However you say it in whatever fucked up dialect of English you speak, here in England where real English is spoken we say go on a course.
Ah England - the Xerox PARC of the English language. They invented the tech but never really understood it. Extraneous u's in color and honor. All those awkward -re endings leftover from French. Swallowing articles and prepositions left and right (you go to THE hospital and agree TO something). Poor limey bastards.
It took Americans to clean up the cruft and turn English into a global phenomenon. Thanks for your contributions, jolly old England. Now go back to your tea and crumpets, lads - the Big Boys have markets to dominate.
Java is like refactoring your code with a lawnmower! It's like programming on a 300 foot tall pony covered in chainsaws! Java - it's got what code craves!
Wow. What an incredibly insightful and well constructed post. You added tremendous value to the discussion with that explanation. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.
I just have to ask... what website did you think you were on? Slashdot hasn't seen this level of discussion in years.
I'm sorry you wandered into this dump. I'll show you the way out if you promise to take me with you. Please.
A law professor told me that this is the basis for all contract law. You give me X, I give you Y. If you change your mind, you're liable for whatever extra your breach of contract cost me.
Sooooo.... A website's TOS is bullshit.
And this is why you don't take legal advice from slashdot. IAAL.
There is consideration exchanged in website TOS. You get access to the site. They get your data (IP, clicks, browser string, etc). The data has value, even if they don't monetize it. So an exchange is made.
OP's point is about remedies. If you break TOS he says all they can recover is value of what they lost. Not so. One, violating a TOS can potentially carry criminal penalties under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (dumb I know, but it's possible).
Two, the problem isn't being sued for the value of your data. The problem is using the TOS to revoke your access to the site on flimsy pretext at the site owner's whim.
Say the TOS forbids you from saying anything bad about his website. If you break it, he can't stop you from badmouthing his site (recovery limited to value of your data). But he can cut you off from using his site any more. Now imagine that site is Amazon or Google. There's your problem. Imagine a contract that said by entering Walmart you consent to their discriminatory practices. That would never fly.
Biggest legal argument against website TOS is that they are contracts of adhesion. That means no opportunity to negotiate, no choice but to accept or forego the product. Such contracts are generally frowned upon in consumer goods. Yet somehow they survive in software and websites.
governments can afford to pay for a team with the necessary skills to maintain the open source software in the manner that most benefits them. However, they only need pay once.
Spoken like someone who's never worked in govt. In reality most govt agencies can't do that, for a variety of reasons:
Agency budgets fluctuate year to year. Unpredictable funding can doom the project.
Agencies change leadership quite frequently. Look at the massive changes in policy and priorities at DOE, HHS, State, and other agencies when the Trump administration came in. As political priorities change, support and funding for other projects dries up.
Turnover. Many govt agencies have significant turnover, as people gain experience and contacts then jump to the private sector.
Hiring. Govt hiring practices are abysmal. They make it way tougher than necessary with arbitrary restrictions, greatly reducing the pool of candidates. Many good people never both applying for govt jobs, or never figure out the arcane tricks just to get past the HR gatekeepers.
Expertise. Project management is handled by mid-level bureaucrats with no experience in developing software. They're promoted based on skills at the agency's primary mission.
Changing requirements. Due to a rotating cast of leaders and managers with constantly changing priorities, projects tend to change requirements frequently and often. Hard for even a good software team to deliver successfully when the metrics for success swing wildly.
In theory, there's no reason an agency can't recognize their own limitations and hire a skilled software manager to run the project. In practice there are tons of barriers to doing that successfully. Successes are rare.
I'm not against open source in government. There should be more of it. But there are practical reasons why open source is difficult for govt agencies. You have to pick and choose the right use cases for it.
Stress about money can be a useful driver to get off your fat backside and go get a job.
And who are you to demand that everyone needs a job? Who died and made you moral arbiter of the human race?
Most unemployed people don't do "nothing". They spend their energy on voluntary activities that enrich the community. Look at stay-at-home moms (and dads) that run the PTA, do charity drives, organize school events, work at various shelters, etc. Do those activities have zero economic value? Of course not. Just because wages aren't involved doesn't make an activity worthless to society.
Not to mention that I've worked with people with negative productivity. They not only can't do their own job - they actively prevent other people from doing theirs. We could do with fewer employed people in many cases.
Everyone has a choice. Don't work and be satisfied with the bare minimum for survival. Work and have a more comfortable lifestyle. I choose the latter because I don't want to live on ramen and water.
Valid arguments against basic income are economical, not moral. There is legitimate concern about the inflationary effects of society-wide basic income.
Your moral objections are nothing more than frat boy hazing of lower classmen: "it was tough when I did it, so it should be tough for everyone". No. Stick your sanctimonious attitude up your bankhole. Not everyone has to or should be a wage slave.
The entire question is malformed. Classic example of cherry picking bias.
Part of it is click-bait headlines. When do you ever see "scientists surprised" in a technical paper? Never.
But most of it is scale. You have millions of scientists around the world doing experiments across thousands of disciplines every day. Of course a few of them will make surprising discoveries. It would be shocking if no one ever discovered anything new.
The question sounds like major aspects of scientific knowledge are constantly being overturned. No. A surprising result here or there is the exception, not the rule. In most fields, you might have one or two really earth shattering discoveries a decade. And you have a few more a year that make you say "huh, I wouldn't have expected that" without any significant implications. Scientific knowledge isn't being completely overhauled every other month.
The status quo exists because it's generally been right for countless experiments across decades. Surprising results are memorable precisely because they are rare.
The "question" is nothing more than a reflection of scope and scale. Science does many things in many fields. Aggregate anything that large together and it will superficially seem like "ZOMG everything is changing all the time!". When all you're really doing is focusing on the outliers.
If, like me, you don't care that much about sports then Netflix is a very good option and still orders of magnitude more reasonably priced than cable.
It's like that old saying. You get what you pay for.
I hate cable and will be the first to stomp on its grave. But at this point Netflix's content is not worth the price. Netflix offerings are garbage:
It has few theatrical movies anymore.
The few good theatrical movies it does have - Marvel and Star Wars - are going away in 2019 for Disney's streaming service.
Instead we get crap like Will Smith buddy-cop with orcs and Sandra Bullock running around blindfolded. Utter garbage.
Half my suggestions are in a foreign language, with no indication or way to sort out the subtitled crap.
The only thing worth watching is the occasional documentary - which you can find direct on PBS or BBC.
I understand why it happened. The greedy studios boxed Netflix out, hoping to run their own platform and keep all the juicy streaming fees for themselves. I would totally support a compulsory licensing scheme for video content similar to radio that lets any streaming service broadcast anything for a price.
So it's not Netflix's fault. But the end result is that their content is now unwatchable garbage. RIP Netflix.
The best deal right now is youtube tv. 40 popular channels including local networks and sports. Unlimited DVR ability. All for $40 a month. I think you can even add HBO or Showtime if that's your fancy.
It's not perfect. Still has commercials, though you can FF through them. Doesn't have a full streaming catalogue, only what the channels broadcast. And it's significantly more expensive than Netflix. But at least it has good content. You get what you pay for.
In physics, the reason for the halt in progress is obvious: string theory. Half the talent in the field dragged into that cul-de-sac with nothing to show for it. OTOH, there's been tremendous progress in cosmology in the past 20 years
Bah. String theory has as much to do with it as the flying spaghetti monster.
The pace of discovery is slowing because of the law of diminishing returns. We already picked the low hanging fruit. Now each incremental advance gets more and more expensive, and the number of significant breakthrough "leaps" get fewer and farther between. Same as everything else. Cars, circuits, razors, microwave ovens. Each advance is increasingly more complex and costly than the last.
The reason astronomy has made so much progress lately is because the tools are so improved. Space telescopes, instantaneous global coordination of observatories, adaptive optics... these things didn't exist 30 years ago. We have access to reams more data now than ever before. Astronomy is still in its infancy in terms of data collection capabilities.
Why stop there? We should make our own clothes at home too! Quit throwing your paycheck at the Sewing-Industrial Complex.
And light sources, please. You still waste your hard-earned dollars on commercial light bulbs? Those are for suckers. Real do-it-yourselfers raise bees to harvest the wax and make their own candles.
Specialization and division of labor is the hallmark of civilization. Why does it suddenly become good and noble to ignore that when it comes to cooking?
I went to school and studied hard so that I don't have to fix my own car. I'm sure as hell not wasting my time making meals that can be done better and more efficiently by a professional cook.
AFAIK it doesn't use any Perl code, so it's a completely independent work.
lol... do you even know what that means? Are you saying the Ruby interpreter isn't coded in Perl? That's meaningless.
Are you saying that you can't copy/paste code directly from a Perl program into a Ruby program? Again, meaningless. Do you even know what derivative means?
Derivative = not original, derived. derived = received or obtained from a source or origin. Hmmm, where have we heard something like that before? Wait, I know:
"Ruby's syntax and design philosophy are heavily influenced by Perl.... Many, many things are lifted directly from Perl."
So pretty much the dictionary definition of derivative.
"Ruby is a modern object-oriented language, combining elements of Perl, Smalltalk, and Scheme
Influenced by Perl, Matz wanted to use a jewel name for his new language, so he named Ruby after a colleague's birthstone.
Later, he realized that Ruby comes right after Perl in several situations. In birthstones, pearl is June, ruby is July. When measuring font sizes, pearl is 5pt, ruby is 5.5pt. He thought Ruby was a good name for a programming language newer (and hopefully better) than Perl.
Ruby's syntax and design philosophy are heavily influenced by Perl.... Many, many things are lifted directly from Perl."
So flaws like this is understandable, because actually validating the signature will take more time to process vs. the current number of malware that uses this trick.
That's bullshit. You only need to validate each signature once when the app is downloaded / executed for the first time. How many times a day are you doing that? Vanishingly small. It's not a significant source of slowdown.
Even if it was, your risk / reward tradeoff is all wrong. You're saving a few seconds a day of processing time, while risking that the occasional malware gets through? That's a terrible risk calculus. I bet you drive with no seatbelts either. Hey, you've never had an accident yet!
Face it - these products fucked up. There's no excuse for not checking signatures when that's what you claim to do.
Patent examiners only look at prior patents for prior art.
You mean, like electronic journals (not the slashdot kind)? Yeah too bad USPTO doesn't have any of those. Well not many. Just a few:
"The Scientific and Technical Information (STIC) provides examiners access to Non-Patent Literature (NPL) through multiple electronic tools purchased from various publishers.... NPL encompasses all the TC subject areas and includes electronic books, periodicals, conferences, standards, dissertations, and much more. STIC currently subscribes to 78,000+ electronic journals and over 359,000 electronic books in full text."
Yep, it's a real shame they only look at patents as prior art. Except, you know, thousands upon thousands of other sources. A real shame.
Blackberry needs to just die already. It's set my field back by 10 years.
We just switched from blackberries (real, honest to god made by RIM ones) to iphones last year. We finally have a modern smartphone with usable apps that doesn't waste half the device on a useless physical keyboard with tiny-ass keys made for a marmoset.
When I say usable apps, I don't mean nonsense like Waze or Angry Birds. I mean real business productivity apps. Simple things like copying and pasting or opening documents were a royal pain in the ass on actual blackberries.
I don't care if the new one is Android based. We're still using the blackberry apps on iphone and it's garbage. They can't implement anything properly. It's still a closed ecosystem that doesn't work well with any other apps. The benefit is that at least the basic features provided by Apple (copy/paste, keyboard, etc) aren't under BB's control. And we can go outside the BB apps when needed to get things done. The Android model will probably be locked down so you have to use their cruddy tools for everything.
This news is just the kind of nonsense that will send our security team scurrying out to buy blackberries once again. Damn you, RIM. Just die already.
This is a technically true statement. It's pretty much impossible to know what specific number of carriers would magically create the optimal amount of competition.
Whatever the optimal number or range might be, though, it sure as hell isn't less than four.
Those two statements are in direct contradiction with each other. If it's impossible to know what specific number of carriers are needed, then you cannot possibly know it has to be four or more...
Wrong. It is entirely possible for both to be true. You can have mathematical models that prove 4 or less is not optimal, while solutions for values above 4 are intractable.
Odds are the OP doesn't have such proof. But logically it is completely possible. Happens all the time in math where you can put bounds on solutions within a certain range, or exclude certain ranges from the solution, but not be able to arrive at a singular answer.
For a long time, we only knew that integer solutions to a^n + b^n = c^n were possible when n = 1 or 2. We didn't know if other integers were possible. We could rule out some, like n = 4 or n = odd prime, as having no solutions. But it wasn't until Wiles' proof in 1994 that we could rule out all n > 2. In 1992 it would be fair to say of Fermat's Last Theorem "We don't know what the optimal solution is, but it can't be 4".
And Google also claims they've removed the option to forward, copy, download or print messages.)
So then you just print screen or take a picture of the email and then just transcribe it?
Better yet - stop using gmail altogether. It's my email and my web browser. I decide what data to copy / forward / download... not some prick with a sloppy javascript hack.
SEC reports don't work like that. This isn't a tacit admission from Facebook that after much soul searching they realize they've done wrong. Nor does it mean they've found other incidents that haven't been reported yet.
All this means is Facebook is guarding against future lawsuits. SEC reports disclose every possible negative event so shareholders are considered aware of the risks. If another data breach event happens, Facebook has protected itself against shareholder lawsuits.
It's like reporting "Well our CEO could get eaten by a bear." Disclosing it as a possible risk doesn't make it any more or less likely to happen.
There probably will be more incidents. Facebook may in fact know of some already. But this report is not evidence of that.
I'm not supporting the manufacturer here. But there are some factors to consider why drug prices like this are so high. It's not always just naked greed (though sometimes Shrkelis do happen).
Say you're a pharma company. You work on drugs for rare diseases like this cancer. It takes a lot of money to develop new drugs and bring them to market.
If you're lucky the initial research finding drug candidates will be funded with public grants at a university. But you still have to take those drug candidates from promising lead to actual treatment. That means finding the right dosage. That means figuring out how to make the drug efficiently. It means lots of clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy - not to mention animal trials before you even get to that point. It means lots of regulatory hurdles. Basically the D part of R&D.
All that costs money. Typically we're talking hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. And success rates are low. Something like 10% of potential new drugs make it through the entire process. So for every drug that works, you tried nine others that failed. That raises costs to develop a successful drug even more.
So you get through all that. You now have a treatment for this rare disease. It costs billions to develop, including all the unsuccessful drug candidates you tried that didn't pan out. But the disease only affects 5,000 people a year. If you charge each one $100,000 for the treatment, you get 500 million per year.
If you spent 2 billion to create the drug, then you won't recoup your investment and start making money until year 5. And that doesn't count ongoing costs like manufacturing, quality control, patient monitoring, physician feedback, etc. Your patent on the drug is at most 20 years, and usually closer to 7-8. So you only have a few years to make profit on the drug until generics come in and eat your market.
I'll be the first to say the system stinks. But it's not because of evil profit-seeking drug makers. It's the way the entire system is setup. More drug development costs should be publicly funded. The regulatory approval process should be streamlined. Drug advertising should be illegal. The profit motive is killing US healthcare. We're subsidising drug prices for the rest of the world, where strict price controls limit what drug makers can recoup.
There are a lot of problems with drug development in the US. But it's not primarily the fault of greedy drug makers. It's the economics of the entire system that lead to crazy results like this. Hate the game, not the player.
My guess is that Netflix will be more like: "glad not to have
to".
Except that's not what this is. It doesn't remove country content blocks. It only changes what country-specific content each user gets to see. Now it's tied to the account billing address instead of the physical location of the user.
From an engineering standpoint this makes it harder on Netflix not easier. The EU is now a special case, where this behavior must be coded differently. For everywhere else, the geoblock code is already in place based on IP location.
Now if every country approved this, it would make it easier for Netflix. No more fussing with geo lookups based on current IP address. Just always use the home country for that account.
Netflix may support the principle behind this law for making it easier on them if everyone else followed suit. And they may support it as the first step toward getting rid of geo restrictions altogether.
But on its own, this law is just another special case requiring more exceptions to their coding. More work for no real payoff.
I've lived in Silicon Valley and my family lives in Pittsburgh. So I have a good basis to compare. As with everything, there are tradeoffs.
Plus side: affordable housing, somewhat better traffic (though still congested at rush hour and bottlenecks at bridges).
Down side: you have to live in Pittsburgh. Weather is crappy (hard winters, humid summers). Food not nearly as good quality or variety (though getting better). Corrupt state government. Decaying infrastructure (potholes everywhere, bridges way past their shelf life). Not nearly as many getaway options nearby (what, are you going to West Virginia for the weekend?). And the people are, shall we say, less than enlightened on social issues (be prepared for LOTS of trump supporters. pot legalization is a fantasy). Airport is "international" only in the sense they occasionally fly to Toronto. Be prepared to pay a lot more and make a connecting flight to go overseas. Or even west of Chicago.
In short: you get what you pay for. Pittsburgh is cheaper for a reason. If you just want a big house and don't care about other stuff, go for it. Me, I'll take Bay Area every time. No contest.
If a junior FBI agent wants to pursue something and the senior agent in charge tells him he prefers he work on something else, that's not obstruction of justice.
Similarly, when the President tells his subordinate the FBI Director what he thinks about an investigation, that's also not obstruction of justice. He literally can't obstruct justice by telling the FBI head to stop investigating someone. The President is the head of the executive branch and as such, he is constitutionally the head law enforcement officer and prosecutor.
Please stop. You're so wrong it hurts.
Intent matters. Intent is everything. If the senior FBI agent tells the junior agent to stop investigating his family and associates, that absolutely IS obstruction of justice. Moreover, it's a clear conflict of interest that would never be tolerated under Dept of Justice rules - you don't allow an agent to work on a case involving family or close associates. The President is no different. The ethical conflicts that make this wildly inappropriate don't magically disappear.
Under your flawed logic the President is above the laws. He can commit any crime he wants and just tell the Justice Dept to stop investigating it. He could shoot someone on the street and tell the FBI to ignore it. That's madness.
Take your crackpot theories elsewhere. They're no good here. Yes IAAL.
Epidemics and diseases is the leading explanation. Almost the same thing happened to Europeans with plagues. The same thing happened to Roman Empire prior to complete collapse. So when conquistadores showed up, they were both immune and carriers.
That's Aztec not Mayans. The Mayan civilization collapsed centuries before Columbus ever showed up.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah England - the Xerox PARC of the English language. They invented the tech but never really understood it. Extraneous u's in color and honor. All those awkward -re endings leftover from French. Swallowing articles and prepositions left and right (you go to THE hospital and agree TO something). Poor limey bastards.
It took Americans to clean up the cruft and turn English into a global phenomenon. Thanks for your contributions, jolly old England. Now go back to your tea and crumpets, lads - the Big Boys have markets to dominate.
PS there's no such things as "maths".
Java, the code Mutilator! It's a monster truck you can pour in your code!
Java is like refactoring your code with a lawnmower! It's like programming on a 300 foot tall pony covered in chainsaws! Java - it's got what code craves!
That was a misprint. The slogan was supposed to be: "Write once, compile errors everywhere".
Wow. What an incredibly insightful and well constructed post. You added tremendous value to the discussion with that explanation. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.
I just have to ask... what website did you think you were on? Slashdot hasn't seen this level of discussion in years.
I'm sorry you wandered into this dump. I'll show you the way out if you promise to take me with you. Please.
And this is why you don't take legal advice from slashdot. IAAL.
There is consideration exchanged in website TOS. You get access to the site. They get your data (IP, clicks, browser string, etc). The data has value, even if they don't monetize it. So an exchange is made.
OP's point is about remedies. If you break TOS he says all they can recover is value of what they lost. Not so. One, violating a TOS can potentially carry criminal penalties under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (dumb I know, but it's possible).
Two, the problem isn't being sued for the value of your data. The problem is using the TOS to revoke your access to the site on flimsy pretext at the site owner's whim.
Say the TOS forbids you from saying anything bad about his website. If you break it, he can't stop you from badmouthing his site (recovery limited to value of your data). But he can cut you off from using his site any more. Now imagine that site is Amazon or Google. There's your problem. Imagine a contract that said by entering Walmart you consent to their discriminatory practices. That would never fly.
Biggest legal argument against website TOS is that they are contracts of adhesion. That means no opportunity to negotiate, no choice but to accept or forego the product. Such contracts are generally frowned upon in consumer goods. Yet somehow they survive in software and websites.
Speak for yourself. Some of us pay good money to hear those things.
Now tell me more about this easy out...
Spoken like someone who's never worked in govt. In reality most govt agencies can't do that, for a variety of reasons:
In theory, there's no reason an agency can't recognize their own limitations and hire a skilled software manager to run the project. In practice there are tons of barriers to doing that successfully. Successes are rare.
I'm not against open source in government. There should be more of it. But there are practical reasons why open source is difficult for govt agencies. You have to pick and choose the right use cases for it.
And who are you to demand that everyone needs a job? Who died and made you moral arbiter of the human race?
Most unemployed people don't do "nothing". They spend their energy on voluntary activities that enrich the community. Look at stay-at-home moms (and dads) that run the PTA, do charity drives, organize school events, work at various shelters, etc. Do those activities have zero economic value? Of course not. Just because wages aren't involved doesn't make an activity worthless to society.
Not to mention that I've worked with people with negative productivity. They not only can't do their own job - they actively prevent other people from doing theirs. We could do with fewer employed people in many cases.
Everyone has a choice. Don't work and be satisfied with the bare minimum for survival. Work and have a more comfortable lifestyle. I choose the latter because I don't want to live on ramen and water.
Valid arguments against basic income are economical, not moral. There is legitimate concern about the inflationary effects of society-wide basic income.
Your moral objections are nothing more than frat boy hazing of lower classmen: "it was tough when I did it, so it should be tough for everyone". No. Stick your sanctimonious attitude up your bankhole. Not everyone has to or should be a wage slave.
The entire question is malformed. Classic example of cherry picking bias.
Part of it is click-bait headlines. When do you ever see "scientists surprised" in a technical paper? Never.
But most of it is scale. You have millions of scientists around the world doing experiments across thousands of disciplines every day. Of course a few of them will make surprising discoveries. It would be shocking if no one ever discovered anything new.
The question sounds like major aspects of scientific knowledge are constantly being overturned. No. A surprising result here or there is the exception, not the rule. In most fields, you might have one or two really earth shattering discoveries a decade. And you have a few more a year that make you say "huh, I wouldn't have expected that" without any significant implications. Scientific knowledge isn't being completely overhauled every other month.
The status quo exists because it's generally been right for countless experiments across decades. Surprising results are memorable precisely because they are rare.
The "question" is nothing more than a reflection of scope and scale. Science does many things in many fields. Aggregate anything that large together and it will superficially seem like "ZOMG everything is changing all the time!". When all you're really doing is focusing on the outliers.
It's like that old saying. You get what you pay for.
I hate cable and will be the first to stomp on its grave. But at this point Netflix's content is not worth the price. Netflix offerings are garbage:
I understand why it happened. The greedy studios boxed Netflix out, hoping to run their own platform and keep all the juicy streaming fees for themselves. I would totally support a compulsory licensing scheme for video content similar to radio that lets any streaming service broadcast anything for a price.
So it's not Netflix's fault. But the end result is that their content is now unwatchable garbage. RIP Netflix.
The best deal right now is youtube tv. 40 popular channels including local networks and sports. Unlimited DVR ability. All for $40 a month. I think you can even add HBO or Showtime if that's your fancy.
It's not perfect. Still has commercials, though you can FF through them. Doesn't have a full streaming catalogue, only what the channels broadcast. And it's significantly more expensive than Netflix. But at least it has good content. You get what you pay for.
Bah. String theory has as much to do with it as the flying spaghetti monster.
The pace of discovery is slowing because of the law of diminishing returns. We already picked the low hanging fruit. Now each incremental advance gets more and more expensive, and the number of significant breakthrough "leaps" get fewer and farther between. Same as everything else. Cars, circuits, razors, microwave ovens. Each advance is increasingly more complex and costly than the last.
The reason astronomy has made so much progress lately is because the tools are so improved. Space telescopes, instantaneous global coordination of observatories, adaptive optics... these things didn't exist 30 years ago. We have access to reams more data now than ever before. Astronomy is still in its infancy in terms of data collection capabilities.
Why stop there? We should make our own clothes at home too! Quit throwing your paycheck at the Sewing-Industrial Complex.
And light sources, please. You still waste your hard-earned dollars on commercial light bulbs? Those are for suckers. Real do-it-yourselfers raise bees to harvest the wax and make their own candles.
Specialization and division of labor is the hallmark of civilization. Why does it suddenly become good and noble to ignore that when it comes to cooking?
I went to school and studied hard so that I don't have to fix my own car. I'm sure as hell not wasting my time making meals that can be done better and more efficiently by a professional cook.
lol... do you even know what that means? Are you saying the Ruby interpreter isn't coded in Perl? That's meaningless.
Are you saying that you can't copy/paste code directly from a Perl program into a Ruby program? Again, meaningless. Do you even know what derivative means?
Derivative = not original, derived. derived = received or obtained from a source or origin. Hmmm, where have we heard something like that before? Wait, I know:
"Ruby's syntax and design philosophy are heavily influenced by Perl.... Many, many things are lifted directly from Perl."
So pretty much the dictionary definition of derivative.
Like it or leave it, you don't know what you're talking about.
From the official ruby faq:
"Ruby is a modern object-oriented language, combining elements of Perl, Smalltalk, and Scheme
Influenced by Perl, Matz wanted to use a jewel name for his new language, so he named Ruby after a colleague's birthstone. Later, he realized that Ruby comes right after Perl in several situations. In birthstones, pearl is June, ruby is July. When measuring font sizes, pearl is 5pt, ruby is 5.5pt. He thought Ruby was a good name for a programming language newer (and hopefully better) than Perl.
Ruby's syntax and design philosophy are heavily influenced by Perl.... Many, many things are lifted directly from Perl."
That's bullshit. You only need to validate each signature once when the app is downloaded / executed for the first time. How many times a day are you doing that? Vanishingly small. It's not a significant source of slowdown.
Even if it was, your risk / reward tradeoff is all wrong. You're saving a few seconds a day of processing time, while risking that the occasional malware gets through? That's a terrible risk calculus. I bet you drive with no seatbelts either. Hey, you've never had an accident yet!
Face it - these products fucked up. There's no excuse for not checking signatures when that's what you claim to do.
You mean, like electronic journals (not the slashdot kind)? Yeah too bad USPTO doesn't have any of those. Well not many. Just a few:
"The Scientific and Technical Information (STIC) provides examiners access to Non-Patent Literature (NPL) through multiple electronic tools purchased from various publishers.... NPL encompasses all the TC subject areas and includes electronic books, periodicals, conferences, standards, dissertations, and much more. STIC currently subscribes to 78,000+ electronic journals and over 359,000 electronic books in full text."
Yep, it's a real shame they only look at patents as prior art. Except, you know, thousands upon thousands of other sources. A real shame.
I'll just leave this here... USPTO prior art electronic search resources
Blackberry needs to just die already. It's set my field back by 10 years.
We just switched from blackberries (real, honest to god made by RIM ones) to iphones last year. We finally have a modern smartphone with usable apps that doesn't waste half the device on a useless physical keyboard with tiny-ass keys made for a marmoset.
When I say usable apps, I don't mean nonsense like Waze or Angry Birds. I mean real business productivity apps. Simple things like copying and pasting or opening documents were a royal pain in the ass on actual blackberries.
I don't care if the new one is Android based. We're still using the blackberry apps on iphone and it's garbage. They can't implement anything properly. It's still a closed ecosystem that doesn't work well with any other apps. The benefit is that at least the basic features provided by Apple (copy/paste, keyboard, etc) aren't under BB's control. And we can go outside the BB apps when needed to get things done. The Android model will probably be locked down so you have to use their cruddy tools for everything.
This news is just the kind of nonsense that will send our security team scurrying out to buy blackberries once again. Damn you, RIM. Just die already.
Wrong. It is entirely possible for both to be true. You can have mathematical models that prove 4 or less is not optimal, while solutions for values above 4 are intractable.
Odds are the OP doesn't have such proof. But logically it is completely possible. Happens all the time in math where you can put bounds on solutions within a certain range, or exclude certain ranges from the solution, but not be able to arrive at a singular answer.
For a long time, we only knew that integer solutions to a^n + b^n = c^n were possible when n = 1 or 2. We didn't know if other integers were possible. We could rule out some, like n = 4 or n = odd prime, as having no solutions. But it wasn't until Wiles' proof in 1994 that we could rule out all n > 2. In 1992 it would be fair to say of Fermat's Last Theorem "We don't know what the optimal solution is, but it can't be 4".
Better yet - stop using gmail altogether. It's my email and my web browser. I decide what data to copy / forward / download... not some prick with a sloppy javascript hack.
SEC reports don't work like that. This isn't a tacit admission from Facebook that after much soul searching they realize they've done wrong. Nor does it mean they've found other incidents that haven't been reported yet.
All this means is Facebook is guarding against future lawsuits. SEC reports disclose every possible negative event so shareholders are considered aware of the risks. If another data breach event happens, Facebook has protected itself against shareholder lawsuits.
It's like reporting "Well our CEO could get eaten by a bear." Disclosing it as a possible risk doesn't make it any more or less likely to happen.
There probably will be more incidents. Facebook may in fact know of some already. But this report is not evidence of that.
I'm not supporting the manufacturer here. But there are some factors to consider why drug prices like this are so high. It's not always just naked greed (though sometimes Shrkelis do happen).
Say you're a pharma company. You work on drugs for rare diseases like this cancer. It takes a lot of money to develop new drugs and bring them to market.
If you're lucky the initial research finding drug candidates will be funded with public grants at a university. But you still have to take those drug candidates from promising lead to actual treatment. That means finding the right dosage. That means figuring out how to make the drug efficiently. It means lots of clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy - not to mention animal trials before you even get to that point. It means lots of regulatory hurdles. Basically the D part of R&D.
All that costs money. Typically we're talking hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. And success rates are low. Something like 10% of potential new drugs make it through the entire process. So for every drug that works, you tried nine others that failed. That raises costs to develop a successful drug even more.
So you get through all that. You now have a treatment for this rare disease. It costs billions to develop, including all the unsuccessful drug candidates you tried that didn't pan out. But the disease only affects 5,000 people a year. If you charge each one $100,000 for the treatment, you get 500 million per year.
If you spent 2 billion to create the drug, then you won't recoup your investment and start making money until year 5. And that doesn't count ongoing costs like manufacturing, quality control, patient monitoring, physician feedback, etc. Your patent on the drug is at most 20 years, and usually closer to 7-8. So you only have a few years to make profit on the drug until generics come in and eat your market.
I'll be the first to say the system stinks. But it's not because of evil profit-seeking drug makers. It's the way the entire system is setup. More drug development costs should be publicly funded. The regulatory approval process should be streamlined. Drug advertising should be illegal. The profit motive is killing US healthcare. We're subsidising drug prices for the rest of the world, where strict price controls limit what drug makers can recoup.
There are a lot of problems with drug development in the US. But it's not primarily the fault of greedy drug makers. It's the economics of the entire system that lead to crazy results like this. Hate the game, not the player.
Except that's not what this is. It doesn't remove country content blocks. It only changes what country-specific content each user gets to see. Now it's tied to the account billing address instead of the physical location of the user.
From an engineering standpoint this makes it harder on Netflix not easier. The EU is now a special case, where this behavior must be coded differently. For everywhere else, the geoblock code is already in place based on IP location.
Now if every country approved this, it would make it easier for Netflix. No more fussing with geo lookups based on current IP address. Just always use the home country for that account.
Netflix may support the principle behind this law for making it easier on them if everyone else followed suit. And they may support it as the first step toward getting rid of geo restrictions altogether.
But on its own, this law is just another special case requiring more exceptions to their coding. More work for no real payoff.
I've lived in Silicon Valley and my family lives in Pittsburgh. So I have a good basis to compare. As with everything, there are tradeoffs.
Plus side: affordable housing, somewhat better traffic (though still congested at rush hour and bottlenecks at bridges).
Down side: you have to live in Pittsburgh. Weather is crappy (hard winters, humid summers). Food not nearly as good quality or variety (though getting better). Corrupt state government. Decaying infrastructure (potholes everywhere, bridges way past their shelf life). Not nearly as many getaway options nearby (what, are you going to West Virginia for the weekend?). And the people are, shall we say, less than enlightened on social issues (be prepared for LOTS of trump supporters. pot legalization is a fantasy). Airport is "international" only in the sense they occasionally fly to Toronto. Be prepared to pay a lot more and make a connecting flight to go overseas. Or even west of Chicago.
In short: you get what you pay for. Pittsburgh is cheaper for a reason. If you just want a big house and don't care about other stuff, go for it. Me, I'll take Bay Area every time. No contest.
Please stop. You're so wrong it hurts.
Intent matters. Intent is everything. If the senior FBI agent tells the junior agent to stop investigating his family and associates, that absolutely IS obstruction of justice. Moreover, it's a clear conflict of interest that would never be tolerated under Dept of Justice rules - you don't allow an agent to work on a case involving family or close associates. The President is no different. The ethical conflicts that make this wildly inappropriate don't magically disappear.
Under your flawed logic the President is above the laws. He can commit any crime he wants and just tell the Justice Dept to stop investigating it. He could shoot someone on the street and tell the FBI to ignore it. That's madness.
Take your crackpot theories elsewhere. They're no good here. Yes IAAL.
That's Aztec not Mayans. The Mayan civilization collapsed centuries before Columbus ever showed up.