But who said I'm not all in favor of checks in our work? All the same (granted I'm a programmer), if I had a nickel for every bit of code that I checked and re-checked, yet still crashed in some way nobody forseen when it was live for all to see, I'd be a rich man by now (as would many other coders I'm sure).
The analogy towards the Titanic for example, might have been similar, who would've thought that not sealing Watertight compartments at the top would create such an issue and sink the ship? Remembering that we're dealing with earlier 20th century engineering developments.
In today's mind, who would've thought that Del Taco's genetic engineering would prove to be the exact strain of gene that makes people allergic to their tortillas? Again with relatively new technology here...
In short, there's only so much we can check for, the rest just has to be dealt with as discovered, especially in new technology areas.
A good book on the topic is "Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea" (ISBN: 0131014005). In it some of the problems of Nanotech are discussed (in addition to the benefits of course).
IMHO though, this is just another snag in the means of progress. We develop Genetic engineering and people are suffering from allergies to Gene spliced tortillas (that was Del Taco IIRC), or for a worse idea, we develop advanced shipbuilding and watch the Titanic sink (over and over again...).
However will Nanotech help society as whole more than it will hurt? IMHO yes. Though it truly remains to be seen whether or not a bunch of Nano-bots will destroy us all from our insides (I think that was from the book), or a bunch of clumped Nano-tubes will get in our lungs (as the article said).
Granted advertisers need to advertise their product, what happens when they infiltrate the computer gaming market more. I can see it now, blowing someone away with a headshot and a message in my headphones "now how about a refreshing cola?". Oh dear...
Though I shouldn't fear someone will have a crack shortly when that happens:-)
well yeah, but anybody involved in network security would admit that security is an integrated effort, from hardware to software to user to pointy haired boss to well you get the idea...
The principle should always be redundancy, or "we fix all our security patches promptly 'cuz we don't know if that firewall is working right" and it may not, and some virus might get in and infect everyone (Believe me I've seen it).
So MS and everyone else don't be lazy, fix your stuff as it occurs and don't blame anything down or up from your position on the desktop for not blocking your error. It's not their job.
Truly I have wondered whether or not SCO's new mission statement has been to clog up the legal system for an eternity and annoy *nix users for all eternity in a pointless and useless battle that would have no impact on *nix even if won.
Speaking from SCO's eyes, the Linux developers violated SCO's user agreements. So it's essentially a retaliatory move I take it. However, even in a court of law 2 wrongs don't make a right. I can only hope for a speedy resolution to this whole mess so even SCO could go back to doing something normal and productive, instead of shooting themselves in the foot all the damn time (do they even have any foot left?)
You know one day I was marvelling at all the Nigerians who were emailing me, desperate to get all their money out of that country by whatever means possible thinking "is there some way I can help them do this?" I think I'll start a business acting as go-between for all these Nigerians, they can give their money to me, and I'll find plenty of American bank accounts to deliver all those funds too! It will be a one stop money moving for all those Nigerians! I'll only take a modest commission of course! Just send all your money to Happy Guy in Springfield and I'll do the rest!
(yes that last Happy Guy part was a shameless Simpsons quote)
I was thinking that myself, anyone else but me think the market is just a little saturated right now? What does MS offer that nobody else does in the digital music market? Better rights control for the artist? Better for them I presume but won't help sales much...somehow this digital music player will have to find a niche that helps people.
Either that or maybe, as usual, the MS brand will make the music player sell like hotcakes (though at the same time MS isn't without it's failures aka MS Bob...*shiver*).
I've always had a saying, for every loss there is an opportunity. Digital music up, CD's down? Think what you can do to help Digital music along? Is there a problem there that needs solving? Is there some worthy contribution you can make? Business is chess and business is war at the same time. Or better still, time to consider a new industry to open a store in? Yes it hurts but in the end you may not only keep your house, but upgrade the house as well:-)
I'm torn, mod insightful or funny?? Aaaah I'll respond then...
Well think about it, you advertise a whole mess of new features as well a "safer more robust operating system" and people will snap it up. Marketing over practicality wins yet again. It's the same reason why I'm feeling a sudden impulse to go out and buy a new Toyota right now...
Or maybe Microsoft needs to take note of that? Consider smaller cheaper incremental upgrades like they did back in the good old days of DOS and Windows 3.1 (Dos 5.0, 6.0, 6.22, etc...;Windows 3.0,3.1,3.11, etc...)?
It is necessary in a company with a 97% piracy rate to resort to a draconian solution such as knocking out windows. Though knocking out windows and restricting the "freedom of trade" could be just as much of a problem for the WTO as the piracy issue. Robbing Peter to pay Paul? Or are we solving more issues going open source for that country then we are creating by knocking out Microsoft? Decisions decisions, but then again that's why I'm not a world leader...
Ok so we're going all open source, who's next? OSX? OS/2? Maybe a Linux distro because it's too "proprietary?". Frankly freedom of choice, even if it is the MS route really needs to be preserved. Thoughts?
On slashdot, there have been topics on digital media durability in the past (run your own searches I'm too lazy). It really couldn't hurt to start archiving stuff on to material that can last hundreds of years if not longer. Was their any digital media that could do that? It couldn't be magnetic because that deteriorates over time, and it couldn't be CD etched as the scratches tear away at it piece by piece....thoughts?
First of all, as everyone should know, robots.txt is just to stop automated crawlers on the website. Presumably (unless stated otherwise) there should be no harm in manually transversing what you want (something like what Yahoo does in their categorization approach) and indexing as such. Probably just a simple technical reason for doing this more than a "conspiracy theory" reason.
Is the world more paranoid these days about conspiracies, or is it just me?
More or less what I was trying to say, I WAS a naive fool thinking that our firewall alone could handle a "little script kiddie toy"....but I don't make the same mistake twice myself:-)
Yes I do see your point regarding rash security patching, why put in a security fix for something you're not exposed to? Usually I hold back on such fixes, or at best deploy them in a fashion to cause very minimal impact. However when my network is comatose, you can bet I'm rushing comp to comp to deploy patches as well....
*sigh* sitting there happy behind firewalls with servers with little exposure, can I have your job??
However all the same being naive and thinking you have little exposure can get you burnt. I still remember around the slammer worm time thinking "oh look at the little script kiddies toy running smack into our RPC/NetBios filter at the firewall..." until an employee downloaded something she shouldn't have, and infected the entire network with this "Script Kiddie toy" known as the slammer worm....our network was near comatose for about 2 days....bad memories there.
Good thinking, mod +1 interesting for the nearest moderator please:-)
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'm speaking from the point of ignorance because I just don't care that much about my Television to want better from it. Maybe the better question is not so much why I would want the ability to pause live TV and/or skip commercials, etc. But what is the value which I see in doing so? Which as implicated, is relatively little for myself. No matter how you slice it I'm just not interested in Tivo:-) hence my ignorance (well not so much anymore now that I've generated a discussion thread on the issue I suppose but even after today's discussions I'm still not going out to buy one).
Does the prospect of never missing an episode of a show not appeal to you?
Honestly: Nope, I'm not that bound to the Television, I just turn it on every so often during some downtime and catch whatever seems mildly amusing. I'm no fan of any particular show (besides the Simpsons maybe) and see no reason to record everything.
Or the power to skip past commercials with a button press?
Meh, commercials are good downtime for me, use bathroom, fix a snack, etc. Not that I wouldn't mind them off of my TV screen but I just don't care enough to spend $100 (give or take) and then $10/month to dispose of them.
So, are my words spoken from ignorance? Or are they just spoken from the point of view of a consumer who just gives nothing for such things? However if I can hack it to do other stuffs, maybe it's worth it like I said:-)
Granted I've never seen the point of what is basically a glorified VCR/TV Guide hybrid for $9.95/month. But if I can hack a Tivo into doing more interesting stuff, then maybe it's worth it, buy the book first and the Tivo next if I like what I see...
Guy: Hello?
Telemarketer: Hi I'm solicting for donations for your Public Television station, for just $18 you get a free T-Shirt and a new credit card with 9.9% intro APR!! (wait isn't that what PBS does anyways these days? Are they soliciting or asking for charity?)
I change a phone number once every 5 years, and haven't changed my cell phone # since I've had it and I get no Telemarketing. Now that I see the problem, I wonder if I ever will (now at least a hair more likely though my phone number started as a mobile phone number and will still remain one). So I may never get a Telemarketing call.
I do honestly have to contemplate the lesser of 2 vices, having to tell everyone my mobile phone number changed, or putting up with Telemarketing on my cell phones. Sometimes I honestly do wish the government would just leave some stuff alone...
aaaah the heck with it, just makes life on Slashdot more interesting.
For those vintage games, my personal favorite being Darklands by Microprose, and the occasional bout of A-Train my Maxis. Still can't beat a 486 with DOS 5.0 for some stuff:-) actually our voicemail system at work is DOS 6.2 as well.
Slashdot Mirror
But who said I'm not all in favor of checks in our work? All the same (granted I'm a programmer), if I had a nickel for every bit of code that I checked and re-checked, yet still crashed in some way nobody forseen when it was live for all to see, I'd be a rich man by now (as would many other coders I'm sure).
The analogy towards the Titanic for example, might have been similar, who would've thought that not sealing Watertight compartments at the top would create such an issue and sink the ship? Remembering that we're dealing with earlier 20th century engineering developments.
In today's mind, who would've thought that Del Taco's genetic engineering would prove to be the exact strain of gene that makes people allergic to their tortillas? Again with relatively new technology here...
In short, there's only so much we can check for, the rest just has to be dealt with as discovered, especially in new technology areas.
A good book on the topic is "Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea" (ISBN: 0131014005). In it some of the problems of Nanotech are discussed (in addition to the benefits of course).
IMHO though, this is just another snag in the means of progress. We develop Genetic engineering and people are suffering from allergies to Gene spliced tortillas (that was Del Taco IIRC), or for a worse idea, we develop advanced shipbuilding and watch the Titanic sink (over and over again...).
However will Nanotech help society as whole more than it will hurt? IMHO yes. Though it truly remains to be seen whether or not a bunch of Nano-bots will destroy us all from our insides (I think that was from the book), or a bunch of clumped Nano-tubes will get in our lungs (as the article said).
Granted advertisers need to advertise their product, what happens when they infiltrate the computer gaming market more. I can see it now, blowing someone away with a headshot and a message in my headphones "now how about a refreshing cola?". Oh dear...
:-)
Though I shouldn't fear someone will have a crack shortly when that happens
Agreed, but to defeat thine enemy, it helps to understand him. Devil's advocate is a good thing to be if you plan on being the Devil slayer someday :-)
well yeah, but anybody involved in network security would admit that security is an integrated effort, from hardware to software to user to pointy haired boss to well you get the idea...
The principle should always be redundancy, or "we fix all our security patches promptly 'cuz we don't know if that firewall is working right" and it may not, and some virus might get in and infect everyone (Believe me I've seen it).
So MS and everyone else don't be lazy, fix your stuff as it occurs and don't blame anything down or up from your position on the desktop for not blocking your error. It's not their job.
Hear hear!
Truly I have wondered whether or not SCO's new mission statement has been to clog up the legal system for an eternity and annoy *nix users for all eternity in a pointless and useless battle that would have no impact on *nix even if won.
Speaking from SCO's eyes, the Linux developers violated SCO's user agreements. So it's essentially a retaliatory move I take it. However, even in a court of law 2 wrongs don't make a right. I can only hope for a speedy resolution to this whole mess so even SCO could go back to doing something normal and productive, instead of shooting themselves in the foot all the damn time (do they even have any foot left?)
You know one day I was marvelling at all the Nigerians who were emailing me, desperate to get all their money out of that country by whatever means possible thinking "is there some way I can help them do this?" I think I'll start a business acting as go-between for all these Nigerians, they can give their money to me, and I'll find plenty of American bank accounts to deliver all those funds too! It will be a one stop money moving for all those Nigerians! I'll only take a modest commission of course! Just send all your money to Happy Guy in Springfield and I'll do the rest!
(yes that last Happy Guy part was a shameless Simpsons quote)
I was thinking that myself, anyone else but me think the market is just a little saturated right now? What does MS offer that nobody else does in the digital music market? Better rights control for the artist? Better for them I presume but won't help sales much...somehow this digital music player will have to find a niche that helps people.
Either that or maybe, as usual, the MS brand will make the music player sell like hotcakes (though at the same time MS isn't without it's failures aka MS Bob...*shiver*).
I've always had a saying, for every loss there is an opportunity. Digital music up, CD's down? Think what you can do to help Digital music along? Is there a problem there that needs solving? Is there some worthy contribution you can make? Business is chess and business is war at the same time. Or better still, time to consider a new industry to open a store in? Yes it hurts but in the end you may not only keep your house, but upgrade the house as well :-)
I'm torn, mod insightful or funny?? Aaaah I'll respond then...
Well think about it, you advertise a whole mess of new features as well a "safer more robust operating system" and people will snap it up. Marketing over practicality wins yet again. It's the same reason why I'm feeling a sudden impulse to go out and buy a new Toyota right now...
Or maybe Microsoft needs to take note of that? Consider smaller cheaper incremental upgrades like they did back in the good old days of DOS and Windows 3.1 (Dos 5.0, 6.0, 6.22, etc...;Windows 3.0,3.1,3.11, etc...)?
It is necessary in a company with a 97% piracy rate to resort to a draconian solution such as knocking out windows. Though knocking out windows and restricting the "freedom of trade" could be just as much of a problem for the WTO as the piracy issue. Robbing Peter to pay Paul? Or are we solving more issues going open source for that country then we are creating by knocking out Microsoft? Decisions decisions, but then again that's why I'm not a world leader...
Ok so we're going all open source, who's next? OSX? OS/2? Maybe a Linux distro because it's too "proprietary?". Frankly freedom of choice, even if it is the MS route really needs to be preserved. Thoughts?
On slashdot, there have been topics on digital media durability in the past (run your own searches I'm too lazy). It really couldn't hurt to start archiving stuff on to material that can last hundreds of years if not longer. Was their any digital media that could do that? It couldn't be magnetic because that deteriorates over time, and it couldn't be CD etched as the scratches tear away at it piece by piece....thoughts?
First of all, as everyone should know, robots.txt is just to stop automated crawlers on the website. Presumably (unless stated otherwise) there should be no harm in manually transversing what you want (something like what Yahoo does in their categorization approach) and indexing as such. Probably just a simple technical reason for doing this more than a "conspiracy theory" reason.
Is the world more paranoid these days about conspiracies, or is it just me?
More or less what I was trying to say, I WAS a naive fool thinking that our firewall alone could handle a "little script kiddie toy"....but I don't make the same mistake twice myself :-)
Yes I do see your point regarding rash security patching, why put in a security fix for something you're not exposed to? Usually I hold back on such fixes, or at best deploy them in a fashion to cause very minimal impact. However when my network is comatose, you can bet I'm rushing comp to comp to deploy patches as well....
*sigh* sitting there happy behind firewalls with servers with little exposure, can I have your job??
However all the same being naive and thinking you have little exposure can get you burnt. I still remember around the slammer worm time thinking "oh look at the little script kiddies toy running smack into our RPC/NetBios filter at the firewall..." until an employee downloaded something she shouldn't have, and infected the entire network with this "Script Kiddie toy" known as the slammer worm....our network was near comatose for about 2 days....bad memories there.
*sigh* Insensitive clods huh??? Well I for one welcome our new Big Mac overlords
*takes a bow, nyuck nyuck*
Good thinking, mod +1 interesting for the nearest moderator please :-)
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'm speaking from the point of ignorance because I just don't care that much about my Television to want better from it. Maybe the better question is not so much why I would want the ability to pause live TV and/or skip commercials, etc. But what is the value which I see in doing so? Which as implicated, is relatively little for myself. No matter how you slice it I'm just not interested in Tivo :-) hence my ignorance (well not so much anymore now that I've generated a discussion thread on the issue I suppose but even after today's discussions I'm still not going out to buy one).
Does the prospect of never missing an episode of a show not appeal to you?
:-)
Honestly: Nope, I'm not that bound to the Television, I just turn it on every so often during some downtime and catch whatever seems mildly amusing. I'm no fan of any particular show (besides the Simpsons maybe) and see no reason to record everything.
Or the power to skip past commercials with a button press?
Meh, commercials are good downtime for me, use bathroom, fix a snack, etc. Not that I wouldn't mind them off of my TV screen but I just don't care enough to spend $100 (give or take) and then $10/month to dispose of them.
So, are my words spoken from ignorance? Or are they just spoken from the point of view of a consumer who just gives nothing for such things? However if I can hack it to do other stuffs, maybe it's worth it like I said
Granted I've never seen the point of what is basically a glorified VCR/TV Guide hybrid for $9.95/month. But if I can hack a Tivo into doing more interesting stuff, then maybe it's worth it, buy the book first and the Tivo next if I like what I see...
With all due respect due Bill Watterson, my pledge of alleigance: "I pledge Alleigance to Queen Frag and her mighty State of Hysteria..."
I do hope he decides to come out of retirement someday, dilbert just doesn't compare sometimes...
Guy: Hello? Telemarketer: Hi I'm solicting for donations for your Public Television station, for just $18 you get a free T-Shirt and a new credit card with 9.9% intro APR!! (wait isn't that what PBS does anyways these days? Are they soliciting or asking for charity?)
I change a phone number once every 5 years, and haven't changed my cell phone # since I've had it and I get no Telemarketing. Now that I see the problem, I wonder if I ever will (now at least a hair more likely though my phone number started as a mobile phone number and will still remain one). So I may never get a Telemarketing call.
I do honestly have to contemplate the lesser of 2 vices, having to tell everyone my mobile phone number changed, or putting up with Telemarketing on my cell phones. Sometimes I honestly do wish the government would just leave some stuff alone...
aaaah the heck with it, just makes life on Slashdot more interesting.
For those vintage games, my personal favorite being Darklands by Microprose, and the occasional bout of A-Train my Maxis. Still can't beat a 486 with DOS 5.0 for some stuff :-) actually our voicemail system at work is DOS 6.2 as well.