Pretty much this. I can use just about anything as background music once I've heard it a few dozen times. I use radio and similar when I want to find new stuff, but when I want background music I just put my "good stuff" playlist on shuffle.
For me it just has to be familiar. It can have lyrics, crazy guitar and drum solos, loud screaming, whatever, as long as I've heard it a few dozen times it fades into the background for me.
Personally I tend to like melodic rock (classic, progressive, even some of the lighter metal) when coding. Pink Floyd, the more ballad-y stuff from GnR, Pearl Jam, Red Rider, hell even Metallica (yeah yeah, shuddup).
Also WTF is up with the layout changes on slashdot. They couldn't get people to swallow beta, so now they are fucking up the non-beta site?
That's not even limited to ancient gear. My old PC at work did that, and it had a dual core processor so it wasn't _that_ old. It was kind of a weird long drawn out high pitched "dragging" sound.. very annoying.
I don't think they are claiming noise in the stored data (although from the articles they don't really claim anything), so much as noise that would effect a near by audio input or output. That is, say, you've got some kind of device that records an analog signals (from say a mic) to an SD card, and the act of writing to that SD card is generating noise which is then making it's way into your analog input.
I still say bullshit. This is right up there with specialty wooden volume knobs in the "maybe with scientific equipment you can see an effect, but practically speaking forget it" category, but at least we're not in Monster "high end digital cable" territory.
Even in the bad old days, stuff would occasionally break, but the whole site usually stayed up, and in either case things were fixed very quickly. Outright outages up until Dice took over were pretty damn rare, but now as you said, they've become rather frequent, and when they do happen, it's for hours. Also the alignment of various elements occasionally goes wonkey and comment boxes only fill up half the screen.
I almost wonder if they are trying to degrade the performance of the site on purpose in a really desperate attempt to push us into their beta disaster.
I love Java, but not even a diehard fanboy will argue that it isn't excessively verbose and loaded with boilerplate code. The amount of code attributed to various getters, setters, and comparison methods alone often eclipses the actual functionality of a class. Not to mention doing just about anything with most Java APIs involves all kinds of intermediary wrapper objects.
Idealism hits up hard against pragmatism. Software is one thing, but when you are selling a physical device with a real cost to manufacture, it has to actually do stuff for people to buy it.
I'm all for fighting DRM, but building what would be a mostly useless device and having it sit unsold serves no purpose.
Generally agree. I use it for a handful of Windows apps I still need (like the updater for my GPS) and a few purpose specific Linux installs and it works fine for that. I'll probably keep using it as long as it still works. Worst case, KVM will probably do what I want just as well.
Sure there are other (paid) alternatives out there but VirtualBox does it's job well for me.
KVM is probably the closest alternative and is free (probably more so than VirtualBox is you go all church of Stallman mode).
Indeed, and some software falls into a realm where you pretty much need paid developers working on it to get anywhere (due to complexity of the code base or lack of interest).
Hey now, normally the CRTC is as corrupt as they come. This is a group that has been heavily infiltrated by big media, who tried to institute 1996 level data caps, and who's outgoing president whined that the internet is their biggest obstacle to controlling what Canadians watch.
I'm actually somewhat baffled by what seems to be a series of decisions on their part which appear at face value to be in the interests of the Canadian public and not their telecom friends.
Tempest protected equipment is readily available from any number of suppliers. If you want to spend the price of a car for a shitty mid-range desktop that'll probably protect you from this kind of attack, the option is there and has been for some time.
They shot first, they eroded the trust to a point where people, not criminals or terrorists or pedophiles but ordinary law abiding people have stood up and said "we don't trust the government any more, nor the systems in place to protect our privacy, and so we have to take it into our own hands."
The proliferation of wide spread encryption is almost a direct result of actions by the NSA, FBI, and friends. They brought this on themselves. If they want people to once again accept them as partners in protecting their rights rather than adversaries, they need to regain the trust they've lost.
To be honest, I think a "team play" level is in there as well.
Working on your own software pet project, working on an open source project with other developers, and working in a corporate software environment are very different experiences. The rock-star programmer cliche still exists, but I think your average run of the mill programmer's success is more determined by how well he plays with others and balances his relationship with management and other forces of evil.
Also throw in a requirements level. A lot of people struggle with this early (and sometimes late) in their careers. It sounds simple, but figuring out what the customer wants (what they _actually_ want), and what you've agreed to provide, and what the program _actually_ needs to do (all three are often exclusive concepts) is a big deal. Sometimes the customer doesn't know what they want (but won't be happy until they get it). Sometimes the customer thinks they want the wrong thing, and won't be happy if you deliver it to them. Requirements analysis is a specialization all it's own, but speaking the language is a huge asset if you go into "big software" (aerospace, medical, defence, etc).
Or something like duplicati which lets you have the benefit of encryption without the downside of having to upload your entire volume every time you want to update it. There's probably a security trade off (I don't know of any specific attacks, but I assume a single encrypted volume is probably more secure), but to me it's worth it for the convenience.
Microsoft doesn't want to be the next RIM. They've been sitting comfortably on their office/desktop monopoly while google and apple have (not necessarily for better) been driving the future of computing, and are worried they may no longer fit into it. Everything they've done recently screams of desperate flailing to stave off a march down RIM's "we innovated once, that aught to be enough" path of doom.
This comes off less as some young guy saying "tablets guys, tablets are cool, lets do tablets!" as some old guy screaming "everyone is using tablets and we don't do tablets, we need to get on tablets now!".
Indeed. I mean you can find them in google, but you'd think an article on the subject would at least include a screenshot of what it was actually talking about.
I've used the flashblock plugin on firefox for a long damn time, but I'm finding it has stopped working properly on a lot of websites, including just recently youtube. I'm guessing this is due to some javascript shenanigans, but haven't had time to investigate.
Socially unacceptable behaviour is met with hostility, usually in proportion to the nature of the behaviour. Something extreme (like a guy beating his date) is likely to attract violence, something relatively minor like my cellphone example would likely result in being told to "cut that out and go away" (which is more or less the response I'm advocating).
You're also a hypocrite for not being upset about the 100+ times per day you end up on security cameras or in the background of someone's cell phone photo.
The counter-argument of "no expectation of privacy" is also oft repeated, and imo wrong (see http://slashdot.org/comments.p... for my also tired response).
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty much this. I can use just about anything as background music once I've heard it a few dozen times. I use radio and similar when I want to find new stuff, but when I want background music I just put my "good stuff" playlist on shuffle.
For me it just has to be familiar. It can have lyrics, crazy guitar and drum solos, loud screaming, whatever, as long as I've heard it a few dozen times it fades into the background for me.
Personally I tend to like melodic rock (classic, progressive, even some of the lighter metal) when coding. Pink Floyd, the more ballad-y stuff from GnR, Pearl Jam, Red Rider, hell even Metallica (yeah yeah, shuddup).
Also WTF is up with the layout changes on slashdot. They couldn't get people to swallow beta, so now they are fucking up the non-beta site?
That's not even limited to ancient gear. My old PC at work did that, and it had a dual core processor so it wasn't _that_ old. It was kind of a weird long drawn out high pitched "dragging" sound.. very annoying.
I don't think they are claiming noise in the stored data (although from the articles they don't really claim anything), so much as noise that would effect a near by audio input or output. That is, say, you've got some kind of device that records an analog signals (from say a mic) to an SD card, and the act of writing to that SD card is generating noise which is then making it's way into your analog input.
I still say bullshit. This is right up there with specialty wooden volume knobs in the "maybe with scientific equipment you can see an effect, but practically speaking forget it" category, but at least we're not in Monster "high end digital cable" territory.
I've noticed that too.
Even in the bad old days, stuff would occasionally break, but the whole site usually stayed up, and in either case things were fixed very quickly. Outright outages up until Dice took over were pretty damn rare, but now as you said, they've become rather frequent, and when they do happen, it's for hours. Also the alignment of various elements occasionally goes wonkey and comment boxes only fill up half the screen.
I almost wonder if they are trying to degrade the performance of the site on purpose in a really desperate attempt to push us into their beta disaster.
Indeed, this looks like a solution seeking out a problem.
Sure, it solves a small number of edge cases, but it also creates a bunch too. What if I'm watching a movie and want to turn the light off?
Indeed.
I love Java, but not even a diehard fanboy will argue that it isn't excessively verbose and loaded with boilerplate code. The amount of code attributed to various getters, setters, and comparison methods alone often eclipses the actual functionality of a class. Not to mention doing just about anything with most Java APIs involves all kinds of intermediary wrapper objects.
Idealism hits up hard against pragmatism. Software is one thing, but when you are selling a physical device with a real cost to manufacture, it has to actually do stuff for people to buy it.
I'm all for fighting DRM, but building what would be a mostly useless device and having it sit unsold serves no purpose.
You can use VirtualBox headless (using vboxmanage), but it's not really the intended use case and there are better alternatives.
Though I tend to use vboxmanage for dealing with disk images, because I find the UI for that stuff to be absolutely terrible.
Generally agree. I use it for a handful of Windows apps I still need (like the updater for my GPS) and a few purpose specific Linux installs and it works fine for that. I'll probably keep using it as long as it still works. Worst case, KVM will probably do what I want just as well.
Sure there are other (paid) alternatives out there but VirtualBox does it's job well for me.
KVM is probably the closest alternative and is free (probably more so than VirtualBox is you go all church of Stallman mode).
Indeed, and some software falls into a realm where you pretty much need paid developers working on it to get anywhere (due to complexity of the code base or lack of interest).
Hey now, normally the CRTC is as corrupt as they come. This is a group that has been heavily infiltrated by big media, who tried to institute 1996 level data caps, and who's outgoing president whined that the internet is their biggest obstacle to controlling what Canadians watch.
I'm actually somewhat baffled by what seems to be a series of decisions on their part which appear at face value to be in the interests of the Canadian public and not their telecom friends.
I imagine it's more likely they'll end up charging everyone less in order to make their service actually usable.
It's a risk/cost analysis.
Tempest protected equipment is readily available from any number of suppliers. If you want to spend the price of a car for a shitty mid-range desktop that'll probably protect you from this kind of attack, the option is there and has been for some time.
They shot first, they eroded the trust to a point where people, not criminals or terrorists or pedophiles but ordinary law abiding people have stood up and said "we don't trust the government any more, nor the systems in place to protect our privacy, and so we have to take it into our own hands."
The proliferation of wide spread encryption is almost a direct result of actions by the NSA, FBI, and friends. They brought this on themselves. If they want people to once again accept them as partners in protecting their rights rather than adversaries, they need to regain the trust they've lost.
To be honest, I think a "team play" level is in there as well.
Working on your own software pet project, working on an open source project with other developers, and working in a corporate software environment are very different experiences. The rock-star programmer cliche still exists, but I think your average run of the mill programmer's success is more determined by how well he plays with others and balances his relationship with management and other forces of evil.
Also throw in a requirements level. A lot of people struggle with this early (and sometimes late) in their careers. It sounds simple, but figuring out what the customer wants (what they _actually_ want), and what you've agreed to provide, and what the program _actually_ needs to do (all three are often exclusive concepts) is a big deal. Sometimes the customer doesn't know what they want (but won't be happy until they get it). Sometimes the customer thinks they want the wrong thing, and won't be happy if you deliver it to them. Requirements analysis is a specialization all it's own, but speaking the language is a huge asset if you go into "big software" (aerospace, medical, defence, etc).
Or something like duplicati which lets you have the benefit of encryption without the downside of having to upload your entire volume every time you want to update it. There's probably a security trade off (I don't know of any specific attacks, but I assume a single encrypted volume is probably more secure), but to me it's worth it for the convenience.
I think panic is the key word.
Microsoft doesn't want to be the next RIM. They've been sitting comfortably on their office/desktop monopoly while google and apple have (not necessarily for better) been driving the future of computing, and are worried they may no longer fit into it. Everything they've done recently screams of desperate flailing to stave off a march down RIM's "we innovated once, that aught to be enough" path of doom.
This comes off less as some young guy saying "tablets guys, tablets are cool, lets do tablets!" as some old guy screaming "everyone is using tablets and we don't do tablets, we need to get on tablets now!".
Indeed. I mean you can find them in google, but you'd think an article on the subject would at least include a screenshot of what it was actually talking about.
I've used the flashblock plugin on firefox for a long damn time, but I'm finding it has stopped working properly on a lot of websites, including just recently youtube. I'm guessing this is due to some javascript shenanigans, but haven't had time to investigate.
Postfix? I thought postfix was pretty solid.
Legal expectation of privacy and social expectation of privacy are pretty different concepts.
Socially unacceptable behaviour is met with hostility, usually in proportion to the nature of the behaviour. Something extreme (like a guy beating his date) is likely to attract violence, something relatively minor like my cellphone example would likely result in being told to "cut that out and go away" (which is more or less the response I'm advocating).
You're also a hypocrite for not being upset about the 100+ times per day you end up on security cameras or in the background of someone's cell phone photo.
See: http://slashdot.org/comments.p... for standard counter argument.
The counter-argument of "no expectation of privacy" is also oft repeated, and imo wrong (see http://slashdot.org/comments.p... for my also tired response).
Agreed, but see:
Covert surveillance is also now mostly trivial, but it's not socially acceptable and very few people actually do it
Citation needed, but at least perceptually I don't feel like everyone is sneakily recording my private conversations at a restaurant.