I just want to know if this is in any way connected to the nuclear subs that lost navigation after they switched to Microsoft Windows based software. Generally, when this kind of thing happens, some external vendor is to blame.
Consolidation of ISPs and centralization by telecoms have crippled the Internet. In the past, redundant routes and competing ISPs were commonplace. Today, everybody wants to play gatekeeper and charge for traffic. Less routes & pipes = less bandwidth & redundancy.
For the record: ISPs are making plenty of money on YouTube traffic, they simply want to ALSO charge the consumer. How many $millions per month does YouTube pay? How many $millions per month do broadband subscribers pay? That, we're led to believe, isn't a fair enough arrangement. We must ALSO pay for usage because the ISPs can't live up to their service agreements.
The state of the U.S. Internet is the epitome of greed. Europe, Japan, China,... almost every other country (even 3rd world ones), have better network infrastructures. The ISP "dream" is to charge per kilobyte on the sending AND receiving end... like cell phone companies charge per MMS.
The Internet needs continual technological upgrades and effective capacity planning... not throttling and surcharges.
"You can pay $1300 for a mac...or you can spend $700 for a PC. Which do you THINK parents are going to buy?"
You make decent point, but you're leaving reality out of the equation. Microsoft Vista will not run on a $700 PC. By the time you equip it with enough RAM and necessary upgrades, a new PC will cost more than most Macintosh models. The effective price difference isn't that great.
I do think that the political system is far too broken to hope congress(wo)men will take letters to heart. Constituents are far too easily influnced by catchy propaganda ("it's for the children", "combat the war on terror", "make the internet safer") to care about the real issue at hand. Privacy and liberty has fallen behind perceived safety and justice.
I think that the best way to get the point across is a grassroots effort to inform the public to take political action. That said, with everything else going on, I doubt such an effort would be effective. It would need a philanthropic contribution to have any real influence and staying power, IMO. This isn't a battle that can be won overnight. It's also not a battle that yields great profits.
Encryption is very important in maintaining privacy. Chief among importance is limiting the government's intervention into cryptographic exports and key lengths... and their constant efforts to include cryptographic back-doors in hardware and the ciphers themselves. People need to understand that cryptography is essential to keeping outside eyes from prying into their lives. For it to be effective, it has to have the same benefit for all people and for all activities. To keep the average Joe safe, we need to keep the average criminal safe. Spying on all citizens, because they might be criminals, is not how law enforcement should be conducted. Convincing some individuals of this concept will be difficult, if not impossible ("I don't have anything to hide, and neither should you.", "Jesus sees my every deed, why not Uncle Sam?").
Redundant networks, quite necessary, are exactly something telecoms are trying to prevent. Redundancy would help slow centralized monitoring at least for awhile. Right now, the power is in the network. Telecoms charge the heck out of each other to move traffic between competing network segments. Multiple routes hardly even exist anymore. A large ISP can seriously hinder any peer-to-peer network with the flip of a switch. It's very difficult to circumvent at least one of the big boys on any given TCP request.
Technologies must be developed that can prevent outside intervention and control. I'm thinking mandatory user-controlled encryption of all data, but no more black-box hardware. That will be difficult, considering all of the trusted computing platform initiatives... all of which have unpublicized back doors.
Here's a crazy idea:
Distribute a software client that does nothing but fire off 1,000's of bogus HTTP requests, emails, and instant messages each second. Mass adoption is essential to hide data within the noise. The flood of log data will make it nearly impossible for ISPs to capture it all. If monitoring MUST happen, we can at least make it a royal pain in the ass to do. Something like that could hold off global monitoring efforts until it becomes more cost effective. If we up the noise ratio, we can make Internet activity monitoring a statistician's worst nightmare.
Everybody knows that politicians know very little about the Internet (tubes anyone?). There's a misconception that an IP address is as reliable as a fingerprint. The reality is, most criminals can bounce their connection around and evade lame measures like this.
IP addresses aren't unique nor do they necessarily identify a user at a particular moment in time. If coming behind an AOL proxy, the only way to discover the actual user, is for AOL to log all outbound TCP & UDP connections. It can't be done... yet.
I know our government exceeds at spreading bureaucracy and inefficiency, but I didn't think they'd start destroying the Internet so soon. Reactionary laws, "moral" laws, regulations, privacy invasion,... The rest of the world is going to leave us behind. Doing anything innovative on the Internet will be hindered by procedures, forms, and compliance measures.
A computer scientist doesn't need to know C or Ruby on Rails. A Computer Scientist needs to know about Unlimited Register Machines..."
I completely agree, however, isn't learning at least one language necessary? It's very hard to learn these theories without applying them repetitively. Solving graph theory problems with Scheme may not be ideal, but it's good enough, IMO. Even if you're not going into software, some programming is very helpful.
I think higher level languages are great in education because they offer training wheels (memory management, hardware abstraction, etc.), but it really doesn't matter much. For some reason, people place too much emphasis on the tools rather than the concepts. A proper CS educated individual should be multi-lingual by nature. Like you said, C and RoR are just syntax.
The feds will always have access to everyone's pr0n collections. These things (disk encryption) are only really good at keeping petty thieves away from your data. The truly motivated will always break your encryption key.
I'd like to know how Apple's FileVault does in comparison. Is it better, worse, about the same?
"Your argument is similar to when Dow Chemical argued that it was patriotic for them to produce napalm..."
Not so much. Ad-ware isn't an implement of death, last I checked, and it's easily avoided. Few would have to uninstall ad-ware if they'd refrain from installing crap like Bonsai Buddy. People should consider actually reading EULAs since most ad-ware doesn't install itself. What you're getting yourself into is often right there in plain english. If you don't have the time, then you're lazy. If you can't understand the wording, then you're stupid. If you can't read the EULA, for any reason, you shouldn't install the software. It's a binding agreement.
Don't appreciate the occasional drive-by download? First, don't use Internet Explorer. Everybody knows Internet Explorer is inherently insecure, yet people still use it, then bitch & whine when it allows something insecure to happen. Imagine the odds of that. Who knew? (other than everybody). Any other browser written by any other entity will offer better protection. Nothing's perfect, but everything is better than IE in this respect.
As a user of the world's most insecure operating system, a firewall and virus scanner are necessities, but so is some discretion. You can't hang out on warez & porn sites with an insecure browser and O/S. Software pirates and pornographers, while they might seem trust worthy, often are not. You don't get ad-ware from surfing CNN and you don't get it checking your email.
Ad-ware is a self-inflicted condition, while things like SPAM, Internet worms, and napalm are not.
Several years ago, I took the information that I learned from working in the industry and went white-hat. I've worked on several high-profile (and well known) security projects that leverage the lessons I learned from writing ad-ware. You cannot understand this industry from the outside looking in.
Your computer is more secure, in part, because of me. I shit you not....And what's so malicious about replacing your search results with pr0n advertisements? Isn't that what everyone is searching for anyway?
As each new hole is exploited, Microsoft will eventually work to close them. Even indirectly, ad-ware IMPROVES security against truly malicious behavior like identity theft. Like your immune system, the only way to strengthen a complex system is to attack it... constantly. Without real attacks, Microsoft will never issue a patch. This is fact. It's a cost thing.
When I used to be employed to write adware, we did this at least once a day. I shit you not.
You just can't hide running processes as well as you can on Windows. No other operating system offers so many diverse methods to run executable code as a privileged user. Believe me when I say: Exploiting Windows is like stealing candy from a baby.
BitTorrent, on a well designed network, will save an ISP money. The argument can be made that there's less traffic going out to the Internet and more staying local to the ISPs LAN. Basically, it's more cost effective for neighbors to serve each other content than to pull it from somewhere else.
The ISPs are ticked off that users are actually using the bandwidth that they pay for. If they didn't sell so far over capacity, this wouldn't be an issue at all. I understand that BitTorrent can bring routers to their knees, but only bad ones. ISPs, generally, shouldn't be using the same hardware sold at Best Buy. If their equipment can't handle it, chances are it's already at capacity.
I pay for 12MiB of bandwidth and I expect to saturate it. I don't want my ISP telling me that I can't use a particular protocal because I might actually max out the speed that I'm paying for. What am I paying a performance surcharge for? Anything that might cause them to fulfill their service agreement, they seem to be against. There even used to be an unenforceable ban on streaming video by my ISP.
BitTorrent will be the way telecoms introduce usage surcharges on top of monthly service agreements. They won't stop until Internet usage is billed like cellular telephones... buy a base bandwidth, and for each Kb/sec over that speed, you pay an additional fee... plus $0.25 per text message (email) sent... but "unlimited" (up to 2MiB) nights & weekend bandwidth.
This is why France has broadband 100 times faster than us.
VMWare virtual appliances are distributed by BitTorrent. Linux ISOs, trial software, games, independent films... that's a significant proportion, although still not a majority.
Web pages about breast cancer are next on the list to be censored. Remember, the U.S.A. believes that all breasts, regardless of context, are sinful & dirty. Even breast feeding an infant will get people wound up.
The breasts are for feeding children. Somehow, everyone has forgotten that they are just food dispensers. The anti-porn movement has begun to influence common sensibilities. "Moral values" groups would rather have mothers feed their child formula (much less healthy), than risk exposing a nipple in public. This has got to stop.
Porn will eventually broaden to include anything "unpopular," the future definition of obscenity. When people begin to cover naked statues, it's gone too far. When they become hysterical over a breast, it's gone too far. Anyone who believes online porn is the biggest world problem worth tackling, should be shot for their irrational beliefs. If you hate your body, kill yourself.
The idea that the Internet should be made "safe" is offensive to me on so many levels. If parents would do their job and not let their kids roam the Internet unsupervised, this entire argument would disappear. I, for one, want the puritans the hell away from technology legislation. What about you?
The Internet is not a playground for children. It's not a fun Christian diversion. It's a network for anyone and everyone to connect to one another electronically. Let's not turn it into Disneyland or Utah. The last thing society needs is FCC-like regulations on everything they do online. Besides, the responsibility in raising children shouldn't fall into the hands of people than don't have any. Parents need to police this issue, not parents AND single individuals.
The "save the children" argument is just a cheap way to achieve the anti-porn agenda. Don't be fooled. It has nothing to do with kids. Trust me, they'll have pre-marital sex and get each other pregnant without online porn. It's been happening for 1,000's of years and will happen for a thousand more. Humans will do what they're biologically designed to do. Legislation can't stop that.
It CAN, however, open the door for more censorship-inspired legislation. How long until the FCC steps in and begins to fine people that use profanity online? I don't think I'm exaggerating my fears. It's already ridiculous that you can't say "Shit" on the radio. After all, how many kids listen to Larry King Live?
Censorship of any kind is fascism. It doesn't matter what cause it's attached to. Today it's porn. Tomorrow it's anti-Americanism. Just because you may not agree with porn, doesn't mean that laws should be passed to control it. Look away. Install commercially available filtering products. Don't let your kids surf unsupervised. For that matter, don't leave your kids unsupervised near ANYTHING you don't want them around. Just don't ask big brother to watch over you. That fucks us all.
The iTunes music store was one of the first, but it's not the only online music store to come along. Numerous companies have attempted their own failed ventures into this frontier, all using one in a handful of mutually-exclusive DRM technologies.
Buying music online is generally a bad idea. At best, it's a convenience with instant gratification. At worst, you'll need to repurchase whatever you buy. Anywhere you buy music online (legally), you are being locked into a content protection scheme. If it's not FairPlay then it's probably Plays For Sure.
When you actually purchase the CD and spend 5 minutes encoding it, you get better audio quality and a backup that will last longer than a CD-R. You also have physical proof of ownership, album art you'll probably never look at, and something that can be returned if it's terrible.
Java is a compiled language. I'm kind of surprised you would write with such authority on the language and make that mistake.
Sorry, but I don't consider byte code to be compiled. Just in time compilation isn't quite the same thing, it's a translation layer. If it were, then JavaScript and C# would be considered to be compiled languages.
The fact that Java can be compiled, doesn't necessarily make it a compiled language, IMO. If I'm wrong in this, then I apologize. It is possible to compile Java with gcj, but this is an extra step that requires external tools. Do you think it's really fair to include external, and optional, tools? Besides, gcj isn't exactly endorsed in many circles because of loosing platform independence.
...it is about how concisely you can capture the idea in code
concise Expressing much in few words; clear and succinct.
I disagree completely. Society has become far too soft. We're encouraging kids to be victims.
The only reason bullies exist is because there's hardly any fear of retaliation. Like criminals, bullies prey on the weak. At every school I've ever attended, no bully will attack a kid they know will fight back. They'd rather go for the ones that take their punishment in silence.
Instead of "talking" to kids to help them cope with the bullying or inflicting ineffective punishments (detention, suspension, etc), kids should be taught to fight back... with fists. Any other solution to this "problem" will result in a world filled with victims.
Java is not as fast as anything else. A statement like this can only come from a non-C++ coder.
The Client vs. Server argument seems to always be mentioned whenever Java's performance comes into question... as if server-side Java is some kind of turbo-charged utopia. It's not. Throwing more hardware at inefficiency doesn't make it fast. It only covers up the problem. I don't care that this kind of waste has become the norm in the Java community. It's fundamentally repulsive.
Java is definitely slow for client applications. There's just no argument, not even bad coding practices can explain why it's so bad. When was the last time you used client-side Java and thought, "Wow, this is snappy." For example (since I can't throw project code up here):
Eclipse is slow even with Sun's latest JVM. I've seen (and debugged) C++ applications, written much more poorly, that execute much faster... and crash less often... and use much less RAM... and not freeze up while doing garbage collection... and not struggle so hard to write a 4k text file... etc.
I use Eclipse daily. I use it on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It sucks on all three platforms because it's slow, prone to crashing, and has periodic bouts of unresponsiveness. This sums up my experience with Java everywhere I've used it. It's not the code, as Eclipse is actually written quite well. Besides, isn't Java supposed to prevent developers from writing code bad enough to cause a crash? I think it's the JVM, but I might be wrong. Java developers (all of them) might just not be very good, because that's the only other explanation.
As someone who has a lot of practical experience with Java in the workplace, the supposed "gains" in coding productivity ("Speed of development") are a tad over hyped. You can still leak resources and memory. You can still code dead locks and race conditions. You still have to profile your code & memory usage. Large programs execute slowly and erratically. On top of all of this, Java still has its fanboys that insist it's not so bad. I'm still surprised at how much developers will put up with just to avoid learning a compiled language.
Saying that the iPhone is cool simply isn't original. So, how do you grab attention? The same way John C. Dvorak does in his columns: Be negative and speculate on disaster. That gets attention. It can even get you slashdotted.
I've heard complaints about the lack of a replaceable battery, 3G, CDMA, IR, GPS... even Wii-mote compatibility. This is version 1.0. There's plenty of new and unproven features to worry about. Who creates full featured products from scratch perfectly on their very first try? No one. That's an unbelievably lofty expectation for a first-generation product.
I have a feeling that if the iPhone also made breakfast, some people would complain that it didn't give them a blowjob afterward. If it did that too, then they'd complain that it didn't do it fast enough. If it did, someone would think it did too much. People just have to complain about shit they usually don't even own.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh wait. Maybe they just forgot to activate their copy of Windows before taking off.
I just want to know if this is in any way connected to the nuclear subs that lost navigation after they switched to Microsoft Windows based software. Generally, when this kind of thing happens, some external vendor is to blame.
Consolidation of ISPs and centralization by telecoms have crippled the Internet. In the past, redundant routes and competing ISPs were commonplace. Today, everybody wants to play gatekeeper and charge for traffic. Less routes & pipes = less bandwidth & redundancy.
... almost every other country (even 3rd world ones), have better network infrastructures. The ISP "dream" is to charge per kilobyte on the sending AND receiving end... like cell phone companies charge per MMS.
For the record: ISPs are making plenty of money on YouTube traffic, they simply want to ALSO charge the consumer. How many $millions per month does YouTube pay? How many $millions per month do broadband subscribers pay? That, we're led to believe, isn't a fair enough arrangement. We must ALSO pay for usage because the ISPs can't live up to their service agreements.
The state of the U.S. Internet is the epitome of greed. Europe, Japan, China,
The Internet needs continual technological upgrades and effective capacity planning... not throttling and surcharges.
"You can pay $1300 for a mac...or you can spend $700 for a PC. Which do you THINK parents are going to buy?"
You make decent point, but you're leaving reality out of the equation. Microsoft Vista will not run on a $700 PC. By the time you equip it with enough RAM and necessary upgrades, a new PC will cost more than most Macintosh models. The effective price difference isn't that great.
That's a lot of questions. Here's my $0.02:
I do think that the political system is far too broken to hope congress(wo)men will take letters to heart. Constituents are far too easily influnced by catchy propaganda ("it's for the children", "combat the war on terror", "make the internet safer") to care about the real issue at hand. Privacy and liberty has fallen behind perceived safety and justice.
I think that the best way to get the point across is a grassroots effort to inform the public to take political action. That said, with everything else going on, I doubt such an effort would be effective. It would need a philanthropic contribution to have any real influence and staying power, IMO. This isn't a battle that can be won overnight. It's also not a battle that yields great profits.
Encryption is very important in maintaining privacy. Chief among importance is limiting the government's intervention into cryptographic exports and key lengths... and their constant efforts to include cryptographic back-doors in hardware and the ciphers themselves. People need to understand that cryptography is essential to keeping outside eyes from prying into their lives. For it to be effective, it has to have the same benefit for all people and for all activities. To keep the average Joe safe, we need to keep the average criminal safe. Spying on all citizens, because they might be criminals, is not how law enforcement should be conducted. Convincing some individuals of this concept will be difficult, if not impossible ("I don't have anything to hide, and neither should you.", "Jesus sees my every deed, why not Uncle Sam?").
Redundant networks, quite necessary, are exactly something telecoms are trying to prevent. Redundancy would help slow centralized monitoring at least for awhile. Right now, the power is in the network. Telecoms charge the heck out of each other to move traffic between competing network segments. Multiple routes hardly even exist anymore. A large ISP can seriously hinder any peer-to-peer network with the flip of a switch. It's very difficult to circumvent at least one of the big boys on any given TCP request.
Technologies must be developed that can prevent outside intervention and control. I'm thinking mandatory user-controlled encryption of all data, but no more black-box hardware. That will be difficult, considering all of the trusted computing platform initiatives... all of which have unpublicized back doors.
Here's a crazy idea:
Distribute a software client that does nothing but fire off 1,000's of bogus HTTP requests, emails, and instant messages each second. Mass adoption is essential to hide data within the noise. The flood of log data will make it nearly impossible for ISPs to capture it all. If monitoring MUST happen, we can at least make it a royal pain in the ass to do. Something like that could hold off global monitoring efforts until it becomes more cost effective. If we up the noise ratio, we can make Internet activity monitoring a statistician's worst nightmare.
Everybody knows that politicians know very little about the Internet (tubes anyone?). There's a misconception that an IP address is as reliable as a fingerprint. The reality is, most criminals can bounce their connection around and evade lame measures like this.
... The rest of the world is going to leave us behind. Doing anything innovative on the Internet will be hindered by procedures, forms, and compliance measures.
IP addresses aren't unique nor do they necessarily identify a user at a particular moment in time. If coming behind an AOL proxy, the only way to discover the actual user, is for AOL to log all outbound TCP & UDP connections. It can't be done... yet.
I know our government exceeds at spreading bureaucracy and inefficiency, but I didn't think they'd start destroying the Internet so soon. Reactionary laws, "moral" laws, regulations, privacy invasion,
I completely agree, however, isn't learning at least one language necessary? It's very hard to learn these theories without applying them repetitively. Solving graph theory problems with Scheme may not be ideal, but it's good enough, IMO. Even if you're not going into software, some programming is very helpful.
I think higher level languages are great in education because they offer training wheels (memory management, hardware abstraction, etc.), but it really doesn't matter much. For some reason, people place too much emphasis on the tools rather than the concepts. A proper CS educated individual should be multi-lingual by nature. Like you said, C and RoR are just syntax.
The feds will always have access to everyone's pr0n collections. These things (disk encryption) are only really good at keeping petty thieves away from your data. The truly motivated will always break your encryption key.
I'd like to know how Apple's FileVault does in comparison. Is it better, worse, about the same?
Not so much. Ad-ware isn't an implement of death, last I checked, and it's easily avoided. Few would have to uninstall ad-ware if they'd refrain from installing crap like Bonsai Buddy. People should consider actually reading EULAs since most ad-ware doesn't install itself. What you're getting yourself into is often right there in plain english. If you don't have the time, then you're lazy. If you can't understand the wording, then you're stupid. If you can't read the EULA, for any reason, you shouldn't install the software. It's a binding agreement.
Don't appreciate the occasional drive-by download? First, don't use Internet Explorer. Everybody knows Internet Explorer is inherently insecure, yet people still use it, then bitch & whine when it allows something insecure to happen. Imagine the odds of that. Who knew? (other than everybody). Any other browser written by any other entity will offer better protection. Nothing's perfect, but everything is better than IE in this respect.
As a user of the world's most insecure operating system, a firewall and virus scanner are necessities, but so is some discretion. You can't hang out on warez & porn sites with an insecure browser and O/S. Software pirates and pornographers, while they might seem trust worthy, often are not. You don't get ad-ware from surfing CNN and you don't get it checking your email.
Ad-ware is a self-inflicted condition, while things like SPAM, Internet worms, and napalm are not.
Several years ago, I took the information that I learned from working in the industry and went white-hat. I've worked on several high-profile (and well known) security projects that leverage the lessons I learned from writing ad-ware. You cannot understand this industry from the outside looking in.
...And what's so malicious about replacing your search results with pr0n advertisements? Isn't that what everyone is searching for anyway?
Your computer is more secure, in part, because of me. I shit you not.
As each new hole is exploited, Microsoft will eventually work to close them. Even indirectly, ad-ware IMPROVES security against truly malicious behavior like identity theft. Like your immune system, the only way to strengthen a complex system is to attack it... constantly. Without real attacks, Microsoft will never issue a patch. This is fact. It's a cost thing.
When I used to be employed to write adware, we did this at least once a day. I shit you not.
You just can't hide running processes as well as you can on Windows. No other operating system offers so many diverse methods to run executable code as a privileged user. Believe me when I say: Exploiting Windows is like stealing candy from a baby.
Actually, mebibytes are used in RAM. Harddrives choose the cheaper measurement.
BitTorrent, on a well designed network, will save an ISP money. The argument can be made that there's less traffic going out to the Internet and more staying local to the ISPs LAN. Basically, it's more cost effective for neighbors to serve each other content than to pull it from somewhere else.
The ISPs are ticked off that users are actually using the bandwidth that they pay for. If they didn't sell so far over capacity, this wouldn't be an issue at all. I understand that BitTorrent can bring routers to their knees, but only bad ones. ISPs, generally, shouldn't be using the same hardware sold at Best Buy. If their equipment can't handle it, chances are it's already at capacity.
I pay for 12MiB of bandwidth and I expect to saturate it. I don't want my ISP telling me that I can't use a particular protocal because I might actually max out the speed that I'm paying for. What am I paying a performance surcharge for? Anything that might cause them to fulfill their service agreement, they seem to be against. There even used to be an unenforceable ban on streaming video by my ISP.
BitTorrent will be the way telecoms introduce usage surcharges on top of monthly service agreements. They won't stop until Internet usage is billed like cellular telephones... buy a base bandwidth, and for each Kb/sec over that speed, you pay an additional fee... plus $0.25 per text message (email) sent... but "unlimited" (up to 2MiB) nights & weekend bandwidth.
This is why France has broadband 100 times faster than us.
VMWare virtual appliances are distributed by BitTorrent. Linux ISOs, trial software, games, independent films... that's a significant proportion, although still not a majority.
Web pages about breast cancer are next on the list to be censored. Remember, the U.S.A. believes that all breasts, regardless of context, are sinful & dirty. Even breast feeding an infant will get people wound up.
The breasts are for feeding children. Somehow, everyone has forgotten that they are just food dispensers. The anti-porn movement has begun to influence common sensibilities. "Moral values" groups would rather have mothers feed their child formula (much less healthy), than risk exposing a nipple in public. This has got to stop.
Porn will eventually broaden to include anything "unpopular," the future definition of obscenity. When people begin to cover naked statues, it's gone too far. When they become hysterical over a breast, it's gone too far. Anyone who believes online porn is the biggest world problem worth tackling, should be shot for their irrational beliefs. If you hate your body, kill yourself.
The idea that the Internet should be made "safe" is offensive to me on so many levels. If parents would do their job and not let their kids roam the Internet unsupervised, this entire argument would disappear. I, for one, want the puritans the hell away from technology legislation. What about you?
The Internet is not a playground for children. It's not a fun Christian diversion. It's a network for anyone and everyone to connect to one another electronically. Let's not turn it into Disneyland or Utah. The last thing society needs is FCC-like regulations on everything they do online. Besides, the responsibility in raising children shouldn't fall into the hands of people than don't have any. Parents need to police this issue, not parents AND single individuals.
The "save the children" argument is just a cheap way to achieve the anti-porn agenda. Don't be fooled. It has nothing to do with kids. Trust me, they'll have pre-marital sex and get each other pregnant without online porn. It's been happening for 1,000's of years and will happen for a thousand more. Humans will do what they're biologically designed to do. Legislation can't stop that.
It CAN, however, open the door for more censorship-inspired legislation. How long until the FCC steps in and begins to fine people that use profanity online? I don't think I'm exaggerating my fears. It's already ridiculous that you can't say "Shit" on the radio. After all, how many kids listen to Larry King Live?
Censorship of any kind is fascism. It doesn't matter what cause it's attached to. Today it's porn. Tomorrow it's anti-Americanism. Just because you may not agree with porn, doesn't mean that laws should be passed to control it. Look away. Install commercially available filtering products. Don't let your kids surf unsupervised. For that matter, don't leave your kids unsupervised near ANYTHING you don't want them around. Just don't ask big brother to watch over you. That fucks us all.
The iTunes music store was one of the first, but it's not the only online music store to come along. Numerous companies have attempted their own failed ventures into this frontier, all using one in a handful of mutually-exclusive DRM technologies.
Buying music online is generally a bad idea. At best, it's a convenience with instant gratification. At worst, you'll need to repurchase whatever you buy. Anywhere you buy music online (legally), you are being locked into a content protection scheme. If it's not FairPlay then it's probably Plays For Sure.
When you actually purchase the CD and spend 5 minutes encoding it, you get better audio quality and a backup that will last longer than a CD-R. You also have physical proof of ownership, album art you'll probably never look at, and something that can be returned if it's terrible.
Java is a compiled language. I'm kind of surprised you would write with such authority on the language and make that mistake.
Sorry, but I don't consider byte code to be compiled. Just in time compilation isn't quite the same thing, it's a translation layer. If it were, then JavaScript and C# would be considered to be compiled languages.
The fact that Java can be compiled, doesn't necessarily make it a compiled language, IMO. If I'm wrong in this, then I apologize. It is possible to compile Java with gcj, but this is an extra step that requires external tools. Do you think it's really fair to include external, and optional, tools? Besides, gcj isn't exactly endorsed in many circles because of loosing platform independence.
...it is about how concisely you can capture the idea in code
conciseExpressing much in few words; clear and succinct.
I disagree completely. Society has become far too soft. We're encouraging kids to be victims. The only reason bullies exist is because there's hardly any fear of retaliation. Like criminals, bullies prey on the weak. At every school I've ever attended, no bully will attack a kid they know will fight back. They'd rather go for the ones that take their punishment in silence. Instead of "talking" to kids to help them cope with the bullying or inflicting ineffective punishments (detention, suspension, etc), kids should be taught to fight back... with fists. Any other solution to this "problem" will result in a world filled with victims.
Hey man. I use my caps-lock key daily. How on Earth will I be able to type important emails from now on?
Java is not as fast as anything else. A statement like this can only come from a non-C++ coder.
The Client vs. Server argument seems to always be mentioned whenever Java's performance comes into question... as if server-side Java is some kind of turbo-charged utopia. It's not. Throwing more hardware at inefficiency doesn't make it fast. It only covers up the problem. I don't care that this kind of waste has become the norm in the Java community. It's fundamentally repulsive.
Java is definitely slow for client applications. There's just no argument, not even bad coding practices can explain why it's so bad. When was the last time you used client-side Java and thought, "Wow, this is snappy." For example (since I can't throw project code up here):
Eclipse is slow even with Sun's latest JVM. I've seen (and debugged) C++ applications, written much more poorly, that execute much faster... and crash less often... and use much less RAM... and not freeze up while doing garbage collection... and not struggle so hard to write a 4k text file... etc.
I use Eclipse daily. I use it on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It sucks on all three platforms because it's slow, prone to crashing, and has periodic bouts of unresponsiveness. This sums up my experience with Java everywhere I've used it. It's not the code, as Eclipse is actually written quite well. Besides, isn't Java supposed to prevent developers from writing code bad enough to cause a crash? I think it's the JVM, but I might be wrong. Java developers (all of them) might just not be very good, because that's the only other explanation.
As someone who has a lot of practical experience with Java in the workplace, the supposed "gains" in coding productivity ("Speed of development") are a tad over hyped. You can still leak resources and memory. You can still code dead locks and race conditions. You still have to profile your code & memory usage. Large programs execute slowly and erratically. On top of all of this, Java still has its fanboys that insist it's not so bad. I'm still surprised at how much developers will put up with just to avoid learning a compiled language.
Is Eclipse written with Swing? I'd say it suffers from more than the first click problem.
The Fastest JDK? So... that puts it somewhere between G.W. Basic and Perl?
Saying that the iPhone is cool simply isn't original. So, how do you grab attention? The same way John C. Dvorak does in his columns: Be negative and speculate on disaster. That gets attention. It can even get you slashdotted.
I've heard complaints about the lack of a replaceable battery, 3G, CDMA, IR, GPS... even Wii-mote compatibility. This is version 1.0. There's plenty of new and unproven features to worry about. Who creates full featured products from scratch perfectly on their very first try? No one. That's an unbelievably lofty expectation for a first-generation product.
I have a feeling that if the iPhone also made breakfast, some people would complain that it didn't give them a blowjob afterward. If it did that too, then they'd complain that it didn't do it fast enough. If it did, someone would think it did too much. People just have to complain about shit they usually don't even own.
If DJ Drama tells consumers what good music is, then the studios won't be able to push the new K-Fed album.