Some people ask whether Edward Snowden can get a fair trial in the US. The real question is whether Keith Alexander can get a fair trial in the US. He was the head of an organization which was doing illegal things. Will he get a fair trial? Will he get a trial at all? No.
A few days ago our backup server died. The hub server detected that no back up had been done for over an hour, and changed the server status web page background from green to red. I saw it and drove over to the office - it's about 4 kilomters from here - and had a look around. Computers were OK, but the router needs replacing.
If you have wings and long hair and a beard and a white robe and a belt made out of rope maybe you can fly into the cloud and do the same.
My first programs were on punched cards at U.C. Berkeley in 1968. As a student I punched the cards myself. The serious programmers, like me, would stay up all night so we could get our results back in only an hour or two. Results came as 11 by 14 blue striped paper wrapped around the original deck of cards.
Ah, I miss punched cards! They were the perfect size to fit into your breast pocket. One side was blank to write notes on; the other side had column numbers and digit numbers: columns 1-80, digits 0-9. They were free; came in boxes of 2,000 cards per box.
My first keyboard/monitor thingy was a graphics terminal connected to the Stanford Timesharing System about 1980. The boss had an Apple II in a back room.
Seems to me that you need to establish a list of pre-approved changes. For example, if you're running Windows and IIS, make sure there's a clause that says anything that comes down the pipeline via Windows Update does not need formal approval. That way you can offload the responsibilty, and work, onto Microsoft. You can keep your core software up-to-date. Third party software, same thing for corporations. Student projects and your own shell scripts might need more examination; not a bad idea actually. But if there's a new version of Firefox, why in the world would a Change Advisory Board think it knows more than Mozilla?
"I moved to Asia and, being overseas, did not owe U.S. any tax money"
Being imployed for a salary by a foreign company in a foreign location, one gets a Foreign Earned Income deduction, which was about double what I was geting paid. And I carefully did not maintain any legal residence in the United States so I did not owe any state or county or city or property taxes.
Wrong. You don't owe the US anything only if you renounced your US citizenship.
The only reason I carry a U.S. Passport is that the government of Thailand wants me to have a passport. If they offered me Thai citizenship I would take it. But I figure it's not polite to pursue it. And in Thailand, "polite" is the key word.
You're right. I've basically given the finger to Uncle Sam. I figure that if I ever set foot in the United States again I will be locked up until I, or Uncle Sam, dies.
I agree. The last few years when I was living in the USA, every April 15 I had to file my employer's statement and my 1040. I always wished for a check box on the form 1040 that said "You got it, you keep it." When you think about it, a tax form is a horrible intrusion into your personal life. The 1040 must have been invented by the NSA. The Thai system is better - just tax the corporations, and let them raise their prices to make up for it.
I live in Thailand. Thailand does not tax indivituals; they tax 7/11 and 7/11 raises their prices to collect it from me. Easy and painless, no paperwork, a better system
The first few years I lived here I filled out a US income tax return. Every year I got an overseas deduction. So one year I attached a letter saying that they can just photocopy that return every year, and if I ever think I owe them money I'll contact them. That was 15 or 20 years ago. I don't talk to them and they haven't found me, even though I still carry a US passport.
People used to say that the only sure things in this world were death and taxes. I haven't paid taxes in over 20 years, so now I'm not so sure about death either.
In 1990 I moved to Asia and, being overseas, did not owe U.S. any tax money. For a few years I filled out the income tax returns. Twenty years ago I attached a letter saying that if I ever think I owe money to the IRS I will contact them; until then the IRS can just photocopy that return every year. I haven't fill out one of those forms since.
This story makes me concerned that the IRS will make a delusion of that they think I owe, and then nail my two eldest children (who are still in Amerika) for the money. If that happens I'll tell them to get the H* out of there. The five Asian children are unreachable.
60 hours a week? Don't be daft. If you're really an effective administrator you should have your work finished well inside 30 hours
I half agree. When the system is up and running you can go home at 3PM. But if the system is down, you don't go home until it comes back up. That's the job; on call 24/7. Love it or leave it.
I was raised as an American Lutheran Scientist. I have always leaned towards resolving apparent conflicts between the Bible and Science. For example, Creationism and Evolution may just be a question of whose experience is being described - the Martians or the animals.
However, I must admit that the Bible has some "facts" which can not be true. Noah's flood is one. The Bible says that the water went down underground, but geology today proves that that much water just isn't there.
It was the basin in the temple - in Exodus I think. Diameter 10 cubits, circumference 30 cubits. To one significant digit, that is the correct value for Pi. On the other hand, remember that a 'cubit' is the distance from your fingertips to your elbow. You would be lucky if you used 40 men and got even one significant digit correct. They wouldn't use women in those days. If you used men for the circumference and women for the diameter you probably would get a value for Pi of less than 3.0.
Congratulations! Please obey all traffic laws and posted signs, and enjoy your new GPS navigation system.
I live in Thailand; I can't even READ the posted signs. But smile and wave to the police and there is no problem. I don't have a Global Positioning System, I only have a MPS (Me Positioning System). Works fine, but it makes me cross-eyed.
But the Earth is the center of the universe! Look at your general theory of relativity! Any object can be consider the unmoving center of a frame of reference. Earth is at (0,0,0) and not rotating. Of course this implies large gravitional fields to keep the sun and the planets and the stars rotating around the Earth every 24 hours, and complex stuff like that. But that just makes the math more complicated. It is still a valid frame of reference.
But hey, why stop there? *** I *** am the center of the universe! All you people rotate around me! No need to bow down...
I suggest that stock trades be delayed for a length of time comparable to a human being. A human investor can buy or sell in what time frame - 10 seconds? It would seem to me, then, that the only way human traders can hope to compete with computerized trading programs is to force the computers to wait ten seconds from submitting the trade to the trade being actuated. Otherwise, the mess we have today will solidify into the stockmarket being a robot playground with humans not allowed on the tarmac.
I have definitely become even more religious, but my variety has increased. Thanks to the Internet I am exposed to more faiths, and can see the merit in each one. For your information, I attend a Mormon church - as a non-member - when I'm near one, but am sympathetic to Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Each has truths to share with you; none should be a box for you to hide in. Remember what King Monkut of Thailand said to the Christian missionaries: "What you teach us to do is good; what you teach us to believe is silly."
The lines between science and superstition and religion are very fuzzy and often arguable. Possibly the best indicator of this stuff is that somebody wants me to believe it. I believe many weird things, but I don't try to convince anyone else.
"Claims that cannot be proven false". Yes, science operates on statements that can be proven true or false. And the statement cannot be proven one way or another, that doesn't mean it's false. Did God create the universe? Nobody can prove it 'yes' or 'no'.
"Adequate peer review"? How many witches were burned at the stake. Wasn't that peer review?
Just because something is non-scientific doesn't mean it's false. And sometimes even false things can be useful. Example: every paper (flat) map you've ever seen is wrong, but useful and not very wrong.
Look, yes. But why are 'they' spending more money for one downed airplane than the airplane costs originally? Why the fortune in searching? Why the massive ongoing search? Why is every government in a panic?
I suspect that aurhorities fear a nefarious actor, and they want to find out exactly who did what so we can make sure it doesn't happen again. What if the air transport regulators never find out what brought the MH370 down, but Al-qaeda knows already?
How to young programmers get to be old programmers? By learning.
I've been programming for forty-five years; FORTRAN, COBOL, ASSEMBLER, PL/I, RPG, Pascal, Basic, HTML, JavaScript - you name it and I've written bugs in it. You MUST evolve or get left behind in a home for obsolete programmers.
Based on several recommendations, I am now learning Ruby On Rails. Not because I can't make PHP dance on the head of a pin, but because my customers want to hear those three magic words. What they want to buy, I will sell them. I can, and have, done OOP in assembler, but there's no market for that.
The Internet makes it easier to get the information, but it does not make it any easier to cram that information into your brain. It still takes time and energy and effort to remember whether the IF statement parentheses are prohibited or optional or mandatory.
Personally my all time favorite language was Pascal, because it reads close to English. I used words, not funny braces and brackets and abbreviations. Ruby insists that I write "def": instead of "define"; I don't know why, but that's what I must write this year.
I do in-house web sites for a living. We do NOT support Internet Explorer. Why not? Because we can't affort to install virtual computers running legal versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 6 (?), Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 9. We just tell our people to use Firefox; it's availlable for free for anything.
Giving away copies for compatability testing would be a great idea.
(Neither can we affort a back room full of old MAC's, but I can test Safari on Windows XP and haven't run in to any problem yet.)
I have levels of security. Any ordinary web site that demands a password gets my lowest-level password, which is the same on any such site. This happens to be my Slashdot password - who cares if somebody hacks that one?
I have a special password that I use for my bank account. It could cost me all my money. Same password for any bank.
Sometimes I have an intermediate level, but not often. It's surprising how little security is really necessary.
Last month I flew from Bangkok to Hong Kong. The security people stole my fingernail scizzors. I am still looking for a replacement. They also took a bottle of Vasaline Lotion purchased in 7/11. Warnings talk about "less than 100 ml" and "more than 100 ml" but nobody knows what happens if the bottle is exactly 100 ml.
I give up - no more flying. There is an overland route from Bangkok through Laos and China to Hong Kong. Actually there is an overland route from Bangkok to damned near anywhere in the world.
The Art of Programming is the art of saying EXACTLY what you mean. You want a button on the lower left corner? How close to the corner? When? In English or French or other language? Lower right corner if the page is in Arabic? How big? Mouseover, mouseclick, double click?
Programming is the translation of user desires to the computer; users think fuzzy, and computers are incredibly dumb. We ued to yell "DWIM!", meaning "Do What I Mean!". Computers cannot do what you mean because meaning to a computer is in a different universe. Computers and Humans have entirely different experiences, and so what seems simple to a human is totally foreign to a computer. Thats' why we must program.
Maybe some day the shared experience of driving an automobile will evolve to a world model that humans and computers can share and mutually understand. But not for another generation, I am thinking.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people ask whether Edward Snowden can get a fair trial in the US. The real question is whether Keith Alexander can get a fair trial in the US. He was the head of an organization which was doing illegal things. Will he get a fair trial? Will he get a trial at all? No.
A few days ago our backup server died. The hub server detected that no back up had been done for over an hour, and changed the server status web page background from green to red. I saw it and drove over to the office - it's about 4 kilomters from here - and had a look around. Computers were OK, but the router needs replacing.
If you have wings and long hair and a beard and a white robe and a belt made out of rope maybe you can fly into the cloud and do the same.
My first programs were on punched cards at U.C. Berkeley in 1968. As a student I punched the cards myself. The serious programmers, like me, would stay up all night so we could get our results back in only an hour or two. Results came as 11 by 14 blue striped paper wrapped around the original deck of cards.
Ah, I miss punched cards! They were the perfect size to fit into your breast pocket. One side was blank to write notes on; the other side had column numbers and digit numbers: columns 1-80, digits 0-9. They were free; came in boxes of 2,000 cards per box.
My first keyboard/monitor thingy was a graphics terminal connected to the Stanford Timesharing System about 1980. The boss had an Apple II in a back room.
Seems to me that you need to establish a list of pre-approved changes. For example, if you're running Windows and IIS, make sure there's a clause that says anything that comes down the pipeline via Windows Update does not need formal approval. That way you can offload the responsibilty, and work, onto Microsoft. You can keep your core software up-to-date. Third party software, same thing for corporations. Student projects and your own shell scripts might need more examination; not a bad idea actually. But if there's a new version of Firefox, why in the world would a Change Advisory Board think it knows more than Mozilla?
"I moved to Asia and, being overseas, did not owe U.S. any tax money"
Being imployed for a salary by a foreign company in a foreign location, one gets a Foreign Earned Income deduction, which was about double what I was geting paid. And I carefully did not maintain any legal residence in the United States so I did not owe any state or county or city or property taxes.
Wrong. You don't owe the US anything only if you renounced your US citizenship.
The only reason I carry a U.S. Passport is that the government of Thailand wants me to have a passport. If they offered me Thai citizenship I would take it. But I figure it's not polite to pursue it. And in Thailand, "polite" is the key word.
You're right. I've basically given the finger to Uncle Sam. I figure that if I ever set foot in the United States again I will be locked up until I, or Uncle Sam, dies.
I agree. The last few years when I was living in the USA, every April 15 I had to file my employer's statement and my 1040. I always wished for a check box on the form 1040 that said "You got it, you keep it." When you think about it, a tax form is a horrible intrusion into your personal life. The 1040 must have been invented by the NSA. The Thai system is better - just tax the corporations, and let them raise their prices to make up for it.
I live in Thailand. Thailand does not tax indivituals; they tax 7/11 and 7/11 raises their prices to collect it from me. Easy and painless, no paperwork, a better system
The first few years I lived here I filled out a US income tax return. Every year I got an overseas deduction. So one year I attached a letter saying that they can just photocopy that return every year, and if I ever think I owe them money I'll contact them. That was 15 or 20 years ago. I don't talk to them and they haven't found me, even though I still carry a US passport.
People used to say that the only sure things in this world were death and taxes. I haven't paid taxes in over 20 years, so now I'm not so sure about death either.
In 1990 I moved to Asia and, being overseas, did not owe U.S. any tax money. For a few years I filled out the income tax returns. Twenty years ago I attached a letter saying that if I ever think I owe money to the IRS I will contact them; until then the IRS can just photocopy that return every year. I haven't fill out one of those forms since.
This story makes me concerned that the IRS will make a delusion of that they think I owe, and then nail my two eldest children (who are still in Amerika) for the money. If that happens I'll tell them to get the H* out of there. The five Asian children are unreachable.
Slashdot spin-offs for beta-haters:
http://pipedot.org/
http://soylentnews.org/
Try: http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1
60 hours a week? Don't be daft. If you're really an effective administrator you should have your work finished well inside 30 hours
I half agree. When the system is up and running you can go home at 3PM. But if the system is down, you don't go home until it comes back up. That's the job; on call 24/7. Love it or leave it.
I was raised as an American Lutheran Scientist. I have always leaned towards resolving apparent conflicts between the Bible and Science. For example, Creationism and Evolution may just be a question of whose experience is being described - the Martians or the animals.
However, I must admit that the Bible has some "facts" which can not be true. Noah's flood is one. The Bible says that the water went down underground, but geology today proves that that much water just isn't there.
It was the basin in the temple - in Exodus I think. Diameter 10 cubits, circumference 30 cubits. To one significant digit, that is the correct value for Pi. On the other hand, remember that a 'cubit' is the distance from your fingertips to your elbow. You would be lucky if you used 40 men and got even one significant digit correct. They wouldn't use women in those days. If you used men for the circumference and women for the diameter you probably would get a value for Pi of less than 3.0.
Congratulations! Please obey all traffic laws and posted signs, and enjoy your new GPS navigation system.
I live in Thailand; I can't even READ the posted signs. But smile and wave to the police and there is no problem. I don't have a Global Positioning System, I only have a MPS (Me Positioning System). Works fine, but it makes me cross-eyed.
But the Earth is the center of the universe! Look at your general theory of relativity! Any object can be consider the unmoving center of a frame of reference. Earth is at (0,0,0) and not rotating. Of course this implies large gravitional fields to keep the sun and the planets and the stars rotating around the Earth every 24 hours, and complex stuff like that. But that just makes the math more complicated. It is still a valid frame of reference.
But hey, why stop there? *** I *** am the center of the universe! All you people rotate around me! No need to bow down...
I suggest that stock trades be delayed for a length of time comparable to a human being. A human investor can buy or sell in what time frame - 10 seconds? It would seem to me, then, that the only way human traders can hope to compete with computerized trading programs is to force the computers to wait ten seconds from submitting the trade to the trade being actuated. Otherwise, the mess we have today will solidify into the stockmarket being a robot playground with humans not allowed on the tarmac.
I have definitely become even more religious, but my variety has increased. Thanks to the Internet I am exposed to more faiths, and can see the merit in each one. For your information, I attend a Mormon church - as a non-member - when I'm near one, but am sympathetic to Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Each has truths to share with you; none should be a box for you to hide in. Remember what King Monkut of Thailand said to the Christian missionaries: "What you teach us to do is good; what you teach us to believe is silly."
The lines between science and superstition and religion are very fuzzy and often arguable. Possibly the best indicator of this stuff is that somebody wants me to believe it. I believe many weird things, but I don't try to convince anyone else.
"Claims that cannot be proven false". Yes, science operates on statements that can be proven true or false. And the statement cannot be proven one way or another, that doesn't mean it's false. Did God create the universe? Nobody can prove it 'yes' or 'no'.
"Adequate peer review"? How many witches were burned at the stake. Wasn't that peer review?
Just because something is non-scientific doesn't mean it's false. And sometimes even false things can be useful. Example: every paper (flat) map you've ever seen is wrong, but useful and not very wrong.
Hell, if you paid me nine million dollars, I'd support the damned thing!
Look, yes. But why are 'they' spending more money for one downed airplane than the airplane costs originally? Why the fortune in searching? Why the massive ongoing search? Why is every government in a panic?
I suspect that aurhorities fear a nefarious actor, and they want to find out exactly who did what so we can make sure it doesn't happen again. What if the air transport regulators never find out what brought the MH370 down, but Al-qaeda knows already?
How to young programmers get to be old programmers? By learning.
I've been programming for forty-five years; FORTRAN, COBOL, ASSEMBLER, PL/I, RPG, Pascal, Basic, HTML, JavaScript - you name it and I've written bugs in it. You MUST evolve or get left behind in a home for obsolete programmers.
Based on several recommendations, I am now learning Ruby On Rails. Not because I can't make PHP dance on the head of a pin, but because my customers want to hear those three magic words. What they want to buy, I will sell them. I can, and have, done OOP in assembler, but there's no market for that.
The Internet makes it easier to get the information, but it does not make it any easier to cram that information into your brain. It still takes time and energy and effort to remember whether the IF statement parentheses are prohibited or optional or mandatory.
Personally my all time favorite language was Pascal, because it reads close to English. I used words, not funny braces and brackets and abbreviations. Ruby insists that I write "def": instead of "define"; I don't know why, but that's what I must write this year.
- www.andycanfield.com
I do in-house web sites for a living. We do NOT support Internet Explorer. Why not? Because we can't affort to install virtual computers running legal versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 6 (?), Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 9. We just tell our people to use Firefox; it's availlable for free for anything.
Giving away copies for compatability testing would be a great idea.
(Neither can we affort a back room full of old MAC's, but I can test Safari on Windows XP and haven't run in to any problem yet.)
I have levels of security. Any ordinary web site that demands a password gets my lowest-level password, which is the same on any such site. This happens to be my Slashdot password - who cares if somebody hacks that one?
I have a special password that I use for my bank account. It could cost me all my money. Same password for any bank.
Sometimes I have an intermediate level, but not often. It's surprising how little security is really necessary.
Total of two or three passwords, each memorized.
Last month I flew from Bangkok to Hong Kong. The security people stole my fingernail scizzors. I am still looking for a replacement. They also took a bottle of Vasaline Lotion purchased in 7/11. Warnings talk about "less than 100 ml" and "more than 100 ml" but nobody knows what happens if the bottle is exactly 100 ml.
I give up - no more flying. There is an overland route from Bangkok through Laos and China to Hong Kong. Actually there is an overland route from Bangkok to damned near anywhere in the world.
Security people are bred for facist chromosomes.
The Art of Programming is the art of saying EXACTLY what you mean. You want a button on the lower left corner? How close to the corner? When? In English or French or other language? Lower right corner if the page is in Arabic? How big? Mouseover, mouseclick, double click?
Programming is the translation of user desires to the computer; users think fuzzy, and computers are incredibly dumb. We ued to yell "DWIM!", meaning "Do What I Mean!". Computers cannot do what you mean because meaning to a computer is in a different universe. Computers and Humans have entirely different experiences, and so what seems simple to a human is totally foreign to a computer. Thats' why we must program.
Maybe some day the shared experience of driving an automobile will evolve to a world model that humans and computers can share and mutually understand. But not for another generation, I am thinking.