The way I read it, the Senator's daughter was the main character in Deception Point. I guess its in the eye of the reader. I have never read Digital Fortress.
You have also just described the plot of Deception Point, another Dan Brown book, except the hero is actually a woman (heroine), and the geeky expert is a man baby, yeahahh (tm).
That reminds me of the old school type network guys that act like union auto workers. "You can't move me to the transmission line, I have been working on the engine line for 30 years."
While everyone is bickering over what basically amounted to stubborn laziness, the Japanese promptly take over half of the US auto market, and thousands of US auto workers (not to mention thousands of workers from supporting industries) lose their jobs in the process.
My point is if you sit around getting fat on one skill, someone leaner an meaner will eventually take your place.
I think electronic voting is insane. I didn't even like the old mechanical voting booths. If a clueless operator starts putting the tally cards in backwards your vote is lost, and you don't even know it.
You manually put holes in a card, and drop it into a locked ballot box. Someone has to do a lot of dirty work to make that box disappear, or alter the cards. Plus there are no ink marks that can be erased or smeared or whatever. (Don't forget to remove any hanging chads, lest an evil soul tries to glue it back in place)
What makes it worse is that Acacia does not even have any code to show. They have basically replaced the "code" with technical drawings explaining a "process" or "idea".
It would be different if they had a piece of software that was written and accomplishes the "idea", that pre-dates any other company's software that accomplishes the same "idea".
I think a line needs to be drawn for software patents to be approved. Don't tell me how it should work, show me that it does work.
I believe the patent office was born out of a need to patent inventions, with tangible prototypes. With software and technology it seems you are able to patent your "Eureka moment" without having to prove its viable or even possible.
Actually that would be a pretty cool gameshow. Ask people incredibly difficult questions (history, literature, sports, etc) and let them use Google to find the answer. Viewers at home could play along and try to find the answer faster than the contestants.
I was only referring to the lack of tax revenues on the origin of the call. Since the call is usually payed for by the "caller" no the "callee" then that is where the big money is.
I guess my point was that Instant Messaging apps have a very intuitive interface for communicating, and managing privacy. Although the security model is rather simple, it is extremely effective when joined with the interface.
I think the 'great divide' between e-mail and instant messaging is the lack of the central database of users which is required for the security model to work.
IMO, as long as e-mail mirrors a postal service, where all mailboxes are open to pretty much whomever wants to send something there, the junk mailers will always find a way through the cracks. It seems to me like e-mail is an app that has band-aid after band-aid piled on to try and fix the side-effects, when at its core the idea behind the app (open communication) is not secure at all.
I agree with this 100%. I think that Vonage found a way to temprarily circumvent the taxes by originating all calls from an Internet connection, although I'm guessing a large percentage of the calls connect to a legacy phone system.
This idea is doomed for two reasons:
1. Goverment is cut out of tax revenue. 2. Mega monopoly telcos that lobby/stroke/pay-off politicians are now being undersold and are pissed.
If Vonage was strictly IP to IP and did not provide public services like 911, I think it would be a different story. Anyways, you really don't need a 3rd party involved for IP to IP. That technology has been around for quite a while, although both parties wanting to communicate need the hardware/software to make it work.
Why can't someone develop a standard and software to make e-mail communication similar to how instant messaging works?
With ICQ I have amazing control over who can communicate with me. I'm sure it would not be as effective for business users that need their email to be public, but IMO it would be 100% better than the current situation.
Worst case you could have a "public" e-mail address with loose restrictions and a "private" e-mail address with tight restrictions so you wouldn't have to dig through 100 viagra spams to find that important business communication from a trusted pool of associates.
Law schools are pumping out more lawyers than the economy can support. I think the new trend of sending out thousands of cease and desist letters is the law firm form of telemarketing, phishing, or even spamming.
I think they look for a mega-response. If they get a response from a company written by a big law firm it tells a lot about what the company has to lose, and how big their bank account is.
IMO, most lawyers are just looking for an easy settlement anyways. Use a 'bot to dig the internet for 'infringements', send out 10K letters, get 5 settlements for 25K each?
Ahhh... the search for the "perfect" language continues.
No one language is going to work for everyone. Is PHP the most secure language? Definitely not. Is it one of the easiest to learn languages? Yes.
Hind-sight is 20/20. I am sure that way back when PHP was created, had they known that such a ginormous percentage of websites on the Internet would be using it they might have done things differently. Who knows...
PHP is so popular because it is easy to learn, supported by a massive, massive user base, and is developed rapidly in response to user requests for new features. Is PHP an enterprise language? That is a hot topic of debate.
Some people would argue that Perl is an enterprise language, and that started out as a tool for system admins to make managing *nix servers easier. PHP started out as a tool to make developing dynamic websites easier.
It would be hard to argue against PHP being an extremely powerful language for developing websites. As site developers demand more and more from the language, and build bigger and bigger apps I think it will grow and morph to meet those challenges.
I don't think PHP is going anywhere anytime soon, and I think its only going to improve as more people jump in and help improve it.
However! There are some important things to remember. Unless you cache your site, it will probably not be any faster. Smarty is, in my opinion, bloated and slow. It tries to do too much and takes forever to load and use. (By forever, I mean like 0.1 seconds to load a page created by Smarty versus 0.005 seconds to load the equivalent page from pure PHP.)
I have read more comments like this than I can remember, and it is only partially true.
Smarty converts the template to pure PHP code the first time it is called, and only parses the raw template if it is modified. There is still overhead to check for modifications, but this can be turned off. Smarty is a monster app, but if you are using a PHP accelerator speed issues become almost moot (in my experience).
In regards to caching, I don't feel that caching speeds up Smarty at all, if anything it might slow it down a bit if you have 10s of thousands of cached pages. However, I believe that caching was originally meant to greatly reduce the load on your database server, which it doeas a great job of.
The greatest power of Smarty that gets very little attention is the plugin system which saves just unbelievable amounts of time by dropping in plugins that someone else has already taken the time to write. I also write many of my own plugins for specific tasks which greatly speed up HTML development.
I think this is a positive outcome for the environment. When I first heard about disposable DVDs I didn't like the thought of billions(?) more plastic discs working their way into landfills. I'm sure a lot of CDs already make it to landfills, but they weren't specifically designed to turn into trash.
I think the mentioned recycle options are a stretch, and not many people would spend the time to recycle them.
Anyways, the marketing push was based on the ease of throw-away technology, and not having to "take the disc back", which is pretty much what you have to do if you want to recycle them.
Now if you could chuck 'em in the recycle bin, and you could purchase them for less than a standard rental, that might be cool.
I expected people to take what I said with a grain of salt, and actually I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I don't think that ALL big name operators discourage spam. The ones that do 'allow' it resort to 'plausible deniability' type policies. "We don't allow spam, when we catch them we close their affiliate account." Makes it very easy to turn a blind eye and let it happen until questioned, then deal with it.
Only in the last 2 or 3 years have I started to come in contact with a large number of very legitimate site operators that actually try very hard to operate in a way that keeps customers happy. Hopefully the community will continue to move in that direction.
You know its funny, I get more non-porn spam than porn spam now. Well depending on what category gen^r*k v*agr^ falls into.
"There is no *business* in porn - it is simply sex-crazed people preying on a weakness in mostly men."
Based on that statement you have made it obvious that you have zero experience with the porn community, so where did you come up with that?
Anyways, I'm not going to argue with you, that is your opinion. The rest of your opinion is based on morality though, and I don't think my personal morality has anything to do with my stated experiences.
I wasn't trying to validate it as a business, its going to exist regardless of what I say anyways.
I was simply trying to make a point that in my experience the spammers in the porn community are in the minority, not the majority, and the majority views spammers as a threat to the community, not a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I read it, the Senator's daughter was the main character in Deception Point. I guess its in the eye of the reader. I have never read Digital Fortress.
You have also just described the plot of Deception Point, another Dan Brown book, except the hero is actually a woman (heroine), and the geeky expert is a man baby, yeahahh (tm).
smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz = "Can't we all just get along?"
and I remember destinctly that they had tweaked the software to hide the genitals
Breaking News!
Man hijacks plane with gun shaped like a penis. Congress to vote on bill banning penis shaped guns. NRA increases lobbying efforts.
That reminds me of the old school type network guys that act like union auto workers. "You can't move me to the transmission line, I have been working on the engine line for 30 years."
While everyone is bickering over what basically amounted to stubborn laziness, the Japanese promptly take over half of the US auto market, and thousands of US auto workers (not to mention thousands of workers from supporting industries) lose their jobs in the process.
My point is if you sit around getting fat on one skill, someone leaner an meaner will eventually take your place.
"...keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume."
-Marilyn Manson
I think electronic voting is insane. I didn't even like the old mechanical voting booths. If a clueless operator starts putting the tally cards in backwards your vote is lost, and you don't even know it.
You manually put holes in a card, and drop it into a locked ballot box. Someone has to do a lot of dirty work to make that box disappear, or alter the cards. Plus there are no ink marks that can be erased or smeared or whatever. (Don't forget to remove any hanging chads, lest an evil soul tries to glue it back in place)
Also, paper does not have source code.
Does Crichton's book count as prior art? Let's fabricate a patent war and do battle /. style.
What makes it worse is that Acacia does not even have any code to show. They have basically replaced the "code" with technical drawings explaining a "process" or "idea".
It would be different if they had a piece of software that was written and accomplishes the "idea", that pre-dates any other company's software that accomplishes the same "idea".
I think a line needs to be drawn for software patents to be approved. Don't tell me how it should work, show me that it does work.
I believe the patent office was born out of a need to patent inventions, with tangible prototypes. With software and technology it seems you are able to patent your "Eureka moment" without having to prove its viable or even possible.
Actually that would be a pretty cool gameshow. Ask people incredibly difficult questions (history, literature, sports, etc) and let them use Google to find the answer. Viewers at home could play along and try to find the answer faster than the contestants.
i see your point, but i least i could choose to live in a state that more matched my political views on this or any subject.
when the feds get involved in morality it is an umbrella policy that you can't escape.
Our federal government wastes entirely too much money trying to police morality which is out of bounds of the Constitution.
The Constitution leaves the policing of morality up to the state governments.
I get so pissed off when the federal goverment gets involved in questions of decency, because it is not their job, and shouldn't be.
I was only referring to the lack of tax revenues on the origin of the call. Since the call is usually payed for by the "caller" no the "callee" then that is where the big money is.
I guess my point was that Instant Messaging apps have a very intuitive interface for communicating, and managing privacy. Although the security model is rather simple, it is extremely effective when joined with the interface.
I think the 'great divide' between e-mail and instant messaging is the lack of the central database of users which is required for the security model to work.
IMO, as long as e-mail mirrors a postal service, where all mailboxes are open to pretty much whomever wants to send something there, the junk mailers will always find a way through the cracks. It seems to me like e-mail is an app that has band-aid after band-aid piled on to try and fix the side-effects, when at its core the idea behind the app (open communication) is not secure at all.
I agree with this 100%. I think that Vonage found a way to temprarily circumvent the taxes by originating all calls from an Internet connection, although I'm guessing a large percentage of the calls connect to a legacy phone system.
This idea is doomed for two reasons:
1. Goverment is cut out of tax revenue.
2. Mega monopoly telcos that lobby/stroke/pay-off politicians are now being undersold and are pissed.
If Vonage was strictly IP to IP and did not provide public services like 911, I think it would be a different story. Anyways, you really don't need a 3rd party involved for IP to IP. That technology has been around for quite a while, although both parties wanting to communicate need the hardware/software to make it work.
Why can't someone develop a standard and software to make e-mail communication similar to how instant messaging works?
With ICQ I have amazing control over who can communicate with me. I'm sure it would not be as effective for business users that need their email to be public, but IMO it would be 100% better than the current situation.
Worst case you could have a "public" e-mail address with loose restrictions and a "private" e-mail address with tight restrictions so you wouldn't have to dig through 100 viagra spams to find that important business communication from a trusted pool of associates.
Law schools are pumping out more lawyers than the economy can support. I think the new trend of sending out thousands of cease and desist letters is the law firm form of telemarketing, phishing, or even spamming.
I think they look for a mega-response. If they get a response from a company written by a big law firm it tells a lot about what the company has to lose, and how big their bank account is.
IMO, most lawyers are just looking for an easy settlement anyways. Use a 'bot to dig the internet for 'infringements', send out 10K letters, get 5 settlements for 25K each?
Also you have to look at the other side of the coin. Can you imagine this country, in this day and age, if true satire/parody was not protected?
Billion dollar companies still struggling to overcome protections championed by a pornographer: priceless
Ahhh... the search for the "perfect" language continues.
No one language is going to work for everyone. Is PHP the most secure language? Definitely not. Is it one of the easiest to learn languages? Yes.
Hind-sight is 20/20. I am sure that way back when PHP was created, had they known that such a ginormous percentage of websites on the Internet would be using it they might have done things differently. Who knows...
PHP is so popular because it is easy to learn, supported by a massive, massive user base, and is developed rapidly in response to user requests for new features. Is PHP an enterprise language? That is a hot topic of debate.
Some people would argue that Perl is an enterprise language, and that started out as a tool for system admins to make managing *nix servers easier. PHP started out as a tool to make developing dynamic websites easier.
It would be hard to argue against PHP being an extremely powerful language for developing websites. As site developers demand more and more from the language, and build bigger and bigger apps I think it will grow and morph to meet those challenges.
I don't think PHP is going anywhere anytime soon, and I think its only going to improve as more people jump in and help improve it.
I have read more comments like this than I can remember, and it is only partially true.
Smarty converts the template to pure PHP code the first time it is called, and only parses the raw template if it is modified. There is still overhead to check for modifications, but this can be turned off. Smarty is a monster app, but if you are using a PHP accelerator speed issues become almost moot (in my experience).
In regards to caching, I don't feel that caching speeds up Smarty at all, if anything it might slow it down a bit if you have 10s of thousands of cached pages. However, I believe that caching was originally meant to greatly reduce the load on your database server, which it doeas a great job of.
The greatest power of Smarty that gets very little attention is the plugin system which saves just unbelievable amounts of time by dropping in plugins that someone else has already taken the time to write. I also write many of my own plugins for specific tasks which greatly speed up HTML development.
I think this is a positive outcome for the environment. When I first heard about disposable DVDs I didn't like the thought of billions(?) more plastic discs working their way into landfills. I'm sure a lot of CDs already make it to landfills, but they weren't specifically designed to turn into trash.
I think the mentioned recycle options are a stretch, and not many people would spend the time to recycle them.
Anyways, the marketing push was based on the ease of throw-away technology, and not having to "take the disc back", which is pretty much what you have to do if you want to recycle them.
Now if you could chuck 'em in the recycle bin, and you could purchase them for less than a standard rental, that might be cool.
I expected people to take what I said with a grain of salt, and actually I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I don't think that ALL big name operators discourage spam. The ones that do 'allow' it resort to 'plausible deniability' type policies. "We don't allow spam, when we catch them we close their affiliate account." Makes it very easy to turn a blind eye and let it happen until questioned, then deal with it.
Only in the last 2 or 3 years have I started to come in contact with a large number of very legitimate site operators that actually try very hard to operate in a way that keeps customers happy. Hopefully the community will continue to move in that direction.
You know its funny, I get more non-porn spam than porn spam now. Well depending on what category gen^r*k v*agr^ falls into.
When Stallman reads that he might just spontaneously combust.
Joking aside, I would be VERY interested to hear his comments about this considering the whole Amazon boycott, etc.
"There is no *business* in porn - it is simply sex-crazed people preying on a weakness in mostly men."
Based on that statement you have made it obvious that you have zero experience with the porn community, so where did you come up with that?
Anyways, I'm not going to argue with you, that is your opinion. The rest of your opinion is based on morality though, and I don't think my personal morality has anything to do with my stated experiences.
I wasn't trying to validate it as a business, its going to exist regardless of what I say anyways.
I was simply trying to make a point that in my experience the spammers in the porn community are in the minority, not the majority, and the majority views spammers as a threat to the community, not a good thing.