Protip: It's a fundamental requirement of Internet Protocol (the IP in TCP/IP) that the machines you connect to or that connect to you need your IP address to send you data.
If you want data from the internet, somebody is going to need your IP address.
Oh... and no reason to go after the person who creates the virus. Only the person who uses it against others.
No reason to go after the guy who makes pipe bombs either. Just the guy who uses them.
No reason to go after the guy who makes the full-auto conversion kits. Just the guy who applies them to the off-the-shelf weapon.
No reason to go after the guy who makes the fake passports. Just the guy who uses one.
Makes sense to me. Most things are legal until you use them to do something stupid.
Your laptop IS, on the other hand, getting OLDER, and while your hardware might not be changing the requirements put upon hardware are.
The point of this benchmark is to test the SAME requirements on different software setups. The whole point is that the requirements are not changing, but the time taken is increasing.
There's no reason the same task should ever get slower on the same hardware. It just doesn't make sense. If the kernel and compiler optimizations are getting better/faster, then they should be better/faster on older hardware as well as newer hardware.
New tasks that require more memory or faster processors may not perform well on old hardware, but existing tasks should stay the same or get faster. If that's not the case, then there's a problem somewhere.
That, or we have 200 cores, each of which is tens or hundreds of times faster than what we've got now. In which case, WTF do I care that 198 of my cores are doing nothing, when the other two are running my Ruby and Python apps as though they were hand-optimized assembly?
All other things being equal, C or hand-optimized assembly will still be faster than Ruby or Python. Maybe the faster processors make the Ruby and Python "fast enough", but they still won't be as fast as hand-optimized assembly language or C.
Of course that's ignoring the possibility of a big break through in interpreter and code generation technology before these chips come out.
Define "much." Because this country has many people that truly can't buy "much" "these days". As soon as there's an eminent war with a global super power (because anything shorter of one wouldn't merit this program), I'm pretty sure a lot of us are going to look back and say "I wish all that money was spent on stabilizing our economy and international relations rather than on big guns for the pricks that started this conflict."
In case you missed it, they already tried spending over $800 billion dollars on that, and it didn't work. Seems very unlikely a mere $29 million more would fix the problem.
Not that I necessarily agree with this satellite program, but it's a better waste of tax money than bailing out idiots.
This is about the umpteenth time we hear about this. Somehow, I can't believe anymore that putting these chips in passports was meant to increase security. The question is...what _was_ the purpose?
First, the article isn't talking about passports. It's talking about the new passport cards. It's not necessarily a given that the same RFID chip is used in both of them.
Second, passport cards aren't even required. You can get a regular passport with or without getting the card. The cards have nothing to do with extra security and everything to do with making travel between the US, Canada and Mexico more convenient.
Third, the RFID chip in regular passports isn't required either. You can get the passport, smash the chip with a hammer, and use it just like a regular old passport.
In any case, it's 100x easier to just order somebody's birth certificate, make a fake ID, and order a legit passport in their name.
Must you idiots turn every fucking article into an anti-McCain or anti-Obama flamefest? Both popular candidates suck. Get over it. If you really must whine about politics,take it to one of the millions of websites dedicated to that shit. This isn't one of them.
As you've probably seens mentioned lots of times here on slashdot already, there is a big difference between a physical product and something that can be duplicated at nearly no cost.
But you still haven't explained why you're entitled to it in the first place. Regardless of how easy it is to duplicate, there's still the initial problem that I start out with the only copy and you don't. You're saying I shouldn't be compensated, so where's my motivation to share?
It worked for Radiohead to let people set their price, because 1) enough people paid to give them a nice profit, and 2) their loss for each freeloader was the cost of bandwidth only.
But it didn't work for Radiohead. According to Wikipedia, Readiohead never publicized the results of letting people set their own price. When they released the regular CDs to retail, it did well. Maybe you're a Radiohead insider or something, but that doesn't sound very promising to me. Seems like if their little experiment went well, they'd want to let people know.
This is why letting people pick their own prices works.
But it's not your decision to make. If I build a car and decide to sell it for $5000, your only options are to buy it for $5000 or not buy it for $5000. You can't just steal it from me and give me $1000 because that's all you think it's worth. That's just not how trading works. If it were, I could kick you out of your house, toss you a $5 bill and claim I bought it from you.
However, the simple answer is that you're not entitled to other people's money.
You're not really explaining why you're entitled to other people's work. Video games don't just write themselves. If I spend hours and hours writing a game, why should I just give you a copy for free?
That's cool if people want to volunteer their time and do that, but I really don't see why you think you're entitled to it.
I'm failing to see how providing access to a DRM authentication server is a "moral and ethical obligation". Seems to me the ethical obligation would be to follow the agreement they made with their customers, and that agreement almost certainly says they can turn the servers off...
Lol! A "tax write off" is not a rebate. It has nothing to do with the government paying people. It's something that lets you pay less tax than you normally would. Unless you really think you have a right to other people's income. In which case your lame Soviet Russia joke would actually be kinda funny, though not in the way you intended.
For example, you can get a tax write off for donating money to charity. A very simple, probably numerically incorrect, example: if you made $50k last year and donated $5k to charities, you can "write off" the $5k, and pay income tax as if you only made $45k. There's no "rebate" or government pay out involved.
One standard, several implementations? Sounds nice in theory, just like the numerous standards that Sun has outputted where each vendor delivers its own implementation (JPA, JDBC, J2EE among others). However, in practise you pick *one* vendor and *one* implementation and run with it. Only a fool would dare switching implementation mid-development, making the choice really just academic, because there are always minor differences that "shouldn't" matter, but does.
That's true, but there are still several reasons why it keeps the vendors on their toes more than a technology with a single vendor, like Microsoft's crap.
It may be a pain to switch implementations, but it's still easier than a complete rewrite using something else. Switching C++ compilers is much easier than switching to a different language. Swapping J2EE implementations is a pain, but still easier than rewriting using Ruby on Rails. So the vendor may be able to make your life difficult, but not too difficult because they know you can switch.
Secondly, multiple vendors supplying several different, but largely similar products makes word of mouth and customer relations much more important. If Vendor A and Vendor B both have products implementing standards C and D, their reputations become much more important in deciding which product to use. There's more incentive to keep the customer happy. That's a good thing.
So no, one standard with multiple implementations won't solve every problem, but it makes the general situation better.
The constitution put a pretty narrow scope on the activities of the federal government. If the federal government limited itself to constitutional activities most lobbyists would be out of a job.
The people writing the constitution realized that an all powerful central government, like the one we have now, would be disconnected from the needs and desires of the people and would be incredibly susceptible to corruption, like we have now. That's why they put in the tenth amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The original constitution wasn't very big.
The problem we have now is that the states and the people have spent the last 230 years giving the federal government more and more power. We're at the same point as the founding fathers when they started the revolution and wrote the constitution: a very powerful, far away government controls every aspect of our lives. Back then it was England and the King, now it's Washington D.C. and Congress.
In 1776 a state law maker knew that if he took bribes and made stupid laws, pissed off citizens with guns lived close enough that they could pay him a visit. That's a hell of a motivating force.
There's nothing similar today. The most controversial laws, with the most impact, bought and paid for are all passed by professional law makers a thousand miles away, which the average person will never be able to see, or even communicate with. Certainly not while angry or carrying a gun. The law makers have forgotten their role. They're the employee, not the boss. They're supposed to be doing what *we* tell *them*, not the other way around.
It doesn't matter what the idiots in marketing tell people, "Version 1" of your software is the first version you release. Whether it's being called "Version 6" or "Version 1", people expect the first version to be buggy.
Honestly, though, I don't think I'd buy software from a company that starts counting at 6. No technical person would decide to start counting at 6, and that gives a pretty good idea of who's running things. Not only that, but starting at 6 to trick customers is a bit dishonest, and gives an even better idea of the type of people in charge. Even if it's not outright lying, it shows a pretty low opinion of the customers to think they'll be too stupid to see what you're doing.
Even if it does fool some people, it's still going to backfire in the end because the first version will still be buggy. Being at version 1 and full of bugs is expected and understandable. Being at version 6 and full of bugs just makes you look incompetent.
Ah, yes, I was once naive like that too and said much the same thing about others who were losing their jobs. I thought that there would always be jobs for the top 10% of their engineering class, the ones whose managers praised them. The ones who were so adaptable they could learn a new language or environment over a weekend. But I was naive and I, too, was replaced by cheap H1B labor.
Does being in the top 10% of your engineering class make you exempt from having to compete with everybody else? Would you still be whining if it was an American who just told your boss "I can do a comparable job, and I'll do it for half of what that guy is asking?" He wouldn't even need a vista.
99% of H1B whining basically boils down to "I'm American, I shouldn't have to compete for my job." Sorry, but that's just bullshit. If you're going to ask for a higher salary than everybody else, you better be prepared to demonstrate you're worth it. You obviously weren't doing that
You mean to tell me that a government program meant to keep wages artificially inflated is being abused? I'm shocked! Corruption in government? Impossible!
Next you'll try to tell me that big companies influence government officials to get favorable copyright legislation.
Incorrect. All of the mentioned countries have anti-spam laws. As such, jurisdictional issues do not exist as each country co-operates with the others to prosecute the entire damn lot. Did you not see the part where the governments were successful in destroying this spam ring?
Did you not see the part where my inbox is still filled with spam? 20 months of work and they haven't made any noticeable impact on spam. This investigation, and the Can Spam Act, aren't doing anything but wasting tax money.
Hell, my guess is this results in a net increase in spammers. $400k a month for sitting on your ass while botnet computers send spam? I'm half tempted to do that myself. They could be off by two orders of magnitude, and it's still higher than the median income in the US. And we're a rich country.
The only way to fight spam is to educate people on why they shouldn't buy things from it. That will never happen, so spam will always be a "problem."
There's no better proof that both major parties are in the pocket of business than the Wall Street bail out. They'll dick around forever discussing education or health care or public safety, or any other bullshit. But try getting an extra billion dollars for education. Never happen. It'd take the better part of a decade, and you'd be lucky to come away with $100 million.
But suddenly their lobbiest funding is at risk, and they can't throw money at the problem fast enough. $850 billion, backed by both parties, in less than a week. Amazing.
That's why it's so important to keep the government as small as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Protip: It's a fundamental requirement of Internet Protocol (the IP in TCP/IP) that the machines you connect to or that connect to you need your IP address to send you data.
If you want data from the internet, somebody is going to need your IP address.
Makes sense to me. Most things are legal until you use them to do something stupid.
You really think law makers are knowledgeable and informed about the fields they regulate? LOL!
They don't even bother reading the laws they vote on, they're certainly not going to bother reading up on the fields the laws regulate.
It's pretty silly to use it against one candidate because whoever you're voting for is undoubtedly just as guilty.
The point of this benchmark is to test the SAME requirements on different software setups. The whole point is that the requirements are not changing, but the time taken is increasing.
There's no reason the same task should ever get slower on the same hardware. It just doesn't make sense. If the kernel and compiler optimizations are getting better/faster, then they should be better/faster on older hardware as well as newer hardware.
New tasks that require more memory or faster processors may not perform well on old hardware, but existing tasks should stay the same or get faster. If that's not the case, then there's a problem somewhere.
All other things being equal, C or hand-optimized assembly will still be faster than Ruby or Python. Maybe the faster processors make the Ruby and Python "fast enough", but they still won't be as fast as hand-optimized assembly language or C.
Of course that's ignoring the possibility of a big break through in interpreter and code generation technology before these chips come out.
Here.
How do you figure?
In case you missed it, they already tried spending over $800 billion dollars on that, and it didn't work. Seems very unlikely a mere $29 million more would fix the problem.
Not that I necessarily agree with this satellite program, but it's a better waste of tax money than bailing out idiots.
First, the article isn't talking about passports. It's talking about the new passport cards. It's not necessarily a given that the same RFID chip is used in both of them.
Second, passport cards aren't even required. You can get a regular passport with or without getting the card. The cards have nothing to do with extra security and everything to do with making travel between the US, Canada and Mexico more convenient.
Third, the RFID chip in regular passports isn't required either. You can get the passport, smash the chip with a hammer, and use it just like a regular old passport.
In any case, it's 100x easier to just order somebody's birth certificate, make a fake ID, and order a legit passport in their name.
People are writing it off as a failure because there aren't crowds and lines forming to buy it? Seriously?
Seems just about every product ever made would be an utter failure going by that metric.
Must you idiots turn every fucking article into an anti-McCain or anti-Obama flamefest? Both popular candidates suck. Get over it. If you really must whine about politics,take it to one of the millions of websites dedicated to that shit. This isn't one of them.
But you still haven't explained why you're entitled to it in the first place. Regardless of how easy it is to duplicate, there's still the initial problem that I start out with the only copy and you don't. You're saying I shouldn't be compensated, so where's my motivation to share?
But it didn't work for Radiohead. According to Wikipedia, Readiohead never publicized the results of letting people set their own price. When they released the regular CDs to retail, it did well. Maybe you're a Radiohead insider or something, but that doesn't sound very promising to me. Seems like if their little experiment went well, they'd want to let people know.
But it's not your decision to make. If I build a car and decide to sell it for $5000, your only options are to buy it for $5000 or not buy it for $5000. You can't just steal it from me and give me $1000 because that's all you think it's worth. That's just not how trading works. If it were, I could kick you out of your house, toss you a $5 bill and claim I bought it from you.
And where did I say that I was?
You're not really explaining why you're entitled to other people's work. Video games don't just write themselves. If I spend hours and hours writing a game, why should I just give you a copy for free?
That's cool if people want to volunteer their time and do that, but I really don't see why you think you're entitled to it.
I'm failing to see how providing access to a DRM authentication server is a "moral and ethical obligation". Seems to me the ethical obligation would be to follow the agreement they made with their customers, and that agreement almost certainly says they can turn the servers off...
In any case, who cares?
Lol! A "tax write off" is not a rebate. It has nothing to do with the government paying people. It's something that lets you pay less tax than you normally would. Unless you really think you have a right to other people's income. In which case your lame Soviet Russia joke would actually be kinda funny, though not in the way you intended.
For example, you can get a tax write off for donating money to charity. A very simple, probably numerically incorrect, example: if you made $50k last year and donated $5k to charities, you can "write off" the $5k, and pay income tax as if you only made $45k. There's no "rebate" or government pay out involved.
That's true, but there are still several reasons why it keeps the vendors on their toes more than a technology with a single vendor, like Microsoft's crap.
It may be a pain to switch implementations, but it's still easier than a complete rewrite using something else. Switching C++ compilers is much easier than switching to a different language. Swapping J2EE implementations is a pain, but still easier than rewriting using Ruby on Rails. So the vendor may be able to make your life difficult, but not too difficult because they know you can switch.
Secondly, multiple vendors supplying several different, but largely similar products makes word of mouth and customer relations much more important. If Vendor A and Vendor B both have products implementing standards C and D, their reputations become much more important in deciding which product to use. There's more incentive to keep the customer happy. That's a good thing.
So no, one standard with multiple implementations won't solve every problem, but it makes the general situation better.
The constitution put a pretty narrow scope on the activities of the federal government. If the federal government limited itself to constitutional activities most lobbyists would be out of a job.
The people writing the constitution realized that an all powerful central government, like the one we have now, would be disconnected from the needs and desires of the people and would be incredibly susceptible to corruption, like we have now. That's why they put in the tenth amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The original constitution wasn't very big.
The problem we have now is that the states and the people have spent the last 230 years giving the federal government more and more power. We're at the same point as the founding fathers when they started the revolution and wrote the constitution: a very powerful, far away government controls every aspect of our lives. Back then it was England and the King, now it's Washington D.C. and Congress.
In 1776 a state law maker knew that if he took bribes and made stupid laws, pissed off citizens with guns lived close enough that they could pay him a visit. That's a hell of a motivating force.
There's nothing similar today. The most controversial laws, with the most impact, bought and paid for are all passed by professional law makers a thousand miles away, which the average person will never be able to see, or even communicate with. Certainly not while angry or carrying a gun. The law makers have forgotten their role. They're the employee, not the boss. They're supposed to be doing what *we* tell *them*, not the other way around.
Bullshit.
It doesn't matter what the idiots in marketing tell people, "Version 1" of your software is the first version you release. Whether it's being called "Version 6" or "Version 1", people expect the first version to be buggy.
Honestly, though, I don't think I'd buy software from a company that starts counting at 6. No technical person would decide to start counting at 6, and that gives a pretty good idea of who's running things. Not only that, but starting at 6 to trick customers is a bit dishonest, and gives an even better idea of the type of people in charge. Even if it's not outright lying, it shows a pretty low opinion of the customers to think they'll be too stupid to see what you're doing.
Even if it does fool some people, it's still going to backfire in the end because the first version will still be buggy. Being at version 1 and full of bugs is expected and understandable. Being at version 6 and full of bugs just makes you look incompetent.
This can't be real, can it? Did he threaten to clog their tubes if they didn't comply?
Sigh.
Does being in the top 10% of your engineering class make you exempt from having to compete with everybody else? Would you still be whining if it was an American who just told your boss "I can do a comparable job, and I'll do it for half of what that guy is asking?" He wouldn't even need a vista.
99% of H1B whining basically boils down to "I'm American, I shouldn't have to compete for my job." Sorry, but that's just bullshit. If you're going to ask for a higher salary than everybody else, you better be prepared to demonstrate you're worth it. You obviously weren't doing that
You mean to tell me that a government program meant to keep wages artificially inflated is being abused? I'm shocked! Corruption in government? Impossible!
Next you'll try to tell me that big companies influence government officials to get favorable copyright legislation.
Did you not see the part where my inbox is still filled with spam? 20 months of work and they haven't made any noticeable impact on spam. This investigation, and the Can Spam Act, aren't doing anything but wasting tax money.
Hell, my guess is this results in a net increase in spammers. $400k a month for sitting on your ass while botnet computers send spam? I'm half tempted to do that myself. They could be off by two orders of magnitude, and it's still higher than the median income in the US. And we're a rich country.
The only way to fight spam is to educate people on why they shouldn't buy things from it. That will never happen, so spam will always be a "problem."
Sad but true.
There's no better proof that both major parties are in the pocket of business than the Wall Street bail out. They'll dick around forever discussing education or health care or public safety, or any other bullshit. But try getting an extra billion dollars for education. Never happen. It'd take the better part of a decade, and you'd be lucky to come away with $100 million.
But suddenly their lobbiest funding is at risk, and they can't throw money at the problem fast enough. $850 billion, backed by both parties, in less than a week. Amazing.
That's why it's so important to keep the government as small as possible.