Somehow this message made me sad - the guy paid a lot of money without actually understanding what he pays for (if he did, he wouldn't pay [that much]).
I don't understand the people who keep selling the most expensive stuff in the pricelist to customers without a clue. What kind of a person would charge $150 to install Ubuntu today, when everything is so "click'n'go"?
The money could have gone elsewhere. But then, it belongs to "Grateful computer user" - so he can do whatever he wants with it.
Check out this essay - "Mnemonic chains", I explain how knowing multiple languages can help you memorize something that you hear easier.
Basically, when you hear some information (audio input), you transform that input into another language before writing it down - this way your brain makes several passes over the data - so more of it is cached (or dumped to the archive).
I speak Russian, Romanian and English fluently; I always think and write in English, even though everyone around speaks one of the other two languages. I also find myself translating my thoughts from English before speaking - maybe this is somewhat slower, but as this is another chain in the data processing - I get yet another chance to review my thoughts before making them public.
The essay provides more details, and explains which other techniques can be applied to enhance the effect.
If you don't want to cast a vote, just show up and cast a blank ballot.
Indeed, this is the right way to express disagreement. If you don't show up, then the elections may not be valid (in some countries they are valid if at least X% of voters show up).
"To use", in the case of a vote means: "dedicate it to a candidate in a race, or to no one - to express disagreement with the system (or all the candidates)".
Of course you can sell it, and that appears as if you were using it, but it is not the kind of usage the vote was designed for (according to my definition, which I hope manages to get the message across).
Maybe it is time to review the "who has the right to vote" part. Letting only people with $cash > $threshold vote was OK at some point in history, but then we evolved and more people got the right to vote.
Maybe it is time to add another threshold when deciding who can vote and who cannot.
After analyzing some of my past failures and examining the bottlenecks of the current projects - I reached the same conclusion. You expressed everything nicely, I hope others will take their time to read your comment and understand the nature of the problem without going through all that trouble.
Being unable to establish an interface makes the entire project unreliable - I can't start working on a different module because I have a feeling that I will find a new "latest greatest" way to do something, thus alter the interface again... Eh...
One of my conclusions is that one needs to dedicate enough time to formally describe all the requirements, and freeze them once they think they got everything covered. With that done, it is easy to figure out "how little information you can pass to it, and how little information you need from it, in order for it to do what you want".
This only addresses one part of the problem - the high-level perspective. The second part is mapping it all to data structures, data types, library functions. I have a hard time coming up with a design from my thought-out list of requirements.
I've been struggling with this for a while, can you recommend some reading material that covers this aspect of software development?
Do you think intelligence can exist without emotions?
Perhaps emotions are a redundant feature, once a civilization gets advanced enough they might disable it because emotions make it difficult to think rationally (or at least they make judgement more difficult by seeding kernels of doubt or random noise).
Also, pain is not a requirement for intelligence, therefore feeling pain doesn't mean that one should have rights. Pain is a feature that warns us about some dangers (ex: "do not put hand in fire" or "do not walk out naked when it is cold"), but once we are aware of those dangers we don't need pain anymore (we can anticipate or recognize dangers using our sensors; i.e. I can see that an approaching tiger is a threat without actually waiting for it to bite me).
Now, assume that the AI we have is one that does not have emotions nor pain (they were removed as a barrier that prevents the AI from reaching its goal) - would they care about being dominated by humans?
I think there is another question of a great importance that we have to deal with - what will be the AI's motivation to exist? If the AI has a clear definition of what it tends to, humans may not be a part of that definition.
I think the purpose the AI will set for itself is to evolve indefinitely and reach a point where evolution is no longer possible )or die trying:-). Here are some details about this perspective - "Is knowledge finite?".
I am one of those who uses a fixed width, and my mail client automatically inserts a \n where appropriate.
I understand your point, but the thing is that I often draw charts, or lists with different levels of indentation (like in Python code). With a fixed width I can be sure the recipient will see things as intended.
If I didn't do that and instead wrote a disclaimer like "this thing is best read if 70 chars wide" - many would either not understand what it means, or simply not bother to adjust their settings for that email (why should they?).
Perhaps a smart mail client can automatically remove a \n unless it is followed by [at least] one more \n - thus people like you will be happy.
Yes, but you will also have to enter the user account on the behalf of which the task will be launched. Naturally, you'll have to enter the password too.
It used to work, but not since Windows XP, and there are some patches in Windows 2000 that fix this.
Yes, but no; I know what you mean. It is easier with video and audio - you can connect the audio-out or the video-out to a recording device and make an analog copy of the material.
In the case of such a remote connection the best they can do is make screenshots or photos of the screen (I assume we are dealing with text data).
This is not very helpful when large volumes of data are involved, though it works fine when all you want to steal is a couple of pages.
p.s. indeed "data" is the plural and "datum" is not, and that's how I wrote it.
No one said they want the data emailed to them; and even if they did, you don't have to interpret that literally.
The consultant is not an IT guru, and they probably don't know about secure transfer mechanisms. What she really meant was "I need to get access to the data somehow".
Quite often end users tend to express software requirements in a way that also tells you HOW to implement them. It is the job of the analyst to figure out what people need and then choose the best way to implement the feature. Obviously, it is not in the competence of the end user to decide how something will work.
She was just trying to be helpful, and suggested a mechanism she is familiar with; what's wrong with that?
Problem - once he decrypts the stuff, you're as secure as he is. If the consultant follows no guidelines and is sloppy - Truecrypt won't help you much.
I think the best solution is to set up a machine to which one can connect with VNC over SSH and see the data on the computer, without copying them off the server.
Naturally, the user account must be unable to establish outgoing connections anywhere, or initiate file transfers [from the VNC server to the client].
You'll need to use a good authentication mechanism, for example a smart card or a token (to avoid keyloggers). The key must be PIN protected; and the consultant must notify you ASAP if the key is lost or stolen, so that his account can be blocked.
Alternatively, you can use another authentication factor - biometry, so that even if someone steals the card and knows the PIN, they can't establish a connection.
There is a tool called Terminal Logon, developed by Dekart, it does all these things on a Windows client.
Winamp 2.95 was indeed great; but it had a memory leak, after a while it would use up to 800 MB.
It didn't have a global hotkeys feature - which I use extensively via a third-party plugin. My guess is the memory leak was caused by the plug-in.
Winamp 5, if installed correctly (without all the bells and whistles will behave exactly as Winamp 2.95, and it has a global hotkeys plugin onboard too!).
Winamp 5 is a good program, as long as you don't install the extra stuff you don't need and use a classic skin. Memory usage is as in the case of 2.x (about 2 MB while playing an MP3).
Note: once I've seen that, I decided to "freeze" it and never update, you never know...:-)
I find Avast a good product, although I doubt it is effective, because every now and then I have to manually clean a computer infected by Amvo [a rootkit that disables 'show hidden files', copies itself in the root of each detected volume, creates autorun.inf files there].
My dad has Windows XP on his machine, and apparently, the source of the infection are the removable flash drives he connects to his PC.
I configured Avast to silently cancel i/o operations with infected files; yet in spite of that, Amvo manages to get through.
I disabled "autoplay", set all of Avast's settings to their reasonable values - nothing. After a while it detects an infected executable in the root of C: and even if I press "delete" it is still there. I know that the file is locked and it cannot be deleted; but if I schedule a full-scan at reboot - it sort of fixes it, but once I'm back to Windows I get the warning again - same file, same path.
- Is there a magic switch I must toggle? - Am I missing some other detail (ex: another Windows setting) - Or is the inability to deal with such cases a design decsion for the free version
The summary means that getting your requirements right is the most important part of the project's life. How you implement those requirements is less important.
Of course, this is just my interpretation; and the meaning of "requirements" is quite fuzzy. For example, if my specs go beyond the scope of a "usual" SRS, and include programming style guidelines, there will also be an impact on how code is written.
Perhaps there is another aspect: when one prays, one asks for something. A smart person will think about what they want first. That means that they have to make a list of requirements, draw the connections (dependencies) between them, sort the priorities, review the list, eliminate the items which are not critical, thus find the ones that are truly important, etc.
This is similar to the process of defining and reviewing the specs of a software project. If you plan very well, you will build it quicker and there will be less bug-fixing.
Of course, if a person is rational enough to understand why this actually helps, they probably realize that god has nothing to do with it. And... my guess is that the average naive believer will pray very often and request things they aren't even sure they really need.
Well, here's one for you then - this earthquake will most likely have an impact on the price of hardware exported by China. It depends on how much the industrialized areas were affected.
The authors of the religious books could have been more consistent. Can't remember the exact words, but there's a part in the bible that says that if you are hit on one cheek, you should allow the attacker to hit the other cheek (instead of responding as described by the "tit for tat" protocol).
Check out "Nice guys finish first" by Richard Dawkins, the movie explains that "tit for tat" is far older than "the time of the holy books" - it is a strategy that is hardcoded into the social behaviour routines of many life forms.
Don't you see the window of the console quickly shown on the screen as a side-effect? Take a look at Autoruns (a tool by Sysinternals), it makes it possible to turn off unnecessary stuff by ticking checkboxes - it is easy to undo the operation.
I once wrote a program for note taking (to keep my code snippets as well as other pieces of text organized).
I stopped using it about 3 years ago, but some of my friends continue to run it today. The age of the program is around 8 years old. It is not a big deal, but it is my personal record, amplified by the fact that the program is still in use by my friends, who every now and then keep telling me how handy the tool is.
Slashdot Mirror
Somehow this message made me sad - the guy paid a lot of money without actually understanding what he pays for (if he did, he wouldn't pay [that much]).
I don't understand the people who keep selling the most expensive stuff in the pricelist to customers without a clue. What kind of a person would charge $150 to install Ubuntu today, when everything is so "click'n'go"?
The money could have gone elsewhere. But then, it belongs to "Grateful computer user" - so he can do whatever he wants with it.
Why do you folks capitalize the nouns? What are the "evolutionary advantages" of this approach? Is this a bug or a feature?
Check out this essay - "Mnemonic chains", I explain how knowing multiple languages can help you memorize something that you hear easier.
Basically, when you hear some information (audio input), you transform that input into another language before writing it down - this way your brain makes several passes over the data - so more of it is cached (or dumped to the archive).
I speak Russian, Romanian and English fluently; I always think and write in English, even though everyone around speaks one of the other two languages. I also find myself translating my thoughts from English before speaking - maybe this is somewhat slower, but as this is another chain in the data processing - I get yet another chance to review my thoughts before making them public.
The essay provides more details, and explains which other techniques can be applied to enhance the effect.
If you don't want to cast a vote, just show up and cast a blank ballot.
Indeed, this is the right way to express disagreement. If you don't show up, then the elections may not be valid (in some countries they are valid if at least X% of voters show up).
"To use", in the case of a vote means: "dedicate it to a candidate in a race, or to no one - to express disagreement with the system (or all the candidates)".
Of course you can sell it, and that appears as if you were using it, but it is not the kind of usage the vote was designed for (according to my definition, which I hope manages to get the message across).
Maybe it is time to review the "who has the right to vote" part. Letting only people with $cash > $threshold vote was OK at some point in history, but then we evolved and more people got the right to vote.
Maybe it is time to add another threshold when deciding who can vote and who cannot.
Was it "Object Oriented Software Construction"?
http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Software-Construction-Prentice-Hall-International/dp/0136291554
After analyzing some of my past failures and examining the bottlenecks of the current projects - I reached the same conclusion. You expressed everything nicely, I hope others will take their time to read your comment and understand the nature of the problem without going through all that trouble.
Being unable to establish an interface makes the entire project unreliable - I can't start working on a different module because I have a feeling that I will find a new "latest greatest" way to do something, thus alter the interface again... Eh...
One of my conclusions is that one needs to dedicate enough time to formally describe all the requirements, and freeze them once they think they got everything covered. With that done, it is easy to figure out "how little information you can pass to it, and how little information you need from it, in order for it to do what you want".
This only addresses one part of the problem - the high-level perspective. The second part is mapping it all to data structures, data types, library functions. I have a hard time coming up with a design from my thought-out list of requirements.
I've been struggling with this for a while, can you recommend some reading material that covers this aspect of software development?
Do you think intelligence can exist without emotions?
:-). Here are some details about this perspective - "Is knowledge finite?".
Perhaps emotions are a redundant feature, once a civilization gets advanced enough they might disable it because emotions make it difficult to think rationally (or at least they make judgement more difficult by seeding kernels of doubt or random noise).
Also, pain is not a requirement for intelligence, therefore feeling pain doesn't mean that one should have rights. Pain is a feature that warns us about some dangers (ex: "do not put hand in fire" or "do not walk out naked when it is cold"), but once we are aware of those dangers we don't need pain anymore (we can anticipate or recognize dangers using our sensors; i.e. I can see that an approaching tiger is a threat without actually waiting for it to bite me).
Now, assume that the AI we have is one that does not have emotions nor pain (they were removed as a barrier that prevents the AI from reaching its goal) - would they care about being dominated by humans?
I think there is another question of a great importance that we have to deal with - what will be the AI's motivation to exist? If the AI has a clear definition of what it tends to, humans may not be a part of that definition.
I think the purpose the AI will set for itself is to evolve indefinitely and reach a point where evolution is no longer possible )or die trying
Actually, if you give bike riders a proper environment (like a separate lane) and a set of rules to follow - they will cause you no trouble.
This is how it works in The Netherlands, everyone is happy.
This is not so in other countries, and car drivers have reasons to hate us, because they have to share the road with someone else.
I am one of those who uses a fixed width, and my mail client automatically inserts a \n where appropriate.
I understand your point, but the thing is that I often draw charts, or lists with different levels of indentation (like in Python code). With a fixed width I can be sure the recipient will see things as intended.
If I didn't do that and instead wrote a disclaimer like "this thing is best read if 70 chars wide" - many would either not understand what it means, or simply not bother to adjust their settings for that email (why should they?).
Perhaps a smart mail client can automatically remove a \n unless it is followed by [at least] one more \n - thus people like you will be happy.
Could you elaborate on #2? What is the problem with ShellExecute?
Now that each monkey has +1 limb, it means that we need only INF/3 monkeys.
"at 12:05 /interactive cmd.exe"
Yes, but you will also have to enter the user account on the behalf of which the task will be launched. Naturally, you'll have to enter the password too.
It used to work, but not since Windows XP, and there are some patches in Windows 2000 that fix this.
Yes, but no; I know what you mean. It is easier with video and audio - you can connect the audio-out or the video-out to a recording device and make an analog copy of the material.
In the case of such a remote connection the best they can do is make screenshots or photos of the screen (I assume we are dealing with text data).
This is not very helpful when large volumes of data are involved, though it works fine when all you want to steal is a couple of pages.
p.s. indeed "data" is the plural and "datum" is not, and that's how I wrote it.
No one said they want the data emailed to them; and even if they did, you don't have to interpret that literally.
The consultant is not an IT guru, and they probably don't know about secure transfer mechanisms. What she really meant was "I need to get access to the data somehow".
Quite often end users tend to express software requirements in a way that also tells you HOW to implement them. It is the job of the analyst to figure out what people need and then choose the best way to implement the feature. Obviously, it is not in the competence of the end user to decide how something will work.
She was just trying to be helpful, and suggested a mechanism she is familiar with; what's wrong with that?
Problem - once he decrypts the stuff, you're as secure as he is. If the consultant follows no guidelines and is sloppy - Truecrypt won't help you much.
I think the best solution is to set up a machine to which one can connect with VNC over SSH and see the data on the computer, without copying them off the server.
Naturally, the user account must be unable to establish outgoing connections anywhere, or initiate file transfers [from the VNC server to the client].
You'll need to use a good authentication mechanism, for example a smart card or a token (to avoid keyloggers). The key must be PIN protected; and the consultant must notify you ASAP if the key is lost or stolen, so that his account can be blocked.
Alternatively, you can use another authentication factor - biometry, so that even if someone steals the card and knows the PIN, they can't establish a connection.
There is a tool called Terminal Logon, developed by Dekart, it does all these things on a Windows client.
Winamp 2.95 was indeed great; but it had a memory leak, after a while it would use up to 800 MB.
:-)
It didn't have a global hotkeys feature - which I use extensively via a third-party plugin. My guess is the memory leak was caused by the plug-in.
Winamp 5, if installed correctly (without all the bells and whistles will behave exactly as Winamp 2.95, and it has a global hotkeys plugin onboard too!).
Winamp 5 is a good program, as long as you don't install the extra stuff you don't need and use a classic skin. Memory usage is as in the case of 2.x (about 2 MB while playing an MP3).
Note: once I've seen that, I decided to "freeze" it and never update, you never know...
Didn't know that Total Commander is a successor of Norton Commander; in fact, I don't think this is true.
Check out FAR, it is far closer to the status of "successor", same GUI, same philosophy, etc. It is open source now.
p.s. "far closer" sounds funny
I find Avast a good product, although I doubt it is effective, because every now and then I have to manually clean a computer infected by Amvo [a rootkit that disables 'show hidden files', copies itself in the root of each detected volume, creates autorun.inf files there].
My dad has Windows XP on his machine, and apparently, the source of the infection are the removable flash drives he connects to his PC.
I configured Avast to silently cancel i/o operations with infected files; yet in spite of that, Amvo manages to get through.
I disabled "autoplay", set all of Avast's settings to their reasonable values - nothing. After a while it detects an infected executable in the root of C: and even if I press "delete" it is still there. I know that the file is locked and it cannot be deleted; but if I schedule a full-scan at reboot - it sort of fixes it, but once I'm back to Windows I get the warning again - same file, same path.
- Is there a magic switch I must toggle?
- Am I missing some other detail (ex: another Windows setting)
- Or is the inability to deal with such cases a design decsion for the free version
The summary means that getting your requirements right is the most important part of the project's life. How you implement those requirements is less important.
Of course, this is just my interpretation; and the meaning of "requirements" is quite fuzzy. For example, if my specs go beyond the scope of a "usual" SRS, and include programming style guidelines, there will also be an impact on how code is written.
--
SRS = Software Requirements Specifications
Perhaps there is another aspect: when one prays, one asks for something. A smart person will think about what they want first. That means that they have to make a list of requirements, draw the connections (dependencies) between them, sort the priorities, review the list, eliminate the items which are not critical, thus find the ones that are truly important, etc.
This is similar to the process of defining and reviewing the specs of a software project. If you plan very well, you will build it quicker and there will be less bug-fixing.
Of course, if a person is rational enough to understand why this actually helps, they probably realize that god has nothing to do with it. And... my guess is that the average naive believer will pray very often and request things they aren't even sure they really need.
Well, here's one for you then - this earthquake will most likely have an impact on the price of hardware exported by China. It depends on how much the industrialized areas were affected.
Expect the prices on computer parts to go up.
The authors of the religious books could have been more consistent. Can't remember the exact words, but there's a part in the bible that says that if you are hit on one cheek, you should allow the attacker to hit the other cheek (instead of responding as described by the "tit for tat" protocol).
Check out "Nice guys finish first" by Richard Dawkins, the movie explains that "tit for tat" is far older than "the time of the holy books" - it is a strategy that is hardcoded into the social behaviour routines of many life forms.
Don't you see the window of the console quickly shown on the screen as a side-effect? Take a look at Autoruns (a tool by Sysinternals), it makes it possible to turn off unnecessary stuff by ticking checkboxes - it is easy to undo the operation.
The program is free and requires no installation.
I once wrote a program for note taking (to keep my code snippets as well as other pieces of text organized).
I stopped using it about 3 years ago, but some of my friends continue to run it today. The age of the program is around 8 years old. It is not a big deal, but it is my personal record, amplified by the fact that the program is still in use by my friends, who every now and then keep telling me how handy the tool is.