because they're slightly dangerous, we wouldn't exactly have come far either.
Sorry, I don't mean to flame or whatever, but I think your logic is flawed. Considering the risks of a proposition is always important. I'm not suggesting that we never do things involving risk, but you seem to be suggesting that we never even think about it - and I disagree.
Oh, lol :X
:p
I s'pose this is what I get for not reading carefully
I didn't mean to use that analogy to talk about the validity of the statistics of the matter - I was trying to show that, depending on how much value you place on what your after, statistics are not valid measures of risk when used absolutely.
Roller coasters are obviously not important to many people, and so 1 / 62.5 deaths is very much unacceptable. What if space flight is just as unimportant to this guy? All I'm trying to say is that a) don't judge his intelligence by his values, and b) we need to think about whether or not loss of life immediately is worth eventual gains from space exploration.
"The fine gentleman from Texas displays his outstanding grasp of statistics and engineering stating that 1 failure in ever 62.5 flights is NOT acceptable." I don't think there's any need to call him stupid just because you disagree with him. That is, the fact that he thinks 1 / 62.5 is too big does NOT mean he thinks that it's not small.. it just means he either places less value on space exploration or more value on human safety than you do. 1 death per 62.5 roller coaster riders is much too high... I'm not sure where I stand on space exploration right now myself - I think it's very interesting, and there is certainly the possibility of it being essential to our survival as a race - but the fact is that people are dying and whenever that happens we have to consider our priorities in terms that cannot, perhaps, be described with things you learn in high school math.