When I first read TFA, I thought of
The Cathedral and the Bazaar. However I don't think that releasing early and often alone will lead to higher quality software. It would seem that MS is playing the numbers game to keep up with the number of releases you'd see in an open source project.
In the open source community frequent releases are due to rapid user feedback. In the MS world, it seems, releases happen because features that the competition has are better or because an exploit needs fixing. I suppose one could see it as a way of MS responding to user feed back but it's neither direct nor rapid.
This shift to release often for MS seems a bit unsettling given the amount of time typically needed for software to be QAed in the cathedral model. Can Microsoft release often and keep up with QAing releases in spite of an increasing number of customers questioning the corporation's ability to QA it's products?
Modded funny? I honestly think it's a valid solution provided that there are some checks and balances to insure reasonable values for X and Y. That's right fine the software vendor not because a flaw exists but because it knows about it and does nothing.
I believe positive pressure is required. The software company is wrong to not fix it. If the security companies are wrong to apply reasonable pressure then where is the right?
I personally don't care if its technically a meaningless statistic. Its the perception of internet users, the press, and the competition that is the important metric. The perception of competition is sometimes enough to spark innovation and creativity on the product line. Which means better products for me.
Unlike the tobacco products, these games aren't clearly bad for all customers (see this which was also discussed on/. here).
Its a big frenzy created by a small percentage of parents, blown out of proportion by the press and being capitalized upon by politicians. In the end we all lose another nibble of freedom.
We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.
So when we go to war we should refrain from targeting communication towers so that we can preserve the enemy's right to free speech?
I would rather the terrorist get a 404 and commit an attack that was less effective and less organized.
FTA: "Government-sponsored monitoring systems, such as Echelon, can track vast amounts of data but have so far proved of minimal benefit in preventing, or even warning, of attacks."
Keep the sights up for intelligence? They don't seem to be getting any. The terrorist, however, seem to be getting all the communication they need. Is that "Intelligent?"
Oh, BTW, I spoke with the British authorities and they have agreed to consult you first before taking down any more web sights. They apologized for making rash decisions on your behalf.
A good carpenter has lots of tools and uses the most suitable tool(s) for each task.
A good carpenter also has favorite multi-use tools. He will often choose a favorite over a specially designed tool. Sometimes the tool isn't available or quickly accessible. The carpenter can save time by using a more general purpose tool in a skillful way (After all he's very good with his favorite tool and knows it's capabilities and limitations).
When you start getting close to the limitations of a tool, by all means use a better one. I've known carpenters who would rent a tool when it obviously would make the end product better or more time effective. He didn't own the tool and wasn't necessarily a master of the tool, but he was able to use it just the same. General purpose skills enabled him to learn quick.
I don't remember the name of the tool--something to do with wood floors (Good thing I'm not a carpenter). When I asked him why he didn't own one for himself he just kind of shrugged and said that he wouldn't use it often enough.
Re:Wow, a whole story I disagree with! Hmm....
on
Basics of RAID
·
· Score: 1
1. RAID implementations on most consumer-grade motherboards (EIDE RAID with Promise controllers on-board, and so on) are cheezy. I've tried using them for several years now, and I ran into lots of unexplainable "glitches" that never occured when I took RAID out of the equation. (EG. The RAID array would suddenly report a failed drive, yet when I'd pull the drive out and try reformatting/reusing it on another machine as a stand-alone C: drive, it would have no problems at all and S.M.A.R.T. reported it was fine too.)
Yes. Promise controllers suck. I have one and occasionally it "forgets" how the drives were set up. Nothing is actually wrong with the drives. It is possible (on mine anyway) to re-enter the configuration and resume normal operation without data loss. The trick being is answering NO when asked if you want to quick initialize the RAID.
I've had no problems with my other on-board RAID controller (made by VIA).
Re:SCSI RAID Yes, IDE RAID No
on
Basics of RAID
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Speaking of SCSI features, NCQ is now available on some SATA drives. It's not the full blown SCSI version, from what I gather, but it does bench well. See Tom's article on it.
I have two RAID controllers populated with two drives each in RAID-0. One has two of Western Digital's Raptors (74GB 10,000 RPM). The other with two of Maxtor's DiamondMax HDDs(250GB 7200 RPM). The latter has NCQ and benches significantly better. Some of the difference may be related to one RAID controller being better than the other (I didn't benchmark both controllers with the same drives), but I suspect the bigger difference is due to the NCQ features of the DiamonMax HDD.
Would it be possible to patch affected software after market? If I purchased some software compiled with Intel's compiler and own an AMD processor it would bug the crap out of me knowing that it could be better.
There are thousands of cracks to defeat the copy protection in games. Could we see cracks that would unleash the full potential of AMD processors?
Would it be legal to do so? Would a software vender actually prosecute someone if they created or used such a patch?
Let's say it records 20 variables per ride and rides 400 times in a day... that's not a significant amount of data to process and store. Sure it may make for a better ride. However, you can hardly compare it to a data center in the context of modern technology.
It would be interesting to see the technology applied to coasters that have already proven to be great rides. Nothing wrong with a little tweaking:)
"Don't get to proud of this technological terror you've constructed..."
I don't play many games beyond Spider solitaire but here are my thoughts on the game:
The storyline seems a bit repetitive a bit repetitive. You meet up with the hot chick and get separated. You meet up with her again... and get separated. Total tease, but then most women are.
The game would be more interesting if there was more than exactly one way through the game. Hell even Mario Bros had more than one way through the game. Now that I've beaten the game, I probably won't play it again. The game's value is depreciated at this point. (This is one reason I like Rockstar's GTA games despite the fact that the software is plagued by bugs and is lacking in 3D rendering capability.)
Games are like pornos you just can't find one with a good storyline.
Despite graduating MIT, the dude never speaks. I don't care if it's a "feature." It's annoying listening to the other characters put words in the main character's mouth because he can't speak. One could argue that the storyline is weaker because you have no idea what's on his mind.
Aside from some lighting issues, the graphics are stunning when played on expensive hardware (lucky for me).
So the window should be 4 inches thick and shouldn't open at all. Who needs fresh air anyway. It's better to have a product that has less functionality and to pay more money for it.
Call to action: Make crime legal--it will fortify us and make us stronger.
For many, many, things yes. But some events (i.e. what time we wake up and start work) are relevant to the local time zone. It's much easier to say "I have to get up everyday at 0500" than to say "I have to get up at 2100 GMT and tomorrow when the time zone changes 2200 GMT."
A change of events could cause us to be in a completely different time zone than originally planed. Let's say I schedule meting to for the 21st of December at 1530 GMT-0 on board the ship. That could be in the middle of the night in the time zone I'll be in for all I know. But if I say that the meeting will be at 1530 relevant to the ship's time zone things become much saner.
Outlook/Exchange and GMT-0 are only sane when the time zone of the scheduled event is known. For example, you know that your exchange server is in GMT-8 (US West Coast) and you know that a meeting is at 0900 GMT+1 (Rome).
Contrast that with only knowing what time an event will occur relative to an unknown time zone.
Does anyone who ever worked on Outlook ever get on a plane? Ever? Do they know what a time zone is?
Anyone take an exchange server around the world? I maintain a few shipboard servers for the US Navy, and one thing I know (believe) is that Microsoft never intended for exchange servers to change time zones. If we update the time zone of the server, say advance it by one time zone, all scheduled events are off by an hour. The only solution we found that outlook, exchange, and some other software would work with (because they seem to have differing ideas about how to reflect the change) was to leave the time zone the same and just advance the clock.
It seems also that both exchange and outlook have some if-then blocks to deal with some time zone changing, but nether knows what the other does about it. I'm not sure if this has changed with newer versions of the software (we are several behind the current).
One would think that if the exchange server doesn't move (it usually doesn't), that outlook would work across time zone changes.
... Anything that allows a person to be tracked by the government (even for potentially legitimate reasons) allows a person to be tracked by malevolent persons as well. That is never an option IMHO.
Thank you.
I personally enjoy the freedom of not being monitored by entities that I don't know if I can trust. I can walk into a store look around, perhaps buy an item, pay cash and leave and not worry about being tracked by some database whose existence is for the express purpose of targeting me for financial gain.
You've seen the Tom Cruse movie. Dude walks by a poster and it changes to reflect his "interests." Now everyone in the store knows that he's pussy whipped and buys feminine hygiene products for his wife.
It has been widely recognized that most governing bodies don't understand the technology being governed most of the time.
I'm reminded of something my brother once said about getting a degree. He said that there are two types of people with degrees. Those who can use the degree do. Those that can't, teach. He further went on to say that most of his instructors were genuinely talented at analyzing algorithms, critiquing papers, or whatever but at the same time lacked creativity. They could critique one's creation, but in general couldn't create one of their own.
I believe the truth to be some what greyer, but it's still an interesting out take of his x years at school.
Soon your sixteen-year-old will not only be busted for downloading music, but for downloading the RepRap code to build his own Sony MP3 player.
But on the other hand, I can't find my keys... hmmm...
If you think about it most of us are already renting software. Newer software comes out and we buy it. It's a scheduled payment (Google Microsoft for "Life-Cycle Policy" to find out when most of the world will be making its next payment). It's simple math: price over time.
We may as well rent our storage space too. Many of us go out and buy larger hard disks all the time (Look up Moore's Law for that payment schedule).
As to being a "slave"... we already are. It's just who we are being sold to next that's in question.
Slashdot Mirror
When I first read TFA, I thought of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. However I don't think that releasing early and often alone will lead to higher quality software. It would seem that MS is playing the numbers game to keep up with the number of releases you'd see in an open source project.
In the open source community frequent releases are due to rapid user feedback. In the MS world, it seems, releases happen because features that the competition has are better or because an exploit needs fixing. I suppose one could see it as a way of MS responding to user feed back but it's neither direct nor rapid.
This shift to release often for MS seems a bit unsettling given the amount of time typically needed for software to be QAed in the cathedral model. Can Microsoft release often and keep up with QAing releases in spite of an increasing number of customers questioning the corporation's ability to QA it's products?
Modded funny? I honestly think it's a valid solution provided that there are some checks and balances to insure reasonable values for X and Y. That's right fine the software vendor not because a flaw exists but because it knows about it and does nothing.
I believe positive pressure is required. The software company is wrong to not fix it. If the security companies are wrong to apply reasonable pressure then where is the right?
I personally don't care if its technically a meaningless statistic. Its the perception of internet users, the press, and the competition that is the important metric. The perception of competition is sometimes enough to spark innovation and creativity on the product line. Which means better products for me.
Stop spoiling the fun. >:)
Unlike the tobacco products, these games aren't clearly bad for all customers (see this which was also discussed on /. here).
Its a big frenzy created by a small percentage of parents, blown out of proportion by the press and being capitalized upon by politicians. In the end we all lose another nibble of freedom.
We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.
So when we go to war we should refrain from targeting communication towers so that we can preserve the enemy's right to free speech?
I would rather the terrorist get a 404 and commit an attack that was less effective and less organized.
FTA: "Government-sponsored monitoring systems, such as Echelon, can track vast amounts of data but have so far proved of minimal benefit in preventing, or even warning, of attacks."
Keep the sights up for intelligence? They don't seem to be getting any. The terrorist, however, seem to be getting all the communication they need. Is that "Intelligent?"
Oh, BTW, I spoke with the British authorities and they have agreed to consult you first before taking down any more web sights. They apologized for making rash decisions on your behalf.
A good carpenter has lots of tools and uses the most suitable tool(s) for each task.
A good carpenter also has favorite multi-use tools. He will often choose a favorite over a specially designed tool. Sometimes the tool isn't available or quickly accessible. The carpenter can save time by using a more general purpose tool in a skillful way (After all he's very good with his favorite tool and knows it's capabilities and limitations).
When you start getting close to the limitations of a tool, by all means use a better one. I've known carpenters who would rent a tool when it obviously would make the end product better or more time effective. He didn't own the tool and wasn't necessarily a master of the tool, but he was able to use it just the same. General purpose skills enabled him to learn quick.
I don't remember the name of the tool--something to do with wood floors (Good thing I'm not a carpenter). When I asked him why he didn't own one for himself he just kind of shrugged and said that he wouldn't use it often enough.
1. RAID implementations on most consumer-grade motherboards (EIDE RAID with Promise controllers on-board, and so on) are cheezy. I've tried using them for several years now, and I ran into lots of unexplainable "glitches" that never occured when I took RAID out of the equation. (EG. The RAID array would suddenly report a failed drive, yet when I'd pull the drive out and try reformatting/reusing it on another machine as a stand-alone C: drive, it would have no problems at all and S.M.A.R.T. reported it was fine too.)
Yes. Promise controllers suck. I have one and occasionally it "forgets" how the drives were set up. Nothing is actually wrong with the drives. It is possible (on mine anyway) to re-enter the configuration and resume normal operation without data loss. The trick being is answering NO when asked if you want to quick initialize the RAID.
I've had no problems with my other on-board RAID controller (made by VIA).
Speaking of SCSI features, NCQ is now available on some SATA drives. It's not the full blown SCSI version, from what I gather, but it does bench well. See Tom's article on it.
I have two RAID controllers populated with two drives each in RAID-0. One has two of Western Digital's Raptors (74GB 10,000 RPM). The other with two of Maxtor's DiamondMax HDDs(250GB 7200 RPM). The latter has NCQ and benches significantly better. Some of the difference may be related to one RAID controller being better than the other (I didn't benchmark both controllers with the same drives), but I suspect the bigger difference is due to the NCQ features of the DiamonMax HDD.
that their penis could be HUGE!
Would it be possible to patch affected software after market? If I purchased some software compiled with Intel's compiler and own an AMD processor it would bug the crap out of me knowing that it could be better.
There are thousands of cracks to defeat the copy protection in games. Could we see cracks that would unleash the full potential of AMD processors?
Would it be legal to do so? Would a software vender actually prosecute someone if they created or used such a patch?
Akkk... I'm dumb. 20 was a type-o of 200 which I fudged from the article's said 300.
400 was intended even though it'd be ludicrous to think they could load and fire off the coaster that many times in a day.
Still not a significant amount of data.
Let's say it records 20 variables per ride and rides 400 times in a day... that's not a significant amount of data to process and store. Sure it may make for a better ride. However, you can hardly compare it to a data center in the context of modern technology.
:)
It would be interesting to see the technology applied to coasters that have already proven to be great rides. Nothing wrong with a little tweaking
"Don't get to proud of this technological terror you've constructed..."
I don't play many games beyond Spider solitaire but here are my thoughts on the game:
The storyline seems a bit repetitive a bit repetitive. You meet up with the hot chick and get separated. You meet up with her again... and get separated. Total tease, but then most women are.
The game would be more interesting if there was more than exactly one way through the game. Hell even Mario Bros had more than one way through the game. Now that I've beaten the game, I probably won't play it again. The game's value is depreciated at this point. (This is one reason I like Rockstar's GTA games despite the fact that the software is plagued by bugs and is lacking in 3D rendering capability.)
Games are like pornos you just can't find one with a good storyline.
Despite graduating MIT, the dude never speaks. I don't care if it's a "feature." It's annoying listening to the other characters put words in the main character's mouth because he can't speak. One could argue that the storyline is weaker because you have no idea what's on his mind.
Aside from some lighting issues, the graphics are stunning when played on expensive hardware (lucky for me).
So the window should be 4 inches thick and shouldn't open at all. Who needs fresh air anyway. It's better to have a product that has less functionality and to pay more money for it. Call to action: Make crime legal--it will fortify us and make us stronger.
A Microsoft product using Google data? Surely Microsoft would have to re-invent its own version of that wheel and then over-inflate it.
Dosn't the USN use UCT for everything?
For many, many, things yes. But some events (i.e. what time we wake up and start work) are relevant to the local time zone. It's much easier to say "I have to get up everyday at 0500" than to say "I have to get up at 2100 GMT and tomorrow when the time zone changes 2200 GMT."
A change of events could cause us to be in a completely different time zone than originally planed. Let's say I schedule meting to for the 21st of December at 1530 GMT-0 on board the ship. That could be in the middle of the night in the time zone I'll be in for all I know. But if I say that the meeting will be at 1530 relevant to the ship's time zone things become much saner.
Outlook/Exchange and GMT-0 are only sane when the time zone of the scheduled event is known. For example, you know that your exchange server is in GMT-8 (US West Coast) and you know that a meeting is at 0900 GMT+1 (Rome).
Contrast that with only knowing what time an event will occur relative to an unknown time zone.
Does anyone who ever worked on Outlook ever get on a plane? Ever? Do they know what a time zone is?
Anyone take an exchange server around the world? I maintain a few shipboard servers for the US Navy, and one thing I know (believe) is that Microsoft never intended for exchange servers to change time zones. If we update the time zone of the server, say advance it by one time zone, all scheduled events are off by an hour. The only solution we found that outlook, exchange, and some other software would work with (because they seem to have differing ideas about how to reflect the change) was to leave the time zone the same and just advance the clock.
It seems also that both exchange and outlook have some if-then blocks to deal with some time zone changing, but nether knows what the other does about it. I'm not sure if this has changed with newer versions of the software (we are several behind the current).
One would think that if the exchange server doesn't move (it usually doesn't), that outlook would work across time zone changes.
Thank you.
I personally enjoy the freedom of not being monitored by entities that I don't know if I can trust. I can walk into a store look around, perhaps buy an item, pay cash and leave and not worry about being tracked by some database whose existence is for the express purpose of targeting me for financial gain.
You've seen the Tom Cruse movie. Dude walks by a poster and it changes to reflect his "interests." Now everyone in the store knows that he's pussy whipped and buys feminine hygiene products for his wife.
It has been widely recognized that most governing bodies don't understand the technology being governed most of the time.
I'm reminded of something my brother once said about getting a degree. He said that there are two types of people with degrees. Those who can use the degree do. Those that can't, teach. He further went on to say that most of his instructors were genuinely talented at analyzing algorithms, critiquing papers, or whatever but at the same time lacked creativity. They could critique one's creation, but in general couldn't create one of their own. I believe the truth to be some what greyer, but it's still an interesting out take of his x years at school.
Soon your sixteen-year-old will not only be busted for downloading music, but for downloading the RepRap code to build his own Sony MP3 player. But on the other hand, I can't find my keys... hmmm...
If you think about it most of us are already renting software. Newer software comes out and we buy it. It's a scheduled payment (Google Microsoft for "Life-Cycle Policy" to find out when most of the world will be making its next payment). It's simple math: price over time. We may as well rent our storage space too. Many of us go out and buy larger hard disks all the time (Look up Moore's Law for that payment schedule). As to being a "slave"... we already are. It's just who we are being sold to next that's in question.