Oh, these systems work just fine if the powers-that-be all cooperate to make it happen.
The problem is that this is not something anyone that cares about privacy should want or encourage. It's too easy for the powers-that-be or governments to intentionally abuse and when it is compromised by criminals the damage is likely much worse than today's login systems..
There is a place for federated/one-keyring-to-rule-them-all logins. Many companies use them so you don't have to log into otherwise-unrelated databases twice. But having the same authenication to pay my utility bill with a credit card as I use to buy a book online with a different credit card isn't something I want and it's not something I want to encourage, unless that "single login" system is enterely in my control (e.g. a password manager on my PC that never does anything over the network and never talks to other applications except as needed to fill in passwords in web browsers).
2. Re-write the compiler to optimize this code in the best way possible.
3. Re-write the code so it provides optimal input to the compiler.
4. Come up with a new algorithm.
5 and beyond: Left as an exercise to the reader.
Assuming any improvements from #1 and #2 don't "count" for this contest, that leaves you with 3 and 4.
Unless the code is brain-dead there is no way you'll get anywhere close to 10,000 improvement JUST by #3. You MIGHT get it with a combination of #3 and #1 and/or #2 vs. just #1 and #2 alone. That is to say, changes in hardware and compilers may give an opportunity to re-factor the code to get huge improvements vs. un-modified code on new compilers and new hardware.
The big win will be in #4, but only if there are better algorithms out there or someone can come up with one. As with re-factoring the code, changes in hardware and corresponding changes in compilers may turn an algorithm that was inefficient in the 1980s into something that is best-in-class today.
5 and beyond are open-ended and the sky is the limit.
Either the microphone and speaker hardware/firmware should filter out sub- and ultrasonic sounds, or the operating system or pre-OS-firmware should do it so it's impossible for any user application to get to this data (absent some bug to exploit, of course).
If all you care about is extracting the audio and video from a disc, it's not hard, provided you have the right equipment.
You can go the analog way and use expensive equipment to sample every pixel that appears on your screen as it plays.
You can go the digital way and disassemble your TV and monitor the signals that go to each LED in the display as the disk plays.
Audio capture is trivial by comparison.
Sure, it's expensive, but I'm sure there are several commericial-scale pirates that either have equipment like this or they could get it or make it themselves if they wanted to.
Mechanized farming reduced the number of on-the-farm jobs per acre.
The industrial revolution and subsequent improvements have reduced the number of worker-hours needed to make X number of widgets.
Automated telephone dialing greatly reduced the number of telephone operators per 10,000 telephone lines.
Automated telegraph repeaters greatly reduced the number of telegraph operators needed.
Voicemail reduced the number of corporate call-takers needed for a given number of incoming calls.
And so on.
But in the meantime, new kinds of work were created, and overall un- and under-employment in the USA at least has been at managable non-crisis levels for decades.
Yes, it was a bit of a common things on older system, from the times where the mass storage hardware was far from precise and reliable, to do things like check that the drive seek really landed the head in the requested track.
"Modern" (probably mid-1980s and newer) hardware had firmware that would do that for you, and for hard disks at least, the firmware started keeping its own meta-data of a sort so that as far as the computer was concerned, the error rate was acceptably low unless there was an actual bad spot on the drive or some other "hard" failure.
The Lisa and early Macintosh drives supported 532-byte sectors. The extra sectors were used for "tags" - basically a less-sophisticated version of this scheme and without the "block 0."
For details on why "tags" were eliminated, see Macintosh Technote #94, "Tags," by Bryan Stearns, November 15, 1986.
Assuming there is no conflict of interest, it should be treated the same as reading a non-work-related book, listening to music on a personal device, or take ng a nap.
In some situations these actually improve overall productivity and should not be discouraged.
In other cased they are a symptom of dissatisfaction or boredom, and the employer should try to address those issues.
In other cases they really are just stealing time from the employer or they are setting a bad example that outweighs any benefit to the company and disciplinary actions, up to and including termination, may be justified.
But it should not be The Only Way to approach a program - unless you are Truly One with the Tao.
Unless you are a total newbie who has only been exposed ot one tool, or a hypothentical/mytical code-master-of-all-code-masters who is "Truly One with the Tao," then you know there is no "Only [one reasonable] Way" to approach a program/problem, at least not one of any reasonable complexity.
Demand that devices come with a "hardware reset switch" that will reset the firmware and other settings to factory condition.
Yes, your data is still screwed if you get firmware ransomware that encrypts your storage, but at least you can get your device back.
I would allow for one exception: Devices like phones and laptops which may NEED to be remotely controlled or even "perma-bricked" if they are stolen or otherwise fall out of your physical control. This kind of theft-protection/deterrent is incompatible with the "factor reset" I'm proposing.
"Someone may re-purpose this for [insert laundry list here] so I better spend 10x the effort to create perfect code, never mind that it will blow the budget and make the product too late to market."
For the newbie programmer: There are times when you do NOT need to write defensively. There are times when you must strive for perfect code at the expense of time and money. Most of the time the best approach is somewhere in between. With experience, you will begin to learn which times are which.
They only have value above their utilitarian value because people say they do.
Two major differences between precious metals and fiat currencies are: * The utility value for fiat currencies is zero for book-entry money, almost zero for paper/plastic currency, and that of base metals for coinage ("melt-down value"). The utility value for gold, silver, and most other precious metals is at least as much as base metals, there's just a lot less of it to go around.
* precious metals have a known, reasonably-predictable caps on long-term future supply based on active mines and known deposits (subject to technology disruptions such as what aluminum went through in the 19th century). The "future supply" of fiat currencies is about as predictable as politics. That is to say, it may be reasonably predictable in the short- or even medium-term but for anything longer than a decade or two, the political risk can become significant even in countries that currently enjoy stable govermnents, stable banking systems, and stable currencies.
I'm leaving out the difference that fiat currencies are typically legal tender in their country of origin. Precious metals might have been legal tender in the past, but I can't think of any major country where they are legal tender in any practical sense of the word (that is, the are legal tender, AND when you pay your debts with them you are credited with the current spot price of the metal in your local currency, or at least something very close to it).
If something is being done to undermine your value in a market then you are being underpaid.
One could argue that if something is being done to lessen - or raise - your value in the market, then that's just the market at work.
One could also argue that the "baseline" with regards to immigration would be "free borders" and anything else is an artificial deviation from that "baseline." In other words, if NOT allowing anyone and everyone on the planet to move about freely and compete in your industry in your city causes your wages to be higher than they would be if there were no such limits, then your wages are "artificially high."
Likewise, one could argue a complete protectionist labor force, where any labor from outside the country would be taxed enough so that the company hiring them would automatically be paying more than they would for even the most expensive domestic applicant and the "baseline" would be "set" by supply-and-demand accordingly. If you are being paid less than this amount due to a less-protectionist legal regime, you could argue that your wages are "artificially low."
I'm not going to claim that either argument is more logical than the other.
Most tech workers in American earn at least the median income for their local region, or at least they could do so easily if they wanted to.
Those workers shouldn't complain about being underpaid - they should either "vote with their feet" or admit that they like their current job even with their current pay and stop complaining.
--
Yes, I realize there really are some tech workers in American who are underpaid and, for whatever reason, don't have the freedom to look for work elsewhere. I'm talking about 90% who aren't in such situations.
My implied point was to only take what you absolutely need when you go to someplace where you might be searched, e.g. a demonstration, an airport, etc.
You need a phone call to make outgoing calls.
You may need an incoming number that you can leave with friends.
If you need a camera, take a stand-alone camera with a blank memory card.
If you need a smart phone, buy a burner phone. But most people don't want to spend $50 on a burner smart-phone for each rally they go to.
There are companies that make "plain" cell phones that do nothing but send and receive calls.
They are mostly marketed to people who want "a land line in their pocket." One even advertises "it has dial tone!" (oooh, ahhh, shiney!).
If the feds seize a phone like this, all they will get is the electronic serial number an, consequently, your phone number and whatever they can get with that information. They won't get anything else useful of the phone itself.
This does nothing to keep me from pointing a high-speed, high-resolution camera at my screen.
It also does nothing to stop me from doing a "tear-down" of my high-resolution, HDMI, DRM-compliant monitor and monitoring the electrical signals that make the pixels light up.
Sure, this is awkward and expensive, but I, er, I mean people like me in other countries, only have to do this once (per video) then put the results up on the Interwebs for everyone to download.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, these systems work just fine if the powers-that-be all cooperate to make it happen.
The problem is that this is not something anyone that cares about privacy should want or encourage. It's too easy for the powers-that-be or governments to intentionally abuse and when it is compromised by criminals the damage is likely much worse than today's login systems..
There is a place for federated/one-keyring-to-rule-them-all logins. Many companies use them so you don't have to log into otherwise-unrelated databases twice. But having the same authenication to pay my utility bill with a credit card as I use to buy a book online with a different credit card isn't something I want and it's not something I want to encourage, unless that "single login" system is enterely in my control (e.g. a password manager on my PC that never does anything over the network and never talks to other applications except as needed to fill in passwords in web browsers).
1. Run it on better hardware.
2. Re-write the compiler to optimize this code in the best way possible.
3. Re-write the code so it provides optimal input to the compiler.
4. Come up with a new algorithm.
5 and beyond: Left as an exercise to the reader.
Assuming any improvements from #1 and #2 don't "count" for this contest, that leaves you with 3 and 4.
Unless the code is brain-dead there is no way you'll get anywhere close to 10,000 improvement JUST by #3. You MIGHT get it with a combination of #3 and #1 and/or #2 vs. just #1 and #2 alone. That is to say, changes in hardware and compilers may give an opportunity to re-factor the code to get huge improvements vs. un-modified code on new compilers and new hardware.
The big win will be in #4, but only if there are better algorithms out there or someone can come up with one. As with re-factoring the code, changes in hardware and corresponding changes in compilers may turn an algorithm that was inefficient in the 1980s into something that is best-in-class today.
5 and beyond are open-ended and the sky is the limit.
Either the microphone and speaker hardware/firmware should filter out sub- and ultrasonic sounds, or the operating system or pre-OS-firmware should do it so it's impossible for any user application to get to this data (absent some bug to exploit, of course).
If all you care about is extracting the audio and video from a disc, it's not hard, provided you have the right equipment.
You can go the analog way and use expensive equipment to sample every pixel that appears on your screen as it plays.
You can go the digital way and disassemble your TV and monitor the signals that go to each LED in the display as the disk plays.
Audio capture is trivial by comparison.
Sure, it's expensive, but I'm sure there are several commericial-scale pirates that either have equipment like this or they could get it or make it themselves if they wanted to.
There are over 30,000 registered users in the English Wikipedia.
Mechanized farming reduced the number of on-the-farm jobs per acre.
The industrial revolution and subsequent improvements have reduced the number of worker-hours needed to make X number of widgets.
Automated telephone dialing greatly reduced the number of telephone operators per 10,000 telephone lines.
Automated telegraph repeaters greatly reduced the number of telegraph operators needed.
Voicemail reduced the number of corporate call-takers needed for a given number of incoming calls.
And so on.
But in the meantime, new kinds of work were created, and overall un- and under-employment in the USA at least has been at managable non-crisis levels for decades.
Yes, it was a bit of a common things on older system, from the times where the mass storage hardware was far from precise and reliable, to do things like check that the drive seek really landed the head in the requested track.
"Modern" (probably mid-1980s and newer) hardware had firmware that would do that for you, and for hard disks at least, the firmware started keeping its own meta-data of a sort so that as far as the computer was concerned, the error rate was acceptably low unless there was an actual bad spot on the drive or some other "hard" failure.
The Lisa and early Macintosh drives supported 532-byte sectors. The extra sectors were used for "tags" - basically a less-sophisticated version of this scheme and without the "block 0."
For details on why "tags" were eliminated, see Macintosh Technote #94, "Tags," by Bryan Stearns, November 15, 1986.
Assuming there is no conflict of interest, it should be treated the same as reading a non-work-related book, listening to music on a personal device, or take ng a nap.
In some situations these actually improve overall productivity and should not be discouraged.
In other cased they are a symptom of dissatisfaction or boredom, and the employer should try to address those issues.
In other cases they really are just stealing time from the employer or they are setting a bad example that outweighs any benefit to the company and disciplinary actions, up to and including termination, may be justified.
In short: It depends.
The rule is very simple: If you mean "it is" or "it has" then you can write "it's". Otherwise, it is "its".
Unless you are using the word out of context: There are too many it's in this discussion, don't you think?
But it should not be The Only Way to approach a program - unless you are Truly One with the Tao.
Unless you are a total newbie who has only been exposed ot one tool, or a hypothentical/mytical code-master-of-all-code-masters who is "Truly One with the Tao," then you know there is no "Only [one reasonable] Way" to approach a program/problem, at least not one of any reasonable complexity.
Light-induced chemical memory: photographic films/papers, typically subject to fading but it can be "fixed" to last decades or longer.
Light-induced biological read-only memory, very short-term/fades fast if not refreshed: photoreceptors in the eyes
Light-induced biological read-only memory, fades after a few days or weeks if not refreshed: sunburn/tan-lines
Re:Queue GM hacking in ...
Cue the spelling police ...
The line to hack GM begins forming in 3...2... [insert unit of time here].
Demand that devices come with a "hardware reset switch" that will reset the firmware and other settings to factory condition.
Yes, your data is still screwed if you get firmware ransomware that encrypts your storage, but at least you can get your device back.
I would allow for one exception: Devices like phones and laptops which may NEED to be remotely controlled or even "perma-bricked" if they are stolen or otherwise fall out of your physical control. This kind of theft-protection/deterrent is incompatible with the "factor reset" I'm proposing.
Tizen has escaped extensive scrutiny from the security community, probably because it's not widely used on phones yet.
"Yet" - and now "never will be" - we hope.
... so I don't have to write defensively."
or the opposite extreme
"Someone may re-purpose this for [insert laundry list here] so I better spend 10x the effort to create perfect code, never mind that it will blow the budget and make the product too late to market."
For the newbie programmer:
There are times when you do NOT need to write defensively. There are times when you must strive for perfect code at the expense of time and money. Most of the time the best approach is somewhere in between. With experience, you will begin to learn which times are which.
They only have value above their utilitarian value because people say they do.
Two major differences between precious metals and fiat currencies are:
* The utility value for fiat currencies is zero for book-entry money, almost zero for paper/plastic currency, and that of base metals for coinage ("melt-down value"). The utility value for gold, silver, and most other precious metals is at least as much as base metals, there's just a lot less of it to go around.
* precious metals have a known, reasonably-predictable caps on long-term future supply based on active mines and known deposits (subject to technology disruptions such as what aluminum went through in the 19th century). The "future supply" of fiat currencies is about as predictable as politics. That is to say, it may be reasonably predictable in the short- or even medium-term but for anything longer than a decade or two, the political risk can become significant even in countries that currently enjoy stable govermnents, stable banking systems, and stable currencies.
I'm leaving out the difference that fiat currencies are typically legal tender in their country of origin. Precious metals might have been legal tender in the past, but I can't think of any major country where they are legal tender in any practical sense of the word (that is, the are legal tender, AND when you pay your debts with them you are credited with the current spot price of the metal in your local currency, or at least something very close to it).
If something is being done to undermine your value in a market then you are being underpaid.
One could argue that if something is being done to lessen - or raise - your value in the market, then that's just the market at work.
One could also argue that the "baseline" with regards to immigration would be "free borders" and anything else is an artificial deviation from that "baseline." In other words, if NOT allowing anyone and everyone on the planet to move about freely and compete in your industry in your city causes your wages to be higher than they would be if there were no such limits, then your wages are "artificially high."
Likewise, one could argue a complete protectionist labor force, where any labor from outside the country would be taxed enough so that the company hiring them would automatically be paying more than they would for even the most expensive domestic applicant and the "baseline" would be "set" by supply-and-demand accordingly. If you are being paid less than this amount due to a less-protectionist legal regime, you could argue that your wages are "artificially low."
I'm not going to claim that either argument is more logical than the other.
Most tech workers in American earn at least the median income for their local region, or at least they could do so easily if they wanted to.
Those workers shouldn't complain about being underpaid - they should either "vote with their feet" or admit that they like their current job even with their current pay and stop complaining.
--
Yes, I realize there really are some tech workers in American who are underpaid and, for whatever reason, don't have the freedom to look for work elsewhere. I'm talking about 90% who aren't in such situations.
My implied point was to only take what you absolutely need when you go to someplace where you might be searched, e.g. a demonstration, an airport, etc.
You need a phone call to make outgoing calls.
You may need an incoming number that you can leave with friends.
If you need a camera, take a stand-alone camera with a blank memory card.
If you need a smart phone, buy a burner phone. But most people don't want to spend $50 on a burner smart-phone for each rally they go to.
There are companies that make "plain" cell phones that do nothing but send and receive calls.
They are mostly marketed to people who want "a land line in their pocket." One even advertises "it has dial tone!" (oooh, ahhh, shiney!).
If the feds seize a phone like this, all they will get is the electronic serial number an, consequently, your phone number and whatever they can get with that information. They won't get anything else useful of the phone itself.
This does nothing to keep me from pointing a high-speed, high-resolution camera at my screen.
It also does nothing to stop me from doing a "tear-down" of my high-resolution, HDMI, DRM-compliant monitor and monitoring the electrical signals that make the pixels light up.
Sure, this is awkward and expensive, but I, er, I mean people like me in other countries, only have to do this once (per video) then put the results up on the Interwebs for everyone to download.
How it is handled in the United Corporations of America, though...
The court case is from the USA, er, I mean the UCA.
They admit that their removal program is counterfeit but they are expanding it anyways???
I'm sooooooo confused.
It's from the Electronic Frontier Foundation's web site, that's almost the equivalent of a "diplomatic passport" when it comes to Slashdot.