I can't think of any reason to write sloppily formatted/indented code
Except that what if it's not (intentionally) sloppy? What if I used different editors (or the same editor with different settings) to produce these, and they look right but are wrong or vice versa? Problems like this are not unknown in the land of Python.
I'm sorry, but whitespace is partly invisible. It doesn't deserve syntactic significance. Period.
Oops. I was using perl 5 to validate. If that's truly valid perl 6 code, it is ugly. On the other hand, it has always been possible to write ugly, incomprehensible perl code. That doesn't mean it has to end up that way. Good variable names and use of parentheses and braces beyond the absolute minimum needed for parsing go a long way for improving readability.
python blows because: for i in list:
do something with i
is probably different from: for i in list: do something with i
which is also probably different from:
for i in list:
do something with i
Syntactically significant whitespace! No fucking thank fucking you! Never in a million million years will I make this my primary, secondary or tertiary language (e.g. I will only learn it if I need to debug some killer app [like TDMA], and only after all other options have failed).
Python: syntactically significant white-space. Need I say more? I just can't get past this one. (Every few years I forget this one and think 'maybe I should look at this Python stuff again' - then I do, remember this, and am torn between nausea and laughter.)
PHP: I suppose if you need to mix code w/ html, this is as good or bad a way as any. But I don't do that (I have that luxury, I code by myself and needn't accomodate webmasturbators).
As others have said, web or non-web, the shortest path between 'need/want' and 'have' is often a perl script. Pretty much anything you want to do (and a lot that you would never even think of doing) is on CPAN.
a defunct company, apparently looking to utterly destroy their once-good reputation
Say what? SCO has sucked for years. Their tech support totally blew (AFTER charging serious money). (This was partially offset by one of their tech guys, Bela Lubkin, spending gobs of time on Usenet. I hope he had the chance to move on to greener pastures, thopugh google shows him recently posting from the caldera.com domain.)
If you wanted UNIX on Intel, it was at one point the main choice. Linux and *BSD ended that. They've been dead meat for years. This is their death rattle. Good riddance.
But it is so much more fun to use a fragment of fact to make the court system look insane.
If I put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, it's not someone else's fault if I die, just because they were told to have the gun unloaded.
This was Darwin in action (except that the dumb bitch was apparently too old to pump out anymore morons anyhow). The courts should have laughed loudly at her, not upheld her claim.
Firewalls are great when you can trust all your insiders. That's rarely the case.
Not exactly. Firewalls are great when you can't trust all your outsiders, which is always the case. It's just that you need more, besides the firewall, to deal with the internal problems.
Real-time intrusion detection systems also help out, but fail when:
* insiders do the job -- they're not "intruding"
The IDS belongs on the same network with the resources (servers) so that they see all activity, internal as well as external.
you still have to memorize the password to that file.
Which I said already. But that one password, which you work to make memorable, gives you access to potentially many, which, due to infosec requirments of construction, history and uniqueness amongst systems, may be totally unmemorable.
For 1 root password on 1 system, it may not be worth it. For multiple passwords on multiple systems, it's not bad.
they should have it written down, but that piece of paper can get lost, and might not be able to be kept reasonably secure.
I disagree. You put your root (and other seldom used passwords in a file. It's accessible under an account you use daily and won't screwup. You encrypt the file with gpg or pgp or some such, and DON'T forget the passphrase. then you wipe and delete the unencrypted file. This works for me unless I forget to update the file when a password chages.
Thompson elaborated... "Our core architecture is so solid, that we were able to take NT from 386-25's in 1990 to today's embedded devices, 64-way, 64-bit multiprocessor machines, and $1000 scale-out server blades."
Does any other company make burners that can burn an image on the CD?
This feature, even if it worked well (I never actually tried it), was lame, as it made the image on the data side, so to get an image of any resaonable size, you have to give up much capacity. Also, only one of the 2 or 3 kinds of CD-Rs available made a really distinct image.
But everything about Microsoft excludes Microsoft.
That was so well said. Microsoft's continuous lying and FUD, and their pathetic Shared Source, which is nothing but an attempt to fool people into thinking that they're getting on board, come immediately to mind.
If I go to a conference about Open Source, I'm looking for useful information about Open Source. No-one representing Microsoft's corporate policy can possibly have anything to say that qualifies - it's impossible by definiton.
There may be venues where their opionions can and should be heard (though I doubt it - their software tend towards cheesey and their business practices alone should disqualify them form use by any ethical organization). An open source meeting isn't one of them.
I still do not believe that the engineers acted with malfeasance.
Neither do I. It is a distortion of my position to imply that I ever did. I just said that it's wrong not to include the means to inspect suspected damage, and repair it if possible, or take other action. Why are you so sensitive to any criticism of NASA?
Who got defensive? I'm saying we have a right to ask questions. I'm willing to listen to the answers. You seem to say that the NASA guys are so far ahead of us that to even ask the question is wrong. That is not good science, and it's not good managment.
Right. So this is the best of all possible worlds. More information wouldn't have helped. Don't question decisions that have already been made - even if they were made 25 years ago. Don't think, don't ask - it's someone else's call.
So glad you know everything.
Tell me which rockets you're working on so I can stay the hell away from them.
Well, there's no backup because a hell of a lot of smart engineers made the determination that it would not significantly increase the survivability of the Shuttle.
Well, now we get to analyze that decision in detail. What could it have hurt to put a jetpack and whatever available patch there was in the shuttel? Or even just the jetpack, so they could make an informed decision and look at alternatives? Maybe there wouldn't have been any other options, but now we'll never know.
wouldn't have given or done ANYTHING to get that crew down safely, even at the risk of their own lives and careers,
Once they were up there in that state, it was probably all over. I just think that with the expenditure of a few percent more, they could have had a way to see what was going on, and another few percent might have given them the way to do something about it - reach the ISS, carry something along to patch the hole, stay up longer and wait for another shuttle (or even a russian craft) to be launched, whatever.
It's always been known that if too many tiles were damaged, it was all over at re-entry. I'm questioning the apparent decision not to do more about that situation. And I have a right to ask those questions - period. If the decision was budgetary, let's find out who made that call.
If you want to be someplace where no-one can question the rocket scientists, this isn't it.
And they'll probably never forgive themselves for it. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on that team that said the insulation damage wasn't going to be a problem.
Agreed. Talk about hell on earth. But they were forced to guess and nobody should have had to guess about this. There should have been at least the means to find out what the real situation was.
My point isn't I'm right and you're wrong, my point is that NASA has some world-class people on both sides of this problem, and you don't have the expertise or experience to criticize. Neither do I, which is why I'm not.
I asked questions, admittedly with some attitude. When you have a system you can't live without, you have backup if there is any possble way. You certainly have a way to know the status of that system.
Because the jetpacks weigh about, what, 100lbs each? Remember that $10,000 per pound number you see bandied about?
"1 jetpack in space: $1,000,000. 7 shuttle astronauts: priceless."
Whenever I push on the ship, I go flying the other direction!"
See above.
Why weren't these problems anticipated and solved? Because they're absurdly hard to anticipate and really really difficult to solve.
Hardly any anticipation needed. Tile damage and heat increase has happened on several previous flights. All one had to say is 'what if this were somewhat worse?' Solutions may be hideously dificult in the absence of space stations and other craft - with these, possibilities open up.
And guess what - you haven't avoided the need to solve these, you only postponed it.
There may have been no solution. But the complete lack of even the means to assess the problem just looks like hell.
What school is your master's in engineering from again?
BSEE UIUC. I'm not a rocket scientist. You say you are. Good for you. But that doesn't automatically mean I'm wrong and you're right.
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I can't think of any reason to write sloppily formatted/indented code
Except that what if it's not (intentionally) sloppy? What if I used different editors (or the same editor with different settings) to produce these, and they look right but are wrong or vice versa? Problems like this are not unknown in the land of Python.
I'm sorry, but whitespace is partly invisible. It doesn't deserve syntactic significance. Period.
Oops. I was using perl 5 to validate. If that's truly valid perl 6 code, it is ugly. On the other hand, it has always been possible to write ugly, incomprehensible perl code. That doesn't mean it has to end up that way. Good variable names and use of parentheses and braces beyond the absolute minimum needed for parsing go a long way for improving readability.
python blows because:
for i in list:
do something with i
is probably different from:
for i in list:
do something with i
which is also probably different from:
for i in list:
do something with i
Syntactically significant whitespace! No fucking thank fucking you! Never in a million million years will I make this my primary, secondary or tertiary language (e.g. I will only learn it if I need to debug some killer app [like TDMA], and only after all other options have failed).
your objection might have some legs if you had at least used vlid perl code.
I can make ANY language look bad if I can break the rules.
Python: syntactically significant white-space. Need I say more? I just can't get past this one. (Every few years I forget this one and think 'maybe I should look at this Python stuff again' - then I do, remember this, and am torn between nausea and laughter.)
PHP: I suppose if you need to mix code w/ html, this is as good or bad a way as any. But I don't do that (I have that luxury, I code by myself and needn't accomodate webmasturbators).
As others have said, web or non-web, the shortest path between 'need/want' and 'have' is often a perl script. Pretty much anything you want to do (and a lot that you would never even think of doing) is on CPAN.
a defunct company, apparently looking to utterly destroy their once-good reputation
Say what? SCO has sucked for years. Their tech support totally blew (AFTER charging serious money). (This was partially offset by one of their tech guys, Bela Lubkin, spending gobs of time on Usenet. I hope he had the chance to move on to greener pastures, thopugh google shows him recently posting from the caldera.com domain.)
If you wanted UNIX on Intel, it was at one point the main choice. Linux and *BSD ended that. They've been dead meat for years. This is their death rattle. Good riddance.
But it is so much more fun to use a fragment of fact to make the court system look insane.
If I put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, it's not someone else's fault if I die, just because they were told to have the gun unloaded.
This was Darwin in action (except that the dumb bitch was apparently too old to pump out anymore morons anyhow). The courts should have laughed loudly at her, not upheld her claim.
...oh, wait, we already are. Nevermind.
Firewalls are great when you can trust all your insiders. That's rarely the case.
Not exactly. Firewalls are great when you can't trust all your outsiders, which is always the case. It's just that you need more, besides the firewall, to deal with the internal problems.
Real-time intrusion detection systems also help out, but fail when:
* insiders do the job -- they're not "intruding"
The IDS belongs on the same network with the resources (servers) so that they see all activity, internal as well as external.
you still have to memorize the password to that file.
Which I said already. But that one password, which you work to make memorable, gives you access to potentially many, which, due to infosec requirments of construction, history and uniqueness amongst systems, may be totally unmemorable.
For 1 root password on 1 system, it may not be worth it. For multiple passwords on multiple systems, it's not bad.
From the linked article: But if you follow any of the vulnerabilities of our competitors, we are not as bad as them.
Um, which competitors are these? Where are the numbers (minus duplicate counting across distros and inconsistent inclusion/exclusion of apps)?
Would this be the FOSS community that acknowledges and patches holes in hours?
they should have it written down, but that piece of paper can get lost, and might not be able to be kept reasonably secure.
I disagree. You put your root (and other seldom used passwords in a file. It's accessible under an account you use daily and won't screwup. You encrypt the file with gpg or pgp or some such, and DON'T forget the passphrase. then you wipe and delete the unencrypted file. This works for me unless I forget to update the file when a password chages.
Thompson elaborated... "Our core architecture is so solid, that we were able to take NT from 386-25's in 1990 to today's embedded devices, 64-way, 64-bit multiprocessor machines, and $1000 scale-out server blades."
Write once, blue-screen anywhere.
How come CNN coudn't put that in the article? What crap.
Does any other company make burners that can burn an image on the CD?
This feature, even if it worked well (I never actually tried it), was lame, as it made the image on the data side, so to get an image of any resaonable size, you have to give up much capacity. Also, only one of the 2 or 3 kinds of CD-Rs available made a really distinct image.
But everything about Microsoft excludes Microsoft.
That was so well said. Microsoft's continuous lying and FUD, and their pathetic Shared Source, which is nothing but an attempt to fool people into thinking that they're getting on board, come immediately to mind.
If I go to a conference about Open Source, I'm looking for useful information about Open Source. No-one representing Microsoft's corporate policy can possibly have anything to say that qualifies - it's impossible by definiton.
There may be venues where their opionions can and should be heard (though I doubt it - their software tend towards cheesey and their business practices alone should disqualify them form use by any ethical organization). An open source meeting isn't one of them.
I still do not believe that the engineers acted with malfeasance.
Neither do I. It is a distortion of my position to imply that I ever did. I just said that it's wrong not to include the means to inspect suspected damage, and repair it if possible, or take other action. Why are you so sensitive to any criticism of NASA?
News today that there was a diofferent re-entry path that moght have been used that would have imposed less thermal stress.
But you just go on believing that more information and consideration would have been of no use at all.
Who got defensive? I'm saying we have a right to ask questions. I'm willing to listen to the answers. You seem to say that the NASA guys are so far ahead of us that to even ask the question is wrong. That is not good science, and it's not good managment.
Right. So this is the best of all possible worlds. More information wouldn't have helped. Don't question decisions that have already been made - even if they were made 25 years ago. Don't think, don't ask - it's someone else's call.
So glad you know everything.
Tell me which rockets you're working on so I can stay the hell away from them.
Well, there's no backup because a hell of a lot of smart engineers made the determination that it would not significantly increase the survivability of the Shuttle.
Well, now we get to analyze that decision in detail. What could it have hurt to put a jetpack and whatever available patch there was in the shuttel? Or even just the jetpack, so they could make an informed decision and look at alternatives? Maybe there wouldn't have been any other options, but now we'll never know.
wouldn't have given or done ANYTHING to get that crew down safely, even at the risk of their own lives and careers,
Once they were up there in that state, it was probably all over. I just think that with the expenditure of a few percent more, they could have had a way to see what was going on, and another few percent might have given them the way to do something about it - reach the ISS, carry something along to patch the hole, stay up longer and wait for another shuttle (or even a russian craft) to be launched, whatever.
It's always been known that if too many tiles were damaged, it was all over at re-entry. I'm questioning the apparent decision not to do more about that situation. And I have a right to ask those questions - period. If the decision was budgetary, let's find out who made that call.
If you want to be someplace where no-one can question the rocket scientists, this isn't it.
And they'll probably never forgive themselves for it. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on that team that said the insulation damage wasn't going to be a problem.
Agreed. Talk about hell on earth. But they were forced to guess and nobody should have had to guess about this. There should have been at least the means to find out what the real situation was.
My point isn't I'm right and you're wrong, my point is that NASA has some world-class people on both sides of this problem, and you don't have the expertise or experience to criticize. Neither do I, which is why I'm not.
I asked questions, admittedly with some attitude. When you have a system you can't live without, you have backup if there is any possble way. You certainly have a way to know the status of that system.
Because the jetpacks weigh about, what, 100lbs each? Remember that $10,000 per pound number you see bandied about?
"1 jetpack in space: $1,000,000. 7 shuttle astronauts: priceless."
Whenever I push on the ship, I go flying the other direction!"
See above.
Why weren't these problems anticipated and solved? Because they're absurdly hard to anticipate and really really difficult to solve.
Hardly any anticipation needed. Tile damage and heat increase has happened on several previous flights. All one had to say is 'what if this were somewhat worse?' Solutions may be hideously dificult in the absence of space stations and other craft - with these, possibilities open up.
And guess what - you haven't avoided the need to solve these, you only postponed it.
There may have been no solution. But the complete lack of even the means to assess the problem just looks like hell.
What school is your master's in engineering from again?
BSEE UIUC. I'm not a rocket scientist. You say you are. Good for you. But that doesn't automatically mean I'm wrong and you're right.