I remember that Perl was not too good for web programming. It was unstable in a sense that variables sometimes got strange values inexplicably.
Funny, the thing I -like- about Perl is that it is very stable in the sense that variables never get strange values inexplicably. It is a very deterministic environment, set it up and it just works as promised.
And also the architecture of the language was not suited for web pages. When I saw PHP3, I switched to it immediately and never looked back.
There are packages that make it very well suited for web pages. OK, you can't really just sprinkle code into your html like you can with php (or maybe you can, but really, why the hell would you want to do that?) but it generates web pages just fine.
I totally agree with you about sanity checking in addition to using bound parameters. Never trust input.
People put too much stock in the home energy savings angle.
I hooked up a Kill-A-Watt to my whole computer/media center stack (computer/monitor/stereo/mixer/external HDDs/assorted electronics), and it was pulling about 65 watts. The only thing that pushed that number up was cranking the stereo.
It costs about 5 bucks a month to leave this stack running 24/7. 5 bucks. If I was to be looking for significant energy savings, I think I would be looking somewhere else.
Want to save energy? Insulate your house. Take shorter showers.
Want to save money? Stop drinking cappuccinos and eating fast food, but leave the fscking computer alone.
anyone who has hooked up a Kill-A-Watt to their computer, and then calculated how much money per year they're spending on it, disagrees with you.
The parent was arguing that producing -corn- for energy takes away from the -corn- supply for raising meat.
I'm not arguing against eating meat (in moderation!), but if it comes down to corn to raise meat vs. corn to feed people vs. corn to produce ethanol, then we should at least consider eating less meat. If that reduced amount of meat is grass-fed, all the better.
Then again, I don't think that using corn to produce ethanol is the greatest idea either, which brings us back on topic - cellulosic biofuel.
Personally, I've chosen to eat less meat and its not the big sacrifice that you might think it is. It's an easy lifestyle change that, if adopted on a wider scale would be both healthy for people and more sustainable in the long run.
I did not advocate strict vegetarianism/veganism. I challenge you to point out where in my post I did. Most of your argument a strawman.
I would wager that the average American consumes far more meat than they need to meet their nutritional requirements.
The greenhouse gas that cattle produce is mostly methane, not CO2. Even if you count the sequestration in the growing of the crops, the carbon is being converted into a more potent greenhouse gas.
You are an idiot. Food/Resource shortages are real. I'm in agriculture, on the animal production side, and I can assure you that there is a finite amount of corn available, and corn based ethanol production is resulting in higher demand. We've always produced more corn than was needed domestically, and much of the excess was then shipped overseas. The current trends for corn production and domestic corn use for human food, animal food, and ethanol production are going to reach a point where we don't have enough corn to meet all 3 and still export any.
Gee, maybe we shouldn't be eating so many animals, since they are an inefficient use of grain.
It takes several pounds of grain (I have seen figures from 4 - 16) to produce 1 pound of beef. Not to mention that cattle are a significant source of greenhouse gasses.
Reducing your meat consumption is a very simple way of reducing your carbon footprint.
No, bugs aren't caused by the user. They are uncovered by the user.
Look, I know that users and their unforeseeable behavior is a major aggravation for developers. As the saying goes, make something idiot-proof, and the world will create a better idiot.
How can a user actually -create- a bug, when all they are doing is running the program? They may do something you didn't anticipate, but that's on you. It's humbling, but blaming the user doesn't do anything to make better software.
GPL is kind of like the paparazzi following you around saying "you're free to do anything you want, just as long as you don't mind that I share it with everybody". Hmmm, actually it's like if the paparazzi would force you to take your own pictures and publish them.
From the sound of your analogy, you clearly either don't understand the GPL or you are just trolling.
The only time you have to share your changes to GPL'd software is if you have modified it and choose to -distribute- it. If you don't distribute the modified version, you are free to keep the changes to yourself.
Merely using GPL software doesn't force any restrictions on you.
Your paparazzi analogy is pure FUD.
You know, the language of the GPL is pretty straightforward. Why don't you take a few minutes to actually read it before you start spouting more crap like this.
Passwords are now some 39+ years old "technology" we the IT community are deficient in not delivering up the next solution that is easy, friendly to use, safe and predictable. Instead we keep whipping dead horses.
Any real IT solution ought to institute the sacred 3: Something you have, Something you know, something you are as minimal the for authentication. Zero COTS OS institute this. This is a conjob on the public by IT R&D, programmers & hardware manufacturers to sell what is possible and necessary as marked up aftermarket upgrades.
Gotta give this one a big AMEN!
We keep upping the password "complexity requirements" until passwords are rendered useless. Passwords are so 20th century. It is time to address the problem, not the symptom.
I have worked in a PKI-enabled environment, and not only is it easier for the user, it can be far more secure.
It is more expensive to implement than passwords, and things often tend toward the lowest common denominator.
I'm not so sure about the third factor, though. Something you are cannot be revoked. For most environments two factors are good enough. Certainly better than one factor.
Dobs are useless for photography. You would have to use an equatorial mount.
It would me even more interesting to know his digital process. That's where the magic happens. Of course you have to start with a good set of the right kind of exposures, but it's the processing that brings out the sort of details you see in the photos. The images that come out of the hardware don't look anything like the photos.
In fact, with a fairly modest mount/tracking setup, a DSLR, and the right processing (also a healthy dose of patience), you can get surprisingly good astrophotos.
With a corporation, it isn't a matter of wanting to kill humans. It is simply a matter of accounting.
If the cost of killing humans is much less than the expected profit, then it is the corporation's duty to kill humans, since it is the corporation's duty to maximize profits for the shareholders. That's the whole purpose of a corporation, to maximize profits for the shareholders.
No, free market assumes equal opportunity. If any party in the market has access to information that anyone else in the market doesn't have access to, the ideal breaks down and the market is neither efficient or free. The situation described in TFA is a case in point.
I agree that if people knew the presence of cadmium and its effects, they would not buy cadmium laden bracelets. However people do not know, they have any way of knowing such a thing, and as most people would presume that such a toxin would never be in children's bracelets there is unlikely to be inquiry by most purchasers (many are also likely aware that the salesperson knows as much about the heavy metal content of the bracelet as they would know about... virtually anything, hence there is no source of information that can be accessed with reasonable levels of effort).
With enough money one can ensure the market never "knows". A well funded company that has purchased all its competitors and has inroads into multiple marketing vectors can present whatever image they feel appropriate. Your rebuttal would seem to be premised on a society made up predominantly of informed, conscientious consumers. That is not the society we now live in. Consumers today are at best uninformed, indifferent, and short-sighted. On average they are self-indulgent, misinformed, and impulsive.
One of the assumptions of an ideal/perfect market is that there is no information disparity. Everyone has access to the same information. For many reasons, this is not the case in a real market. It's not just that the consumers are indifferent. As you pointed out, the information disparity can come from other places, and the problem under discussion is the result of information disparity.
The people who tout the free market as the perfect solution based on the ideal of the perfect market are no different than the people who tout Communism based on the ideal of Communism. The ideal is predicated on assumptions that can't exist in the real world.
Having read this thread this morning, I was walking down the aisle in the store and came across a shiny new "Cisco/LinkSys" wireless router.
I read every bit of text on the box, and while there was plenty of info about what OSs it is "compatible" with, there was not a single mention of whether or not it is IPv6 compatible. No hype == no adoption.
This is a big barrier, the little consumer-level device at the end of the wire.
Most people with DSL have the "modem/router" that their service provider provided with the connection. If that huge base of installed equipment isn't upgraded to IPv6 (and who is going to pay for it?), then IPv6 is a FAIL.
Insightful? Why hasn't this whole thread been modded off-topic? What I see here is a political discussion, nothing about the movement of the magnetic pole due to core flux....
In conventional (earth) nuke scenarios, getting into the 100MT range has practical implications that limit the possibilities for testing, and those implications probably don't apply in a space scenario.
You're fighting the inverse square law, so one logical compensation is to use bigger nukes.
What I've seen on government (at least federal government) systems is that all communications are subject to monitoring and there is no expectation of privacy except for privileged communications (personal representation or services by attorneys, psychotherapists or clergy).
There is a policy that allows limited personal use, as long as it doesn't cost the government any more money and some other conditions (no pr0n, not to be used to run a business, no sexual harassment, etc.), but the expectation of privacy is explicitly limited to privileged communications.
Certainly a good perspective and common sense, but both are in short supply these days. Add common courtesy to that list.
If you spend much time reading the threads here about things like reducing consumption, riding a bike, using a smaller car or driving less, etc., you quickly see that the majority attitude is "fuck it, why should -I- make a sacrifice?", or "that just -won't- work for me, I'm special", "It's my -right- to do whatever -I- want, it's my money".
Empathy, perspective, and common sense are pretty much dead, AFAICT.
I hate the Chicken Little stuff too, it's insulting. But appealing to common sense doesn't work. In our current (dare I say post-9/11) frame of mind, Chicken Little rules.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember that Perl was not too good for web programming. It was unstable in a sense that variables sometimes got strange values inexplicably.
Funny, the thing I -like- about Perl is that it is very stable in the sense that variables never get strange values inexplicably. It is a very deterministic environment, set it up and it just works as promised.
And also the architecture of the language was not suited for web pages. When I saw PHP3, I switched to it immediately and never looked back.
There are packages that make it very well suited for web pages. OK, you can't really just sprinkle code into your html like you can with php (or maybe you can, but really, why the hell would you want to do that?) but it generates web pages just fine.
I totally agree with you about sanity checking in addition to using bound parameters. Never trust input.
People put too much stock in the home energy savings angle.
I hooked up a Kill-A-Watt to my whole computer/media center stack (computer/monitor/stereo/mixer/external HDDs/assorted electronics), and it was pulling about 65 watts. The only thing that pushed that number up was cranking the stereo.
It costs about 5 bucks a month to leave this stack running 24/7. 5 bucks. If I was to be looking for significant energy savings, I think I would be looking somewhere else.
Want to save energy? Insulate your house. Take shorter showers.
Want to save money? Stop drinking cappuccinos and eating fast food, but leave the fscking computer alone.
anyone who has hooked up a Kill-A-Watt to their computer, and then calculated how much money per year they're spending on it, disagrees with you.
I've done it and I disagree with -you-.
RIP IE6
Burn in HELL, IE6!!
profiting off the misfortune and ill-health of people is the worst kind of dickery.
I assume you don't also mean doctors, nurses and EMTs.
Wow, I've actually heard that song...
The parent was arguing that producing -corn- for energy takes away from the -corn- supply for raising meat. I'm not arguing against eating meat (in moderation!), but if it comes down to corn to raise meat vs. corn to feed people vs. corn to produce ethanol, then we should at least consider eating less meat. If that reduced amount of meat is grass-fed, all the better. Then again, I don't think that using corn to produce ethanol is the greatest idea either, which brings us back on topic - cellulosic biofuel. Personally, I've chosen to eat less meat and its not the big sacrifice that you might think it is. It's an easy lifestyle change that, if adopted on a wider scale would be both healthy for people and more sustainable in the long run.
I did not advocate strict vegetarianism/veganism. I challenge you to point out where in my post I did. Most of your argument a strawman.
I would wager that the average American consumes far more meat than they need to meet their nutritional requirements.
The greenhouse gas that cattle produce is mostly methane, not CO2. Even if you count the sequestration in the growing of the crops, the carbon is being converted into a more potent greenhouse gas.
You are an idiot. Food/Resource shortages are real. I'm in agriculture, on the animal production side, and I can assure you that there is a finite amount of corn available, and corn based ethanol production is resulting in higher demand. We've always produced more corn than was needed domestically, and much of the excess was then shipped overseas. The current trends for corn production and domestic corn use for human food, animal food, and ethanol production are going to reach a point where we don't have enough corn to meet all 3 and still export any.
Gee, maybe we shouldn't be eating so many animals, since they are an inefficient use of grain.
It takes several pounds of grain (I have seen figures from 4 - 16) to produce 1 pound of beef. Not to mention that cattle are a significant source of greenhouse gasses.
Reducing your meat consumption is a very simple way of reducing your carbon footprint.
It's healthy, too...
No, bugs aren't caused by the user. They are uncovered by the user.
Look, I know that users and their unforeseeable behavior is a major aggravation for developers. As the saying goes, make something idiot-proof, and the world will create a better idiot.
How can a user actually -create- a bug, when all they are doing is running the program? They may do something you didn't anticipate, but that's on you. It's humbling, but blaming the user doesn't do anything to make better software.
The onus is on the developer, not the user.
GPL is kind of like the paparazzi following you around saying "you're free to do anything you want, just as long as you don't mind that I share it with everybody". Hmmm, actually it's like if the paparazzi would force you to take your own pictures and publish them.
From the sound of your analogy, you clearly either don't understand the GPL or you are just trolling.
The only time you have to share your changes to GPL'd software is if you have modified it and choose to -distribute- it. If you don't distribute the modified version, you are free to keep the changes to yourself.
Merely using GPL software doesn't force any restrictions on you.
Your paparazzi analogy is pure FUD.
You know, the language of the GPL is pretty straightforward. Why don't you take a few minutes to actually read it before you start spouting more crap like this.
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
Passwords are now some 39+ years old "technology" we the IT community are deficient in not delivering up the next solution that is easy, friendly to use, safe and predictable. Instead we keep whipping dead horses. Any real IT solution ought to institute the sacred 3: Something you have, Something you know, something you are as minimal the for authentication. Zero COTS OS institute this. This is a conjob on the public by IT R&D, programmers & hardware manufacturers to sell what is possible and necessary as marked up aftermarket upgrades.
Gotta give this one a big AMEN!
We keep upping the password "complexity requirements" until passwords are rendered useless. Passwords are so 20th century. It is time to address the problem, not the symptom.
I have worked in a PKI-enabled environment, and not only is it easier for the user, it can be far more secure.
It is more expensive to implement than passwords, and things often tend toward the lowest common denominator.
I'm not so sure about the third factor, though. Something you are cannot be revoked. For most environments two factors are good enough. Certainly better than one factor.
Dobs are useless for photography. You would have to use an equatorial mount.
It would me even more interesting to know his digital process. That's where the magic happens. Of course you have to start with a good set of the right kind of exposures, but it's the processing that brings out the sort of details you see in the photos. The images that come out of the hardware don't look anything like the photos.
In fact, with a fairly modest mount/tracking setup, a DSLR, and the right processing (also a healthy dose of patience), you can get surprisingly good astrophotos.
That's cos Bill didn't have the physical strength to lift and throw a chair being the penultimate geek.
If Gates was the penultimate geek, I want to know who was the ultimate geek, and what does that make me?
Do you really think they want to kill humans?
With a corporation, it isn't a matter of wanting to kill humans. It is simply a matter of accounting.
If the cost of killing humans is much less than the expected profit, then it is the corporation's duty to kill humans, since it is the corporation's duty to maximize profits for the shareholders. That's the whole purpose of a corporation, to maximize profits for the shareholders.
free market means equal opportunity.
No, free market assumes equal opportunity. If any party in the market has access to information that anyone else in the market doesn't have access to, the ideal breaks down and the market is neither efficient or free. The situation described in TFA is a case in point.
I agree that if people knew the presence of cadmium and its effects, they would not buy cadmium laden bracelets. However people do not know, they have any way of knowing such a thing, and as most people would presume that such a toxin would never be in children's bracelets there is unlikely to be inquiry by most purchasers (many are also likely aware that the salesperson knows as much about the heavy metal content of the bracelet as they would know about ... virtually anything, hence there is no source of information that can be accessed with reasonable levels of effort).
With enough money one can ensure the market never "knows". A well funded company that has purchased all its competitors and has inroads into multiple marketing vectors can present whatever image they feel appropriate. Your rebuttal would seem to be premised on a society made up predominantly of informed, conscientious consumers. That is not the society we now live in. Consumers today are at best uninformed, indifferent, and short-sighted. On average they are self-indulgent, misinformed, and impulsive.
One of the assumptions of an ideal/perfect market is that there is no information disparity. Everyone has access to the same information. For many reasons, this is not the case in a real market. It's not just that the consumers are indifferent. As you pointed out, the information disparity can come from other places, and the problem under discussion is the result of information disparity.
The people who tout the free market as the perfect solution based on the ideal of the perfect market are no different than the people who tout Communism based on the ideal of Communism. The ideal is predicated on assumptions that can't exist in the real world.
Having read this thread this morning, I was walking down the aisle in the store and came across a shiny new "Cisco/LinkSys" wireless router.
I read every bit of text on the box, and while there was plenty of info about what OSs it is "compatible" with, there was not a single mention of whether or not it is IPv6 compatible. No hype == no adoption.
This is a big barrier, the little consumer-level device at the end of the wire.
Most people with DSL have the "modem/router" that their service provider provided with the connection. If that huge base of installed equipment isn't upgraded to IPv6 (and who is going to pay for it?), then IPv6 is a FAIL.
No, I would just like to see the political rants go somewhere else. How is the any of the parent thread even remotely on-topic?
Goodbye EZTV?
Insightful? Why hasn't this whole thread been modded off-topic? What I see here is a political discussion, nothing about the movement of the magnetic pole due to core flux....
Definitely more power.
In conventional (earth) nuke scenarios, getting into the 100MT range has practical implications that limit the possibilities for testing, and those implications probably don't apply in a space scenario.
You're fighting the inverse square law, so one logical compensation is to use bigger nukes.
What I've seen on government (at least federal government) systems is that all communications are subject to monitoring and there is no expectation of privacy except for privileged communications (personal representation or services by attorneys, psychotherapists or clergy).
There is a policy that allows limited personal use, as long as it doesn't cost the government any more money and some other conditions (no pr0n, not to be used to run a business, no sexual harassment, etc.), but the expectation of privacy is explicitly limited to privileged communications.
s/Government/Corporate/g The fudging under corporate sponsorship is far more pervasive than under government sponsorship.
Certainly a good perspective and common sense, but both are in short supply these days. Add common courtesy to that list.
If you spend much time reading the threads here about things like reducing consumption, riding a bike, using a smaller car or driving less, etc., you quickly see that the majority attitude is "fuck it, why should -I- make a sacrifice?", or "that just -won't- work for me, I'm special", "It's my -right- to do whatever -I- want, it's my money".
Empathy, perspective, and common sense are pretty much dead, AFAICT.
I hate the Chicken Little stuff too, it's insulting. But appealing to common sense doesn't work. In our current (dare I say post-9/11) frame of mind, Chicken Little rules.