People claiming that they can make "a sound every 2.5 seconds" don't get it. It's is not the same as a single continuous waveform oscillating at 0.189 Hz. There is a big difference between a continuous waveform at that frequency versus some joe blow making a click at 3 kHz for 250 ms duration every 2.5 seconds. No, it is not a set of pulses.
No, developers should NOT be sued. I'm quite frankly tired of hearing this drivel. COMPANIES or their UPPER MANAGEMENT should be sued (depending on the type of company) because THEY are the ones truly responsible and accountable. "They get paid the big bucks for a reason." Unless the person is a very crappy developer, most devs I know actually WANT quality control and the time required to write software properly. It's almost always management that tells them no, that "time to market" with something that vaguely resembles a product is most important, no matter how angry at the result the customers will be. Until the people with the actual power to change company decisions are held accountable for their decisions, nothing changes. So why are we wasting time persecuting the people with little power and who actually agrees with us?
Let's put aside for a moment the issue of whether or not Russia's problems is the fault of the U.S. government. But when it comes to saying the U.S. government or rather U.S. politicians are just as bad, we need to look no further than to RTFA. Kasparov mentions,
A spokesman for the Obama administration called the sentence [for Pussy Riot] "disproportionate," as if the length of the prison term were the only problem with open repression of political speech.
Re:Not "Going out of Business," Persay...
on
Trouble At OnLive
·
· Score: 1
The Latin phrase "per se" means "in itself" or "through itself". It's not "persay". Also, don't use it when you actually mean to say "exactly". "Per se" is used when you want to say that something is intrinsically true about an object. If you mean to say that something "isn't exactly true", then simply say that instead.
Yes, it's true that if a "too big to fail" company fails, bad things happen and people get mad. But let's look at it another way. In a market driven economy, the economy is strong when the market is strong. The market is driven by the consumer being able to choose the supplier of products and services. So, if the consumer is mad because of a poor performing company, the consumer can choose to leave and support a better, stronger company.
If a market driven economy no longer forces companies to live with the consequences of their decisions, opting to bail them out so no one gets mad, then their is no incentive for any company to be a good company because it isn't required stay in business. The actual good companies then see that their extra effort is a waste of time, an in order to compete, they also must become a company with similarly bad products and services.
Saving "too big to fail" companies only keeps people from being mad for the short term. But once the entire market is in trouble, they'll still lose and will be even madder later. There's a moral to the story for our society that goes beyond the stock market: FOCUSING WORRIES ON FAILURE IS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY. DO INSTEAD WHAT YOU KNOW IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Here's some PDFs from the U.S. military on what constitutes an "assault rifle".
http://gunfax.com/aw.htm
To be an assault rifle, the firearm MUST support SELECTIVE FIRE. The Sig716 mentioned in the article does not have selective fire and is therefore NOT an assault rifle. Period. It is a semi-auto firearm styled ergonomically like an assault rifle, but it isn't one.
Also, does anyone else find the article a little strange? Rifles and TVs aren't even close to the same size or shaped box. D.C. is probably the most anti-firefarm city in the U.S. concerning its policies, and obviously the most public and political, and yet someone got shipped an AR style firearm instead of a TV? It wasn't even just a bolt action hunting rifle, it just so happened to be AR styled? Immediately after being reported the Brady Campaign of course jumped on this. Shipping errors can happen of course, but doesn't the convenience of all this kind of smell like a publicity stunt?
Isn't the POINT of Facebook to get yourself "out there" and be-your-own-celebrity? [...] What am I failing to understand about this issue?
You're failing to understand that:
1. Social networking isn't about people trying to be a celebrity. It's about some people trying to be a celebrity, while others just want to keep in touch with friends (e.g. for many, social networking sites are just the replacement for Instant Messaging). It's about access to information that is controlled and owned by the user.
2. Even for those that want to be celebrities, even they just want to be visible to other party-goers, students, and friends-of-friends. Nowhere does 3rd-party advertising companies mining their personal data figure into the equation. That is NOT what motivated the person to join the site.
3. The idea that the information is always "voluntarily provided" is bogus. That implies a conscious decision was made by the user. Clicking OK to a Terms Of Service agreement may cover a site legally, but in the real world it has nothing to do with whether or not the user understands the consequences of the legal double-talk a TOS agreement implies. If you misunderstand it's consequences, then it is not informed consent (regarding real-life informed decisions, regardless of any legal definition of "informed consent"). For example, if the TOS says that certain types of content won't be provided to third-parties except in special cases A and B, the user might not expect that this is just Cover-Your-Ass talk and that special cases A and B unwittingly happen most of the time from actions the user didn't expect would cause special cases A and B. Various sites are better or worse at this, of course.
4. All these sites have verbiage saying they "respect your privacy" (of course), but where is the transparency? Laws aren't magic wands. How do I verify whether or not my privacy is truly being respected. When potential profit is involved, it's the corporate norm that it's "better to ask forgiveness than permission". And if they get caught doing something wrong, they get a slap on the wrist because apparently corporations have more rights than citizens do, and then they continue to do what they've always done before.
5. Just because you may be disinterested about something only other people seem to be interested in, doesn't mean this doesn't eventually have implications for everyone.
6. Simply put, the point of the issue is what you're failing to understand.
Uh no, it's to demonstrate that the code "works". The problem here is what it means "to work". Part of the usefulness of TDD is that you might not fully understand what it means "to work" yet, and the tests help you flesh that out.
Let me clarify, so you don't think I'm 100% ditching what you're saying versus stating it a different way. A test suite will tend to have BOTH tests for what the correct behavior *is* and also tests for what the correct behavior *is not*. In other words, what you're doing is defining the BOUNDARIES between correct and incorrect behavior. You're right in the sense that if your *strategy* is to write only *optimistic* tests (i.e. "proving that it works"), you'll miss subtle areas where the behavior isn't fully clarified (i.e. corner cases).
But here's the problem: for absolutely anything in the universe, there is an INFINITE number of things something *is not*, but only a finite amount of things something *is*. I've seen people go too crazy with using tests as a way of type-checking everything where smarter data types would have been a better choice, or performing a hundred "this isn't what I want" tests that could have been handled with a single "this IS what I want" test. My point is that you're supposed to program for the correct case, not design as if you always expect everything to go wrong. Write for the correct case, test for the correct cases FIRST, test for the EXCEPTIONAL cases, and write handling code for the things that are exceptional. Don't write an infinite test suite of what something is not.
CONCLUSION: Write the most EFFECTIVE tests you can that covers the most ground. Don't write *pointless* tests you have to maintain later if there was a better test. If a test covers a lot of logical ground by defining the boundaries of what something *is not*, then write the test for that. If it covers a lot of ground by defining what something *is*, write the test for that.
Exactly. One good example is when you look at how a SQL RDBMS indexes its data at the implementation level. Indexes are local and are concerned with local things such as the ordering of the data on the disk (e.g. clustered indexes). If you want a distributed SQL database, indexes are still typically a local operation and replication is handled at a much higher level. Much of these "NoSQL" implementations are about fast searches (requiring fast indexing) that are inherently distributed. If SQL RDBMS implementations had more sophisticated implementations that assumed the database is inherently distributed, and if the indexes were treated as such from the start, then searches would be much faster and there would be less need for "NoSQL" databases. When you realize that the relational model is based on "relations" (and in turn, set theory) you realize that there is nothing inherent about what is essentially math that prevents it from working efficiently in a distributed manner. If you can make a distributed "key-value store", you can make a distributed UNIQUE index too, etc. If speed is the ultimate concern and that is why they opt for "eventual consistency", then a special-purpose "NoSQL" database may be the way to go, for the *web* anyway. But if you need massive data *and* constant consistency (e.g. such as with financial transaction data), distributed SQL databases would be a better choice (given there is a good implementation available).
No, it's the other way around. PC's are currently TERRIBLE compared to consoles. How can I say that? It's easy. There is no objective meaning of "terrible": it depends on what your goals are. Apparently you're one of the gamers who prioritizes eye-candy and/or processing power. I don't, and many others don't either.
Here's what I think is important:
1. I can actually play the f***ing game at all. The PC market has intentionally alienated used-games with copy-protection and "activation". If you already activated your old game and try to resell it, good luck if you're the new owner who can't install it on their computer. But let's say this is *my* old game, not a used one. Five years down the road, if I want to use it on my new PC with my new version of Windows (because it's going to *have* to be Windows), can I activate it to play? Is the company's servers even around? How do we deal with all the breakage due to OS updates, malware, driver bugs, etc...
2. I can actually play the f***ing game at all, without having to take out a bank loan. For under $300, I can buy a console off the shelf, pop in the disk for any game I own, and I can play it immediately. As long as I have this hardware, I can continue to have the *freedom* to play these games 10 years from now if I wish to. Let me see you play Crysis with a computer off the shelf for under $300. "Technically feasible" doesn't count. I'm referring to the ability to have a genuinely enjoyable gaming experience.
3. Consoles are dedicated to their jobs, with standardized hardware and software. PC's are for general purposes, but do not excel for special purposes like gaming (or high-end audio or video) unless you spend a lot of money to get *non-standardized* hardware and software. As a result of the predictability of the console platform, quality control is easier when you only have to worry about one hardware platform coupled with one software platform. (Note that I wouldn't condone this for PC's. They really are for general purposes and not specifically just gaming.)
If the fee was stated *plainly* and the customer factored the fee into their decision, then fine. If instead businesses understand that people won't buy a new computer because they don't want Vista, and they entice customers with a FREE upgrade to Windows 7, then it HAD BETTER BE FREE. It doesn't matter if $17 doesn't break the bank. Even $0.01 is too much if I was coerced into a buying decision by a vendor who was withholding information. DISTRIBUTION COST IS IRRELEVANT. It doesn't matter if it costs money for the CD or online downloads. If they knew that it would cost money for distribution they weren't willing to eat, THEN YOU STATE UP FRONT THAT IT WON'T BE FREE. Otherwise, you keep your promise to the consumer. PERIOD. They simply have no excuses here. I don't understand why people don't understand this.
I'm bewildered why "plain old Java objects" is considered a virtue, considering it still makes the middleware language-specific for something that is essentially an integration software. If all you do is Java, fine. But gambling that you'll always be married to one language seems like you're giving up too much for no gain.
Perhaps developers should take a closer look at something like Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and implementations like RabbitMQ or Apache ActiveMQ?
1. According to the whistleblower article, the last names of the president and CEO of FairPoint is "Nixon" and "Johnson", where Nixon is the president of the company. Johnson was CEO before Hauser took over in June. Well there's your problem, the company's run by President Nixon!
2. The new CEO, Hauser responded concerning the fraud allegations, "We take these allegations seriously and will do a thorough investigation". To paraphrase: "We know we're busted, and we intend to do a very thorough cover-up considering billions of dollars are on the line."
I agree. Isn't "duplication of functionality" by a 3rd party just a fancy word for COMPETITION? We can't have that in a free-market economy, now can we?
There are two camps using copyright law as protection:
1. Copyright law keeps source code non-proprietary (e.g. GPL) 2. Copyright law keeps source code proprietary, so you have to pay to use the product (e.g. most commercial software)
Now apply a 5 year expiration of copyright:
Result to 1: The source code is already visible, and nothing protects the code anymore from someone stealing it and making it proprietary, despite the intention of the authors for it to remain non-proprietary.
Result to 2: The source code is NOT already visible. Lack of copyright protection makes the product free-as-in-beer, but mere expiration of copyright does not force the authors to release the source code. So the result is that no one else can steal the source code like they could for expired FLOSS copyright.
So yes, there IS an imbalance of power. In no way does this help authors preserve the freedom to keep software non-proprietary. And no, it's NOT just a simple case of each side has a right to keep their code open or closed as they see fit. It favors proprietary software to remain proprietary, but removes protections for software to remain non-proprietary. Stallman is right: the only way to keep it fair is if both sides must make the source code available.
IANAL, but I thought that *one* essential reason laws waive the expectation of privacy in "public places" is because by the *nature* of that place, it is essentially not private. For example, there is too much of a practical burden of enforcing privacy when I go walk outside, because that's actually *me* walking outside. There's only so much identity-hiding I can do.
But for a blog, by its very *nature* it works the other way around. Anonymity happens by the fact that the blog posting doesn't see who is actually sitting at the keyboard, so identity has to be proactively required by settling for something that substitutes, such as using a valid email for login registration. Here, regarding the enforcement burden, it's the other way around: there is more effort required to identify someone than not identify someone (e.g. you could allow anonymous posts, etc.).
The point: Although I am sharing *data* that becomes public, *I* am not personally in a public place, so I should reasonably assume I can have anonymity.
I get tired of hearing the same old discussion about whether or not the relational database is going to die. They're not. But the new breed of *specialized* databases work well for their *specialized* purposes. Big surprise. But all of them inevitably make a trade-off. Anyone who works seriously with database design knows that it's all about trade-offs.
One of the main motivations for the new breed of databases is that the standard SQL database relies on things such as foreign keys and other constraints for data consistency, but that requires the data to be directly managed by that running DBMS process. When you require data to be distributed over a network (i.e. over many separate processes), then the only way a *foreign key* can work is if the DBMS process has some sort of link over the network to the separate DBMS process and then use that somewhat as if it were local. (Other strategies involve using external application code for consistency rather than foreign keys, etc.) Of course, the DBMS process can't use it's usual local low-level optimizations behind-the-scenes in order to handle that query efficiently over the network, so it doesn't scale. Specialized DBMS's for distributed data focus on optimizing being distributed, while the typical SQL DBMS optimizes storage and retrieval of data as if it were local. The bottom line is that the traditional SQL database scales well vertically, but not horizontally concerning hardware. Or rather, when you scale horizontally, you forgo a lot of its advantages. The new breed of databases trade-off consistency and other assurances for the sake of "good enough" consistency and really fast retrieval of domain-specific data.
But not everyone is trying to be Google or Amazon. Financial institutions such as banks can't tolerate "good enough" consistency. The biggest problem with relational databases I see nowadays is that people are ignorant about why "relational" is such a good idea, and how SQL only gets you part of the way to "relational" and that SQL's shortcomings are a different issue. The second biggest problem is that most people are used to only one or two data usage patterns, and if it "works for them", then they assume it should *always* be done that way. For example, the hordes of people who barely know Excel (i.e. not a relational database) or Access, and then like to give "expert" advice. Or a web programmer that believes that ORM's are the One True Way because they abstract away choices of DBMS in order to keep favorite language X, despite the needs of other people are the opposite: perhaps we want to abstract away the choice of programming language so that we can keep the same database, and so maybe it's a good idea if the database itself can ensure data consistency rather than relying on the ORM, etc.
According to this Wikipedia article (so take with a grain of salt), caffeine acts as a natural pesticide for insects, but for humans it's a stimulant. That may explain why the spiders would have so much difficulty with caffeine, but the comparison doesn't hold so well for humans. (LSD is far more mind-altering...)
Then again, it does mention the lesser-known problem of "caffeine intoxication" that goes undetected as a factor for other psychological problems.
Slashdot Mirror
People claiming that they can make "a sound every 2.5 seconds" don't get it. It's is not the same as a single continuous waveform oscillating at 0.189 Hz. There is a big difference between a continuous waveform at that frequency versus some joe blow making a click at 3 kHz for 250 ms duration every 2.5 seconds. No, it is not a set of pulses.
Don't you mean "Moore's Law", not "Murphy's Law"? Murphy's Law hasn't had a major effect on processors since the Pentium fdiv bug.
No, developers should NOT be sued. I'm quite frankly tired of hearing this drivel. COMPANIES or their UPPER MANAGEMENT should be sued (depending on the type of company) because THEY are the ones truly responsible and accountable. "They get paid the big bucks for a reason." Unless the person is a very crappy developer, most devs I know actually WANT quality control and the time required to write software properly. It's almost always management that tells them no, that "time to market" with something that vaguely resembles a product is most important, no matter how angry at the result the customers will be. Until the people with the actual power to change company decisions are held accountable for their decisions, nothing changes. So why are we wasting time persecuting the people with little power and who actually agrees with us?
A spokesman for the Obama administration called the sentence [for Pussy Riot] "disproportionate," as if the length of the prison term were the only problem with open repression of political speech.
The Latin phrase "per se" means "in itself" or "through itself". It's not "persay". Also, don't use it when you actually mean to say "exactly". "Per se" is used when you want to say that something is intrinsically true about an object. If you mean to say that something "isn't exactly true", then simply say that instead.
Is it laser guided?
Yes, it's true that if a "too big to fail" company fails, bad things happen and people get mad. But let's look at it another way. In a market driven economy, the economy is strong when the market is strong. The market is driven by the consumer being able to choose the supplier of products and services. So, if the consumer is mad because of a poor performing company, the consumer can choose to leave and support a better, stronger company.
If a market driven economy no longer forces companies to live with the consequences of their decisions, opting to bail them out so no one gets mad, then their is no incentive for any company to be a good company because it isn't required stay in business. The actual good companies then see that their extra effort is a waste of time, an in order to compete, they also must become a company with similarly bad products and services.
Saving "too big to fail" companies only keeps people from being mad for the short term. But once the entire market is in trouble, they'll still lose and will be even madder later. There's a moral to the story for our society that goes beyond the stock market: FOCUSING WORRIES ON FAILURE IS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY. DO INSTEAD WHAT YOU KNOW IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Teach Yourself Programming In Ten Years
Here's some PDFs from the U.S. military on what constitutes an "assault rifle". http://gunfax.com/aw.htm To be an assault rifle, the firearm MUST support SELECTIVE FIRE. The Sig716 mentioned in the article does not have selective fire and is therefore NOT an assault rifle. Period. It is a semi-auto firearm styled ergonomically like an assault rifle, but it isn't one. Also, does anyone else find the article a little strange? Rifles and TVs aren't even close to the same size or shaped box. D.C. is probably the most anti-firefarm city in the U.S. concerning its policies, and obviously the most public and political, and yet someone got shipped an AR style firearm instead of a TV? It wasn't even just a bolt action hunting rifle, it just so happened to be AR styled? Immediately after being reported the Brady Campaign of course jumped on this. Shipping errors can happen of course, but doesn't the convenience of all this kind of smell like a publicity stunt?
Isn't the POINT of Facebook to get yourself "out there" and be-your-own-celebrity? [...] What am I failing to understand about this issue?
You're failing to understand that:
1. Social networking isn't about people trying to be a celebrity. It's about some people trying to be a celebrity, while others just want to keep in touch with friends (e.g. for many, social networking sites are just the replacement for Instant Messaging). It's about access to information that is controlled and owned by the user.
2. Even for those that want to be celebrities, even they just want to be visible to other party-goers, students, and friends-of-friends. Nowhere does 3rd-party advertising companies mining their personal data figure into the equation. That is NOT what motivated the person to join the site.
3. The idea that the information is always "voluntarily provided" is bogus. That implies a conscious decision was made by the user. Clicking OK to a Terms Of Service agreement may cover a site legally, but in the real world it has nothing to do with whether or not the user understands the consequences of the legal double-talk a TOS agreement implies. If you misunderstand it's consequences, then it is not informed consent (regarding real-life informed decisions, regardless of any legal definition of "informed consent"). For example, if the TOS says that certain types of content won't be provided to third-parties except in special cases A and B, the user might not expect that this is just Cover-Your-Ass talk and that special cases A and B unwittingly happen most of the time from actions the user didn't expect would cause special cases A and B. Various sites are better or worse at this, of course.
4. All these sites have verbiage saying they "respect your privacy" (of course), but where is the transparency? Laws aren't magic wands. How do I verify whether or not my privacy is truly being respected. When potential profit is involved, it's the corporate norm that it's "better to ask forgiveness than permission". And if they get caught doing something wrong, they get a slap on the wrist because apparently corporations have more rights than citizens do, and then they continue to do what they've always done before.
5. Just because you may be disinterested about something only other people seem to be interested in, doesn't mean this doesn't eventually have implications for everyone.
6. Simply put, the point of the issue is what you're failing to understand.
Bakeries?? ...Really? So... it's the one place where you SHOULDN'T be offended if you find a pube in your sandwich?
...you're not getting it. It's waay better than the AMD stuff because it's xxxxxxtreme! That's like *twice* the xxx!
Uh no, it's to demonstrate that the code "works". The problem here is what it means "to work". Part of the usefulness of TDD is that you might not fully understand what it means "to work" yet, and the tests help you flesh that out.
Let me clarify, so you don't think I'm 100% ditching what you're saying versus stating it a different way. A test suite will tend to have BOTH tests for what the correct behavior *is* and also tests for what the correct behavior *is not*. In other words, what you're doing is defining the BOUNDARIES between correct and incorrect behavior. You're right in the sense that if your *strategy* is to write only *optimistic* tests (i.e. "proving that it works"), you'll miss subtle areas where the behavior isn't fully clarified (i.e. corner cases).
But here's the problem: for absolutely anything in the universe, there is an INFINITE number of things something *is not*, but only a finite amount of things something *is*. I've seen people go too crazy with using tests as a way of type-checking everything where smarter data types would have been a better choice, or performing a hundred "this isn't what I want" tests that could have been handled with a single "this IS what I want" test. My point is that you're supposed to program for the correct case, not design as if you always expect everything to go wrong. Write for the correct case, test for the correct cases FIRST, test for the EXCEPTIONAL cases, and write handling code for the things that are exceptional. Don't write an infinite test suite of what something is not.
CONCLUSION: Write the most EFFECTIVE tests you can that covers the most ground. Don't write *pointless* tests you have to maintain later if there was a better test. If a test covers a lot of logical ground by defining the boundaries of what something *is not*, then write the test for that. If it covers a lot of ground by defining what something *is*, write the test for that.
Exactly. One good example is when you look at how a SQL RDBMS indexes its data at the implementation level. Indexes are local and are concerned with local things such as the ordering of the data on the disk (e.g. clustered indexes). If you want a distributed SQL database, indexes are still typically a local operation and replication is handled at a much higher level. Much of these "NoSQL" implementations are about fast searches (requiring fast indexing) that are inherently distributed. If SQL RDBMS implementations had more sophisticated implementations that assumed the database is inherently distributed, and if the indexes were treated as such from the start, then searches would be much faster and there would be less need for "NoSQL" databases. When you realize that the relational model is based on "relations" (and in turn, set theory) you realize that there is nothing inherent about what is essentially math that prevents it from working efficiently in a distributed manner. If you can make a distributed "key-value store", you can make a distributed UNIQUE index too, etc. If speed is the ultimate concern and that is why they opt for "eventual consistency", then a special-purpose "NoSQL" database may be the way to go, for the *web* anyway. But if you need massive data *and* constant consistency (e.g. such as with financial transaction data), distributed SQL databases would be a better choice (given there is a good implementation available).
Step 1: Launch Chandrayaan-1
:-)
Step 2: Blow a hole in the moon and later announce the discovery of a hole in the moon...
Step 3: Profit!
Even later, scientists learned how to attach the frickin lasers to the flys' heads.
No, it's the other way around. PC's are currently TERRIBLE compared to consoles. How can I say that? It's easy. There is no objective meaning of "terrible": it depends on what your goals are. Apparently you're one of the gamers who prioritizes eye-candy and/or processing power. I don't, and many others don't either.
Here's what I think is important:
1. I can actually play the f***ing game at all. The PC market has intentionally alienated used-games with copy-protection and "activation". If you already activated your old game and try to resell it, good luck if you're the new owner who can't install it on their computer. But let's say this is *my* old game, not a used one. Five years down the road, if I want to use it on my new PC with my new version of Windows (because it's going to *have* to be Windows), can I activate it to play? Is the company's servers even around? How do we deal with all the breakage due to OS updates, malware, driver bugs, etc...
2. I can actually play the f***ing game at all, without having to take out a bank loan. For under $300, I can buy a console off the shelf, pop in the disk for any game I own, and I can play it immediately. As long as I have this hardware, I can continue to have the *freedom* to play these games 10 years from now if I wish to. Let me see you play Crysis with a computer off the shelf for under $300. "Technically feasible" doesn't count. I'm referring to the ability to have a genuinely enjoyable gaming experience.
3. Consoles are dedicated to their jobs, with standardized hardware and software. PC's are for general purposes, but do not excel for special purposes like gaming (or high-end audio or video) unless you spend a lot of money to get *non-standardized* hardware and software. As a result of the predictability of the console platform, quality control is easier when you only have to worry about one hardware platform coupled with one software platform. (Note that I wouldn't condone this for PC's. They really are for general purposes and not specifically just gaming.)
If the fee was stated *plainly* and the customer factored the fee into their decision, then fine. If instead businesses understand that people won't buy a new computer because they don't want Vista, and they entice customers with a FREE upgrade to Windows 7, then it HAD BETTER BE FREE. It doesn't matter if $17 doesn't break the bank. Even $0.01 is too much if I was coerced into a buying decision by a vendor who was withholding information. DISTRIBUTION COST IS IRRELEVANT. It doesn't matter if it costs money for the CD or online downloads. If they knew that it would cost money for distribution they weren't willing to eat, THEN YOU STATE UP FRONT THAT IT WON'T BE FREE. Otherwise, you keep your promise to the consumer. PERIOD. They simply have no excuses here. I don't understand why people don't understand this.
I'm bewildered why "plain old Java objects" is considered a virtue, considering it still makes the middleware language-specific for something that is essentially an integration software. If all you do is Java, fine. But gambling that you'll always be married to one language seems like you're giving up too much for no gain. Perhaps developers should take a closer look at something like Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and implementations like RabbitMQ or Apache ActiveMQ?
1. According to the whistleblower article, the last names of the president and CEO of FairPoint is "Nixon" and "Johnson", where Nixon is the president of the company. Johnson was CEO before Hauser took over in June. Well there's your problem, the company's run by President Nixon!
2. The new CEO, Hauser responded concerning the fraud allegations, "We take these allegations seriously and will do a thorough investigation". To paraphrase: "We know we're busted, and we intend to do a very thorough cover-up considering billions of dollars are on the line."
I agree. Isn't "duplication of functionality" by a 3rd party just a fancy word for COMPETITION? We can't have that in a free-market economy, now can we?
There are two camps using copyright law as protection:
1. Copyright law keeps source code non-proprietary (e.g. GPL)
2. Copyright law keeps source code proprietary, so you have to pay to use the product (e.g. most commercial software)
Now apply a 5 year expiration of copyright:
Result to 1:
The source code is already visible, and nothing protects the code anymore from someone stealing it and making it proprietary, despite the intention of the authors for it to remain non-proprietary.
Result to 2:
The source code is NOT already visible. Lack of copyright protection makes the product free-as-in-beer, but mere expiration of copyright does not force the authors to release the source code. So the result is that no one else can steal the source code like they could for expired FLOSS copyright.
So yes, there IS an imbalance of power. In no way does this help authors preserve the freedom to keep software non-proprietary.
And no, it's NOT just a simple case of each side has a right to keep their code open or closed as they see fit. It favors proprietary software to remain proprietary, but removes protections for software to remain non-proprietary. Stallman is right: the only way to keep it fair is if both sides must make the source code available.
THINK PEOPLE.
IANAL, but I thought that *one* essential reason laws waive the expectation of privacy in "public places" is because by the *nature* of that place, it is essentially not private. For example, there is too much of a practical burden of enforcing privacy when I go walk outside, because that's actually *me* walking outside. There's only so much identity-hiding I can do.
But for a blog, by its very *nature* it works the other way around. Anonymity happens by the fact that the blog posting doesn't see who is actually sitting at the keyboard, so identity has to be proactively required by settling for something that substitutes, such as using a valid email for login registration. Here, regarding the enforcement burden, it's the other way around: there is more effort required to identify someone than not identify someone (e.g. you could allow anonymous posts, etc.).
The point:
Although I am sharing *data* that becomes public, *I* am not personally in a public place, so I should reasonably assume I can have anonymity.
I get tired of hearing the same old discussion about whether or not the relational database is going to die. They're not. But the new breed of *specialized* databases work well for their *specialized* purposes. Big surprise. But all of them inevitably make a trade-off. Anyone who works seriously with database design knows that it's all about trade-offs.
One of the main motivations for the new breed of databases is that the standard SQL database relies on things such as foreign keys and other constraints for data consistency, but that requires the data to be directly managed by that running DBMS process. When you require data to be distributed over a network (i.e. over many separate processes), then the only way a *foreign key* can work is if the DBMS process has some sort of link over the network to the separate DBMS process and then use that somewhat as if it were local. (Other strategies involve using external application code for consistency rather than foreign keys, etc.) Of course, the DBMS process can't use it's usual local low-level optimizations behind-the-scenes in order to handle that query efficiently over the network, so it doesn't scale. Specialized DBMS's for distributed data focus on optimizing being distributed, while the typical SQL DBMS optimizes storage and retrieval of data as if it were local. The bottom line is that the traditional SQL database scales well vertically, but not horizontally concerning hardware. Or rather, when you scale horizontally, you forgo a lot of its advantages. The new breed of databases trade-off consistency and other assurances for the sake of "good enough" consistency and really fast retrieval of domain-specific data.
But not everyone is trying to be Google or Amazon. Financial institutions such as banks can't tolerate "good enough" consistency. The biggest problem with relational databases I see nowadays is that people are ignorant about why "relational" is such a good idea, and how SQL only gets you part of the way to "relational" and that SQL's shortcomings are a different issue. The second biggest problem is that most people are used to only one or two data usage patterns, and if it "works for them", then they assume it should *always* be done that way. For example, the hordes of people who barely know Excel (i.e. not a relational database) or Access, and then like to give "expert" advice. Or a web programmer that believes that ORM's are the One True Way because they abstract away choices of DBMS in order to keep favorite language X, despite the needs of other people are the opposite: perhaps we want to abstract away the choice of programming language so that we can keep the same database, and so maybe it's a good idea if the database itself can ensure data consistency rather than relying on the ORM, etc.
According to this Wikipedia article (so take with a grain of salt), caffeine acts as a natural pesticide for insects, but for humans it's a stimulant. That may explain why the spiders would have so much difficulty with caffeine, but the comparison doesn't hold so well for humans. (LSD is far more mind-altering...) Then again, it does mention the lesser-known problem of "caffeine intoxication" that goes undetected as a factor for other psychological problems.