First of all, your goal is way too specific. Once you get rid of Caps Lock, what then? You should re-word your goal to be "war on useless keys"
That's much better. Now you have a vague definition of victory. Once you get rid of caps lock, don't hang a banner that says "Mission Accomplished", but it isn't.
Next, you can start building support for removing the dreaded "vertical bar" key. The Windows people will fight you becase that is also backslash. You could get Microsoft on board by proposing a flat filesystem for Vista. At that point, the only need for backslash is the escape character. Only Unix people use that and they should stick to low-order ASCII where they belong.
You could try some easy victories with the "SysRq" and "Scroll Lock" keys - kind of like Grenada - the good 'ole days.
There aren't too many of those keys though. You need something big, something to stir up keyboard-patriotic fervor. How about the backspace key? Who wants to admit to mistakes anyway? We should be moving forwards, not backwards. Keep the delete key. You still want to delete unwanted text in front of you, but going backwards is the same as retreat. Definitely the backspace!
Great! Note to self - Use preview and pay attention.
Check out this American, Christian, Scientist who didn't like that choice either: http://www.indigenouspeople.net/vine.htm
How come I have to choose between Christians and Scientists? Computers use a binary number system. Nature is analog.
Check out this American, Christian, Scientist who didn't like that choice either:
to the developers at Adobe and the MAC BU at Microsoft. Maybe if they can get a beta version of Leopard soon enough they will be able to release compatible software less than a year after it gets released. This while Mac OS X on Intel seems to have really caught them by surprise.
Everyone knows about rounding problems with floats. What people don't seem to realize (and this goes for many real "Rocket Scientists" I've known) is that a float only gives you a fixed amount of digits - that's all. You can have a highly precise small number or a really big number. You cannot ever have a precise, big number. It just so happens that these same "Rocket Scientists" like to represent time as a floating point based on some 1970 epoch. Guess how accurate that is going to be in a couple of years. How do they solve this problem? The "double double" type of course!
The story is that they didn't learn anything.
I read it on slashdot. Here is the link.
But that report is by Symantec, so it could just be FUD directed at Microsoft for a change.
People hack a MacBook using 3rd party hardware and software that they won't reveal, then claim the hack would also work on hardware they didn't demonstrate, then claim Apple "leaned on them" to keep the details secret. Suddenly, Macs have no more security.
TFA didn't go into enough detail about the "Blue Pill". It wasn't really a hack in the same sense. It was a proof-of-concept to insert a rootkit into an x64-based OS without hacking. To quote the original author,
I would like to make it clear, that the Blue Pill technology does not rely on any bug of the underlying operating system. I have implemented a working prototype for Vista x64, but I see no reasons why it should not be possible to port it to other operating systems, like Linux or BSD which can be run on x64 platform.
People aren't worried about how to hack into Vista, they are working on brand new exploitation architectures using Vista. I have read elsewhere where Vista appears to have a TCP/IP stack designed from scratch. It includes all new implementations of the bugs that have been fixed over the past 15 years in all the other OSes.
The amazing thing about the Big Dig is that it just isn't that big. It really is only a couple of tunnels under downtown Boston. Are they "big" tunnels? Yes - but not $14.6 billion worth! The T tunnels are much more extensive.
Remember the Denver International Airport boondoggle? For the price of the Big Dig, they could have had 3 DIAs.
When I lived in Boston, they were talking about extending the "Silver Line". Note: the "Silver" line is just a bus, unline the Red, Orange, Blue, or Green lines. The good people of Boston are expected to pay $700 million dollars for a BUS!
How do police patrolling the ghetto do anyone any good? I think you are caught in a logical fallacy. How can you establish any cause and effect relationship between increased police patrols and lower crime by citing an example of an area with high crime?
Americans and Europeans of today, who have health insurance, are bigger, fatter, and healthier than people who were too poor pay their way out of conscription during the Civil War.
Sorry, I tried to read Stephen Jay Gould and just couldn't take it. Too dry and orthodox. Plus, haven't the intelligent design people debunked evolution?
If you want a good alternative to evolution and intelligent design, pick up something by Vine Deloria Jr., who is also sadly no longer with us.
Have you considered the possibility that both your tool vendor and lead developer don't know what they are doing? Any questions regarding compilation time are simply irrelevant. The only reason someone would include a source file is because they can't get the project to link with either a library or object code. Pretty much the only way that would happen is if either the tool vendor or the lead developer (or both) don't know what they are doing. The logical suggestion is to just link a sample app yourself and show them that it can work after all. However, that would probably offend the lead developer and get your fired or shunned.
I think corporate culture explains these buffer overflow bugs more than anything else. All programmers will make mistakes, no matter what language they code in or whether they work for Microsoft or help with Open Source. If an Open Source programmer finds bug, he or she can just fix it. This isn't always possible in corporations. That explains the difference between Firefox (Camino in my case) and IE more than relative programming skill or language used.
I'll use my own experience as an examples. I once found such a bug and had to fight to get it fixed. The reason I had to fight was because it hadn't done any damage yet. I'm sure my experience would be the same in many large corporations. A bug won't get fixed until after it has caused damage or been publicly exposed as a risk.
And sadly, I can't really blame those who didn't want that particular bug fixed. They knew the politics involved. In order to get the buffer overflow bug fixed, they would probably have to take many code changes that may not have been safe. I'm sure this story is familiar to anyone who as ever upgraded software.
The solution? Simple. Good coding practices. Good review practices. Good testing. Good management.
Throw in a talking bunny rabbit and you'll have a good fairy tale.
Keep in mind that those without problems usually don't complain.
My Dual USB 700 14" laptop is 1.5 years old. No LCD problems at all. I used it several hours a day every day. The hard drive started acting up (after warranty expiration) so I swapped it out for a 60 gig. You can't expect a hard drive to last very long these days anyway. Now that Quantum is gone, hard drives don't last very long.
In fact, after 15 years and 6 Macs, the only real Apple hardware failure I've seen was when the sound went out on my old 7100. I don't know, but the lightening strike may have been more at fault than Apple on that one.
Keep in mind that NASA is a huge, huge organization. Just when you think you've found the biggest website you've ever seen at NASA, you'll find another one at NASA just as big and on the same subject.
If the earthobservatory sites are down, go to the spacecraft sites themselves.
There are other sites for the other spacecraft as well. These are the ones that I like to promote because I helped to write the command and control software for them.
For once in my life I will stay out of the C++ vs. Java argument. I surrender. Java is just as fast as C++ and infinitely more portable. All I ask is that the Java programmers make use of Java's speed and power to write some nice programs.
Clearly, they won't be any slower than equivalent C++ programs, right?
Obviously, there will no longer be any need to write a native, C++ version of your app for Windows and a Java version with 1/10 the features for us poor Unix/Linux/Mac users, right?
Henceforth, all programs will be in Java and all programs will run everywhere. I will be able to get a new job using these fancy Java programs and my boss will even let me use a Mac because, hey, all Java programs operate the same on any platform, right?
My modern, multitasking OS will no longer lock up completely so a browser can display some scrolling text, right?
I love Java. Java was never at war with C++. Java is our friend.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, your goal is way too specific. Once you get rid of Caps Lock, what then? You should re-word your goal to be "war on useless keys"
That's much better. Now you have a vague definition of victory. Once you get rid of caps lock, don't hang a banner that says "Mission Accomplished", but it isn't.
Next, you can start building support for removing the dreaded "vertical bar" key. The Windows people will fight you becase that is also backslash. You could get Microsoft on board by proposing a flat filesystem for Vista. At that point, the only need for backslash is the escape character. Only Unix people use that and they should stick to low-order ASCII where they belong.
You could try some easy victories with the "SysRq" and "Scroll Lock" keys - kind of like Grenada - the good 'ole days.
There aren't too many of those keys though. You need something big, something to stir up keyboard-patriotic fervor. How about the backspace key? Who wants to admit to mistakes anyway? We should be moving forwards, not backwards. Keep the delete key. You still want to delete unwanted text in front of you, but going backwards is the same as retreat. Definitely the backspace!
Great! Note to self - Use preview and pay attention. Check out this American, Christian, Scientist who didn't like that choice either: http://www.indigenouspeople.net/vine.htm
How come I have to choose between Christians and Scientists? Computers use a binary number system. Nature is analog. Check out this American, Christian, Scientist who didn't like that choice either:
to the developers at Adobe and the MAC BU at Microsoft. Maybe if they can get a beta version of Leopard soon enough they will be able to release compatible software less than a year after it gets released. This while Mac OS X on Intel seems to have really caught them by surprise.
That is completely off-topic
Everyone knows about rounding problems with floats. What people don't seem to realize (and this goes for many real "Rocket Scientists" I've known) is that a float only gives you a fixed amount of digits - that's all. You can have a highly precise small number or a really big number. You cannot ever have a precise, big number. It just so happens that these same "Rocket Scientists" like to represent time as a floating point based on some 1970 epoch. Guess how accurate that is going to be in a couple of years. How do they solve this problem? The "double double" type of course!
The story is that they didn't learn anything. I read it on slashdot. Here is the link. But that report is by Symantec, so it could just be FUD directed at Microsoft for a change.
The amazing thing about the Big Dig is that it just isn't that big. It really is only a couple of tunnels under downtown Boston. Are they "big" tunnels? Yes - but not $14.6 billion worth! The T tunnels are much more extensive.
Remember the Denver International Airport boondoggle? For the price of the Big Dig, they could have had 3 DIAs.
When I lived in Boston, they were talking about extending the "Silver Line". Note: the "Silver" line is just a bus, unline the Red, Orange, Blue, or Green lines. The good people of Boston are expected to pay $700 million dollars for a BUS!
And just who are we supposed to vote for to fix it? The Democrats? Didn't they pass the Patriot Act?
When election day comes around, make sure your voice counts. Get off your tired feet, sit on the couch, and have beer.
In 2000, 54.3% of eligible voters voted. In 2004, 60.7% voted. Are you better off now?
How do police patrolling the ghetto do anyone any good? I think you are caught in a logical fallacy. How can you establish any cause and effect relationship between increased police patrols and lower crime by citing an example of an area with high crime?
History repeats itself - first as tragedy, then as farce. :)
-- Not my quote, you'll have to find the author
I will wrap up TFA...
Americans and Europeans of today, who have health insurance, are bigger, fatter, and healthier than people who were too poor pay their way out of conscription during the Civil War.
Boo War!
Hooray Health Insurance!
And just what networking gear is made in the US? AFAIK, it is all made in China - convenient, huh?
Page 4. To disassemble civilization, just follow the assembly instructions from page 2 in reverse order.
Privacy, schmivacy! This will be the dawn of a new golden age of hacking.
It is not the same thing. It is more like our National Guard than our police.
Less than a dozen comments so far and the majority are "surrender" jokes. Where are my moderator points when I need them?
Sorry, I tried to read Stephen Jay Gould and just couldn't take it. Too dry and orthodox. Plus, haven't the intelligent design people debunked evolution? If you want a good alternative to evolution and intelligent design, pick up something by Vine Deloria Jr., who is also sadly no longer with us.
Have you considered the possibility that both your tool vendor and lead developer don't know what they are doing? Any questions regarding compilation time are simply irrelevant. The only reason someone would include a source file is because they can't get the project to link with either a library or object code. Pretty much the only way that would happen is if either the tool vendor or the lead developer (or both) don't know what they are doing. The logical suggestion is to just link a sample app yourself and show them that it can work after all. However, that would probably offend the lead developer and get your fired or shunned.
I'll use my own experience as an examples. I once found such a bug and had to fight to get it fixed. The reason I had to fight was because it hadn't done any damage yet. I'm sure my experience would be the same in many large corporations. A bug won't get fixed until after it has caused damage or been publicly exposed as a risk.
And sadly, I can't really blame those who didn't want that particular bug fixed. They knew the politics involved. In order to get the buffer overflow bug fixed, they would probably have to take many code changes that may not have been safe. I'm sure this story is familiar to anyone who as ever upgraded software.
The solution? Simple. Good coding practices. Good review practices. Good testing. Good management.
Throw in a talking bunny rabbit and you'll have a good fairy tale.
My Dual USB 700 14" laptop is 1.5 years old. No LCD problems at all. I used it several hours a day every day. The hard drive started acting up (after warranty expiration) so I swapped it out for a 60 gig. You can't expect a hard drive to last very long these days anyway. Now that Quantum is gone, hard drives don't last very long.
In fact, after 15 years and 6 Macs, the only real Apple hardware failure I've seen was when the sound went out on my old 7100. I don't know, but the lightening strike may have been more at fault than Apple on that one.
If the earthobservatory sites are down, go to the spacecraft sites themselves.
They are:
There are other sites for the other spacecraft as well. These are the ones that I like to promote because I helped to write the command and control software for them.
They often claim to have technical backgrounds too. On one occasion, I had to spell the ".com" part of my e-mail address.
Clearly, they won't be any slower than equivalent C++ programs, right?
Obviously, there will no longer be any need to write a native, C++ version of your app for Windows and a Java version with 1/10 the features for us poor Unix/Linux/Mac users, right?
Henceforth, all programs will be in Java and all programs will run everywhere. I will be able to get a new job using these fancy Java programs and my boss will even let me use a Mac because, hey, all Java programs operate the same on any platform, right?
My modern, multitasking OS will no longer lock up completely so a browser can display some scrolling text, right?
I love Java. Java was never at war with C++. Java is our friend.