And it is often caused by the fact that many control systems today depends on operating system from the same vendor as all other machines, namely Microsoft. In one way it's useful to have the machines on the net. This because it's cheap and easy to get a DSL line to the remote unmanned locations. The problem is that even if you do a VPN connection there is still a risk that the firewalls can be penetrated. (misconfiguration etc.)
There is always a balance between cost and protection and it's easy to cut back the costs, since the risks are very hard to weigh. Many companies calculates with a certain amount of downtime caused by "unforseen" events. What's in this category also depends on the amount of money put into the security bag. They are just comparing the agreements with their customers and the cost for protection and are figuring out that "OK, we can allow to have a day or more downtime without violating our customer agreements".
It's all about money, but sometimes you may think that there are people as mean as Marwin Meathead.
The problem is that Amazon isn't a French company, this is a normal action... Try to suppress anything that hasn't originated in France. Doesn't matter which product or service...
Of course it's not always obvious that it's happening, it just happens to be delays or that taxes are different on French and non-French cars etc. Everything done in a way that's not easy to figure out, even more since it's motivated in the French language in a legal setup.
Just for Amazon to come back and yell loudly about unfair trade agreements and such - and nothing happens until someone gets so upset that he/she is going to blow a blood vessel...
You must consider that there has to be many reasons for people to send out stress pheromones, late for work, fear of flying, claustrophobia etc.
And there is no reason that a suicide bomber actually is afraid - that phase may have passed over months ago and the person may have actually come to terms with his/her destiny.
The US also leads the world in patent development.
Interesting - is the patent system developing? Considering that there are so many patent-trolls the patent system doesn't seem to be anything else than a collection of idea-data regardless of obviousness and quality.
But on the other hand - what is to be expected from a country ruled by the legal departments of companies.
There are certainly those who are willing to let it grow beyond the 14 day limit...
Can be a creepy result... A sheep with a human brain... Or the opposite... Those are extremes...
But what about a human with polar bear fur?
Never mind - there are better features that I would have had... Better eyesight maybe? Birds are able to see UV-radiation, and some birds have a lot better vision than humans. On the other hand the genome for UV isn't lost in humans - it's actually changed into blue instead, probably because it's more useful that way. (so we can see the BSOD from M$)
Or a simple feature - why does humans really need toilet paper? Most animals can keep themselves clean anyway!
And the XXX industry would like to have a man hung like a horse...
And the athletes would like to be able to run like a cheetah.
But don't forget - humans are actually one of the more adaptable species in the world, even if laziness and sex drive are the most prominent features of a human. (don't underestimate the amount of work a human can do to avoid work later...)
Ends up being that Novell owns SCO retroactively and that the board of SCO and it's directors has been doing everything in a way that allows Novell to sue them for everything down to their pants and their genetic code (that probably is worthless anyway except as proof of relation to slugs or something...)
a case where somebody hacks this and inserts their own ads into the devices.
Just check if somebody are near the vitamins and insert an ad for those infamous blue pills we all see on the net. At the newsstand insert an ad for obscure magazines that you only can buy online. At olive oil insert a commercial for Mobil 1 as the best alternative for your car. Near the toothbrushes an ad for an infamous dentist. "You want the Blue Screen of Death - buy the latest from Microsoft!"
Or maybe in these times insert a picture of a president candidate together with a maybe not so friendly text.
Use your imagination about what possibly can go wrong!
It is also decreasing the value of video and photos as evidence in court cases.
Both as positive and negative evidence.
It will be as easy to "prove" that somebody was somewhere else as it is that someone was at the scene of a crime. Or that YOU were part of that riot mob at the football stadium.
The presidental sector of the government seems to be too much in control - not only the president himself but a lot of the grey-hats that surrounds the president. A revision here should be useful - even if it weakens the office.
But first I think that the current government needs a scrutiny. It seems that there are a few persons there that has to take responsibility for unnecessary violence.
An adjustment to the Second Amendment seems to be overdue. There should at least be some limitation on the right to bear arms. Verify that the person is competent enough by verifying weapon handling and safety first to avoid unnecessary accidents. And also have a mandatory health check at regular intervals. Followed by a weapon storage safety regulation that notes that when not in use a weapon shall be locked-up and disabled to avoid accidents with children and limit weapons theft.
The voting system may have been good once - but in today's world it may be improved upon. Mostly since the technology of today may offer a different way to do an election. Another thing is to require that any voting calculation method must be available for scrutiny by the public.
Every citizen shall be able to get a health insurance - at a reasonable cost. For individuals below the age of 18 the state shall provide reasonable health care. (not free, but at a cost that isn't prohibitive). Don't forget that people with bad health isn't as able to pay income taxes as healthy people.
Education is important - and this means that if a person is competent enough that person shall be able to study at a higher level without prohibitive costs. However the competence requirement will have to be re-evaluated at regular intervals.
Requirement for schools to not dismiss the theory of evolution - and especially not to push any religious beliefs upon the children. If they want to know - fine - but that's what Freedom of Religion is about. Forcing a certain religion in a public school is a different thing.
Sony & Microsoft - the companies that wants their own standards and can't accept that there already are standards in place doing the same thing.
OK Apple are playing in a division of their own - but they are relatively insignificant and only attracts a minority. But even if they are insignificant - it may be important that they do what they do.
A wireless USB that has a range of a few centimeters seems to be a complete waste. The 3 meter distance seems to be relatively useful. The only disadvantage with all these wireless devices we have today is all the EM radiation. But WTF - we all are going to get our hole in the ground sooner or later...
Personally - when it comes to memory sticks I would see a radical cleanup. The original SD cards and the CF cards may be the best choices. The mini-versions are starting to get so small and fiddly that they are hard to handle instead.
that the hydrogen gas cloud exists - it means that there is material for a lot of new stars to form yet.
Time to bring out the spaceship and start spreading humanity into the galaxy.:-)
But when the cloud hits humanity will have disappeared and diverted in so many different forms that it's probably not interesting anymore. But is humanity at it's height right now? Inhumanity sure is!
On a geological timeframe humanity is insignificant, and on a universal scale we are merely a static crack. That we still are able to fathom the scale of the events to come is still rather cool!
that the sound has a better feel on a vinyl record is that on CD:s the sound is digitally modified for "loudness" effect - which over the time is tiresome to the listener and also does not utilize the full range of the capacity a CD actually has. Of course - there are a few really well-made CD:s around too, and the earliest CD releases like Brothers in Arms or many classical music records.
For MP3:s and other lossy formats the effect is that the lower and upper frequency ranges are stripped out, which also causes a loss of information and therefore gives a sloppier sound.
The vinyl records are a different kind of thing - but the disadvantage with vinyl is that those records slowly degrades over time where the upper frequencies are lost first. But a fresh vinyl record on a really good player is really an experience if it is a good recording.
I see a different paradox here - aside from the real programmers... "Real programmers count '075, 076, 077, 100'", Pays a $7 item with a $10 bill and says "keep the change"...
Anyway - what about debugging/validation tools for script languages like Python? (FindBugs(TM) exists for Java) From what I have seen of Python (not too much anyway) is that it is a bit more like Basic (or Fortran if you like) of the 80's. In a few years we will get "programmers with Python-syndrome". Not that Python doesn't have some good parts too - I don't deny that.
I'm a bit worried about the 'Python programmers smarter than Java programmers' statement. It may be true - but then - when they have moved on and maintenance has started - it's not the smart guys that are there anymore it's the average code dumpster divers that sits and tries to figure out what's happening...
There is a difference with a compiling language (like Java) is that when done right with declarations and dependency definitions you can end up getting a system that can be re-compiled and any mismatches can be resolved. In a scripting language you run the risk of not encountering such problems until runtime - where the cost of rectifying them will be much higher.
I think that the paradox is that the "smart" guys are always looking for new things to use - and they may use them well. This isn't really a paradox since the persons that are most prone to change assimilates new knowledge better than the others that are left with the old well-known parts. In a while today's Python-coders will move on to a new pasture unless they degrade and got stuck in Python.
Of course - this seems to end up in a conflict of "compiling" and "non-compiling" languages, same as the "soft" and "hard" type-checking conflict. These issues has been around since the 80's and even earlier.
In the end - it all comes down to how a language does not only in a small system but in a large integration where it is essential that you don't get runtime errors just because a function is called with a different number of parameters (that should have been detected at compile-time).
Personally I advocate for a language with strong data type checks together with the use of tools that allows the programmer to verify the code to not only look good, but also being safe and efficient. If you have a larger project you may want to use tools like PurifyPlus to verify not only the integrity of your code but also detect and allow you to resolve bottlenecks. (And any code regardless of programming language benefits from code optimization)
Another issue is to avoid intermixing of languages in the same code. This is often the case when it comes to web design where you often see a single JSP, PHP, ASP (or possibly other techniques too) file with HTML, Java (or corresponding Microsoft data), Javascript, XML Tag libraries and even VBScript (BARF!!!). Such code is often extremely hard to read. An editor with color-coding may prove helpful - but it's still a real pain.
So - essentially - there is no paradox at all - it's just that either you are a quick learner and race on to new challenges or you stick with the well-known (maybe because you HAVE to - not that you WANT to).
C++ may be useful - but only for "glue" and larger embedded systems today. The potential stability issues that's inherited from C with the possibility of buffer overflows etc. still exists.
A really big disadvantage with C++ is that it relies heavily on library packages which means that the code may be very hard to port between systems.
C is sufficient for most uses when it comes to low-level programming. The code is also a lot easier to read than C++ unless the programmer is really obscure about it. And if you plan to write device drivers for Linux you have to do it in C and not C++. (OK, you probably CAN, but you will probably end up doing more work managing the C++ interfacing and management than it's worth)
And NO! a CS degree will not prove that you are a really good programmer - it only proves that you were able to pass the minimum requirements to get that grade. Experience is worth a lot more than a degree. It is as important to learn yesterday's languages and their pitfalls as it is to learn modern languages - or you will repeat the same mistakes made by programmers in a different language. For being bashed as an unsuitable language experience in Basic is still not an disadvantage - but the experience must be to learn it's shortcomings and not only the language. C has it's shortcomings in that you can do whatever you like - but the pitfall is that you can code buffer overflows. However sometimes you WANT to do "unorthodox" things and then you have to resolve to C or assembly. With Cobol experience there is something new to learn - that the language is designed for business tasks. Here you may learn the Cobol way of defining data records. This is really useful whenever you want to code a package that is going to exchange data with a system written in Cobol. (Yes they still exists - and will probably still exist for several years or even decades to come...)
Oh - there are alternatives to Java. The good thing with Java isn't that it's really a good language or that it's very efficient. But it is relatively easy to create reasonable solutions in it and it is portable.
For some solutions you may be better off using a different language. This since Java isn't the complete truth and solution either - and no programming language is.
I'm currently in progress of converting from OpenVMS running software written in Basic, C, C++, DCL and Java to Linux running almost only Java. The difference is that there are a large number of software packages and libraries available for Java that aren't available for many other languages. And to be portable between different environments is sometimes much more important than using the perfect language.
OK, it always help you if you have a good development tool. The days of a plain editor is almost over. Eclipse is a good development system. (even if it doesn't suit everybody and it has a few glitches). And don't ignore compiler warnings - even those that aren't on by default in the development environment - they are there for a reason. If you think that you can't get enough warnings you can always try FindBugs(TM) on your Java code.
Code comments are useful - but as always don't be excessive about it or you may obscure the code or the comments will get outdated. For an overview you may want to create pictures/flowcharts instead and insert as images in the JavaDoc comments and/or other documentation.
And now Microsoft will make a move and do one or more of the following:
Offer a great discount on licenses.
Whine loudly about unfair practices.
Send the BSA thugs over to each school to do a license check.
Update an agreement with the government forcing the use of Microsoft licenses on every computing devices.
'invent' different computer-related crimes that the schools has to be knowing about and therefore be responsible. Of course - provided by proxies like the RIAA.
Silently change their licensing models to be even more obscure and confusing.
Outsource more of their support to the government to any country where it's so impolite to say 'No' that you always get 'Yes' as an answer regardless of the question - and charge heavily for it.
Create a telephone queue on the 900 support number that forces the users to wait for 30 minutes and £2 per minute while listening to annoying music before answering your call.
Require all UK government support calls to be done to a helpdesk in California that's open only between 08:00 and 16:00 PST.
Claim security threats and request that the streets around their office shall be closed to through traffic.
Buy companies that have agreements with the government and then start to renegotiate the agreements.
Release a critical security update that has a specific UK flaw that doesn't show up until after the next security release with an interlocking dependency that can't be fixed for another six months.
Will not that be a problem for the students later in life if they chose to seek higher education?
Oh - wait - religion wants us to be all meek and follow the leader and his disciples.
There is only one religion that always works and that is Murphy's Law. But there are some who think's Murphy was an optimist. - In short "Shit happens".
Slashdot Mirror
There is always a balance between cost and protection and it's easy to cut back the costs, since the risks are very hard to weigh. Many companies calculates with a certain amount of downtime caused by "unforseen" events. What's in this category also depends on the amount of money put into the security bag. They are just comparing the agreements with their customers and the cost for protection and are figuring out that "OK, we can allow to have a day or more downtime without violating our customer agreements".
It's all about money, but sometimes you may think that there are people as mean as Marwin Meathead.
Of course it's not always obvious that it's happening, it just happens to be delays or that taxes are different on French and non-French cars etc. Everything done in a way that's not easy to figure out, even more since it's motivated in the French language in a legal setup.
Just for Amazon to come back and yell loudly about unfair trade agreements and such - and nothing happens until someone gets so upset that he/she is going to blow a blood vessel...
And there is no reason that a suicide bomber actually is afraid - that phase may have passed over months ago and the person may have actually come to terms with his/her destiny.
So someone is barking up the wrong tree again...
But on the other hand - what is to be expected from a country ruled by the legal departments of companies.
Some Unused and Probably Unusable references to lawyers by Heinlein. Another more interesting is Mass-murder of all lawyers in 1965 in one of his timelines as it appeared in the book Number of the Beast (p.378).
Can be a creepy result... A sheep with a human brain... Or the opposite... Those are extremes...
But what about a human with polar bear fur?
Never mind - there are better features that I would have had... Better eyesight maybe? Birds are able to see UV-radiation, and some birds have a lot better vision than humans. On the other hand the genome for UV isn't lost in humans - it's actually changed into blue instead, probably because it's more useful that way. (so we can see the BSOD from M$)
Or a simple feature - why does humans really need toilet paper? Most animals can keep themselves clean anyway!
And the XXX industry would like to have a man hung like a horse...
And the athletes would like to be able to run like a cheetah.
But don't forget - humans are actually one of the more adaptable species in the world, even if laziness and sex drive are the most prominent features of a human. (don't underestimate the amount of work a human can do to avoid work later...)
Ends up being that Novell owns SCO retroactively and that the board of SCO and it's directors has been doing everything in a way that allows Novell to sue them for everything down to their pants and their genetic code (that probably is worthless anyway except as proof of relation to slugs or something...)
(end sarcastic mode...)
- Operating system & networking drivers
- Network client applications. (browsers, email, chat etc.)
- Server softwares. (IIS, File server etc.)
- Databases. (Access, SQL Server etc.)
- Office applications. (Excel, Word, Powerpoint etc.)
- Software development.
And require that all these are geographically separated and that the documentation about all interfaces are publicly available for competitors.Of course - this means that the chair-throwing guy will lose a lot of control.
Just check if somebody are near the vitamins and insert an ad for those infamous blue pills we all see on the net. At the newsstand insert an ad for obscure magazines that you only can buy online. At olive oil insert a commercial for Mobil 1 as the best alternative for your car. Near the toothbrushes an ad for an infamous dentist. "You want the Blue Screen of Death - buy the latest from Microsoft!"
Or maybe in these times insert a picture of a president candidate together with a maybe not so friendly text.
Use your imagination about what possibly can go wrong!
Both as positive and negative evidence.
It will be as easy to "prove" that somebody was somewhere else as it is that someone was at the scene of a crime. Or that YOU were part of that riot mob at the football stadium.
Yesterday's movie fiction - today's reality.
But first I think that the current government needs a scrutiny. It seems that there are a few persons there that has to take responsibility for unnecessary violence.
An adjustment to the Second Amendment seems to be overdue. There should at least be some limitation on the right to bear arms. Verify that the person is competent enough by verifying weapon handling and safety first to avoid unnecessary accidents. And also have a mandatory health check at regular intervals. Followed by a weapon storage safety regulation that notes that when not in use a weapon shall be locked-up and disabled to avoid accidents with children and limit weapons theft.
The voting system may have been good once - but in today's world it may be improved upon. Mostly since the technology of today may offer a different way to do an election. Another thing is to require that any voting calculation method must be available for scrutiny by the public.
Every citizen shall be able to get a health insurance - at a reasonable cost. For individuals below the age of 18 the state shall provide reasonable health care. (not free, but at a cost that isn't prohibitive). Don't forget that people with bad health isn't as able to pay income taxes as healthy people.
Education is important - and this means that if a person is competent enough that person shall be able to study at a higher level without prohibitive costs. However the competence requirement will have to be re-evaluated at regular intervals.
Requirement for schools to not dismiss the theory of evolution - and especially not to push any religious beliefs upon the children. If they want to know - fine - but that's what Freedom of Religion is about. Forcing a certain religion in a public school is a different thing.
The question is valid though - since there is a possibility that we are going to get a really bad crash due to energy shortage...
I can't see any other true reason. If I post a picture of my car they should see that as free marketing and let it be.
And - anyway - this may not work in other countries.
OK Apple are playing in a division of their own - but they are relatively insignificant and only attracts a minority. But even if they are insignificant - it may be important that they do what they do.
A wireless USB that has a range of a few centimeters seems to be a complete waste. The 3 meter distance seems to be relatively useful. The only disadvantage with all these wireless devices we have today is all the EM radiation. But WTF - we all are going to get our hole in the ground sooner or later...
Personally - when it comes to memory sticks I would see a radical cleanup. The original SD cards and the CF cards may be the best choices. The mini-versions are starting to get so small and fiddly that they are hard to handle instead.
Time to bring out the spaceship and start spreading humanity into the galaxy. :-)
But when the cloud hits humanity will have disappeared and diverted in so many different forms that it's probably not interesting anymore. But is humanity at it's height right now? Inhumanity sure is!
On a geological timeframe humanity is insignificant, and on a universal scale we are merely a static crack. That we still are able to fathom the scale of the events to come is still rather cool!
caused by the number of calls from Slashdot...
For MP3:s and other lossy formats the effect is that the lower and upper frequency ranges are stripped out, which also causes a loss of information and therefore gives a sloppier sound.
The vinyl records are a different kind of thing - but the disadvantage with vinyl is that those records slowly degrades over time where the upper frequencies are lost first. But a fresh vinyl record on a really good player is really an experience if it is a good recording.
Anyway - what about debugging/validation tools for script languages like Python? (FindBugs(TM) exists for Java) From what I have seen of Python (not too much anyway) is that it is a bit more like Basic (or Fortran if you like) of the 80's. In a few years we will get "programmers with Python-syndrome". Not that Python doesn't have some good parts too - I don't deny that.
I'm a bit worried about the 'Python programmers smarter than Java programmers' statement. It may be true - but then - when they have moved on and maintenance has started - it's not the smart guys that are there anymore it's the average code dumpster divers that sits and tries to figure out what's happening...
There is a difference with a compiling language (like Java) is that when done right with declarations and dependency definitions you can end up getting a system that can be re-compiled and any mismatches can be resolved. In a scripting language you run the risk of not encountering such problems until runtime - where the cost of rectifying them will be much higher.
I think that the paradox is that the "smart" guys are always looking for new things to use - and they may use them well. This isn't really a paradox since the persons that are most prone to change assimilates new knowledge better than the others that are left with the old well-known parts. In a while today's Python-coders will move on to a new pasture unless they degrade and got stuck in Python.
Of course - this seems to end up in a conflict of "compiling" and "non-compiling" languages, same as the "soft" and "hard" type-checking conflict. These issues has been around since the 80's and even earlier.
In the end - it all comes down to how a language does not only in a small system but in a large integration where it is essential that you don't get runtime errors just because a function is called with a different number of parameters (that should have been detected at compile-time).
Personally I advocate for a language with strong data type checks together with the use of tools that allows the programmer to verify the code to not only look good, but also being safe and efficient. If you have a larger project you may want to use tools like PurifyPlus to verify not only the integrity of your code but also detect and allow you to resolve bottlenecks. (And any code regardless of programming language benefits from code optimization)
Another issue is to avoid intermixing of languages in the same code. This is often the case when it comes to web design where you often see a single JSP, PHP, ASP (or possibly other techniques too) file with HTML, Java (or corresponding Microsoft data), Javascript, XML Tag libraries and even VBScript (BARF!!!). Such code is often extremely hard to read. An editor with color-coding may prove helpful - but it's still a real pain.
So - essentially - there is no paradox at all - it's just that either you are a quick learner and race on to new challenges or you stick with the well-known (maybe because you HAVE to - not that you WANT to).
A really big disadvantage with C++ is that it relies heavily on library packages which means that the code may be very hard to port between systems.
C is sufficient for most uses when it comes to low-level programming. The code is also a lot easier to read than C++ unless the programmer is really obscure about it. And if you plan to write device drivers for Linux you have to do it in C and not C++. (OK, you probably CAN, but you will probably end up doing more work managing the C++ interfacing and management than it's worth)
And NO! a CS degree will not prove that you are a really good programmer - it only proves that you were able to pass the minimum requirements to get that grade. Experience is worth a lot more than a degree. It is as important to learn yesterday's languages and their pitfalls as it is to learn modern languages - or you will repeat the same mistakes made by programmers in a different language. For being bashed as an unsuitable language experience in Basic is still not an disadvantage - but the experience must be to learn it's shortcomings and not only the language. C has it's shortcomings in that you can do whatever you like - but the pitfall is that you can code buffer overflows. However sometimes you WANT to do "unorthodox" things and then you have to resolve to C or assembly. With Cobol experience there is something new to learn - that the language is designed for business tasks. Here you may learn the Cobol way of defining data records. This is really useful whenever you want to code a package that is going to exchange data with a system written in Cobol. (Yes they still exists - and will probably still exist for several years or even decades to come...)
Oh - there are alternatives to Java. The good thing with Java isn't that it's really a good language or that it's very efficient. But it is relatively easy to create reasonable solutions in it and it is portable.
For some solutions you may be better off using a different language. This since Java isn't the complete truth and solution either - and no programming language is.
I'm currently in progress of converting from OpenVMS running software written in Basic, C, C++, DCL and Java to Linux running almost only Java. The difference is that there are a large number of software packages and libraries available for Java that aren't available for many other languages. And to be portable between different environments is sometimes much more important than using the perfect language.
OK, it always help you if you have a good development tool. The days of a plain editor is almost over. Eclipse is a good development system. (even if it doesn't suit everybody and it has a few glitches). And don't ignore compiler warnings - even those that aren't on by default in the development environment - they are there for a reason. If you think that you can't get enough warnings you can always try FindBugs(TM) on your Java code.
Code comments are useful - but as always don't be excessive about it or you may obscure the code or the comments will get outdated. For an overview you may want to create pictures/flowcharts instead and insert as images in the JavaDoc comments and/or other documentation.
Assuming it really is C - it may be a different language where the condition is valid!
Oh - wait - religion wants us to be all meek and follow the leader and his disciples.
There is only one religion that always works and that is Murphy's Law. But there are some who think's Murphy was an optimist. - In short "Shit happens".
"Religion is only a crutch"
Hmm.... Sounds to me like a Brainiac test; Will it sink or will it float?