There are different ways to use cameras. I like to compose each and every shot carefully before I hit the shutter release, so I end up keeping at least 50% of my pictures if not more. If you use SLR like a trigger happy point and shoot, then of course digital is going to be cheaper than film, but you're relying on chance for getting a good picture, not skill. If you want to alter your picture afterwards, I always ask the lab to develop my film into digital. I get a picture that is about 6 megapixel, but each pixel has full information for all colors, which makes it about 18 megapixel (compare 5 megapixel Foveon with 15 megapixel CCD with bayes filter).
Many professionals switched to DSLR for the following reason, this I tell you for a matter of fact. When they used film SLR, they carried a number of camera bodies with them that contained films of different sensitivity (ISO rating). But for digital, you just need one camera body because the sensor can adapt to different sensitivity. If you go into a jungle, you can use ISO 50 to film a waterfall, and ISO 1600 to film a snake snapping a frog, both with the same DSLR camera. If you use film SLR, you need to plan in advance what kinds of shot you're taking.
The added convenience of DSLR, being able to take as many pictures as you want, is not meant for you to use it like a point and shoot.
Back in 2001, the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers brought Toyoda to court and obtained a restraining order that prohibited him from playing a number of copyrighted songs in public.
Toyoda still repeatedly violated the court order, so he was finally arrested by the police.
I'm strongly against police raid to curb copyright violators, but I agree that if a restraining order is in place, then you better think twice before you do it again.
The issue here is if a court should ever grant restraining order on copyright violations, but it doesn't look like Toyoda bothered to contest it at all.
For small prints, digital is great and beats 35mm film in most cases.
Depends on whether you're comparing 35mm DSLR against 35mm film SLR, or 35mm point and shoot (P&S) against digital P&S. It is quite clear that digital P&S already beats 35mm film ones. I also have no doubt that recent 35mm DSLR performs better than 35mm film SLR.
But taking the price-performance ratio into account, 35mm SLR definitely still produces superior picture than digital P&S and is more affordable than DSLR. Also, I have a mechanical 35mm film SLR whose responsiveness is unparalleled by any digital cameras. It can operate for months on a small LR44 battery (it is used to control automatic aperture priority shutter speed). Even if you run out of battery, you can still take pictures at a fixed shutter speed, so you will never miss a shot.
If I were serious about photography, I would get a medium format camera and a digital back, and I can switch between digital and film by switching the back. I think you can do that for 4x5 too, but a digital back will cost you an arm and leg.
That market for medium to large format digital backs is just unimaginable from the consumer's point of view. You call the sales person to come to your studio and setup the equipment in house. You evaluate it, and they try to work with you to make sure you are totally satisfied.
Cryptography is all about probability, really. When you use hash functions like MD5 and SHA-1, you're counting on the low probability of collision. When you encrypt something, you're counting on the ciphertext being in a way that your probability of guessing the nature of plaintext is the same no matter how you guess it. A ciphertext that simply looks like random noise isn't enough.
The machine doesn't keep the "printed" ballot configuration. Instead, it randomly generates an equivalent imaginary ballot such that if you know which side you voted for, your vote will be counted the same on your printed ballot. The trick to protect secrecy is that they allow election official to check only one side for any given ballot. Don't know if that could be enforced, however.
I saw links to Wiki with full articles on censorship in the ROC. Would this work if searched while located in Bejing or anywhere else in the ROC? My guess is no. Other hardware filters are in place.
ROC (Republic of China) actually refers to a "government in exile" that currently resides in Taiwan.
The proper name for China is People's Republic of China, or PRC.
That's actually correct. Last time I heard about the newest China firewall technology, they were using Cisco's IDS (intrusion detection system) to make these network devices flag censored keywords as intrusion. The network responds to this by dropping the connection and blacklist the origin of attack---websites---for a predetermined period, which results in these websites being blocked.
Deep inside the Windows NT/XP kernel, it maintains an object namespace very similar to a Unix filesystem. You can use WinObj from sysinternals.com to navigate this object namespace. Notice that under the 'Global??' folder you will find the entries 'C:' and 'D:' and so on symbolic linked to the appropriate file system. Also, '\Device\*' in the object namespace is very much like '/dev/*' on Unix.
It is evident that drive letters under an NT kernel is just a DOS compatibility after-thought. The kernel doesn't have concepts of drive letters.
What are the odds that you installed the drivers from ATI and not used the Ubuntu.deb packages for your ATI drivers? I would also guess that you have a wireless card and you did some fiddling around with it to get it to work?
I can affirm this. Last night I spent a few hours wondering what went wrong with the Dapper to Edgy upgrade. They both had to do with some peculiarity of my system:
GUI upgrade failed halfway because xorg-common complained that/usr/X11R6/bin is not empty. Edgy now installs all X programs under/usr/bin, so/usr/X11R6/bin needs to become symbolic linked to/usr/bin. It turned out that I installed a snapshot of DRI drivers for my Mach 64 video card, which left a file/usr/X11R6/bin/xdriinfo, and dpkg tried to preserve that for me.
Fix: run
apt-get dist-upgrade; apt-get -f install
until all packages are upgraded properly.
As a result of the previous boo-boo, X drivers weren't automatically upgraded. The packages were renamed from xserver-xorg-driver-* to xserver-xorg-video-*, and for some reason apt-get didn't pick up these new names. So I wasn't able to start X after the next reboot.
Fix: run apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-all
A final problem had to do with usplash not being able to find a theme, so I watched in horror as Ubuntu booted in text mode. I switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu, but I upgraded the system back to Ubuntu. As a result, the usplash theme "update-alternatives" symbolic link pointed to a non-existent Kubuntu theme after the upgrade.
You could have just said, "I tried my best, sorry." But instead you over-reacted and became defensive. Maybe you're much more pain in the ass than you think you are. Of course I have my fair share of pain-in-the-ass-ness to ever bother with someone like you. But believe me, I meant to do you good, not harm.
I met a number of ex-alcoholics at my church. They've been successfully rehabilitated and now function as able members. I have no doubt an alcoholic can be rehabilitated. I think most alcoholics recognize alcoholism as a problem and want to improve their condition. What is crucial is if you allow them to build their self-esteem.
Since your wife wasn't alcoholic when you first married her 9 years ago, that means from that point on, her life must have declined to the point she is now. You've been part of her life after marriage, so don't be so quick denying your responsibility. I don't blame you for having failed your relationship, but I need you to agree with me on what could have been better.
Do you think your wife just needed an exercise when she systematically destroyed your stuff? She wanted to find your most precious possession and hurt you by destroying it. What makes she hate you with such bitterness, especially you said you loved her to marry her in the first place? There is a lot of details that only you will know. I can't think of a reason other than that you've been constantly eroding her self-esteem.
How easy it is to erode someone's self-esteem? Tons of tiny criticisms. You posted your marriage problems on slashdot, and I expressed my concerns, and you think it's criticism. It's that easy. "Honey, why don't you put the eggs inside this compartment instead of that." "Honey, where did you put my newspaper?" When these things happen daily, it accumulates. It appears to her that you've never appreciated her presence.
Learn to appreciate someone's presence. It is very important. It is a lot of work. Love is a lot of work.
I can't expect you to love her or anyone at this moment. Bitterness reinforces itself like mic feedback. It precipitates through your comment and almost made me feel bitter about you. But I want to correct you with one point: true love never reciprocates.
To be fair, I would never post my personal details online. You've done that, and that takes great courage. I hope you'll take some time to think about what I just wrote.
You probably married your wife for a wrong reason. At least, when compared to the option that you could help her rehabilitate from alcoholic problems and violent tendencies, it does not weigh enough. Isn't unconditional help and love what a family is for?
In fact, the analysis demonstrated that proprietary code is, on average, more than five times less buggy.
From the article:
In our research using automatic bug-hunting technology, no open-source project we analyzed had fewer software defects (per thousand lines of code) than the top-of-the-line closed-source application. That proprietary code, written for an aerospace company, is better than the best in open source--more than five times better, in fact. That company's software won't let you down when you're flying from New York to London.
In other words, they're comparing the best proprietary code---in this case some aerospace controller program---with the best open-source code. Of course, we would expect the controller program to be more closely scrutinized. There hasn't been life-and-death deployment of open source software nor a need for it.
On the other hand, the article doesn't clarify whether the top quality proprietary software can be purchased by a consumer. I'm guessing these programs are generally not available to personal computer users because of their highly specialized nature (e.g., running a nuclear power plant or jet turbine engine).
Don't worry. 300 Million---9 digits. Social security number---also 9 digits. Very soon we will run out of numbers, and that will be the fall of social security (hopefully).
I've never been to PHX, but if they use private IP addresses like 10.*.*.* and use NAT to provide connectivity, then VPN might not work for several possible reasons:
Their NAT implementation doesn't know how to track connections for GRE packets, needed for PPTP.
Most NAT cannot deal with IPsec packets, because NAT requires modifying source and destination IP addresses in a packet, and this violates packet integrity for IPsec. You can probably use UDP wrapper instead.
IPsec needs to be configured for NAT traversal because of key exchange issues.
Even if you get VPN to work, it is possible that only one connection is allowed to any given server from the private network.
I'm not a CIO, but that's from my experience setting up VPN for myself.
I think it's just an effort to modularize code, but they need a new commercial name to get people excited. It's easier to write an parser + validator than to write parser + validator + render + javascript interpreter in one bunch. If they're nice, they would even offer outputting validated HTML code for non-IE browsers to use. IANAMP (I am not a Microsoft programmer), and IANHW (I am not Helen Wang) but I think that's the idea of this framework.
About inspecting the script for malicious run-time behavior, I don't think that's going to fly far (think halting problem).
I think this would be a pointless and confusing solution...
It's a poor attitude to call other's ideas "pointless and confusing."
The whole point of making Program Files read-only for the average home PC user is so viruses and other things can't get in and silently modify them.
But then, you're unable to run, as a non-privileged user, those legacy applications that store configuration files into the program folder, which is read-only. This solution addresses specially that.
Furthermore, a system admin can look at that part of the read-write per-user file system and tell which users have attempted to modify executables, hence signal the presence of a virus. You don't even need anti-virus or third party tripwire software since all modifications leave a track record.
... The UI for this system service asks you to choose a file, and since the UI is running as you it allows you to pick a file from your alias path...
Blame the UI. When a program is run as a service (and therefore cannot be a legacy program), it has access to object trees of all sessions, so it should take that into consideration. Since your concern is about subst, I don't see my proposal will make this matter any worse.
... Also, taking Windows Services out of the picture, several non-technical users at my company have sent me email telling me to look at T:\document.doc...
You seem to suggest that any form of addressing a file can cause confusion. Let's ditch the filesystem altogether? Actually, why not, if you can find a file on your local hard drive just as easily as finding it on the web. Now only if you'll get WinFS back into Vista...
"sudo" spawns a process for the command you wish to run with effective uid/gid set to root, so it is equivalent to running a program as root. Run these commands, compare the outputs and see for yourself:
The subject line is a short summary of the solution that Microsoft should have implemented a long time ago---to implement a union of file systems so some files are drawn from a read-only file systems and others from a read-write file system.
Basically, the program folder has only read access to users, but unionfs of the program folder and a user folder in "Documents and Settings" would allow each user to modify content of that program folder independently. Users do not see each other's changes, and the main copy is left intact. You also don't need to be a privileged user to run that program.
I apologize in advance if Microsoft has already included that feature, but I would get even further irritated because there is absolutely no excuse now to make everyone administrators.
Before the crucifiction, all the apostles were weak in faith. Even Peter denied that he followed Jesus. If Jesus never resurrected, why would the apostles suddenly became willing to risk their lives for a "King of Jerusalem" that supposedly perished?
Paul used to be a prosecuter of Jesus' followers, but he became the person who brought Christianity to Rome. How was he converted after Jesus died? I mean, think about yourself. Paul was just like you.
Yes, you can deny the accuracy of New Testament, and you can do the same to Old Testament. I just don't see a point arguing with you if you don't agree on something in common.
Objective C has one of the most elegant reference counting implementations on the planet.
There is no need to panic. You can support both reference counting and garbage collection in one run-time, provided the objects are in separate heaps. Whenever there is a reference from reference counting heap to the garbage collected heap, you simply tell the GC that there is a "root" reference inside a reference counting object. The other direction is probably even easier. A conservative GC can discern whether a reference is managed by the GC or not. Otherwise, we can foil a GC's attempt at traversing outside of the GC heap by marking a reference as an integer or by wrapping it in a special binary object that GC does not traverse.
Now, instead of profiling memory for leaks, you can profile the garbage collector, which I predict will be just as much of a headache as tracking down a memory leak.
Ever heard of suggestions that global variables are harmful? This is even truer for GC memory management. These globals have roots that persist throughout the lifetime of a program. For this reason, Java programmers seem to suffer more GC problems than a functional language programmer. In fact, the only place you need to look at, in the case of a "GC memory leak," is your global variables.
Unless a GC implementation is flawed, GC does not produce memory leaks. The leaks you are talking about are still technically used by the program but the programmer is not aware of it.
Debugging reference counting is just as much work as debugging malloc/free. In both cases, you need a map tracking the creation, duplication, and consumption of references.
Garbage collection is a step backward, IMO, but every language seems to be moving in this direction. I really do believe that resource awareness is crucial to efficient programming.
If by efficient programming you also take into account run-time overhead, some implementation of GC is more efficient than some implementation of malloc/free. For example, a copying GC only maintains a "heap top" pointer, and any new object is allocated from heap top only. In contrast to malloc/free implemented as linked list traversal, GC takes O(1) time to allocate, and O(n) time when it runs out of memory; malloc/free always takes O(n) time.
I'm sure other people will fill in the details here if they want to. The point here is that you cannot compare blanket GC with blanket reference counting or malloc/free.
If by efficient programming you mean the time it takes to write code, I believe GC is the winner here, since you forget you're using memory altogether.
Synapses as we understand them today do not appear to have any sort of collision detection.
You don't need collision detection if the connection is end-to-end and one way. The reason why wired and wireless ethernet have collision detection is because multiple interfaces are accessing the same channel. If you have multiple eyes on the same optical nerve, you would need collision detection.
Slashdot Mirror
There are different ways to use cameras. I like to compose each and every shot carefully before I hit the shutter release, so I end up keeping at least 50% of my pictures if not more. If you use SLR like a trigger happy point and shoot, then of course digital is going to be cheaper than film, but you're relying on chance for getting a good picture, not skill. If you want to alter your picture afterwards, I always ask the lab to develop my film into digital. I get a picture that is about 6 megapixel, but each pixel has full information for all colors, which makes it about 18 megapixel (compare 5 megapixel Foveon with 15 megapixel CCD with bayes filter).
Many professionals switched to DSLR for the following reason, this I tell you for a matter of fact. When they used film SLR, they carried a number of camera bodies with them that contained films of different sensitivity (ISO rating). But for digital, you just need one camera body because the sensor can adapt to different sensitivity. If you go into a jungle, you can use ISO 50 to film a waterfall, and ISO 1600 to film a snake snapping a frog, both with the same DSLR camera. If you use film SLR, you need to plan in advance what kinds of shot you're taking.
The added convenience of DSLR, being able to take as many pictures as you want, is not meant for you to use it like a point and shoot.
I'm strongly against police raid to curb copyright violators, but I agree that if a restraining order is in place, then you better think twice before you do it again.
The issue here is if a court should ever grant restraining order on copyright violations, but it doesn't look like Toyoda bothered to contest it at all.
Depends on whether you're comparing 35mm DSLR against 35mm film SLR, or 35mm point and shoot (P&S) against digital P&S. It is quite clear that digital P&S already beats 35mm film ones. I also have no doubt that recent 35mm DSLR performs better than 35mm film SLR.
But taking the price-performance ratio into account, 35mm SLR definitely still produces superior picture than digital P&S and is more affordable than DSLR. Also, I have a mechanical 35mm film SLR whose responsiveness is unparalleled by any digital cameras. It can operate for months on a small LR44 battery (it is used to control automatic aperture priority shutter speed). Even if you run out of battery, you can still take pictures at a fixed shutter speed, so you will never miss a shot.
If I were serious about photography, I would get a medium format camera and a digital back, and I can switch between digital and film by switching the back. I think you can do that for 4x5 too, but a digital back will cost you an arm and leg.
That market for medium to large format digital backs is just unimaginable from the consumer's point of view. You call the sales person to come to your studio and setup the equipment in house. You evaluate it, and they try to work with you to make sure you are totally satisfied.
You do mean how you can distribute only half of your source code at any given time?
Cryptography is all about probability, really. When you use hash functions like MD5 and SHA-1, you're counting on the low probability of collision. When you encrypt something, you're counting on the ciphertext being in a way that your probability of guessing the nature of plaintext is the same no matter how you guess it. A ciphertext that simply looks like random noise isn't enough.
By the way, in their terminology, a "side" is the box that you color your vote, painting through the top and bottom sheets.
The machine doesn't keep the "printed" ballot configuration. Instead, it randomly generates an equivalent imaginary ballot such that if you know which side you voted for, your vote will be counted the same on your printed ballot. The trick to protect secrecy is that they allow election official to check only one side for any given ballot. Don't know if that could be enforced, however.
ROC (Republic of China) actually refers to a "government in exile" that currently resides in Taiwan.
The proper name for China is People's Republic of China, or PRC.
That's actually correct. Last time I heard about the newest China firewall technology, they were using Cisco's IDS (intrusion detection system) to make these network devices flag censored keywords as intrusion. The network responds to this by dropping the connection and blacklist the origin of attack---websites---for a predetermined period, which results in these websites being blocked.
Deep inside the Windows NT/XP kernel, it maintains an object namespace very similar to a Unix filesystem. You can use WinObj from sysinternals.com to navigate this object namespace. Notice that under the 'Global??' folder you will find the entries 'C:' and 'D:' and so on symbolic linked to the appropriate file system. Also, '\Device\*' in the object namespace is very much like '/dev/*' on Unix.
It is evident that drive letters under an NT kernel is just a DOS compatibility after-thought. The kernel doesn't have concepts of drive letters.
I can affirm this. Last night I spent a few hours wondering what went wrong with the Dapper to Edgy upgrade. They both had to do with some peculiarity of my system:
GUI upgrade failed halfway because xorg-common complained that /usr/X11R6/bin is not empty. Edgy now installs all X programs under /usr/bin, so /usr/X11R6/bin needs to become symbolic linked to /usr/bin. It turned out that I installed a snapshot of DRI drivers for my Mach 64 video card, which left a file /usr/X11R6/bin/xdriinfo, and dpkg tried to preserve that for me.
Fix: run
until all packages are upgraded properly.As a result of the previous boo-boo, X drivers weren't automatically upgraded. The packages were renamed from xserver-xorg-driver-* to xserver-xorg-video-*, and for some reason apt-get didn't pick up these new names. So I wasn't able to start X after the next reboot.
Fix: run apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-all
A final problem had to do with usplash not being able to find a theme, so I watched in horror as Ubuntu booted in text mode. I switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu, but I upgraded the system back to Ubuntu. As a result, the usplash theme "update-alternatives" symbolic link pointed to a non-existent Kubuntu theme after the upgrade.
Fix: run
and after that, run to reflect the change in initrd for booting.All of these commands to run must be performed as root, and I recommend switching to a single user mode before you do that.
You could have just said, "I tried my best, sorry." But instead you over-reacted and became defensive. Maybe you're much more pain in the ass than you think you are. Of course I have my fair share of pain-in-the-ass-ness to ever bother with someone like you. But believe me, I meant to do you good, not harm.
I met a number of ex-alcoholics at my church. They've been successfully rehabilitated and now function as able members. I have no doubt an alcoholic can be rehabilitated. I think most alcoholics recognize alcoholism as a problem and want to improve their condition. What is crucial is if you allow them to build their self-esteem.
Since your wife wasn't alcoholic when you first married her 9 years ago, that means from that point on, her life must have declined to the point she is now. You've been part of her life after marriage, so don't be so quick denying your responsibility. I don't blame you for having failed your relationship, but I need you to agree with me on what could have been better.
Do you think your wife just needed an exercise when she systematically destroyed your stuff? She wanted to find your most precious possession and hurt you by destroying it. What makes she hate you with such bitterness, especially you said you loved her to marry her in the first place? There is a lot of details that only you will know. I can't think of a reason other than that you've been constantly eroding her self-esteem.
How easy it is to erode someone's self-esteem? Tons of tiny criticisms. You posted your marriage problems on slashdot, and I expressed my concerns, and you think it's criticism. It's that easy. "Honey, why don't you put the eggs inside this compartment instead of that." "Honey, where did you put my newspaper?" When these things happen daily, it accumulates. It appears to her that you've never appreciated her presence.
Learn to appreciate someone's presence. It is very important. It is a lot of work. Love is a lot of work.
I can't expect you to love her or anyone at this moment. Bitterness reinforces itself like mic feedback. It precipitates through your comment and almost made me feel bitter about you. But I want to correct you with one point: true love never reciprocates.
To be fair, I would never post my personal details online. You've done that, and that takes great courage. I hope you'll take some time to think about what I just wrote.
You probably married your wife for a wrong reason. At least, when compared to the option that you could help her rehabilitate from alcoholic problems and violent tendencies, it does not weigh enough. Isn't unconditional help and love what a family is for?
From the summary:
From the article:
In other words, they're comparing the best proprietary code---in this case some aerospace controller program---with the best open-source code. Of course, we would expect the controller program to be more closely scrutinized. There hasn't been life-and-death deployment of open source software nor a need for it.
On the other hand, the article doesn't clarify whether the top quality proprietary software can be purchased by a consumer. I'm guessing these programs are generally not available to personal computer users because of their highly specialized nature (e.g., running a nuclear power plant or jet turbine engine).
Don't worry. 300 Million---9 digits. Social security number---also 9 digits. Very soon we will run out of numbers, and that will be the fall of social security (hopefully).
I've never been to PHX, but if they use private IP addresses like 10.*.*.* and use NAT to provide connectivity, then VPN might not work for several possible reasons:
I'm not a CIO, but that's from my experience setting up VPN for myself.
I think it's just an effort to modularize code, but they need a new commercial name to get people excited. It's easier to write an parser + validator than to write parser + validator + render + javascript interpreter in one bunch. If they're nice, they would even offer outputting validated HTML code for non-IE browsers to use. IANAMP (I am not a Microsoft programmer), and IANHW (I am not Helen Wang) but I think that's the idea of this framework.
About inspecting the script for malicious run-time behavior, I don't think that's going to fly far (think halting problem).
It's a poor attitude to call other's ideas "pointless and confusing."
But then, you're unable to run, as a non-privileged user, those legacy applications that store configuration files into the program folder, which is read-only. This solution addresses specially that.
Furthermore, a system admin can look at that part of the read-write per-user file system and tell which users have attempted to modify executables, hence signal the presence of a virus. You don't even need anti-virus or third party tripwire software since all modifications leave a track record.
What a great idea.
I find your excuse of legacy software annoying.
The subject line is a short summary of the solution that Microsoft should have implemented a long time ago---to implement a union of file systems so some files are drawn from a read-only file systems and others from a read-write file system.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionFS.
Basically, the program folder has only read access to users, but unionfs of the program folder and a user folder in "Documents and Settings" would allow each user to modify content of that program folder independently. Users do not see each other's changes, and the main copy is left intact. You also don't need to be a privileged user to run that program.
Mac OS X also has it. See http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_fs.html.
I apologize in advance if Microsoft has already included that feature, but I would get even further irritated because there is absolutely no excuse now to make everyone administrators.
Before the crucifiction, all the apostles were weak in faith. Even Peter denied that he followed Jesus. If Jesus never resurrected, why would the apostles suddenly became willing to risk their lives for a "King of Jerusalem" that supposedly perished?
Paul used to be a prosecuter of Jesus' followers, but he became the person who brought Christianity to Rome. How was he converted after Jesus died? I mean, think about yourself. Paul was just like you.
Yes, you can deny the accuracy of New Testament, and you can do the same to Old Testament. I just don't see a point arguing with you if you don't agree on something in common.
There is no need to panic. You can support both reference counting and garbage collection in one run-time, provided the objects are in separate heaps. Whenever there is a reference from reference counting heap to the garbage collected heap, you simply tell the GC that there is a "root" reference inside a reference counting object. The other direction is probably even easier. A conservative GC can discern whether a reference is managed by the GC or not. Otherwise, we can foil a GC's attempt at traversing outside of the GC heap by marking a reference as an integer or by wrapping it in a special binary object that GC does not traverse.
Ever heard of suggestions that global variables are harmful? This is even truer for GC memory management. These globals have roots that persist throughout the lifetime of a program. For this reason, Java programmers seem to suffer more GC problems than a functional language programmer. In fact, the only place you need to look at, in the case of a "GC memory leak," is your global variables.
Unless a GC implementation is flawed, GC does not produce memory leaks. The leaks you are talking about are still technically used by the program but the programmer is not aware of it.
Debugging reference counting is just as much work as debugging malloc/free. In both cases, you need a map tracking the creation, duplication, and consumption of references.
If by efficient programming you also take into account run-time overhead, some implementation of GC is more efficient than some implementation of malloc/free. For example, a copying GC only maintains a "heap top" pointer, and any new object is allocated from heap top only. In contrast to malloc/free implemented as linked list traversal, GC takes O(1) time to allocate, and O(n) time when it runs out of memory; malloc/free always takes O(n) time.
I'm sure other people will fill in the details here if they want to. The point here is that you cannot compare blanket GC with blanket reference counting or malloc/free.
If by efficient programming you mean the time it takes to write code, I believe GC is the winner here, since you forget you're using memory altogether.
You don't need collision detection if the connection is end-to-end and one way. The reason why wired and wireless ethernet have collision detection is because multiple interfaces are accessing the same channel. If you have multiple eyes on the same optical nerve, you would need collision detection.