James Gosling created a somewhat viable programming language in an effort to have code that you 'write once, run everywhere'.
My experience with Java has been problematic at best. I was in a programming situation a few years ago where I had to write a piece of some mission-critical code in Java!
It was a drawn-out nightmare akin to 'death by a thousand papercuts' but with help I was able to get the code up and running. One bright spot was that Java's syntax is very similar to C of which I have written thousands of and thousands of lines of it using Microsoft Visual C++.
I like programming in the 'programmer is king' environment of C. When done properly, one can code efficient, high-performance software in C.
Not so in Java with its interpretive nature, syntatic verbosity in places, and the way it handholds the programmer by generating compile-time errors that wouldn't occur or appear to the equivalent C compiler.
Java is nice as a teaching programming language like Pascal (which I've used in the distant past) but when you need an industrial strength, high-performance programming language that doesn't attempt to second-guess the programmer, C is hard to beat.
In general, they do a good job. Sometimes the choices they make for television display, or the lack of proper controls for the game spoil the mechanics.
This is why I'd rather play actual arcade games with the possible exception of the NEO-GEO home unit as that was a home version of actual SNK arcade hardware. You can't get the true arcade experience playing an arcade game in a ported version or via emulation--it just isn't the same.
At face value, SMASH T.V. is nothing more than ROBOTRON 2084 with lots and lots of cool-looking raster graphics. However it enhances the concept with varried weaponry you can use in the game while offering a plausible, THE RUNNING MAN type of gameshow setting for the game to play out in.
I must admit, for sustained, white-knuckle gaming intensity, I think it is impossible to top ROBOTRON 2084, SMASH T.V., DEFENDER/STARGATE, or TEMPEST. I wasn't any good at all of them them. Any dissenters about that can name videogames offering a more harried experience while playing other than the ones above? I'll bet the people who were good at these games are now air traffic controllers or some similar job where you have to think on your feet at a moment's notice when presented with a screenful of fast-moving objects.
So, in closing. Downloading software is illegal. Fucking consumers is immoral.
Correction: Downloading illegally available software is illegal.
Case in point: I have a free, free-to-download test program available at my site (see sig) that checks if the PC you run it on is capable of running my retail program that is available for purchase there.
zerocool complains about high-priced (overpriced) software as is his/her right in the USA under the First Amendment to the Constitution Of America.
The reality: Software development costs MONEY and should be compensated for if desired by the creators of said software.
The facts....
The computer(s) the software is developed on costs money (unless said computer(s) were donated for free).
The electricity powering the computer costs money (unless it is being generated from a free and/or donated source).
The programmer(s) who programmed the software cost money (unless they are donating their time and skills for free).
The advertising for the software costs money (unless it is being done for free somehow).
The distribution expenses to distribute the software to the recipients cost money (unless it is being done for free somehow).
Companies and individuals have invested lots of time and money in the software they create and sell. They found needs/markets for certain kinds of software and wrote the software to fill those needs/markets. Big companies have to sell software for big bucks to recoup the expenses in creating, maintaining, and distributing said software. They also are entitled to profit from their software which should be reinvested back into the company--not wasted.
For example, look at the 'gross profit margin' on a retail CD copy of Windows: $179.00 or so for a round thin sandwich of plastics and metal that has an intrinsic value of maybe $1.00. That $179.00 Windows CD allowed everybody, from the end user/customer up to Microsoft itself, to profit and benefit from the manpower and technology invested in it to create it and to benefit from its power as a computer operating system.
Ok, let's cut to the chase....
Windows is a kludge, based on code dating back to the dawn of the PC era.
Even in this environment, the customer STILL has alternatives such as Apple and Linux -- SCO problems with commercial Linux use aside (which can be resolved.
If you want to avoid paying for high-priced software, use cheaper/free software or buy/legally get for free the necessary software tools to write your own custom programmed software solutions.
To address the second part of zerocool's comment, I offer the the following as some of the societal results of 'people as consumers -- not customers'. This has created a desparate, adversarial environment in which commerce and 'consumers' meet in an inevitable clusterfsck....
I grew up during the heyday of videogaming (late '70s - early '80s) and had a chance to play games on a NEO-GEO console some years ago.
It was the only gaming console available at the time of its release to give the player the full arcade gaming experience as it was the home version of actual SNK arcade gaming hardware.
Though incredibly expensive (~$700.00 game console and ~$200.00 game cartridges), all the other home gaming consoles available at the time paled in comparison.
As for me, I'd rather play actual arcade games. The problem is, I can barely find any of the games to play that I've enjoyed playing in my youth. Nowadays, the most popular games out there fall into three broad categories:
1) Driving games (such as Sega's MONACO GP and OUTRUN)
2) Shooting games (such as Nintendo's HOGAN'S ALLEY)
3) Fighting games (such as CAPCOM'S STREET FIGHTER line of arcade games)
Arcade industry: Please bring back the 'golden era' videogames.
They didn't have the eyecandy that today's videogames have, but they sure were fun to play!
It's wrong to think prison as a place of punishment - it should be a place of rehabilitation.
Seen on a anti-guncrime billboard: [if you get caught with a gun] '...Five Years Hard Federal Time!'
Get caught counterfeiting US money and they throw the book at you? 'Twenty Years Hard Federal Time!'
In this topsy-turvy capitalist society that is the USA, guncrime, which can be an has been proven fatal, is treated less harshly by the Federal government than counterfeiting which is, essentially, a nonfatal form of fraud.
It is this misplaced set of priorites along with 'zero tolerance' and 'three strikes' that has led to an explosion in the levels of prison incarceration here in the USA. It is a known fact that more people are in jail in the USA as a whole than anywhere else in the world.
Because of the large influx of prisoners to the penal system and penal staffing stretched to the limits, this has led prisons to be little more than human warehouses where society dumps their undesireables for the duration of their sentence. Treated as such, isn't it any wonder that there is an alarming rate of recidivism in the USA penal system?
Since there is little or no attempt at real rehabilitation, prisons become little more than crime dens where the incarcerated learn to become better criminals upon their release.
For the ones who do their time and are released, who decide never again to go back to prison, are faced with wholesale ostracization by society as a whole.
Case in point: Job applications that ask: 'Are you a convicted felon?'
Past experience does not predict future performance--but alas, is a strong indicator of it.
If 'crime doesn't pay', why are people who leave the penal system, 'having paid their debt to society in full', still being treated like criminals?
Until there is a radical, fundamental shift in the operation of the US penal system toward real, genuine, lasting rehabilitation of the prisoners in its care, it will continue to be 'just business as usual'.
With some additional programming effort, the position of the decimal point and 'zero right padding' of numbers can be kept track of when doing multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction with a multiprecision integer computation package. Once the answer is computed, the answer printing routine can insert the decimal point in the right place inside the decimal digit string.
Precision is retained -- 100000 decimal digits of precison is equivalent to about 332193 bits of binary precision. If the multiprecision integer computation package was written properly, all one has to do is change one #define statement and re-compile the package to get that level of precision.
Speed of computation is maintained -- computing in binary, albeit in chunks, is the fastest, simplest way of doing such gargantuan calculations when every speedup trick known to the programmer is coded into the computation routines. Thus, complicated decimal multiprecision calculation routines are not needed.
Couldn't determined crackers trick their way onto XBOX Live with modchipped XBOXes and a properly setup MITM PC monitoring and replying the connection to/from XBOX Live after first doing all of this with a stock, un-modchipped XBOX?
If the data flow is unencrypted, it oughta be 'a snap'. Otherwise...who knows....
If such an attack is 100% successful, it could lead to 2nd generation XBOX modchips that don't need the MITM to operate properly. As far as XBOX Live is concerned on their end, it's business as usual--no cracker detected on this connection....
...and watch mass-market entertainment mounted with better, bigger production values.
Problem solved.
However, there is a Survivorlike movie (comming) out. I think it is done like the Scary Movie series.
As for me, I hardly ever watch anything 'made in Hollywood' unless there is a good reason to watch it such as the LOTR film trilogy by Peter Jackson and filmed in thoroughly picturesque New Zeland.
Come to think of it, I do somewhat remember getting spam like that.
At the time I asked myself: Did I order anything online recently?...Nope. Spam. Plonk!
Problem solved. Case closed.
Such spam would have been filtered as such by my program I use (see sig). If I were doing business with an etailer, I would whitelist the email address or email domain the order information came from thus allowing it to bypass my program's spam filtering heuristics. Then once I personally receive all my order(s) for the time being, I can then remove them from the whitelist to prevent them from marketing to me whether I requested it or not--likely not. I view advertising as a 'necessary evil' in any capitalist society such as the one I live in here in the USA.
Anybody have a URL to a non-Quicktime version of the complete, with sound Apple/Ridley Scott '1984' commercial? Now that is my idea of a commercial! I'd like to see that one again! Nowadays, most of the commercials I see seem to be aimed at small children, crass and silly--an obvious attempt at grabbing your attention so they can sell you their product they are advertising in the commercial. This is the antithesis of what was done in the famed '1984' commercial. To heighten its impact, the commercial was officially aired only once during the 1984 Super Bowl football game and has only been seen infrequently on varous 'retrospective' TV shows in the 20 years since 1984.
The best part of 'Brian' is the end with the big 'show tune' at the end which is quite good! Other than that, the whole film before it is a hit-or-miss affair.
However....
'Grail' is definitely time capsule material! This film is pure, unadulterated comic genius from start to finish--including the 'ending'--in spite of its low-rent production values (filmed for about the equivalent of $500,000 1975 dollars I've heard). Monty Python managed to take material presented seriously in John Boorman's 'Excalibur' six years later (1981) and make it utterly logical, preposterous, and entertaining all at the same time!
To me, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' is the cinematic masterpiece from the Monty Python comedy troupe!
Use the email Subject: line to remind the customer of their previous order ie:
Subject: From example.com -- Invoice #123 for your order placed March 20, 2004
That way, unless their short-term memory is shot or they are incompetent/dishonest, they won't misconstrue your email as spam.
(Our marketing you opt into while ordering, don't flame me, we do not purchase lists!)
Do they consciously have to opt out (ie. check the 'do not bother me unless I order something from you and only then only send order related information only' box) to avoid unwanted, non-order related email from your company? You should change it to an 'opt in' approach. People who consciously opt in want to be marketed to and would be on the lookout for your email ads. Unless they were incompetent/dishonest or had bad short-term memory, they would only report your email ads as spam by genuine mistake (ie. a 'mouseslip' caused them to hit 'report as spam' rather than 'delete').
What I am driving at is that the average person doesn't want to expend any more effort than is necessary in order to get something accomplished. If you run your email system with that in mind, the number of problems you are having now should drop to almost zero (if not zero).
However, thanks to the passage of CAN-SPAM at the 'behest' of the Direct Marketers Association, everybody in America with an email address (with some exceptions no doubt--.gov and.mil email addresses) has been automatically 'opted in' without their prior approval. Anti-spam advocates said CAN-SPAM will allow millions of U.S. businesses to flood the Internet with even more email marketing. If that is the case, I am, at last, ready to funnel it all to my spam archive for convenient perusal and deletion thanks to the program I wrote and use for just this purpose (see sig).
Leave the geeks to their machines, let the rest of us rule them from management.
That attitude of hubris helped pop the dot-com bubble in the first place. The geeks you so derisively malign helped infuse the world economy with *LOTS* of money of which a number of managers at successful companies used to lavish on themselves and their cronies rather than reward said geeks for their services and re-invest the proceeds in the companies they manage to help them survive and grow.
How many wildly successful internet-only business are there left?
eBay / PayPal Google Amazon
Those are the only ones that come readily to my mind.
Managers with that attitude are a dime a dozen....
Great managers are the ones that treat the staff as people and not as tools, utensils, and ultimately a drag on the bottom line to be disposed of the moment they are no longer useful. In return, such managers get a loyal workforce that respect them in return--even to the point of sticking with the company through lean times or other hardship.
The poster's attitude may work in the retail and service industries where the profits are slim and employee turnover is high but it *still* isn't right!
"sure we could do that, but then we'd have to replace those engineers. Now we already hired the best ones we could find in the world, so where are we to get better ones?"
Institute a new policy: if you work/contract for NASA, you are held responsible for your work. If lives are lost due to negligence--however small--hold the negligent party/parties criminally responsible with commensurate penalties. If something is wrong with your work, as punishment, you *must* fix it for free or refund all monies paid to you for doing the original job.
This way, only 'acts of God' are the only causes for mishaps at NASA i.e. don't launch Space Shuttles when ice can form--it's what brought down Challenger and Columbia: killing 14 people and destroying billions of dollars of taxpayer-paid-for NASA hardware.
-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807
int64s have over 18 decimal digits of precison with NO roundoff error -- adequate to ennumerate the entire global GDP of the planet Earth in U.S. Dollars with ease (well in the trillions but surely not in the quadrillions of dollars).
If for some strange reason you need more precison with no roundoff error (or you don't have int64s available), you will need to write or obtain a multiple-precison integer computation package.
They are not too difficult to write a correct, working implementation. It may take you time to make it as fast and efficient as possible.
Archiving the spam prevents the loss of 'false positive messages' from people sending me real email but don't know about my email policy. The rest of the spam I get is the real thing and is treated as such: Selfishly Promoted Advertising Messages.
Should have read:
Archiving the spam prevents the loss of 'false positive messages' from people sending me real email but don't know about my email policy. The rest of the spam I get is the real thing and is treated as such: Senselessly Promulgated Advertising Messages.
Then change the rules, making it virtually impossible for you to see the spam they send. I wrote and use a program (see sig) that funnels all the spam I get into two files for easy perusal and deletion.
The thing to do is to only allow bonafide mailservers (via DNS MX), POP-before-SMTP, and IP black/whitelists to (deny) access a mailserver. Doing that will stop the hardcore pro spammers (who will have their spamservers IP blacklisted). POP-before-SMTP will stop rampant 'relay rape'. Any spammers that make it past the connection stage can have their spam 'delivered' (silently routed to the bit bucket) or rejected based on the content of it -- say using the techniques my program uses to dectect and archive (likely) spam.
Archiving the spam prevents the loss of 'false positive messages' from people sending me real email but don't know about my email policy. The rest of the spam I get is the real thing and is treated as such: Selfishly Promoted Advertising Messages.
And I treat all email attachments I get as 'text files' to avoid immediate system compromise.
Now I just have to keep my antivirus and firewall running ok to avoid having a particular Registry entry from being compromised that will make such 'text file' treatment of malware impossible.
...because when my program (see sig) downloads and decodes it, it becomes a.txt file on disk no mater what the malware author names it. However, I have to protect the Windows registry entry that controls 'text file execution' by loading the double-clicked on text file into Notepad. To do that, I use a firewall and antivirus programs.
The other day, I got a malware exe disguised as a.bat.safe file (phony antivirus email?). When my program decoded it, it added.txt to the end of the file name. Perusing the malware with a hex editor, I notice the names of many antivirus and firewall programs listed in it. I'll bet the malware will 'search and destroy' such software in order to do it's dirty work.
By treating ALL email file attachments as 'text files' will make it almost impossible for a PC using my program to be compromised by malware. These 'text files' can be scanned for viruses or safely inspected with Notepad or a hex editor or simply deleted if not expected. If the file is kept, the rightmost.txt can be removed from the file to get the original filename back.
This method of handling file attachments also stops 'CLSID' trickery--using the CLSID for reserved file extensions instead of the extension itself.
World Leader's post addresses the core issue that drives spam: Desparation borne out of a insatiable desire to make a quick buck.
I, on the other hand, have decided to 'take the high road' and not resort to spamming in order to promote my solution to the spam problem (see sig).
I belive I have 'invented the better mousetrap' to deal with email spam and I have, for example, limited myself to sending clearly identified small emails for my online product press release to potentially interested parties in the media at large.
If my efforts above are construed as spamming, and an (internet) ad campaign is beyond my budget, and outright spamming (or any other such unsolicited email contact) is out of the question, then what can I do to tell large numbers of other people about my product?
Please do not suggest venture capitalism as a possible solution as I would then be subject to a Wall Street 'the profit is all' mentality. That is to say I've found a real need via firsthand experience and crafted an effective solution to that need to the best of my abilities. I leave it up to the public at large to decide for themselves if that is the case.
That is one of the things my program does that I use. To read more about it, go here.
Unfortunately, my program downloads an processes all email to avoid deleting a 'false positive' at the server level after email header analysis. To make up for that, all spam is routed to two files and all spam attachments are clearly identified so all the spam can be perused and deleted with ease.
Stop spam dead in its tracks! Restricted charset!
on
Junkie Loves His Spam
·
· Score: 2
See my website (see sig) for more details.
My program has no need for CPU taxing Bayesian filtering in the traditional sense--it uses simple pattern-matching against two wordlists to quickly deem an email as spam.
Restricting unapproved email senders to only alphabetic characters and 'spaces' makes it impossible for spammers to easily hawk their wares.
These are two of the cold, brutal, logical ideas implemented in my software email filter (see sig).
I get no spam this way. The 'false positives' I do get are deemed spam but that is because the unapproved sender doesn't yet know about my email policy and/or the program that implements it.
Here is my definition of spam as it is codified in my spam filter program (see sig). This applies to senders who are not on my approved sender lists. Such approved email is not deemed spam by my program.
1. Email relayed through a 3rd party mailserver.
2. Anonymous senders.
3. BCC: email where my account email address does not appear in the headers.
4. All email not sent as 'text/plain' and/or not using an English-language character set. Any and all attachments sent are decoded as 'harmless text files' and tagged as spam if needed.
5. Email subject or body uses a character that is not a 'space' or an alphabetic character. This makes it impossible for spammers to easily spell websites and email addresses.
6. No 'spamwords'. The use of a 'spamword' in an email that is on my 'spamword' list deems that email message spam. My 'spamword' list contains 'zero','one',...,'eight', and 'nine'. In this manner, it is impossible for spammers to use these words to spell zip codes and product prices.
7. No 'hashbusters' or 'l33tspeak'. Since 'words' in these two categories do not appear anywhere in Grady Ward's single word 'Moby' list, email messages using them are deemed spam. This makes it impossible for spammers to use words like 'alsj9o2034n' and '\/|4gr4' in a message that would slip past other forms of filtering.
My program makes spamming virtually impossible while still making it possible for two parties to communicate via email using no challenge/response system and nothing more than the existing email infrastructure.
Slashdot Mirror
Lame Java joke I know.
James Gosling created a somewhat viable programming language in an effort to have code that you 'write once, run everywhere'.
My experience with Java has been problematic at best. I was in a programming situation a few years ago where I had to write a piece of some mission-critical code in Java!
It was a drawn-out nightmare akin to 'death by a thousand papercuts' but with help I was able to get the code up and running. One bright spot was that Java's syntax is very similar to C of which I have written thousands of and thousands of lines of it using Microsoft Visual C++.
I like programming in the 'programmer is king' environment of C. When done properly, one can code efficient, high-performance software in C.
Not so in Java with its interpretive nature, syntatic verbosity in places, and the way it handholds the programmer by generating compile-time errors that wouldn't occur or appear to the equivalent C compiler.
Java is nice as a teaching programming language like Pascal (which I've used in the distant past) but when you need an industrial strength, high-performance programming language that doesn't attempt to second-guess the programmer, C is hard to beat.
In general, they do a good job. Sometimes the choices they make for television display, or the lack of proper controls for the game spoil the mechanics.
This is why I'd rather play actual arcade games with the possible exception of the NEO-GEO home unit as that was a home version of actual SNK arcade hardware. You can't get the true arcade experience playing an arcade game in a ported version or via emulation--it just isn't the same.
At face value, SMASH T.V. is nothing more than ROBOTRON 2084 with lots and lots of cool-looking raster graphics. However it enhances the concept with varried weaponry you can use in the game while offering a plausible, THE RUNNING MAN type of gameshow setting for the game to play out in.
I must admit, for sustained, white-knuckle gaming intensity, I think it is impossible to top ROBOTRON 2084, SMASH T.V., DEFENDER/STARGATE, or TEMPEST. I wasn't any good at all of them them. Any dissenters about that can name videogames offering a more harried experience while playing other than the ones above? I'll bet the people who were good at these games are now air traffic controllers or some similar job where you have to think on your feet at a moment's notice when presented with a screenful of fast-moving objects.
So, in closing. Downloading software is illegal. Fucking consumers is immoral.
Correction: Downloading illegally available software is illegal.
Case in point: I have a free, free-to-download test program available at my site (see sig) that checks if the PC you run it on is capable of running my retail program that is available for purchase there.
zerocool complains about high-priced (overpriced) software as is his/her right in the USA under the First Amendment to the Constitution Of America.
The reality: Software development costs MONEY and should be compensated for if desired by the creators of said software.
The facts....
The computer(s) the software is developed on costs money (unless said computer(s) were donated for free).
The electricity powering the computer costs money (unless it is being generated from a free and/or donated source).
The programmer(s) who programmed the software cost money (unless they are donating their time and skills for free).
The advertising for the software costs money (unless it is being done for free somehow).
The distribution expenses to distribute the software to the recipients cost money (unless it is being done for free somehow).
Companies and individuals have invested lots of time and money in the software they create and sell. They found needs/markets for certain kinds of software and wrote the software to fill those needs/markets. Big companies have to sell software for big bucks to recoup the expenses in creating, maintaining, and distributing said software. They also are entitled to profit from their software which should be reinvested back into the company--not wasted.
For example, look at the 'gross profit margin' on a retail CD copy of Windows: $179.00 or so for a round thin sandwich of plastics and metal that has an intrinsic value of maybe $1.00. That $179.00 Windows CD allowed everybody, from the end user/customer up to Microsoft itself, to profit and benefit from the manpower and technology invested in it to create it and to benefit from its power as a computer operating system.
Ok, let's cut to the chase....
Windows is a kludge, based on code dating back to the dawn of the PC era.
Microsoft is a monopoly.
Even in this environment, the customer STILL has alternatives such as Apple and Linux -- SCO problems with commercial Linux use aside (which can be resolved.
If you want to avoid paying for high-priced software, use cheaper/free software or buy/legally get for free the necessary software tools to write your own custom programmed software solutions.
To address the second part of zerocool's comment, I offer the the following as some of the societal results of 'people as consumers -- not customers'. This has created a desparate, adversarial environment in which commerce and 'consumers' meet in an inevitable clusterfsck....
Wal-Mart, their business practices and its consequenses.
Ad creep. Even on the Internet. a technique coined and first implemented in 1996.
Email spam.
I grew up during the heyday of videogaming (late '70s - early '80s) and had a chance to play games on a NEO-GEO console some years ago.
It was the only gaming console available at the time of its release to give the player the full arcade gaming experience as it was the home version of actual SNK arcade gaming hardware.
Though incredibly expensive (~$700.00 game console and ~$200.00 game cartridges), all the other home gaming consoles available at the time paled in comparison.
As for me, I'd rather play actual arcade games. The problem is, I can barely find any of the games to play that I've enjoyed playing in my youth. Nowadays, the most popular games out there fall into three broad categories:
1) Driving games (such as Sega's MONACO GP and OUTRUN)
2) Shooting games (such as Nintendo's HOGAN'S ALLEY)
3) Fighting games (such as CAPCOM'S STREET FIGHTER line of arcade games)
Arcade industry: Please bring back the 'golden era' videogames.
They didn't have the eyecandy that today's videogames have, but they sure were fun to play!
It's wrong to think prison as a place of punishment - it should be a place of rehabilitation.
Seen on a anti-guncrime billboard: [if you get caught with a gun] '...Five Years Hard Federal Time!'
Get caught counterfeiting US money and they throw the book at you? 'Twenty Years Hard Federal Time!'
In this topsy-turvy capitalist society that is the USA, guncrime, which can be an has been proven fatal, is treated less harshly by the Federal government than counterfeiting which is, essentially, a nonfatal form of fraud.
It is this misplaced set of priorites along with 'zero tolerance' and 'three strikes' that has led to an explosion in the levels of prison incarceration here in the USA. It is a known fact that more people are in jail in the USA as a whole than anywhere else in the world.
Because of the large influx of prisoners to the penal system and penal staffing stretched to the limits, this has led prisons to be little more than human warehouses where society dumps their undesireables for the duration of their sentence. Treated as such, isn't it any wonder that there is an alarming rate of recidivism in the USA penal system?
Since there is little or no attempt at real rehabilitation, prisons become little more than crime dens where the incarcerated learn to become better criminals upon their release.
For the ones who do their time and are released, who decide never again to go back to prison, are faced with wholesale ostracization by society as a whole.
Case in point: Job applications that ask: 'Are you a convicted felon?'
Past experience does not predict future performance--but alas, is a strong indicator of it.
If 'crime doesn't pay', why are people who leave the penal system, 'having paid their debt to society in full', still being treated like criminals?
Until there is a radical, fundamental shift in the operation of the US penal system toward real, genuine, lasting rehabilitation of the prisoners in its care, it will continue to be 'just business as usual'.
With some additional programming effort, the position of the decimal point and 'zero right padding' of numbers can be kept track of when doing multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction with a multiprecision integer computation package. Once the answer is computed, the answer printing routine can insert the decimal point in the right place inside the decimal digit string.
Precision is retained -- 100000 decimal digits of precison is equivalent to about 332193 bits of binary precision. If the multiprecision integer computation package was written properly, all one has to do is change one #define statement and re-compile the package to get that level of precision.
Speed of computation is maintained -- computing in binary, albeit in chunks, is the fastest, simplest way of doing such gargantuan calculations when every speedup trick known to the programmer is coded into the computation routines. Thus, complicated decimal multiprecision calculation routines are not needed.
Couldn't determined crackers trick their way onto XBOX Live with modchipped XBOXes and a properly setup MITM PC monitoring and replying the connection to/from XBOX Live after first doing all of this with a stock, un-modchipped XBOX?
If the data flow is unencrypted, it oughta be 'a snap'. Otherwise...who knows....
If such an attack is 100% successful, it could lead to 2nd generation XBOX modchips that don't need the MITM to operate properly. As far as XBOX Live is concerned on their end, it's business as usual--no cracker detected on this connection....
To 'paraphrase' Field Of Dreams
In a nutshell, that's what the issue of Trusted Computing all boils down to anyway, right?
Who controls the power of duplication inherint in a personal computer?
The owner/user of that computer?
Or the hardware/software makers at the behest of the media cartels/corporate conglomerates/Federal government?
Stock up on non-DRM hardware/software now and refuse to buy DRM/Trusted Computing encumbered hardware/software.
That way, you will be voting against Trusted Computing using the only language they care about: your money.
...and watch mass-market entertainment mounted with better, bigger production values.
Problem solved.
However, there is a Survivorlike movie (comming) out. I think it is done like the Scary Movie series.
As for me, I hardly ever watch anything 'made in Hollywood' unless there is a good reason to watch it such as the LOTR film trilogy by Peter Jackson and filmed in thoroughly picturesque New Zeland.
Come to think of it, I do somewhat remember getting spam like that.
At the time I asked myself: Did I order anything online recently?...Nope. Spam. Plonk!
Problem solved. Case closed.
Such spam would have been filtered as such by my program I use (see sig). If I were doing business with an etailer, I would whitelist the email address or email domain the order information came from thus allowing it to bypass my program's spam filtering heuristics. Then once I personally receive all my order(s) for the time being, I can then remove them from the whitelist to prevent them from marketing to me whether I requested it or not--likely not. I view advertising as a 'necessary evil' in any capitalist society such as the one I live in here in the USA.
Anybody have a URL to a non-Quicktime version of the complete, with sound Apple/Ridley Scott '1984' commercial? Now that is my idea of a commercial! I'd like to see that one again! Nowadays, most of the commercials I see seem to be aimed at small children, crass and silly--an obvious attempt at grabbing your attention so they can sell you their product they are advertising in the commercial. This is the antithesis of what was done in the famed '1984' commercial. To heighten its impact, the commercial was officially aired only once during the 1984 Super Bowl football game and has only been seen infrequently on varous 'retrospective' TV shows in the 20 years since 1984.
I've seen both.
The best part of 'Brian' is the end with the big 'show tune' at the end which is quite good! Other than that, the whole film before it is a hit-or-miss affair.
However....
'Grail' is definitely time capsule material! This film is pure, unadulterated comic genius from start to finish--including the 'ending'--in spite of its low-rent production values (filmed for about the equivalent of $500,000 1975 dollars I've heard). Monty Python managed to take material presented seriously in John Boorman's 'Excalibur' six years later (1981) and make it utterly logical, preposterous, and entertaining all at the same time!
To me, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' is the cinematic masterpiece from the Monty Python comedy troupe!
Seriously.
.mil email addresses) has been automatically 'opted in' without their prior approval. Anti-spam advocates said CAN-SPAM will allow millions of U.S. businesses to flood the Internet with even more email marketing. If that is the case, I am, at last, ready to funnel it all to my spam archive for convenient perusal and deletion thanks to the program I wrote and use for just this purpose (see sig).
Use the email Subject: line to remind the customer of their previous order ie:
Subject: From example.com -- Invoice #123 for your order placed March 20, 2004
That way, unless their short-term memory is shot or they are incompetent/dishonest, they won't misconstrue your email as spam.
(Our marketing you opt into while ordering, don't flame me, we do not purchase lists!)
Do they consciously have to opt out (ie. check the 'do not bother me unless I order something from you and only then only send order related information only' box) to avoid unwanted, non-order related email from your company? You should change it to an 'opt in' approach. People who consciously opt in want to be marketed to and would be on the lookout for your email ads. Unless they were incompetent/dishonest or had bad short-term memory, they would only report your email ads as spam by genuine mistake (ie. a 'mouseslip' caused them to hit 'report as spam' rather than 'delete').
What I am driving at is that the average person doesn't want to expend any more effort than is necessary in order to get something accomplished. If you run your email system with that in mind, the number of problems you are having now should drop to almost zero (if not zero).
However, thanks to the passage of CAN-SPAM at the 'behest' of the Direct Marketers Association, everybody in America with an email address (with some exceptions no doubt--.gov and
Leave the geeks to their machines, let the rest of us rule them from management.
That attitude of hubris helped pop the dot-com bubble in the first place. The geeks you so derisively malign helped infuse the world economy with *LOTS* of money of which a number of managers at successful companies used to lavish on themselves and their cronies rather than reward said geeks for their services and re-invest the proceeds in the companies they manage to help them survive and grow.
How many wildly successful internet-only business are there left?
eBay / PayPal
Google
Amazon
Those are the only ones that come readily to my mind.
Managers with that attitude are a dime a dozen....
Great managers are the ones that treat the staff as people and not as tools, utensils, and ultimately a drag on the bottom line to be disposed of the moment they are no longer useful. In return, such managers get a loyal workforce that respect them in return--even to the point of sticking with the company through lean times or other hardship.
The poster's attitude may work in the retail and service industries where the profits are slim and employee turnover is high but it *still* isn't right!
"sure we could do that, but then we'd have to replace those engineers. Now we already hired the best ones we could find in the world, so where are we to get better ones?"
Institute a new policy: if you work/contract for NASA, you are held responsible for your work. If lives are lost due to negligence--however small--hold the negligent party/parties criminally responsible with commensurate penalties. If something is wrong with your work, as punishment, you *must* fix it for free or refund all monies paid to you for doing the original job.
This way, only 'acts of God' are the only causes for mishaps at NASA i.e. don't launch Space Shuttles when ice can form--it's what brought down Challenger and Columbia: killing 14 people and destroying billions of dollars of taxpayer-paid-for NASA hardware.
0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615
or
-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807
int64s have over 18 decimal digits of precison with NO roundoff error -- adequate to ennumerate the entire global GDP of the planet Earth in U.S. Dollars with ease (well in the trillions but surely not in the quadrillions of dollars).
If for some strange reason you need more precison with no roundoff error (or you don't have int64s available), you will need to write or obtain a multiple-precison integer computation package.
They are not too difficult to write a correct, working implementation. It may take you time to make it as fast and efficient as possible.
Archiving the spam prevents the loss of 'false positive messages' from people sending me real email but don't know about my email policy. The rest of the spam I get is the real thing and is treated as such: Selfishly Promoted Advertising Messages.
Should have read:
Archiving the spam prevents the loss of 'false positive messages' from people sending me real email but don't know about my email policy. The rest of the spam I get is the real thing and is treated as such: Senselessly Promulgated Advertising Messages.
Spammers, these days, don't follow the rules.
Then change the rules, making it virtually impossible for you to see the spam they send. I wrote and use a program (see sig) that funnels all the spam I get into two files for easy perusal and deletion.
The thing to do is to only allow bonafide mailservers (via DNS MX), POP-before-SMTP, and IP black/whitelists to (deny) access a mailserver. Doing that will stop the hardcore pro spammers (who will have their spamservers IP blacklisted). POP-before-SMTP will stop rampant 'relay rape'. Any spammers that make it past the connection stage can have their spam 'delivered' (silently routed to the bit bucket) or rejected based on the content of it -- say using the techniques my program uses to dectect and archive (likely) spam.
Archiving the spam prevents the loss of 'false positive messages' from people sending me real email but don't know about my email policy. The rest of the spam I get is the real thing and is treated as such: Selfishly Promoted Advertising Messages.
I use a separate program (see sig) to check my email to hold malware at bay.
Now one has to keep their computer firewalled and protected by antivirus to keep out malware transmitted by TCP/UDP/other internet protocol.
Read about it here.
And I treat all email attachments I get as 'text files' to avoid immediate system compromise.
Now I just have to keep my antivirus and firewall running ok to avoid having a particular Registry entry from being compromised that will make such 'text file' treatment of malware impossible.
...because when my program (see sig) downloads and decodes it, it becomes a .txt file on disk no mater what the malware author names it. However, I have to protect the Windows registry entry that controls 'text file execution' by loading the double-clicked on text file into Notepad. To do that, I use a firewall and antivirus programs.
.bat.safe file (phony antivirus email?). When my program decoded it, it added .txt to the end of the file name. Perusing the malware with a hex editor, I notice the names of many antivirus and firewall programs listed in it. I'll bet the malware will 'search and destroy' such software in order to do it's dirty work.
.txt can be removed from the file to get the original filename back.
The other day, I got a malware exe disguised as a
By treating ALL email file attachments as 'text files' will make it almost impossible for a PC using my program to be compromised by malware. These 'text files' can be scanned for viruses or safely inspected with Notepad or a hex editor or simply deleted if not expected. If the file is kept, the rightmost
This method of handling file attachments also stops 'CLSID' trickery--using the CLSID for reserved file extensions instead of the extension itself.
World Leader's post addresses the core issue that drives spam: Desparation borne out of a insatiable desire to make a quick buck.
I, on the other hand, have decided to 'take the high road' and not resort to spamming in order to promote my solution to the spam problem (see sig).
I belive I have 'invented the better mousetrap' to deal with email spam and I have, for example, limited myself to sending clearly identified small emails for my online product press release to potentially interested parties in the media at large.
If my efforts above are construed as spamming, and an (internet) ad campaign is beyond my budget, and outright spamming (or any other such unsolicited email contact) is out of the question, then what can I do to tell large numbers of other people about my product?
Please do not suggest venture capitalism as a possible solution as I would then be subject to a Wall Street 'the profit is all' mentality. That is to say I've found a real need via firsthand experience and crafted an effective solution to that need to the best of my abilities. I leave it up to the public at large to decide for themselves if that is the case.
That is one of the things my program does that I use. To read more about it, go here.
Unfortunately, my program downloads an processes all email to avoid deleting a 'false positive' at the server level after email header analysis. To make up for that, all spam is routed to two files and all spam attachments are clearly identified so all the spam can be perused and deleted with ease.
Complete post here.
See my website (see sig) for more details.
My program has no need for CPU taxing Bayesian filtering in the traditional sense--it uses simple pattern-matching against two wordlists to quickly deem an email as spam.
Restricting unapproved email senders to only alphabetic characters and 'spaces' makes it
impossible for spammers to easily hawk their wares.
These are two of the cold, brutal, logical ideas implemented in my software email filter (see sig).
I get no spam this way. The 'false positives' I do get are deemed spam but that is because the unapproved sender doesn't yet know about my email policy and/or the program that implements it.
Here is my definition of spam as it is codified in my spam filter program (see sig). This applies to senders who are not on my approved sender lists. Such approved email is not deemed spam by my program.
1. Email relayed through a 3rd party mailserver.
2. Anonymous senders.
3. BCC: email where my account email address does not appear in the headers.
4. All email not sent as 'text/plain' and/or not
using an English-language character set. Any and all attachments sent are decoded as 'harmless text files' and tagged as spam if needed.
5. Email subject or body uses a character that is not a 'space' or an alphabetic character. This makes it impossible for spammers to easily spell websites and email addresses.
6. No 'spamwords'. The use of a 'spamword' in an email that is on my 'spamword' list deems that email message spam. My 'spamword' list contains 'zero','one',...,'eight', and 'nine'. In this manner, it is impossible for spammers to use these words to spell zip codes and product prices.
7. No 'hashbusters' or 'l33tspeak'. Since 'words' in these two categories do not appear anywhere in Grady Ward's single word 'Moby' list, email messages using them are deemed spam. This makes it impossible for spammers to use words like 'alsj9o2034n' and '\/|4gr4' in a message that would slip past other forms of filtering.
My program makes spamming virtually impossible while still making it possible for two parties to communicate via email using no challenge/response system and nothing more than the existing email infrastructure.
Thanks for reading, Bryan