First of all, it should be noted that the dataset was from early December, and thus preserves the distribution of torrents before the recent site shutdowns.
So, you may want to try reading a little more closely next time. In no way does this article indicate "that irrespective of the recent damage dealt to global torrent sites, the communities are still very active".
Slashdot moderators, mind RTFAing before publishing submissions?
...which would make you the router/hub/switch/whatever, and the man and fire dept., clients. Do not mistake the fact that just because there are no computers involved, there is still a network and a protocol used to relay the messages.
...and before I get flamed: I definitely agree that the internet and ham are two different technologies meant for two different applications. But if you're going to explain the difference, explain it correctly.
LONG before some sick fuck decided to publicize this horrible term for a horrible practice, we *nix folk had.plan files. Need to know what joe is working on? finger joe@hisdomain. "Blogging" is not a new thing, folks.
For all of you looking to reclaim that first programming experience, LOGO is still available. It's been updated a bit: multiple turtles, color, even 3D IIRC. If you head to the link above, you'll see lots of talk about modeling comlex environments and such, but it is really just LOGO with a bunch of MIT geeks writing webpages about using it.;)
The Software Patent Directive has been withdrawn from the Agenda of the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Have I really not been paying enough attention to realize that when people said, "it's being pushed through the back door," that this is what they meant? Or does the EU have strange, overgrown branches of government (such that Agriculture and Fisheries really does control software rulings)? Or was this just a joke from the FFII?
This is absolutely moronic. Change the calendar to make it easier for coders to compute the date? There are two problems with this idea:
1. If anyone is writing code to compute the date, they are fools wasting their time. There are countless tools already out there that you can download and use for free. No need to reinvent the wheel.
2. Our computers waste so much time doing useless things like drawing rounded corners on windows that there is no reason not to waste a few cycles on computing the date.
Have you graduated yet? I ask because it seems like you have a few holes in your idea about this whole "fiasco."
As a concrete point: The fact that there were 25 kids in the class and 44 security holes found does not, in any way, mean that most people found 2-ish bugs. There was no requirement mentioned that holes found by one student had to be different from holes found by another. There was probably a great deal of overlap, especially if the students were smart and worked together to find these things.
As a rant: Now that I have graduated, I can look back on the experience and realize that all the worrying I did was just wasted time. We would all sit around and worry about professors being super strict on rules and not caring about how many people he fails and being completely illogical about awarding points on an exam. The reality is that professors are very intelligent people. They listen very well to students with concerns.
When this guy assigned this homework, I'm sure there were people in the audience who just about had a heart attack. They began to talk exactly like you are now. "You can't do that. We'll get the administration!" Meanwhile, the smart ones started planning when they would meet in a group and take a look at things. The really smart ones probably even grabbed their TA after class and asked when they could talk to him.
The professor is extremely rarely ("never" is such a strong word) out to "get" his students. I'm sure he understood that his assignment was extremely difficult. If he was like most professors, he had his TA's fully prepared with 5-ish examples of holes for them to go over with students who had trouble (which, given proper write up, undoubtedly counted for credit). He probably even went over a couple of examples in class, and had a list posted somewhere of programs with security holes he already new about, just waiting for someone searching for inspiration.
So, if you haven't graduated yet, keep these things in mind in your future years. If you have graduated, try not to bang your head too hard on your desk.;)
Wow - being that this is an audio player story, I assumed he meant "does it have something other than a headphone jack", i.e. left/right RCA-style audio breakout.:P Will I never learn that people like stupidextras.
If you're refering to the interesting puzzlers that were popular to discuss in the late 90's, they don't do that any more. There is much debate as to whether they were ever any good at all for selecting good people to hire.
Ah ha! You are absolutely correct. I did, in fact, make the stupid jump from IT to CS. I can't believe I did it either, because I spend so much time trying to convince people they are different. It's so annoying when people can't understand why even though you know a million things about balanced trees, sorting, bit order, and power consumption; you still have no idea where the font setting for Outlook Express is.:P Thank you for setting my words straight.
I do want to emphasize the problem with programming for dummies, though. I have actually heard people whine about how their "HTML programming skills are no longer needed." Sorry, man, HTML is not a programming language.
I did also want to address sysadmins separately. From my experience, someone who has in-depth knowledge about network configurations (I'm talking star vs. bus topology, true bandwidth, security, protocol advantages/disadvantages, etc. - not ipconfig for windows) is invaluable when you are trying to set up a high-performance, reliable network. But once it's all running, it really only takes one person's time to plug in a new disk drive when one fails. So, if you're looking for work in the sysadmin sector, don't expect companies with in-place systems to come beating down your door.
If Games Journalism is just a job to you, you really shouldn't be doing it. The word should be "vocation".
This quote applies to more than just games journalism. Any of these tossers on/. who have asked, "I'm at A University studying Computer Science - will I get a job?" should be listening up.
People bitch, whine, moan, complain, etc. about how they lost their jobs at the end of the tech bubble, and about how there are no tech jobs available now. I, however, whole-heartedly support the paring down of the industry. In the late 90's, all the news could report on was how much money people were making founding dot-com companies. So, every person out there looking to make a quick buck said, "Hey - I could totally make it selling Vievelflutzers on the Internet." So, millions flocked to Universities, Community Colleges, and Barnes & Noble to get their hands on "Programming for Dummies."
Well, guess what. Programming is not for dummies. It never has been. Programming is a science and an art, and there is no way that you can do it properly without enjoying doing it. You have to enjoy spending hours racking your brain about organizing data structures, communicating with collegues about new ideas, and researching what other people have already done. It's a difficult field, and if you're just there because your buddy told you that you could make millions, you have no choice of making it.
Go figure out what you like doing, and do it. Don't try to do my job half-assed.
As much as I try not to pay attention to Anonymous Cowards, I'd rather not see other people write off my comment because they didn't stop to think about this reply that was shot from the hip.
My point was that it is possible that the metaphor did not make it through the language barrier. Just because we're using "the same" word doesn't mean that the concept is the same. Why force other people to learn what concepts we associate with their words? Figure out what their concept and terminology is, then use that.
Ok, so they translated OpenOffice to Swahili, but now can anyone use it? I'm sure the English word "File" in Swahili is, indeed, "Faili" (see the picture in the article), but will any Swahili speakers understand what that means?
I'm not trying to rag on Swahili speakers here - the problem exists in every country. Many Germans find it difficult to talk about computers because the technical language developed around it is so strange ("Datei" is the translation they've chosen for "File"). Even in the US, where computers nearly do sit on every desk, some people have no clue what "Files" really are.
Computing interfaces are all about metaphors, and metaphors are one of the things that are most difficult to translate across languages and cultures.
Yeah, and I'll bet they don't blow their money on hiring loads of moronic administrators either. I went to high school where the average class size was 80 students. I mean there were ~320 students in the high school. Now, guess what the superintendent was earning my senior year. This idiot was making $90,000+ (he was, of course, also superintendent of the grade school, but that is still only 8x80=640 more kids at most). This was a public school in a town of 3500 - there is no way in hell this guy deserved to be making anywhere near that much. Oh - the other number you probably want is average teacher salary: less than $30,000/yr. (and they cut a teacher and a half the year the superintendent's salary broke the $90k mark).
If you want to hear me go on, I'll also tell you stories of how many teachers today are completely frustrated by the fact that they miss a day of teaching almost every week because they are forced to go to seminars about how to be a better teacher. So, for that day/wk. there is a substitute in the room who more than likely knows jack shit about the subject, and sadly often doesn't care whether or not the lesson for the day is taught. Meanwhile the poor teacher has spent many hours outside of class preparing this lesson and will spend many more hours the next night grading the worksheets she had to assign just to keep the kids busy.
If any of you really want to know about the lives of teachers, go talk to a few at your local school. My mother was a teacher, and so was my wife. You would not believe the amount of work these people put into their jobs outside of class. We in the corporate world are getting off easy with our 8 hour days.
Why do you want to work alone so badly? Working on a team is often much better. If for no other reason than to have someone to tell you you're wrong once in a while, it's good to have a partner. Even if they were wrong about your error, at least they got you to think it through more carefully.
Whoever modded this post as +5 Informative is a fucking moron. The guy admits he doesn't know Java, and yet he makes arguments about how Ruby is better than Java. The way he talks about primitive types, you would think he thought there was a "dollar" type in Java. The purpose of the comment in the code is to remind the programmer that he wants the value in dollars, not billions of dollars, euros, yen, etc. The only thing the post is +5 informative about is how much of an idiot the poster is (and maybe how stupid the modders are).
Um - you have been sucked into the "standard browser display" zone. There is absolutely no reason that all of your links must be underlined, colored, or otherwise highlighted. There is also no reason not to have the information readily available. The idea that should be extracted from your post is that developers should resist the temptation to clutter the display with alerts that more information is available.
It seems like this would mean you would have to worry even more about how you laid out the traces on your board. Since they will be even closer together between layers, I would think there would be a greater risk of capacitance between them. That could cause some rather strange behavior.
Sadly, though, I don't have my E&M textbook handy, though, so I can't check the math on distance/voltage limits here. I suppose the board will have to be run at a lower voltage anyway to keep from melting, no?
Sorry, I didn't go to Seiko's site to look for specs, just the news article. So, if these questions have been answered already, I appologize.
It's interesting the way a lot of these threads are going here. A lot of what I'm seeing is, "Well, if you just need a word processor, then..." This makes me wonder if we should be focusing some effort in a slightly different place.
Maybe what we need is an operating system that "just does" word processing, web surfing, and e-mail. It would be a bit of a throwback to the old days of typewriters and workstations, but was that era really wrong?
Sun seems to be trying to encourage one mode of doing this - the blade terminal. But, I think there are a lot of companies who are very worried about taking such a big step toward this setup. Not only do you have to spend a bit of time getting the networking for that system right, but if you don't like it later, you suddenly have all of this hardware that is completely useless to you.
I think that if you could get the same setup running on the x86 machines that are already in place in most companies, and also show them how they could buy cheaper versions, that would still work perfectly if they ever chose to go back to their Windoze platform, then you would really have something killer.
I'm sure that there are now a few zealots screaming, "This is exactly what XYZ linux does!" I'd argue, though, that even linux in its current state is a bit more than what is needed. I'm really talking about a very non-general purpose machine that literally only does word-processing, web browsing, and e-mail. And, of course, the qualifier here is that it does these three exceptionally well and extremely intuitively. I think there are ways to start with a linux distro and write some extra application code to make this system happen, but it's not there yet.
Sigh, back to my current Windoze business life. Counting the hours until I can get home to my nice, debian-loaded UltraSPARC.:)
This could be done for $100, but the margins would be razor-thin.
There, you have touched on the real problem. For anyone willing to go out and find their own parts, a $100 PC is not that difficult. But if a business is going to sell it, that business needs to make money, and it can't do that if it doesn't mark up the price of the machine.
I'm really not even sure how today's manufacturers stay in business. I used to work for a "beige box" company, and all of our revenue came from selling printer cartridges and repair service. The company went under when they decided that in order to sell more boxes, they'd offer free support for them. Well, by the time you pay a tech to drive out to the customer's place and spend an hour or two fixing a problem, you've just about shot your profit from the original sale.
I'm sorry - this is completely insane. What right does he have to tell the hardware manufacturers to lower prices? The HW guys are producing an actual, physical product. If there are 10 grams of silicon in a chip, then the company must buy 10 grams of silicon, do something to it, then sell that 10 grams of silicon to the customer. A software company on the other hand, merely needs to toggle the voltage on a wire that someone else built and paid for.
"Buyers of software pay for the work of the programmers," you say? Do you think that buyers of hardware are not also paying for the work of hardware designers?
I'm not saying software should be free - obviously someone has put in some work and should be paid, but there's no reason it should be nearly as expensive as some would have it.
Actually, have you ever tried to write a parser for any "standard" language? It is almost always the case that you can parse 85% of the standard without any trouble at all. Then, in the last 15% you will find something that is just so complicated to do in your system that it's usually just easier to give up...er... I mean promise it in Version 2.0.;)
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
First of all, it should be noted that the dataset was from early December, and thus preserves the distribution of torrents before the recent site shutdowns.
So, you may want to try reading a little more closely next time. In no way does this article indicate "that irrespective of the recent damage dealt to global torrent sites, the communities are still very active".
Slashdot moderators, mind RTFAing before publishing submissions?
...which would make you the router/hub/switch/whatever, and the man and fire dept., clients. Do not mistake the fact that just because there are no computers involved, there is still a network and a protocol used to relay the messages.
...and before I get flamed: I definitely agree that the internet and ham are two different technologies meant for two different applications. But if you're going to explain the difference, explain it correctly.
LONG before some sick fuck decided to publicize this horrible term for a horrible practice, we *nix folk had .plan files. Need to know what joe is working on? finger joe@hisdomain. "Blogging" is not a new thing, folks.
Blog = Brain Rot
For all of you looking to reclaim that first programming experience, LOGO is still available. It's been updated a bit: multiple turtles, color, even 3D IIRC. If you head to the link above, you'll see lots of talk about modeling comlex environments and such, but it is really just LOGO with a bunch of MIT geeks writing webpages about using it. ;)
The Software Patent Directive has been withdrawn from the Agenda of the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Have I really not been paying enough attention to realize that when people said, "it's being pushed through the back door," that this is what they meant? Or does the EU have strange, overgrown branches of government (such that Agriculture and Fisheries really does control software rulings)? Or was this just a joke from the FFII?
This is absolutely moronic. Change the calendar to make it easier for coders to compute the date? There are two problems with this idea:
1. If anyone is writing code to compute the date, they are fools wasting their time. There are countless tools already out there that you can download and use for free. No need to reinvent the wheel.
2. Our computers waste so much time doing useless things like drawing rounded corners on windows that there is no reason not to waste a few cycles on computing the date.
Have you graduated yet? I ask because it seems like you have a few holes in your idea about this whole "fiasco."
;)
As a concrete point: The fact that there were 25 kids in the class and 44 security holes found does not, in any way, mean that most people found 2-ish bugs. There was no requirement mentioned that holes found by one student had to be different from holes found by another. There was probably a great deal of overlap, especially if the students were smart and worked together to find these things.
As a rant: Now that I have graduated, I can look back on the experience and realize that all the worrying I did was just wasted time. We would all sit around and worry about professors being super strict on rules and not caring about how many people he fails and being completely illogical about awarding points on an exam. The reality is that professors are very intelligent people. They listen very well to students with concerns.
When this guy assigned this homework, I'm sure there were people in the audience who just about had a heart attack. They began to talk exactly like you are now. "You can't do that. We'll get the administration!" Meanwhile, the smart ones started planning when they would meet in a group and take a look at things. The really smart ones probably even grabbed their TA after class and asked when they could talk to him.
The professor is extremely rarely ("never" is such a strong word) out to "get" his students. I'm sure he understood that his assignment was extremely difficult. If he was like most professors, he had his TA's fully prepared with 5-ish examples of holes for them to go over with students who had trouble (which, given proper write up, undoubtedly counted for credit). He probably even went over a couple of examples in class, and had a list posted somewhere of programs with security holes he already new about, just waiting for someone searching for inspiration.
So, if you haven't graduated yet, keep these things in mind in your future years. If you have graduated, try not to bang your head too hard on your desk.
A) Just because it's NOT a camera phone doesn't mean it can't have a color display.
B) I never said a thing about the quality of these cameras.
C) Why are you calling your toddler on a cell phone (as implied by your "[Mommy/Daddy]")?
Wow - being that this is an audio player story, I assumed he meant "does it have something other than a headphone jack", i.e. left/right RCA-style audio breakout. :P Will I never learn that people like stupid extras.
Microsoft's crazy hiring tests
If you're refering to the interesting puzzlers that were popular to discuss in the late 90's, they don't do that any more. There is much debate as to whether they were ever any good at all for selecting good people to hire.
Ah ha! You are absolutely correct. I did, in fact, make the stupid jump from IT to CS. I can't believe I did it either, because I spend so much time trying to convince people they are different. It's so annoying when people can't understand why even though you know a million things about balanced trees, sorting, bit order, and power consumption; you still have no idea where the font setting for Outlook Express is. :P Thank you for setting my words straight.
I do want to emphasize the problem with programming for dummies, though. I have actually heard people whine about how their "HTML programming skills are no longer needed." Sorry, man, HTML is not a programming language.
I did also want to address sysadmins separately. From my experience, someone who has in-depth knowledge about network configurations (I'm talking star vs. bus topology, true bandwidth, security, protocol advantages/disadvantages, etc. - not ipconfig for windows) is invaluable when you are trying to set up a high-performance, reliable network. But once it's all running, it really only takes one person's time to plug in a new disk drive when one fails. So, if you're looking for work in the sysadmin sector, don't expect companies with in-place systems to come beating down your door.
Sorry for the mixup - thanks for the catch.
If Games Journalism is just a job to you, you really shouldn't be doing it. The word should be "vocation".
This quote applies to more than just games journalism. Any of these tossers on /. who have asked, "I'm at A University studying Computer Science - will I get a job?" should be listening up.
People bitch, whine, moan, complain, etc. about how they lost their jobs at the end of the tech bubble, and about how there are no tech jobs available now. I, however, whole-heartedly support the paring down of the industry. In the late 90's, all the news could report on was how much money people were making founding dot-com companies. So, every person out there looking to make a quick buck said, "Hey - I could totally make it selling Vievelflutzers on the Internet." So, millions flocked to Universities, Community Colleges, and Barnes & Noble to get their hands on "Programming for Dummies."
Well, guess what. Programming is not for dummies. It never has been. Programming is a science and an art, and there is no way that you can do it properly without enjoying doing it. You have to enjoy spending hours racking your brain about organizing data structures, communicating with collegues about new ideas, and researching what other people have already done. It's a difficult field, and if you're just there because your buddy told you that you could make millions, you have no choice of making it.
Go figure out what you like doing, and do it. Don't try to do my job half-assed.
a total in the thousands of kilobyte range, not megs
Hmmm...let's look this up here real quick... Yep - 1 MB is still equal to 1024 KB. So, I guess "thousands of kilobytes" is still around a few megs. ;)
As much as I try not to pay attention to Anonymous Cowards, I'd rather not see other people write off my comment because they didn't stop to think about this reply that was shot from the hip.
My point was that it is possible that the metaphor did not make it through the language barrier. Just because we're using "the same" word doesn't mean that the concept is the same. Why force other people to learn what concepts we associate with their words? Figure out what their concept and terminology is, then use that.
Ok, so they translated OpenOffice to Swahili, but now can anyone use it? I'm sure the English word "File" in Swahili is, indeed, "Faili" (see the picture in the article), but will any Swahili speakers understand what that means?
I'm not trying to rag on Swahili speakers here - the problem exists in every country. Many Germans find it difficult to talk about computers because the technical language developed around it is so strange ("Datei" is the translation they've chosen for "File"). Even in the US, where computers nearly do sit on every desk, some people have no clue what "Files" really are.
Computing interfaces are all about metaphors, and metaphors are one of the things that are most difficult to translate across languages and cultures.
Yeah, and I'll bet they don't blow their money on hiring loads of moronic administrators either. I went to high school where the average class size was 80 students. I mean there were ~320 students in the high school. Now, guess what the superintendent was earning my senior year. This idiot was making $90,000+ (he was, of course, also superintendent of the grade school, but that is still only 8x80=640 more kids at most). This was a public school in a town of 3500 - there is no way in hell this guy deserved to be making anywhere near that much. Oh - the other number you probably want is average teacher salary: less than $30,000/yr. (and they cut a teacher and a half the year the superintendent's salary broke the $90k mark).
If you want to hear me go on, I'll also tell you stories of how many teachers today are completely frustrated by the fact that they miss a day of teaching almost every week because they are forced to go to seminars about how to be a better teacher. So, for that day/wk. there is a substitute in the room who more than likely knows jack shit about the subject, and sadly often doesn't care whether or not the lesson for the day is taught. Meanwhile the poor teacher has spent many hours outside of class preparing this lesson and will spend many more hours the next night grading the worksheets she had to assign just to keep the kids busy.
If any of you really want to know about the lives of teachers, go talk to a few at your local school. My mother was a teacher, and so was my wife. You would not believe the amount of work these people put into their jobs outside of class. We in the corporate world are getting off easy with our 8 hour days.
How has no one yet brought up the old adage:
IBM was created by guys who drank beer.
Apple was created by guys who smoked pot.
Careful when mixing substances!!! ;)
Why do you want to work alone so badly? Working on a team is often much better. If for no other reason than to have someone to tell you you're wrong once in a while, it's good to have a partner. Even if they were wrong about your error, at least they got you to think it through more carefully.
Whoever modded this post as +5 Informative is a fucking moron. The guy admits he doesn't know Java, and yet he makes arguments about how Ruby is better than Java. The way he talks about primitive types, you would think he thought there was a "dollar" type in Java. The purpose of the comment in the code is to remind the programmer that he wants the value in dollars, not billions of dollars, euros, yen, etc. The only thing the post is +5 informative about is how much of an idiot the poster is (and maybe how stupid the modders are).
Um - you have been sucked into the "standard browser display" zone. There is absolutely no reason that all of your links must be underlined, colored, or otherwise highlighted. There is also no reason not to have the information readily available. The idea that should be extracted from your post is that developers should resist the temptation to clutter the display with alerts that more information is available.
It seems like this would mean you would have to worry even more about how you laid out the traces on your board. Since they will be even closer together between layers, I would think there would be a greater risk of capacitance between them. That could cause some rather strange behavior. Sadly, though, I don't have my E&M textbook handy, though, so I can't check the math on distance/voltage limits here. I suppose the board will have to be run at a lower voltage anyway to keep from melting, no? Sorry, I didn't go to Seiko's site to look for specs, just the news article. So, if these questions have been answered already, I appologize.
It's interesting the way a lot of these threads are going here. A lot of what I'm seeing is, "Well, if you just need a word processor, then..." This makes me wonder if we should be focusing some effort in a slightly different place.
Maybe what we need is an operating system that "just does" word processing, web surfing, and e-mail. It would be a bit of a throwback to the old days of typewriters and workstations, but was that era really wrong?
Sun seems to be trying to encourage one mode of doing this - the blade terminal. But, I think there are a lot of companies who are very worried about taking such a big step toward this setup. Not only do you have to spend a bit of time getting the networking for that system right, but if you don't like it later, you suddenly have all of this hardware that is completely useless to you.
I think that if you could get the same setup running on the x86 machines that are already in place in most companies, and also show them how they could buy cheaper versions, that would still work perfectly if they ever chose to go back to their Windoze platform, then you would really have something killer.
I'm sure that there are now a few zealots screaming, "This is exactly what XYZ linux does!" I'd argue, though, that even linux in its current state is a bit more than what is needed. I'm really talking about a very non-general purpose machine that literally only does word-processing, web browsing, and e-mail. And, of course, the qualifier here is that it does these three exceptionally well and extremely intuitively. I think there are ways to start with a linux distro and write some extra application code to make this system happen, but it's not there yet.
Sigh, back to my current Windoze business life. Counting the hours until I can get home to my nice, debian-loaded UltraSPARC. :)
This could be done for $100, but the margins would be razor-thin.
There, you have touched on the real problem. For anyone willing to go out and find their own parts, a $100 PC is not that difficult. But if a business is going to sell it, that business needs to make money, and it can't do that if it doesn't mark up the price of the machine.
I'm really not even sure how today's manufacturers stay in business. I used to work for a "beige box" company, and all of our revenue came from selling printer cartridges and repair service. The company went under when they decided that in order to sell more boxes, they'd offer free support for them. Well, by the time you pay a tech to drive out to the customer's place and spend an hour or two fixing a problem, you've just about shot your profit from the original sale.
I'm sorry - this is completely insane. What right does he have to tell the hardware manufacturers to lower prices? The HW guys are producing an actual, physical product. If there are 10 grams of silicon in a chip, then the company must buy 10 grams of silicon, do something to it, then sell that 10 grams of silicon to the customer. A software company on the other hand, merely needs to toggle the voltage on a wire that someone else built and paid for. "Buyers of software pay for the work of the programmers," you say? Do you think that buyers of hardware are not also paying for the work of hardware designers? I'm not saying software should be free - obviously someone has put in some work and should be paid, but there's no reason it should be nearly as expensive as some would have it.
Actually, have you ever tried to write a parser for any "standard" language? It is almost always the case that you can parse 85% of the standard without any trouble at all. Then, in the last 15% you will find something that is just so complicated to do in your system that it's usually just easier to give up ...er... I mean promise it in Version 2.0. ;)