They do know that DRM doesn't stop piracy. I can't recall where I read this, but I think I remember reading that the source of most large-scale pirated films are film industry insiders. DRM is just so they can keep charging you for the same old. Before digital they relied on fundamentally new music technology and formats to do the same (78, 33, 45, cassette tape, CD, etc.). Now it's all digital and networked and that trick doesn't work anymore.
Yeah, god damn those "real numbers", "negative numbers" and that annoying "square root of minus one". Programmers should figure out how to get the correct solution rather than mucking about with higher maths nonsense.
There do seem to be several points of view over fractional reserve banking (at least, on Wikipedia). The discussion pages about it are quite interesting:
Hmmmm... saying that they loan out "many times the sum of all deposits they hold" but also "not all of it" isn't the clearest way of putting it!
When they lend the money, they don't take it out of existing deposits - this would not cover the amount they lend, which is far greater than the amount they have on deposit.
They effectively create money out of thin air to loan to you, on which you pay interest as you pay it back. But the total amount they can lend is effectively capped at some (large) proportion of the money they have on deposit, so there is a relationship. E.g. if they have £100 on deposit, they can loan out $1000.
Not true. Banks do not lend money out of the savings in the bank. Western economies operate a fractional reserve banking system (they can lend out money they don't have).
Capitalism doesn't *fairly* distribute wealth at all - that's not its purpose. If combined with a free market system, it may lead to efficient allocation of resources, which should make us all wealthier in the long term. Under communism the disparity in wealth is *less*, but less wealth overall is generated (as the system is so inefficient and there is no incentive to do any better), so everyone is poorer.
I seem to remember reading that in any competitive system, a power law arises in distribution of resources, so we should always expect to have the ultra rich and the ultra poor in any such system, minus the distorting effects of taxation and other government interventions. Of course, I'm in favour of limited intervention, as perfect market efficiency cannot be the only desirable goal of a human economy.
These games are global, I am not a US citizen and I don't live in the US. Good luck to the US government trying to tax me for playing a game.
Taxation on real income earned through playing a game - fair enough - then it's just normal income. Although the volume of people earning significant amounts of real money from a virtual world in any given country is surely so low that it's not worth considering.
It's amusing that you accuse the left of the what GWB and Blair's administration have been most guilty of. Here's an interesting leaked memo from the pre-war planning stage:
Of course, all politicians lie for a living - it's part of the job. We just don't put up with being led into a war under false pretences. That's a crime.
Interesting you mention religion as a cause of war. I'm no fan of religion, but I suspect that war is something that people would find reasons for even without it.
I will have to respectfully disagree with you on the oil issue. Important natural resources may be essential to the world economy, but surely you aren't advocating that nation's should invade each other over them? Iraq wasn't withholding its oil under Saddam Hussein, and (admittedly under a rule of terror) he held together that fractious nation. The supply of oil wasn't in danger under Saddam, and neither was its price, as they were under economic sanction.
As far as fixing the situation in Iraq, I rather think the US and the UK caused it! I don't think it's fixable by any nation on this planet, other than the Iraqis themselves - and they may not be able to stay united as a single nation to do so. The only way I can see this action having worked is if the United Nations (with substantial international support) had authorised military action, and a multi-national force was in place. I think this would have been a more acceptable solution to the Iraqis, but I'm just guessing.
Some fair points there, sorry if I misjudged you. The trouble with "the enemy of my enemy" is it often seems to come back and bite us a few decades later. We are collectively paying the price for our meddling ways now, and we still don't seem to have learned.
If you look at some of my other posts, you will see that I am not attacking the military or the soldiers risking their lives in this misguided war; I am attacking the political establishment and anyone who thinks we cannot criticize a war due to some misplaced notion of loyalty or patriotism. I live in a democracy, I'm proud of it, and I would fight to defend it.
I am not in the US, by the way, I'm from the UK, and we are still extremely grateful for your assistance in WWII. That doesn't mean I support all war under all circumstances though. To me at least, the war in Iraq stinks of corruption and lies - it is not a just war.
Look, I'm against the invasion of Iraq. I seriously think that GWB should be prosecuted for war crimes. But don't mistake the problems the US army are having in Iraq as being about the quality of their soldiers.
The problem is the political masters who sent brave Americans into a no-win situation, with a complete lack of planning on how to win the peace. It's one thing to defeat a military and take out essential infrastructure from 60,000 feet. Is anyone surprised that the biggest superpower on the planet defeated a poor third world nation that had been under economic sanction for years? Not really.
If the population had scattered the invading coalition with flowers and welcomed the demise of Saddam, all would be roses, and that seems to have been about the extent of the post-conflict planning that the glorious American leaders engaged in.
The bottom line is that occupying a country is much harder than defeating a military force. If the people in that country don't want you there, you will have a world of pain, whoever you are.
I suggest you enlist immediately. Put it where your mouth is.
The fact is, the US actively supported all sorts of nasty regimes, including Saddam Hussein's. And trained Osama Bin Laden, when it was in your political interests. You only take out nasty dictators when there's some oil involved - I don't see you doing the same in other benighted regions of the world.
Look - you aren't the world's police force, and we don't want you to be. But don't pretend that your recent military action is some kind of global heroism. It won't wash.
Almost spot on. You may have won every "named" battle, but you lost the war. Occupation is harder than beating a standing military force.
Just as you say, anyone who invaded the US would be in for a hell of a beating. Just as the US are getting when they try the same. Crushing a country's infrastructure and military forces is easy if you have overwhelming superior technology and resources. Winning the peace is much, much harder if you intend to hang around.
Guerilla tactics can often trump a large military force. Check out this amusing story about a recent American war game that was restarted, as the opposition commander used guerilla tactics and roundly defeated the vast forces massed against him:
It hasn't got anything to do with being disorganised or ill-disciplined. The American military are pretty well trained, and have good equipment. They have soundly defeated pretty much every standing army they fought against in the last 100 years or so.
But like all militaries, there is little you can do when every stranger on a corner may be an enemy. When you are hated by a large proportion of the civilians you are "protecting". When the enemy can come from anywhere and everywhere.
Big military is simply not particularly effective against determined guerilla warfare.
A very dumb dumbass. But that's not what SQL injection is about. It's about allowing arbitrary data supplied by users into your SQL.
A lot of poorly coded applications dynamically assemble SQL statements with user supplied input - for example, when asking for their user name. E.g. (in pseudo-SQL:)
SET @StatementToExecute = "SELECT FullName FROM Users WHERE UserName ='" + @UserNameInputByUser + '"' EXEC @StatementToExecute
If a user just supplies a username here, the statement that is assembled will do the right thing. For example, the user inputs FRED, and the SQL looks like this:
SELECT FullName FROM Users WHERE UserName ='FRED'
But if an attacker doesn't supply a username, but instead supplies a string that terminates the current statement, adds one of their own and finishes with a commenting token (that prevents any subsequent SQL supplied by the program from executing or breaking the syntax), you have SQL injection.
For example, if an attacker inputs this string instead of a user name:
DUMMYUSER'; DROP ALL TABLES; --
The SQL that is assembled will look like this:
SELECT FullName FROM Users WHERE UserName ='DUMMYUSER'; DROP ALL TABLES; --'
Re:If the review is accurate, the book is revision
on
In Search of Stupidity
·
· Score: 1
And of course, you should never mention your competitor's name in a marketing campaign. What do people remember... what was it now? Windows. Something about Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
They do know that DRM doesn't stop piracy. I can't recall where I read this, but I think I remember reading that the source of most large-scale pirated films are film industry insiders. DRM is just so they can keep charging you for the same old. Before digital they relied on fundamentally new music technology and formats to do the same (78, 33, 45, cassette tape, CD, etc.). Now it's all digital and networked and that trick doesn't work anymore.
So... what idiot killed a harmless shizophrenic with pollonium 210?
Only if the marriage operation is commutative in that circumstance ;) This usually depends on similar values of hotness for both sides of the equation.
Yeah, god damn those "real numbers", "negative numbers" and that annoying "square root of minus one". Programmers should figure out how to get the correct solution rather than mucking about with higher maths nonsense.
You can derive numerical mathematics from set theory. It's all related.
m atics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathe
There do seem to be several points of view over fractional reserve banking (at least, on Wikipedia). The discussion pages about it are quite interesting:
r ve_banking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fractional-rese
I'm not qualified to judge between them, although I suspect that both are true. There's a nice explanation of this on there.
Ooops - mixed up my £s and $s there... I meant to say, if they have $100 on deposit, they can loan out $1000.
Hmmmm... saying that they loan out "many times the sum of all deposits they hold" but also "not all of it" isn't the clearest way of putting it!
When they lend the money, they don't take it out of existing deposits - this would not cover the amount they lend, which is far greater than the amount they have on deposit.
They effectively create money out of thin air to loan to you, on which you pay interest as you pay it back. But the total amount they can lend is effectively capped at some (large) proportion of the money they have on deposit, so there is a relationship. E.g. if they have £100 on deposit, they can loan out $1000.
Not true. Banks do not lend money out of the savings in the bank. Western economies operate a fractional reserve banking system (they can lend out money they don't have).
a nking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_b
Capitalism doesn't *fairly* distribute wealth at all - that's not its purpose. If combined with a free market system, it may lead to efficient allocation of resources, which should make us all wealthier in the long term. Under communism the disparity in wealth is *less*, but less wealth overall is generated (as the system is so inefficient and there is no incentive to do any better), so everyone is poorer.
I seem to remember reading that in any competitive system, a power law arises in distribution of resources, so we should always expect to have the ultra rich and the ultra poor in any such system, minus the distorting effects of taxation and other government interventions. Of course, I'm in favour of limited intervention, as perfect market efficiency cannot be the only desirable goal of a human economy.
What a generous lot they are!
These games are global, I am not a US citizen and I don't live in the US. Good luck to the US government trying to tax me for playing a game.
Taxation on real income earned through playing a game - fair enough - then it's just normal income. Although the volume of people earning significant amounts of real money from a virtual world in any given country is surely so low that it's not worth considering.
It's amusing that you accuse the left of the what GWB and Blair's administration have been most guilty of. Here's an interesting leaked memo from the pre-war planning stage:
6 07,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593
Of course, all politicians lie for a living - it's part of the job. We just don't put up with being led into a war under false pretences. That's a crime.
Interesting you mention religion as a cause of war. I'm no fan of religion, but I suspect that war is something that people would find reasons for even without it.
I will have to respectfully disagree with you on the oil issue. Important natural resources may be essential to the world economy, but surely you aren't advocating that nation's should invade each other over them? Iraq wasn't withholding its oil under Saddam Hussein, and (admittedly under a rule of terror) he held together that fractious nation. The supply of oil wasn't in danger under Saddam, and neither was its price, as they were under economic sanction.
As far as fixing the situation in Iraq, I rather think the US and the UK caused it! I don't think it's fixable by any nation on this planet, other than the Iraqis themselves - and they may not be able to stay united as a single nation to do so. The only way I can see this action having worked is if the United Nations (with substantial international support) had authorised military action, and a multi-national force was in place. I think this would have been a more acceptable solution to the Iraqis, but I'm just guessing.
Some fair points there, sorry if I misjudged you. The trouble with "the enemy of my enemy" is it often seems to come back and bite us a few decades later. We are collectively paying the price for our meddling ways now, and we still don't seem to have learned.
If you look at some of my other posts, you will see that I am not attacking the military or the soldiers risking their lives in this misguided war; I am attacking the political establishment and anyone who thinks we cannot criticize a war due to some misplaced notion of loyalty or patriotism. I live in a democracy, I'm proud of it, and I would fight to defend it.
I am not in the US, by the way, I'm from the UK, and we are still extremely grateful for your assistance in WWII. That doesn't mean I support all war under all circumstances though. To me at least, the war in Iraq stinks of corruption and lies - it is not a just war.
Look, I'm against the invasion of Iraq. I seriously think that GWB should be prosecuted for war crimes. But don't mistake the problems the US army are having in Iraq as being about the quality of their soldiers.
The problem is the political masters who sent brave Americans into a no-win situation, with a complete lack of planning on how to win the peace. It's one thing to defeat a military and take out essential infrastructure from 60,000 feet. Is anyone surprised that the biggest superpower on the planet defeated a poor third world nation that had been under economic sanction for years? Not really.
If the population had scattered the invading coalition with flowers and welcomed the demise of Saddam, all would be roses, and that seems to have been about the extent of the post-conflict planning that the glorious American leaders engaged in.
The bottom line is that occupying a country is much harder than defeating a military force. If the people in that country don't want you there, you will have a world of pain, whoever you are.
True :) Napoleon, Hitler, we just don't learn.
I suggest you enlist immediately. Put it where your mouth is.
The fact is, the US actively supported all sorts of nasty regimes, including Saddam Hussein's. And trained Osama Bin Laden, when it was in your political interests. You only take out nasty dictators when there's some oil involved - I don't see you doing the same in other benighted regions of the world.
Look - you aren't the world's police force, and we don't want you to be. But don't pretend that your recent military action is some kind of global heroism. It won't wash.
Ha ha. "Russia would just throw infantry at our tanks". Yeah, Hitler had the same idea.
Almost spot on. You may have won every "named" battle, but you lost the war. Occupation is harder than beating a standing military force.
Just as you say, anyone who invaded the US would be in for a hell of a beating. Just as the US are getting when they try the same. Crushing a country's infrastructure and military forces is easy if you have overwhelming superior technology and resources. Winning the peace is much, much harder if you intend to hang around.
Guerilla tactics can often trump a large military force. Check out this amusing story about a recent American war game that was restarted, as the opposition commander used guerilla tactics and roundly defeated the vast forces massed against him:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wartech/nature.html
Three words: Second World War.
We are totally prepared to sacrifice ourselves against a monstrous oppressor - wouldn't you as your family as being slaughtered and tortured?
It hasn't got anything to do with being disorganised or ill-disciplined. The American military are pretty well trained, and have good equipment. They have soundly defeated pretty much every standing army they fought against in the last 100 years or so.
But like all militaries, there is little you can do when every stranger on a corner may be an enemy. When you are hated by a large proportion of the civilians you are "protecting". When the enemy can come from anywhere and everywhere.
Big military is simply not particularly effective against determined guerilla warfare.
A very dumb dumbass. But that's not what SQL injection is about. It's about allowing arbitrary data supplied by users into your SQL.
A lot of poorly coded applications dynamically assemble SQL statements with user supplied input - for example, when asking for their user name. E.g. (in pseudo-SQL:)
SET @StatementToExecute = "SELECT FullName FROM Users WHERE UserName ='" + @UserNameInputByUser + '"'
EXEC @StatementToExecute
If a user just supplies a username here, the statement that is assembled will do the right thing. For example, the user inputs FRED, and the SQL looks like this:
SELECT FullName FROM Users WHERE UserName ='FRED'
But if an attacker doesn't supply a username, but instead supplies a string that terminates the current statement, adds one of their own and finishes with a commenting token (that prevents any subsequent SQL supplied by the program from executing or breaking the syntax), you have SQL injection.
For example, if an attacker inputs this string instead of a user name:
DUMMYUSER'; DROP ALL TABLES; --
The SQL that is assembled will look like this:
SELECT FullName FROM Users WHERE UserName ='DUMMYUSER'; DROP ALL TABLES; --'
And of course, you should never mention your competitor's name in a marketing campaign. What do people remember... what was it now? Windows. Something about Windows.