Read "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accident of Software Engineering" by Brooks. A copy can be found here.
Software is extremely complex. Developed to handle all possible states is an enormous task. That, combined with market forces for commercial software and constraints on developer time and interest for free software, causes buggy, unreliable software.
If you are running that FreeBSD system as a server, you could run a fetchmail to get her mail off of her ISP's server, filter it, and let her then retrieve the filtered mail from your server. That may or may not be a lot of work, depending on your setup.
Does anyone happen to know if the transaction is even encrypted? What's to stop someone from snooping my account and ordering themself a ton of songs under my name?
I think I'll get my music the old fashioned way, go buy a CD in a store.
I would love to use a more robust References database to store my bookmarks. BibTeX is nice. It's not great for my purposes, but nice. Specifically, it does not handle URLs very well. Many of the bibtex style's don't understand the URL field (though I usually stick it in "howpublished"). In fact, there really needs to be a URI Entry (i.e. at the same level as Aricle, Book, etc). Maybe BibTeX is antiquated and a new and improved system for managing references to content is needed. (And this is what is really needed, don't think in the small domain of webpages, think bigger)
With that, my ideal system would also act as a cache (think google) and give me a way to reference specific parts of the webpage. Squid would probably be useful here. Think how often your bookmarked link gets removed from the webserver. Why not have your bookmark manager save a copy in a cache, for future use.
Also, when you are only interested in one part of a huge webpage, or wish to refer to a specific sentence, a mechanism for highlighting specific parts of a webpage would be great. I've seen some programs that work like this for changed material (that is, it highlights changes). This would be difficult to implement, but maybe a Mozilla plugin would be sufficient.
So, ideally, I want a references database that can cache websites, ftp downloads, etc, etc, then take that cached content and mark parts of it for specific referencing. When I view the database, I can go directly to the content, or go to the highlighted cache.
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More on topic, perhaps: I suggest you treat google as your bookmark manager. It really is easier this way, if your memory is good. For many things, you just think about what you are interested, type it in google and on the first page or two is the link you visited last week. Or maybe you need to remember something close to the title of the website. Google is your friend, it'll help you out if you aren't exact.
This doesn't work well for hard to find pages, for pages you don't access very often or if you have LOTS of links. But, hopefully there aren't many of those links that you need to store.
I use a combination of above. Projects (both those at work and at home) have BibTeX databases for long term access and documentation. Short term interests and those websites I access often are kept in my mind, though I have to google for them some times.
As far as things go, I'm sure the average user has more use for a multimedia-specifc keys or internet-specific keys (quick access to their CD/MP3 player, or Internet Explorer) than do programmers.
When is the last time you saw your mother, et al, use the curley bracket "{". What about the pipe "|". Or the carat "^".
I know I could not live without them, but most people could easily give them up.
Have any of you programmers actually used Dvorak or Maltron keyboards. I have. I can still type on either one, but programming on one sucks! The curly bracket is one of my most used keys and it's totally not in the right place for *me*. Anything optimized for writing english text is going to be horrible for any other symbol system.
Maybe we will get custom keyboards for different sections of the population before too long.
In the future, I would set up an account that you do not use for real email. Use this account in some newsgroup postings and on the web to attract email harvesters. (you probably already do this part...)
For every email you receive auto-reply with a notice that by sending to that email address the spammer grants publication rights to the Great Spam Archive. (you may wish to be "fair" and give the spammer a chance to opt-out of this)
Ok. Assuming you don't just want to delete the spam (i.e. you wish to make things complicated for yourself). You should do the following:
1. Consult Copyright.gov
a. Notably, see Circular 21 on page 12 they cover Reproduction by Libraries and Archives.
b. Also see FL 102 on Fair Use. 2. Consult a Lawyer. After reading that, and perhaps researching the issue some more, if you feel that you are still within your fair use rights and you wish to stand by your ethics and values that make you want to keep the spam on the website, Then you really should consider contacting a lawyer. You could try and just ignore the email. I would request that they send you an official letter (via registered mail) stating the legal reasons for the threat.
Also, Note: Contrary to what some comments on this site indicate, the spammer does not have to include a copyright notice on the email. This is especially true if you consider the act of emailing to be a form of publishing the message. See http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#hsc
Like Mathematics, just because something is difficult and may not be directly applicable to the kind of programming jobs available, does not mean you should not learn it anyways. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" is one of the best Computer Science books. There is a reason the authors chose Lisp. Reading the book is enlightening.
Personally, bit twiddling in C, requires me to use a great deal more keystrokes than in lisp. But, I generally avoid working at the level of abstraction that causes C to be useful.
Slashdot Mirror
from the what-exactly-are-kid-gloves dept.
Get the answer at Straight Dope
#2) We use it to filter out Spam. I don't get _any_ Spam at my work address. At all. Very impressive if you ask me!
It sounds like you are lucky to be getting any email at all.
Of course, none of what you said matters, as long as you don't sell it.
I think this varies state to state. In the state I live in, it's perfectly legal to produce a certain amount of alcohol for personal consumption.
I find that is really easy to wrong code. I do it all the time...
Read "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accident of Software Engineering" by Brooks. A copy can be found here.
Software is extremely complex. Developed to handle all possible states is an enormous task. That, combined with market forces for commercial software and constraints on developer time and interest for free software, causes buggy, unreliable software.
If you are running that FreeBSD system as a server, you could run a fetchmail to get her mail off of her ISP's server, filter it, and let her then retrieve the filtered mail from your server. That may or may not be a lot of work, depending on your setup.
Thanks for the link.. I was to lazy to give a link in my original post.
Urban legends are kind of like mind viruses
Are you new here? Usually people call this kind of thing a meme.
Don't worry, I've got .uk blocked as well!
Does anyone happen to know if the transaction is even encrypted? What's to stop someone from snooping my account and ordering themself a ton of songs under my name?
I think I'll get my music the old fashioned way, go buy a CD in a store.
You are, in fact, an idiot.
Gnu/Debian BSD
Why God, Why!?
Two Words: Diamond Pro
Mitsubishi all the way
I would love to use a more robust References database to store my bookmarks. BibTeX is nice. It's not great for my purposes, but nice. Specifically, it does not handle URLs very well. Many of the bibtex style's don't understand the URL field (though I usually stick it in "howpublished"). In fact, there really needs to be a URI Entry (i.e. at the same level as Aricle, Book, etc). Maybe BibTeX is antiquated and a new and improved system for managing references to content is needed. (And this is what is really needed, don't think in the small domain of webpages, think bigger)
With that, my ideal system would also act as a cache (think google) and give me a way to reference specific parts of the webpage. Squid would probably be useful here. Think how often your bookmarked link gets removed from the webserver. Why not have your bookmark manager save a copy in a cache, for future use.
Also, when you are only interested in one part of a huge webpage, or wish to refer to a specific sentence, a mechanism for highlighting specific parts of a webpage would be great. I've seen some programs that work like this for changed material (that is, it highlights changes). This would be difficult to implement, but maybe a Mozilla plugin would be sufficient.
So, ideally, I want a references database that can cache websites, ftp downloads, etc, etc, then take that cached content and mark parts of it for specific referencing. When I view the database, I can go directly to the content, or go to the highlighted cache.
-----
More on topic, perhaps: I suggest you treat google as your bookmark manager. It really is easier this way, if your memory is good. For many things, you just think about what you are interested, type it in google and on the first page or two is the link you visited last week. Or maybe you need to remember something close to the title of the website. Google is your friend, it'll help you out if you aren't exact.
This doesn't work well for hard to find pages, for pages you don't access very often or if you have LOTS of links. But, hopefully there aren't many of those links that you need to store.
I use a combination of above. Projects (both those at work and at home) have BibTeX databases for long term access and documentation. Short term interests and those websites I access often are kept in my mind, though I have to google for them some times.
I don't know, but NetBSD already runs on it!
Jesus Christ! Go to the F'ing Library!
It's a joke. Slashdot "editors" use than in place of then quite often.
...but if you aren't worried about it, then neither am I.
I think you mean "than neither am I."
all waste plastic on a backwards-apostrophe key
But how will we use TeX without it??!
---
As far as things go, I'm sure the average user has more use for a multimedia-specifc keys or internet-specific keys (quick access to their CD/MP3 player, or Internet Explorer) than do programmers.
When is the last time you saw your mother, et al, use the curley bracket "{". What about the pipe "|". Or the carat "^".
I know I could not live without them, but most people could easily give them up.
Have any of you programmers actually used Dvorak or Maltron keyboards. I have. I can still type on either one, but programming on one sucks! The curly bracket is one of my most used keys and it's totally not in the right place for *me*. Anything optimized for writing english text is going to be horrible for any other symbol system.
Maybe we will get custom keyboards for different sections of the population before too long.
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/5F04
Half way down the page
"Software Engineering is defined as the multi-person construction of multi-version programs."
and the one about Masters of Orion 3 beign out soon
YOU BASTARD!!!
Christ! February! I've got one up for renewal in MAY and Register.com has been sending me emails weekly since early November!
In the future, I would set up an account that you do not use for real email. Use this account in some newsgroup postings and on the web to attract email harvesters. (you probably already do this part...)
For every email you receive auto-reply with a notice that by sending to that email address the spammer grants publication rights to the Great Spam Archive. (you may wish to be "fair" and give the spammer a chance to opt-out of this)
This should help resolve issues like this.
Ok. Assuming you don't just want to delete the spam (i.e. you wish to make things complicated for yourself). You should do the following:
1. Consult Copyright.gov
a. Notably, see Circular 21 on page 12 they cover Reproduction by Libraries and Archives.
b. Also see FL 102 on Fair Use.
2. Consult a Lawyer. After reading that, and perhaps researching the issue some more, if you feel that you are still within your fair use rights and you wish to stand by your ethics and values that make you want to keep the spam on the website, Then you really should consider contacting a lawyer. You could try and just ignore the email. I would request that they send you an official letter (via registered mail) stating the legal reasons for the threat.
Also, Note: Contrary to what some comments on this site indicate, the spammer does not have to include a copyright notice on the email. This is especially true if you consider the act of emailing to be a form of publishing the message. See http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#hsc
Like Mathematics, just because something is difficult and may not be directly applicable to the kind of programming jobs available, does not mean you should not learn it anyways. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" is one of the best Computer Science books. There is a reason the authors chose Lisp. Reading the book is enlightening.
Personally, bit twiddling in C, requires me to use a great deal more keystrokes than in lisp. But, I generally avoid working at the level of abstraction that causes C to be useful.