2) record every number plate and look through the logs to look when a particular one passed a particular camera, then keeping the logs until forever.
It absolutely must be number 2. I can think of no other feasible way to even run the speed camera system.
It most likely works as follows (dubious guesswork follows):
a) When any car or other vehicle passes a camera, its licence is read by the system, and then entered into a database, with thee relevent timestamp and information. b) These records are kept forever. c) Tracking a paticular car is simply a matter of a few simple SQL statements such as SELECT Location FROM Main_Records WHERE Licence_PLate = 'THBADGYS' ORDER BY Timestamp.
Speeding fine checks are also a matter of a few SQL statements. As is tracking those pesky Watergate reporters to find out where they're meeting Felt.
Or we will sue your company and toss the proceeds into state coffers. How noble. I wonder how much of the money will simply go to paying off the legal teams rather than compensating the users whos computers have been violated.
Sony may not have done anything patently illegal. The EULA does inform the end user that they are making modifications to their system.
Pffftt! The EULA said a lot of things. A LOT of things. It has about a snowballs chance in a Google data server container of standing up for more than ten minutes in court. EULAs in shrinkwrap software is one thing. EULAs in shrinkwrapped music CDs is quite another.
Oh, I'll expect Sony to puff up like a blowfish, indignantly declaring that because you clicked yes they in effect have complete dominion over your entire PC and everything on it, as well as most of your actions for the rest of your life if most EULAs are obeyed to the letter.
Whatever. I'll expect the judges to frown once they learn that Sony is the vector for one of the worlds biggest computer virus infections, and that they're seeking to justify it using the most dubious type of legal agreement since the oral contract. With any luck EULAs will be universally declared null an void and people can go back to actually buying and owning goods.
AM: Well, we never even used CVS. Before BitKeeper we basically weren't using anything - just a bunch of patches sitting on Linus' hard drive and it uploaded occasionally. We had no tracking of what had gone in the kernel at all.
Someone, please tell me this is a dream. Wake me from this nightmare. Dear gods!! There was no version control on the Linux Kernel!? How? What? When? Where? Why? WTF!!?
I am not rightly able to comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that would provoke such a situation.
Re:What I have to say will certainly get me banned
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
·
· Score: 1
I'm so ridiculously brilliant I had a computer when I was 3 and was programming the little stick figure to walk across the screen but --- now I work as a programmer and I fall roughly on the same pay curve as every other American techster and worry because I know there's a whole bunch of Indians who didn't learn Basic in pre-K that can do everything I can only cheaper and better.
Yup. Welcome to the real world, where it's not what you can do or how you can do it, but how much you can do it for that's most important. And hey, those Indian programmers do some fine work, so don't be so dispariging. Besides, someone so intelligent shouldn't have gotten themselves into a position where they are competing with other codemonkeys, whether from the US or abroad. Shouldn't you be in a computer job "more suited to your abilities"?
I hate, HATE, the term "book smart" because people have had the tendancy to peg me with it because it carries this connotation that you're not smart-smart, just smart about certain things and naive about the rest but some of you posters strike me as book smart in the most basic, unglamorous way... the kid who can memorize Washington's birthday but couldn't change a tire if they wanted to.
I am one of these "book smart" people. Though I've never heard it euphamised like this. Nerdy, wierd etc, are more the terms I recognise. I learned long ago that I can't do things other take for granted, just as they can't do things I seem to take for granted. Very often, I feel those who can't solve partial differential equations, but can change tires and deal with other people got the better end of the bargin. But the grass is always greener right?
No shit. Over the past couple years I've replaced a furnace that has dropped my natural gas usage by over 40%, moved to CFLs as lightbulbs burn out, installed a smart thermostat, wrapped my hot water tank, and am making plans to renovate the kitchen, replacing an inefficient refridgerator, stove (goin' gas!), and dishwasher.
Sounds like the average house in Europe. We were doing all this stuff 15 years ago. I don't think I've ever seen a hot water tank without a lagging jacket.
No. The Earth is too complex to have just ended up flat with the sun spinning around it. A higher power must have had a guiding hand. So we should instruct kids on the Intelligent Flat Earth Design Theory over the Newtonian-Einstienian theories of gravity, which are after all, completely unprovable.
People at the USPTO need to go to jail for granting patents like these. They are crippling, willfully, the US economy. A bad patent has all the effect of sinking an oil tanker, and the effects are longers lasting. We still don't have encrypted email because of the willful sabotage committed at the USPTO by granting the RSA patent.
Throw a couple of examiners in jail. They'll read the next patent more thoroughly then.
The primary examiner on the patent was Howard W. Britton. He was either incompetant, or willfully neglegent when he granted this patent. If I make a mistake this serious at my job, I can be held seriously accountable for it. So should Mr. Britton.
I am in no way exaggerating or being sarcastic. In my honest opinion Britton deserves to go to jail for the damage he has done to the economy, and the disgrace he has brought on the entire patent system.
I had colleagues who were in signal processing (and DCT is at base a signal processing application), and none of them said "oh, that's obvious".
I don't know. Using a mathematical technique designed for data compression to compress data has a certain... obviousness about it wouldn't you say? The signal processing folks were certainly using fourier transforms all over the place.
In any case the patent doesn't specify what algorithm it is using. It can be fourier transform, wavelet transform, whatever. That alone should strike it down on grounds of being non-specific.
Um, you do realize that the patent was filed in October 1986 and granted in October 1987, don't you?
The biggest irony in all this is that wavelet transforms were discovered in the early 1980's and have only been used in the computer software industry during the last ten years. Yet somehow, the patent covers a technique that was not even known to anyone in the computer industry at the time of filing. I somehow doubt that the applicant was a) aware of wavelets and b) understood the wavelet technique mathematically.
What's more, and I think this is key, this technique covers as yet undiscovered algorithms for compression, whether they exist or not. If I were to discover some new transform that compresses data, even if it was totally unknown beforehand, somehow I'm violating a patent that was filed before any such algorithm, theory or technique was even known about.
This is what happens when you allow mathematical algorithms to be patented. I blame the RSA patent for all this.
The problem is most good image codecs are a patent mindfield [e.g. wavelets].
But Wavelets are a mathematical technique! They are a mathematical algorithm! Mathematical algorithms can't be patented! The trained professionals at the USPTO would NEVER allow a mathematical algorithm to be patented.......oh wait.
I have several Doctor Friends that were trained in Israel (as an example) and then quickly left Israel (after paying next to nothing for their MD) to come to the US to collect the big almight BUCK..
This has actually been one of the traditional reasons for the vibrancy of the US economy. As a lot of academic US workers are trained abroad, the US has not had to go to the expense of educating them. Other countries have.
This is the "Brain Drain" effect, where, it is argued, the US economy is buoyed by the educational expendature of less wealthy countries. There's a certain element of truth to this.
I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?
Make education possible for everyone at costs comparable to Asia/Europe/etc and you will have more PhDs.
But will people pay the taxes to do it?
The reality is that people simply don't want to pay for anything. They expect services from the government yes, but in the end, for a lot of things, they'd rather pay no tax than have some services.
Even if the US slips behind and loses its position as the worlds biggest economy and/or science nation, Americans will still not reform their education system. This is because in the end, beneath all the rhetoric, all the patriotism, all the pride, all the manifest destinies, there has been only one true constant in America. The Buck.
And more correctly "My Buck". And no american will fork it over without a danm good reason.
Basically, in order for Slashdot to compete, it needs to somehow rip off the Digg system. Story submissions could be placed in a pool where Slashdotters could select the best they feel that the editors are letting go to waste.
The Random Slashdot Story Submission System (RS^4) had to be updated at some point.
FYI the Commodore 64 was called such because it had 64kB of memory. That said, there's no excuse for not using the old girl to try and bluescreen Longhorn!
A belief or world view that includes beings of non-earthly origin, transcending the self-centeredness of secular humanism and corresponding to reality doesn't necessarily contain or lead to qualities of addiction.
Just as the act of pressing controller buttons to make mario jump or master chief shoot doesn't necessarily contain or lead to qualities of addiction.
It's all subjective. Or more accurately, it's all political.
However, if you show my mother (a devout Catholic and Sunday school teacher) a cross, she doesn't get the urge to suddenly go to chuch and pray.
So why dos she keep going? Religion is every bit as addictive as a narcotic. Go to the south and observe the mass eurphoric religious chanting that goes on there. If you think a group of junkies shooting up is disturbing, I'd advise you never to attend a ceremony of the faithful.
My company is porting our C++ Windows app to C in an embedded device and the question of whether to use dynamic memory allocation continues to come up.
OK, I realise I know precious little about embedded devices, but exactly why do you even need to port the code from C++ to C. Surely there's a C++ compiler for the device, but if there isn't, naturally I see the issue.
Secondly, dynamic memory in an embedded device?! Something seems awry here. Would preallocating memory work just as well? You, in theory, know all the parameters and tolerences beforehand.
Lastly, going back to the first paragraph, I'd keep away from C if I could, especially considering that the C++ system is likely object oriented. On top of that new/delete is much superior to the malloc/free. But that is just my humble C++ centric opinion!
I've got 30-45 mins a day at max i can play, and the experience, ease of use and integration of the xbox and xbox live service is what makes it for me.
You play less than an hours worth of games a day, yet you want to splash out on a new console system the moment it comes out?
I'm finding it hard to believe you've finished all the games you own on your current system, so whay the rush to buy a new one? Prudence would dictate that you take the time to expierience the top quality titles of the current generation, before moving onto the next.
I usually don't buy a system unless I can pinpoint at least three games on it that I simply must have. I've yet to see a console released on day one that offered even two "must have" titles for me.
Save your money and buy some of the quality titles that you haven't played on your current system. The 360 will still be there in 12 months time, at a cheaper price, and with better games, so why pay more now for less?
Codd is rolling in his grave. 30+ years since he developed the relational model, and still nobody's bothered implementing it.
The database admins might argue that it's a moot point, given that relational databases are fairly close to the relational model. The concepts are at any rate, related to one another. Not quite isomorphic, but close enough for most purposes.
In fact, it could be argued that to fully implement the relational model would intoduce too much complexity to the fairly simple SQL sysetm, which has served many a programmer well over the years.
Slashdot Mirror
2) record every number plate and look through the logs to look when a particular one passed a particular camera, then keeping the logs until forever.
It absolutely must be number 2. I can think of no other feasible way to even run the speed camera system.
It most likely works as follows (dubious guesswork follows):
a) When any car or other vehicle passes a camera, its licence is read by the system, and then entered into a database, with thee relevent timestamp and information.
b) These records are kept forever.
c) Tracking a paticular car is simply a matter of a few simple SQL statements such as
SELECT Location FROM Main_Records WHERE Licence_PLate = 'THBADGYS' ORDER BY Timestamp.
Speeding fine checks are also a matter of a few SQL statements. As is tracking those pesky Watergate reporters to find out where they're meeting Felt.
This will be made illegal about ten minutes after it becomes popular.
It's more than just the dupes though, slashdot is no longer a "tech" site whatsoever, it's mostly a political blog now.
Wait! You're saying Slashdot wasn't always like this?
Don't mess with Texas.
Or we will sue your company and toss the proceeds into state coffers. How noble. I wonder how much of the money will simply go to paying off the legal teams rather than compensating the users whos computers have been violated.
Sony may not have done anything patently illegal. The EULA does inform the end user that they are making modifications to their system.
Pffftt! The EULA said a lot of things. A LOT of things. It has about a snowballs chance in a Google data server container of standing up for more than ten minutes in court. EULAs in shrinkwrap software is one thing. EULAs in shrinkwrapped music CDs is quite another.
Oh, I'll expect Sony to puff up like a blowfish, indignantly declaring that because you clicked yes they in effect have complete dominion over your entire PC and everything on it, as well as most of your actions for the rest of your life if most EULAs are obeyed to the letter.
Whatever. I'll expect the judges to frown once they learn that Sony is the vector for one of the worlds biggest computer virus infections, and that they're seeking to justify it using the most dubious type of legal agreement since the oral contract. With any luck EULAs will be universally declared null an void and people can go back to actually buying and owning goods.
Oh. My. Gods. From TFA
AM: Well, we never even used CVS. Before BitKeeper we basically weren't using anything - just a bunch of patches sitting on Linus' hard drive and it uploaded occasionally. We had no tracking of what had gone in the kernel at all.
Someone, please tell me this is a dream. Wake me from this nightmare. Dear gods!! There was no version control on the Linux Kernel!? How? What? When? Where? Why? WTF!!?
I am not rightly able to comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that would provoke such a situation.
I'm so ridiculously brilliant I had a computer when I was 3 and was programming the little stick figure to walk across the screen but --- now I work as a programmer and I fall roughly on the same pay curve as every other American techster and worry because I know there's a whole bunch of Indians who didn't learn Basic in pre-K that can do everything I can only cheaper and better.
Yup. Welcome to the real world, where it's not what you can do or how you can do it, but how much you can do it for that's most important. And hey, those Indian programmers do some fine work, so don't be so dispariging. Besides, someone so intelligent shouldn't have gotten themselves into a position where they are competing with other codemonkeys, whether from the US or abroad. Shouldn't you be in a computer job "more suited to your abilities"?
I hate, HATE, the term "book smart" because people have had the tendancy to peg me with it because it carries this connotation that you're not smart-smart, just smart about certain things and naive about the rest but some of you posters strike me as book smart in the most basic, unglamorous way... the kid who can memorize Washington's birthday but couldn't change a tire if they wanted to.
I am one of these "book smart" people. Though I've never heard it euphamised like this. Nerdy, wierd etc, are more the terms I recognise. I learned long ago that I can't do things other take for granted, just as they can't do things I seem to take for granted. Very often, I feel those who can't solve partial differential equations, but can change tires and deal with other people got the better end of the bargin. But the grass is always greener right?
No shit. Over the past couple years I've replaced a furnace that has dropped my natural gas usage by over 40%, moved to CFLs as lightbulbs burn out, installed a smart thermostat, wrapped my hot water tank, and am making plans to renovate the kitchen, replacing an inefficient refridgerator, stove (goin' gas!), and dishwasher.
Sounds like the average house in Europe. We were doing all this stuff 15 years ago. I don't think I've ever seen a hot water tank without a lagging jacket.
No, it's flat because it's stationery, duh!
No. The Earth is too complex to have just ended up flat with the sun spinning around it. A higher power must have had a guiding hand. So we should instruct kids on the Intelligent Flat Earth Design Theory over the Newtonian-Einstienian theories of gravity, which are after all, completely unprovable.
People at the USPTO need to go to jail for granting patents like these. They are crippling, willfully, the US economy. A bad patent has all the effect of sinking an oil tanker, and the effects are longers lasting. We still don't have encrypted email because of the willful sabotage committed at the USPTO by granting the RSA patent.
Throw a couple of examiners in jail. They'll read the next patent more thoroughly then.
The primary examiner on the patent was Howard W. Britton. He was either incompetant, or willfully neglegent when he granted this patent. If I make a mistake this serious at my job, I can be held seriously accountable for it. So should Mr. Britton.
I am in no way exaggerating or being sarcastic. In my honest opinion Britton deserves to go to jail for the damage he has done to the economy, and the disgrace he has brought on the entire patent system.
I had colleagues who were in signal processing (and DCT is at base a signal processing application), and none of them said "oh, that's obvious".
I don't know. Using a mathematical technique designed for data compression to compress data has a certain... obviousness about it wouldn't you say? The signal processing folks were certainly using fourier transforms all over the place.
In any case the patent doesn't specify what algorithm it is using. It can be fourier transform, wavelet transform, whatever. That alone should strike it down on grounds of being non-specific.
Um, you do realize that the patent was filed in October 1986 and granted in October 1987, don't you?
The biggest irony in all this is that wavelet transforms were discovered in the early 1980's and have only been used in the computer software industry during the last ten years. Yet somehow, the patent covers a technique that was not even known to anyone in the computer industry at the time of filing. I somehow doubt that the applicant was a) aware of wavelets and b) understood the wavelet technique mathematically.
What's more, and I think this is key, this technique covers as yet undiscovered algorithms for compression, whether they exist or not. If I were to discover some new transform that compresses data, even if it was totally unknown beforehand, somehow I'm violating a patent that was filed before any such algorithm, theory or technique was even known about.
This is what happens when you allow mathematical algorithms to be patented. I blame the RSA patent for all this.
The problem is most good image codecs are a patent mindfield [e.g. wavelets].
...oh wait.
But Wavelets are a mathematical technique! They are a mathematical algorithm! Mathematical algorithms can't be patented! The trained professionals at the USPTO would NEVER allow a mathematical algorithm to be patented....
I have several Doctor Friends that were trained in Israel (as an example) and then quickly left Israel (after paying next to nothing for their MD) to come to the US to collect the big almight BUCK..
This has actually been one of the traditional reasons for the vibrancy of the US economy. As a lot of academic US workers are trained abroad, the US has not had to go to the expense of educating them. Other countries have.
This is the "Brain Drain" effect, where, it is argued, the US economy is buoyed by the educational expendature of less wealthy countries. There's a certain element of truth to this.
I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?
You'd be very surprised how many people do think that the commadore was a 64 bit machine. I blame the consoles.
Make education possible for everyone at costs comparable to Asia/Europe/etc and you will have more PhDs.
But will people pay the taxes to do it?
The reality is that people simply don't want to pay for anything. They expect services from the government yes, but in the end, for a lot of things, they'd rather pay no tax than have some services.
Even if the US slips behind and loses its position as the worlds biggest economy and/or science nation, Americans will still not reform their education system. This is because in the end, beneath all the rhetoric, all the patriotism, all the pride, all the manifest destinies, there has been only one true constant in America. The Buck.
And more correctly "My Buck". And no american will fork it over without a danm good reason.
Basically, in order for Slashdot to compete, it needs to somehow rip off the Digg system. Story submissions could be placed in a pool where Slashdotters could select the best they feel that the editors are letting go to waste.
The Random Slashdot Story Submission System (RS^4) had to be updated at some point.
Seems to me that Sony hired some blackhats to get the job done for them.
Given how this has affected sony, I think it's more likely these were whitehats in disguise!
FYI the Commodore 64 was called such because it had 64kB of memory. That said, there's no excuse for not using the old girl to try and bluescreen Longhorn!
A belief or world view that includes beings of non-earthly origin, transcending the self-centeredness of secular humanism and corresponding to reality doesn't necessarily contain or lead to qualities of addiction.
Just as the act of pressing controller buttons to make mario jump or master chief shoot doesn't necessarily contain or lead to qualities of addiction.
It's all subjective. Or more accurately, it's all political.
However, if you show my mother (a devout Catholic and Sunday school teacher) a cross, she doesn't get the urge to suddenly go to chuch and pray.
So why dos she keep going? Religion is every bit as addictive as a narcotic. Go to the south and observe the mass eurphoric religious chanting that goes on there. If you think a group of junkies shooting up is disturbing, I'd advise you never to attend a ceremony of the faithful.
My company is porting our C++ Windows app to C in an embedded device and the question of whether to use dynamic memory allocation continues to come up.
OK, I realise I know precious little about embedded devices, but exactly why do you even need to port the code from C++ to C. Surely there's a C++ compiler for the device, but if there isn't, naturally I see the issue.
Secondly, dynamic memory in an embedded device?! Something seems awry here. Would preallocating memory work just as well? You, in theory, know all the parameters and tolerences beforehand.
Lastly, going back to the first paragraph, I'd keep away from C if I could, especially considering that the C++ system is likely object oriented. On top of that new/delete is much superior to the malloc/free. But that is just my humble C++ centric opinion!
I'll be buying it at day one.
I've got 30-45 mins a day at max i can play, and the experience, ease of use and integration of the xbox and xbox live service is what makes it for me.
You play less than an hours worth of games a day, yet you want to splash out on a new console system the moment it comes out?
I'm finding it hard to believe you've finished all the games you own on your current system, so whay the rush to buy a new one? Prudence would dictate that you take the time to expierience the top quality titles of the current generation, before moving onto the next.
I usually don't buy a system unless I can pinpoint at least three games on it that I simply must have. I've yet to see a console released on day one that offered even two "must have" titles for me.
Save your money and buy some of the quality titles that you haven't played on your current system. The 360 will still be there in 12 months time, at a cheaper price, and with better games, so why pay more now for less?
With all this statistical analysis you do, do you ever have a chance to pay attention to the road?
About 67% of the time!
Codd is rolling in his grave. 30+ years since he developed the relational model, and still nobody's bothered implementing it.
The database admins might argue that it's a moot point, given that relational databases are fairly close to the relational model. The concepts are at any rate, related to one another. Not quite isomorphic, but close enough for most purposes.
In fact, it could be argued that to fully implement the relational model would intoduce too much complexity to the fairly simple SQL sysetm, which has served many a programmer well over the years.