I believe Microsoft is getting more concerned about interoperability not out of goodness, but because of market pressure.
If you believe any company is concerned about interoperability because their hearts are filled with goodness, I've got a great business venture for you to invest in... click my PayPal link to get started.
Slight difference with this here is that no one is coming for anyone. Monitoring is not the same as imprisoning, and I have no reason to shed a tear for anyone who has been imprisoned, because it was done because of direct connections to terrorist plots. The funny idea you people seem to have is that the government is going to throw you in jail because they don't like you. That's never happened. You may think Bush is the goddamn devil but last time I checked he hasn't had the Secret Service quietly "silence" protesters. Sheehan is still yelling her head off about it and no one is putting her in jail.
Why do I care if a) some very large computer or b) some lowly desk jocky with a reference manual on "terrorist keywords" is parsing my e-mails? How does it affect me personally? It doesn't. And if you don't have anything to hide, then it doesn't affect you either. Your e-mail will come and go through the system and you won't ever know.
The person reading your e-mail gives less of a shit about who you are or what you have to say than the coffee they picked up on the way to their office that morning - you are less to them than a customer through the WalMart line is to the cashier.
Clinging to a principle for no practical reason is fanaticism, it's just that when it's YOUR principle, suddenly it's all about morality and your rights. Right?
Yes, coverage is very sharp and wonderful. Odd though, there's a forest where my 6-year-old subdivision should be. Now, I don't live in the center of the [tech] world that is California, but I would think a metro area of over a million people would have pictures from more recent than a decade ago (most of the areas on that list don't).
Instead of bashing MS and Windows, prove that you're the better programmer by compensating for the sometimes flawed security. If you don't think users can trust their OS, at least you can take pride in the fact that they can trust your software running on it. A solid piece of software is just as impenetrable on Windows as it is on Linux or any other platform - it's all about understanding the environment. Looks like a great book, thanks for the review.
FYI, the judge in Alabama cannot disbar Thompson, because Thompson is licensed to practice law in Florida. Moore is an Alabama judge. Moore can (and has) revoke[d] Thompson's Pro Hac Vice in Alabama, which is a kind of temporary acknowledgement of another state's bar license for an individual, for the duration of a single case.
The concept of a hyperlinked "world-wide-web" was invented at CERN. The Internet was invented by the United States Army in the 1960's, and the various parts of the underlying technical structure of the current inter-network system were invented at various universities and research parks in the US. Those entities in turn passed control onto ICANN.
Who said it was in danger? Oh, right - the people who have no say over it anyway. As has been said many times here, very few people in the US are going to blink if Europe or Asia yank the connection to the US network. And Mr. Khan may be the greatest negotiator to ever walk this earth, but that won't be enough to make any US diplomat agree to give up control. Of course he's being hailed as masterful by the people who already agree with him anyway. That's not exactly shocking.
There's no direct benefit to Microsoft for pouring billions of dollars into their Entertainment division. The Xbox is a money pit, but they keep dumping more into it because with time, Microsoft will become an established brand in the living room. The Xbox becomes a launching point for more products and services, and then profits. Same concept here with growing MSN.
They can spend billions of dollars and they will never catch up with Google, because Google has a position that money can't buy. It's not about Building a Better Browser this time - unless Microsoft manages to completely revolutionize search to where, as Eric Schmidt I believe put it, "it knows what you mean". However, Microsoft does have the right idea at least (we'll have to wait and see if they implement it well) with Live, and web-based productivity tools. Everyone has been deriding MS as "behind the curve" on the web-based, or subscription-based software model, claiming that the likes of Google will kill the desktop-oriented software market, and Microsoft with it, but Microsoft is the first to start rolling out prebetas of said software, while most else is just speculation and vapour.
Generally one does not seriously consider one old man and his wife running a semi-annual newsletter to a hundred or so people in the US and Canada about the shape of the Earth to be a "movement". Such a term has connotations that simply do not apply.
And whether a said book has inconsistencies is largely a matter of personal opinion, as any moderately intelligent person could soundly rebut arguments from either side.
I agree with your position, but not your reasoning. I find that good programmers are good programmers, regardless of whether they have a degree or not. I've never, in my career, seen a developer who understands fundamentals because of college, and I've never seen one who lacks skills because he or she didn't go to college.
However, a degree will generally add at least 10 g's to your salary, when you are compared to someone with comparable skill without a degree. College is the way to go. Doesn't matter if it is online or not - a degree is just an extra foot in the door. Talent and people skills will take you the rest of the way from there.
Bank of America (my bank) gives me an interest-rate boost on savings and money market accounts, as well as other nice little things, for agreeing to do everything through their website and forgo mailed paper statements.
Like the ignorance made apparent by assuming that religious beliefs are, by nature, born out of ignorance and not out of a deeply intellectual personal search for truth?
Not to lend credence to the Bible-thumping idiots, but evolution has its problems too. A rational search for the best answer to life, the universe and everything has caused many far more intelligent than you or I to conclude that some higher creator is a superior answer to the roll of some cosmic, trillion-faced dice. It is nothing but vanity and a very ill-placed trust in ones own faculties to dismiss every single one of such persons out of hand.
It's similar to poorer countries like Africa and China using stolen copies of Windows. They can't be expected to pay for it.
Actually, it's not like that at all. You're not going to die if you can't obtain your own copy of Windows 2000. Your analogy is more akin to saying "I can't afford a new computer, so I will go to Best Buy and steal one." Just because you don't have enough money for something doesn't mean you have the right to obtain it through other means. This situation is what they call "dire". Stealing copies of software for your poor is what they call "cheating to get ahead".
I was a paid consultant there for two years, and have been an employee an additional year since. No downtime in 5 years (the time our current IT admin has been running the show) is pretty impressive.
This will always be a problem because people don't want to have to deal with complex security. I wouldn't mind keeping an RSA authenticated keychain that has a rotating cryptographic key that changes every 60 seconds (a pretty cool solution, I've seen in action), but moron hick who doesn't see why he should have to have more than one password will never stand for it. Juggling multiple methods of authentication is too complex for the average Joe.
Thankfully, that average Joe is also the same moron who will fall victim to phishing instead of me. I'll never lose my money, so it's not my problem. A connundrum, if you will - the only people smart enough to do anything about it (or be willing to do anything about it) are the ones that such scams don't apply to anyway.
(No offense to any geeks/intellects happened to be named Joe)
I am a senior developer at an all-Microsoft company (I'm also good friends with the IT admin, so I help him alot and am familiar with the network). We print and ship direct mail (like bank statements and stuff), so we run alot of high-end, high volume printers, the size of a large trucks. We also do alot of high-volume data manipulation and data processing. Here are some metrics:
We have about 1000 employees across 6 locations. Every single workstation runs XP Pro.
We have about 45 servers, all either Dell rackmounted or Dell blades. They all run Server 2003, or some variation. We use Microsoft solutions for our domain, Active Directory, data storage, DNS/Nameserver, etc.
Our database servers are MS SQL 2000 (two running 2005 beta, plan to migrate all when it is released).
Our web servers all run IIS 6.
Our accounting system is Great Plains.
Our mail solution is Exchange/Outlook.
All co-location systems are Microsoft-based solutions.
Our IT staff is 5 people and the only things that ever break, ever (emphasis on the ever) is the non-MS software we HAVE to use for things like managing those massive printers.
It all comes down to what you know and what you're good at. Our IT admin is good at the Microsoft approach, and the implementation is flawless. If you're not good at it, then you are either a) good at Unix/Linux/OSS/whatever, or b) you're just stupid. Either way, the problem with your MS systems is you, not MS.
Elegant or otherwise "pretty" code is not necessarily more secure. Sometimes kludging produces the best practical solution. Elegant code is often more secure and complete, but that is correlation, not causation. It is often easy to assume that because the two change together, one must cause the other. There is nothing inherent to nice code that makes it secure.
OSS isn't inherently any more secure than proprietary software. It's just that the nature of the typical OSS developer vs a corporation means that the OSS organization is more transparent when bad things do happen. It doesn't mean that the security breach didn't already happen, though.
Job burnout is a serious issue for Americans, who typically work 20 hours or more per week than their lazy European counterparts. That is why the US accounts for 30% of the world's economic activity.
I find that such competitions are generally pretty worthless... like math competitions. The ability to solve problems that, while "complex" , are still solveable in mere hours, is not really indicative of a truly great talent in either field, mathematics or computer programming. It is simply indicative of a great talent of coming up with elegant solutions to very small, localized problems. Fine for the competition, but winning gives little reason that this young man will be any more successful a programmer than any other in the contest.
A feat worthy of congratulations, to be sure, but it has no bearing on the real world - though many, including Google, pretended that it does.
Complex Game Factors
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
I know alot of readers would really like to hear about how you approach the task of balancing complex strengths and weaknesses in games - for example, the relative speed and power of a unit in an RTS.
Slashdot Mirror
Shh. Questions are not the mark of a trusting person. You clearly have no place in our company of, uh, goodwill.
I believe Microsoft is getting more concerned about interoperability not out of goodness, but because of market pressure.
If you believe any company is concerned about interoperability because their hearts are filled with goodness, I've got a great business venture for you to invest in... click my PayPal link to get started.
Slight difference with this here is that no one is coming for anyone. Monitoring is not the same as imprisoning, and I have no reason to shed a tear for anyone who has been imprisoned, because it was done because of direct connections to terrorist plots. The funny idea you people seem to have is that the government is going to throw you in jail because they don't like you. That's never happened. You may think Bush is the goddamn devil but last time I checked he hasn't had the Secret Service quietly "silence" protesters. Sheehan is still yelling her head off about it and no one is putting her in jail.
Why do I care if a) some very large computer or b) some lowly desk jocky with a reference manual on "terrorist keywords" is parsing my e-mails? How does it affect me personally? It doesn't. And if you don't have anything to hide, then it doesn't affect you either. Your e-mail will come and go through the system and you won't ever know.
The person reading your e-mail gives less of a shit about who you are or what you have to say than the coffee they picked up on the way to their office that morning - you are less to them than a customer through the WalMart line is to the cashier.
Clinging to a principle for no practical reason is fanaticism, it's just that when it's YOUR principle, suddenly it's all about morality and your rights. Right?
Yes, coverage is very sharp and wonderful. Odd though, there's a forest where my 6-year-old subdivision should be. Now, I don't live in the center of the [tech] world that is California, but I would think a metro area of over a million people would have pictures from more recent than a decade ago (most of the areas on that list don't).
Instead of bashing MS and Windows, prove that you're the better programmer by compensating for the sometimes flawed security. If you don't think users can trust their OS, at least you can take pride in the fact that they can trust your software running on it. A solid piece of software is just as impenetrable on Windows as it is on Linux or any other platform - it's all about understanding the environment. Looks like a great book, thanks for the review.
FYI, the judge in Alabama cannot disbar Thompson, because Thompson is licensed to practice law in Florida. Moore is an Alabama judge. Moore can (and has) revoke[d] Thompson's Pro Hac Vice in Alabama, which is a kind of temporary acknowledgement of another state's bar license for an individual, for the duration of a single case.
The concept of a hyperlinked "world-wide-web" was invented at CERN. The Internet was invented by the United States Army in the 1960's, and the various parts of the underlying technical structure of the current inter-network system were invented at various universities and research parks in the US. Those entities in turn passed control onto ICANN.
I don't recall suggesting that the statement was more or less correct because of the number of times it has been said.
Who said it was in danger? Oh, right - the people who have no say over it anyway. As has been said many times here, very few people in the US are going to blink if Europe or Asia yank the connection to the US network. And Mr. Khan may be the greatest negotiator to ever walk this earth, but that won't be enough to make any US diplomat agree to give up control. Of course he's being hailed as masterful by the people who already agree with him anyway. That's not exactly shocking.
There's no direct benefit to Microsoft for pouring billions of dollars into their Entertainment division. The Xbox is a money pit, but they keep dumping more into it because with time, Microsoft will become an established brand in the living room. The Xbox becomes a launching point for more products and services, and then profits. Same concept here with growing MSN.
They can spend billions of dollars and they will never catch up with Google, because Google has a position that money can't buy. It's not about Building a Better Browser this time - unless Microsoft manages to completely revolutionize search to where, as Eric Schmidt I believe put it, "it knows what you mean". However, Microsoft does have the right idea at least (we'll have to wait and see if they implement it well) with Live, and web-based productivity tools. Everyone has been deriding MS as "behind the curve" on the web-based, or subscription-based software model, claiming that the likes of Google will kill the desktop-oriented software market, and Microsoft with it, but Microsoft is the first to start rolling out prebetas of said software, while most else is just speculation and vapour.
Generally one does not seriously consider one old man and his wife running a semi-annual newsletter to a hundred or so people in the US and Canada about the shape of the Earth to be a "movement". Such a term has connotations that simply do not apply.
And whether a said book has inconsistencies is largely a matter of personal opinion, as any moderately intelligent person could soundly rebut arguments from either side.
I agree with your position, but not your reasoning. I find that good programmers are good programmers, regardless of whether they have a degree or not. I've never, in my career, seen a developer who understands fundamentals because of college, and I've never seen one who lacks skills because he or she didn't go to college.
However, a degree will generally add at least 10 g's to your salary, when you are compared to someone with comparable skill without a degree. College is the way to go. Doesn't matter if it is online or not - a degree is just an extra foot in the door. Talent and people skills will take you the rest of the way from there.
Bank of America (my bank) gives me an interest-rate boost on savings and money market accounts, as well as other nice little things, for agreeing to do everything through their website and forgo mailed paper statements.
Ignorance is hard to fight.
Like the ignorance made apparent by assuming that religious beliefs are, by nature, born out of ignorance and not out of a deeply intellectual personal search for truth?
Not to lend credence to the Bible-thumping idiots, but evolution has its problems too. A rational search for the best answer to life, the universe and everything has caused many far more intelligent than you or I to conclude that some higher creator is a superior answer to the roll of some cosmic, trillion-faced dice. It is nothing but vanity and a very ill-placed trust in ones own faculties to dismiss every single one of such persons out of hand.
It's similar to poorer countries like Africa and China using stolen copies of Windows. They can't be expected to pay for it.
Actually, it's not like that at all. You're not going to die if you can't obtain your own copy of Windows 2000. Your analogy is more akin to saying "I can't afford a new computer, so I will go to Best Buy and steal one." Just because you don't have enough money for something doesn't mean you have the right to obtain it through other means. This situation is what they call "dire". Stealing copies of software for your poor is what they call "cheating to get ahead".
I was a paid consultant there for two years, and have been an employee an additional year since. No downtime in 5 years (the time our current IT admin has been running the show) is pretty impressive.
This will always be a problem because people don't want to have to deal with complex security. I wouldn't mind keeping an RSA authenticated keychain that has a rotating cryptographic key that changes every 60 seconds (a pretty cool solution, I've seen in action), but moron hick who doesn't see why he should have to have more than one password will never stand for it. Juggling multiple methods of authentication is too complex for the average Joe.
Thankfully, that average Joe is also the same moron who will fall victim to phishing instead of me. I'll never lose my money, so it's not my problem. A connundrum, if you will - the only people smart enough to do anything about it (or be willing to do anything about it) are the ones that such scams don't apply to anyway.
(No offense to any geeks/intellects happened to be named Joe)
- We have about 1000 employees across 6 locations. Every single workstation runs XP Pro.
- We have about 45 servers, all either Dell rackmounted or Dell blades. They all run Server 2003, or some variation. We use Microsoft solutions for our domain, Active Directory, data storage, DNS/Nameserver, etc.
- Our database servers are MS SQL 2000 (two running 2005 beta, plan to migrate all when it is released).
- Our web servers all run IIS 6.
- Our accounting system is Great Plains.
- Our mail solution is Exchange/Outlook.
- All co-location systems are Microsoft-based solutions.
- Our IT staff is 5 people and the only things that ever break, ever (emphasis on the ever) is the non-MS software we HAVE to use for things like managing those massive printers.
It all comes down to what you know and what you're good at. Our IT admin is good at the Microsoft approach, and the implementation is flawless. If you're not good at it, then you are either a) good at Unix/Linux/OSS/whatever, or b) you're just stupid. Either way, the problem with your MS systems is you, not MS.Elegant or otherwise "pretty" code is not necessarily more secure. Sometimes kludging produces the best practical solution. Elegant code is often more secure and complete, but that is correlation, not causation. It is often easy to assume that because the two change together, one must cause the other. There is nothing inherent to nice code that makes it secure.
OSS isn't inherently any more secure than proprietary software. It's just that the nature of the typical OSS developer vs a corporation means that the OSS organization is more transparent when bad things do happen. It doesn't mean that the security breach didn't already happen, though.
Job burnout is a serious issue for Americans, who typically work 20 hours or more per week than their lazy European counterparts. That is why the US accounts for 30% of the world's economic activity.
I find that such competitions are generally pretty worthless... like math competitions. The ability to solve problems that, while "complex" , are still solveable in mere hours, is not really indicative of a truly great talent in either field, mathematics or computer programming. It is simply indicative of a great talent of coming up with elegant solutions to very small, localized problems. Fine for the competition, but winning gives little reason that this young man will be any more successful a programmer than any other in the contest.
A feat worthy of congratulations, to be sure, but it has no bearing on the real world - though many, including Google, pretended that it does.
I know alot of readers would really like to hear about how you approach the task of balancing complex strengths and weaknesses in games - for example, the relative speed and power of a unit in an RTS.