I shouldn't waste my virtual breath answering your post, but I can't resist. I truly believe you are wrong, in so many ways!
1. If this topic was so easy, there wouldn't be so many varying, and failed approaches to the problem discussed here.
2. This sort of problem should be dealt with by an architect on a project, not a coder - it is not something that coders should have to bother about.
3. This topic is only "easy" if you dealt with it at length on an appropriate course. If only computer science graduates were allowed to code, the internet as we know it would simply not exist. On most of the (large) projects I've been on, less than half or even less than a quarter had a Bachelors degree in IT.
It would be nice if everyone got the right degree before starting, but the real world just doesn't work like that.
I think that the article means "software technology". Google has in the past been quite open about the hardware it uses.
I remember a quote (though I am not enough of a karma whore to dredge it up), where one of the google guys said that if they ran out of server horsepower, they just wandered down to the nearest Kwik-e Mart (TM) and picked up a bunch of new PCs.
Most big companies would think to themselves: "We are really big so we must need really big servers", without actually doing the maths of what they really need. So most if not all big sites use much bigger servers (at least in terms of price, if not cpu power, memory, HDD space) than Google.
Google's secret is its clustering algorithm, which enables it to spread the load over very many small servers, and still get a lightning fast response back to the user.
It seems to be a ubiquitous misconception that "clean" means somehow pure.
What we call "clean" often means, "covered in cleaning chemicals", or perhaps "free from stuff that is alive or was recently alive, like bacteria, house dust, cat hair etc.", or just "free from visible dirt".
I think it's fairly common knowledge (though apparently not on slashdot) that perfumes and other chemicals are a common cause of allergies.
So therefore it is more likely that it is the paranoid housewife's love of agressive chemical cleaners with 'lovely' fragrant perfumes, that causes allergies in those clean city homes.
Regarding the clean room discussion - the term is also misleading: clean rooms are usually a type of laboratory, and so contain all manner of chemicals. They are usually only a low dust (or airborne particle) environment. I myself worked in a clean room, where we used nasty solvents (chloroform, benzene) for cleaning apparatus and dissolving chemicals. It would be no surprise to me if someone entering there had an allergy attack.
My mum thought she had asthma or similar, because she would wheeze when we opened the kitchen window. The she cleared out some cupboards and threw away a load of old household cleaning solvent bottles, and the wheezing went away. The draft from the window had been wafting the solvent vapours over to the kitchen table.
Of course, a subject like this is rarely black and white, and I am sure the argument about exposure to microbes has merit (I myself have had a bout of colitis, and was at one point was tempted by the worms treatment)
My guess is that it's a bug in the yahoo webmail application itself, rather than a bug in javascript per se - therefore it is not limited by which browser you have, as you need javascript enabled to use yahoo mail.
The bug probably lies in the ability to access yahoo's own webmail javascripts to obtain addresses and send mails from a script within the mail itself. Presumably they have tried to block scripts from doing this, but not successfully.
Their webmail beta rocks, by the way - it kicks hotmail's equivalent beta into touch.
I don't know where this myth comes from, but you only need to look at Microsoft's own security bulletins to see that this just isn't the case. Unchecked buffers resulting in buffer overflows mean that a cracker can install and run any code he likes, without you ever knowing about it.
Websense researchers found that the rigged site exploits the unpatched createTextRange vulnerability to download and install a keystroke logger without any user action.
Worse than that, the bad guy doesn't need to install a virus, so your virus checker probably won't notice. And even spyware scanners will only work if the bad guy uses code that the AdAware guys and their friends know about.
This, my friends, is why everyone is switching to Firefox
--------
Hey, who needs a sig? Not me!! Oh wait...
It's much worse than that! AMD's Thermal Design Power is set higherthan the Maximum power used (worst case scenario), whereas Intel's refers to the Average power. This can translate into a difference of approx 50 watts.
PLEASE please Google, release an operating system!!! I don't care if it's any good.... hell, I don't even care if it works: I'll gladly pay good money just to see the expression on Ballmer's face when Google beats them at their own game.
Google has given us back the enjoyment of computing. I'll support just about anything they're doing at the moment.
(For an example of what I mean, check out google earth)
I just hope Google always remembers that we love them because they are the good guys, so they keep doing the good guy thing....
So.... by your argument, if I gave each of my friends (and anyone I happened to meet on the street) 20 bucks to e.g. take a crap on... say... your car bonnet (I'm assuming here there isn't actually a law against this), you think they should do this?
Because, as you say, this would be the "rational economic choice". Any concept of 'doing the right thing' or not harming others unless you have no choice, or at least a really good reason is just "ephemeral rot".
When people like yourself look down on someone because they are "trying to save the planet", it always make me wonder whether you realise that this is the same planet you are living on (and currently the only known inhabitable planet in the universe.)
If you don't think that anything you do affects the environment, then you should try an experiment:
Step 1. leave your garbage in the front room, use your kitchen as a toilet, do an oil change on your SUV in the dining room, then fill it up with gas and leave the engine running.
Step 2. after one week, see if your environment has changed for the better or for the worse.
Step 3. re-evaluate whether damaging the environment is "ephemeral rot"
Ok... I'll drop the term "real world" if it offends anyone.
But I thought that the point was to make free software available to the masses (free software for everyone, as you say yourself - and I take it we're talking free as in freedom, not necessarily free as in beer). It's no good making the most wonderful free software if no-one ever gets to use it. And there are two things preventing people from using it at the moment:
1. They have never heard of it 2. It isn't quite a credible competitor to Microsoft, yet.
Now, I don't have any personal agenda against Bill Gates: he is very good at what he does. He saw early on that the way to conquer the software market was to make sure his software got into ordinary people's homes.
I just wish that the people who care deeply about great, free software also could see this.
The problem for OSS is that ordinary people usually don't research what software is best or cheapest or most free. They go with what they know, or else with what they're given, or else with what they can find in the shops.
Or did I get it completely wrong????? Am I the only one who wants to see ordinary people using OpenOffice??????
Why is it that Nerds have no vision... they are happy to just wallow in their own nerdiness and build solutions that no real people can use/want to use because only nerds can join the club. And don't tell me that Gates is a nerd too - because he isn't - he doesn't give a crap about technology, he only cares about big business.
And the only thing that matters at the moment is getting a real alternative to Microsoft products, because Microsoft is like a huge, doubly bloated, beached whale, rolling around and crushing the software market, squeezing the life out of all other products around it.
The only way out of this situation is to become credible competition to Microsoft, and you can't do that with a "no can do" attitude.
No one in the real world cares whether Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu or Oogabooga ship with or without Java, all they need to know is where to download their software from, or where they can get it on a CD. ("And by the way will it work the same as Word?")
Just today I tried to get a friend to use OpenOffice instead of Word, but they needed a swedish thesaurus and spell checker, which I couldn't rustle up. There is still work to be done, guys..... it's fantastic that you are doing it....
"nothing renewable comes close to the energy return of fossil fuels or nuclear (at current production)."
Am I the only person to have noticed the success of wind power these days?
Current state-of-the-art wind turbines (1.5+ MW) are able to compete with other power sources on equal terms (and before you rant about PTCs, Production tax credits, remember that other power sources also receive massive direct and indirect subsidies). I don't know how you calculate your "energy return", but I hope you include e.g. for nuclear, the astronomical cost of decomissioning, which can be greater than the cost of running the plant for the whole of it's lifetime.
Wind power has the potential to fulfill a great deal of our energy needs. Denmark, for example, already gets 20% of it's energy from wind power.
It's unfortunate that older wind projects like Altamont Pass have given so much bad press. Newer projects, and especially offshore wind farms are much easier on the eye and on the environment. e.g. A Vestas V90 3MW turbine pays for itself energetically within the first 7 months of its 20 year rated liftime.
And anyone who says that reducing energy consumption is not part of the solution has lost touch with reality. This is the same sort of person who has maxed out all their credit cards, has massive debts and doesn't intend to reduce their spending. (Did someone say National debt, Mr. Bush?)
However much energy we produce, we will always be able to consume it all if we waste it. And the expense is no barrier - if there is oversupply in our market economy, the price falls. So energy saving schemes must always be part of the solution.
Slashdot Mirror
I shouldn't waste my virtual breath answering your post, but I can't resist. I truly believe you are wrong, in so many ways!
1. If this topic was so easy, there wouldn't be so many varying, and failed approaches to the problem discussed here.
2. This sort of problem should be dealt with by an architect on a project, not a coder - it is not something that coders should have to bother about.
3. This topic is only "easy" if you dealt with it at length on an appropriate course. If only computer science graduates were allowed to code, the internet as we know it would simply not exist. On most of the (large) projects I've been on, less than half or even less than a quarter had a Bachelors degree in IT.
It would be nice if everyone got the right degree before starting, but the real world just doesn't work like that.
I know, I know, -99 Offtopic
Of course it's pointless! Captain Picard would totally kick Darth Vader's ass!
He is righteous, has a posh British accent and says "Make it so!"....
...whereas Vader got his todger burnt off on a lavalamp, and sounds like he's swallowed a hoover hose.
Set phasers to kill!
I think that the article means "software technology". Google has in the past been quite open about the hardware it uses. I remember a quote (though I am not enough of a karma whore to dredge it up), where one of the google guys said that if they ran out of server horsepower, they just wandered down to the nearest Kwik-e Mart (TM) and picked up a bunch of new PCs. Most big companies would think to themselves: "We are really big so we must need really big servers", without actually doing the maths of what they really need. So most if not all big sites use much bigger servers (at least in terms of price, if not cpu power, memory, HDD space) than Google. Google's secret is its clustering algorithm, which enables it to spread the load over very many small servers, and still get a lightning fast response back to the user.
Can we mod the article -1 troll?
It seems to be a ubiquitous misconception that "clean" means somehow pure.
What we call "clean" often means, "covered in cleaning chemicals", or perhaps "free from stuff that is alive or was recently alive, like bacteria, house dust, cat hair etc.", or just "free from visible dirt".
I think it's fairly common knowledge (though apparently not on slashdot) that perfumes and other chemicals are a common cause of allergies.
So therefore it is more likely that it is the paranoid housewife's love of agressive chemical cleaners with 'lovely' fragrant perfumes, that causes allergies in those clean city homes.
Regarding the clean room discussion - the term is also misleading: clean rooms are usually a type of laboratory, and so contain all manner of chemicals. They are usually only a low dust (or airborne particle) environment. I myself worked in a clean room, where we used nasty solvents (chloroform, benzene) for cleaning apparatus and dissolving chemicals. It would be no surprise to me if someone entering there had an allergy attack.
My mum thought she had asthma or similar, because she would wheeze when we opened the kitchen window. The she cleared out some cupboards and threw away a load of old household cleaning solvent bottles, and the wheezing went away. The draft from the window had been wafting the solvent vapours over to the kitchen table.
Of course, a subject like this is rarely black and white, and I am sure the argument about exposure to microbes has merit (I myself have had a bout of colitis, and was at one point was tempted by the worms treatment)
My guess is that it's a bug in the yahoo webmail application itself, rather than a bug in javascript per se - therefore it is not limited by which browser you have, as you need javascript enabled to use yahoo mail.
The bug probably lies in the ability to access yahoo's own webmail javascripts to obtain addresses and send mails from a script within the mail itself. Presumably they have tried to block scripts from doing this, but not successfully.
Their webmail beta rocks, by the way - it kicks hotmail's equivalent beta into touch.
I don't know where this myth comes from, but you only need to look at Microsoft's own security bulletins to see that this just isn't the case. Unchecked buffers resulting in buffer overflows mean that a cracker can install and run any code he likes, without you ever knowing about it.
For exampleHere is an excerpt:
Websense researchers found that the rigged site exploits the unpatched createTextRange vulnerability to download and install a keystroke logger without any user action.Worse than that, the bad guy doesn't need to install a virus, so your virus checker probably won't notice. And even spyware scanners will only work if the bad guy uses code that the AdAware guys and their friends know about.
This, my friends, is why everyone is switching to Firefox--------
Hey, who needs a sig? Not me!! Oh wait...
It's much worse than that! AMD's Thermal Design Power is set higherthan the Maximum power used (worst case scenario), whereas Intel's refers to the Average power. This can translate into a difference of approx 50 watts.
. html
m l
Examples of the actual power consumption differences:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/05/09/amd/page20
Here is a detailed discussion:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article169-page3.ht
PLEASE please Google, release an operating system!!! I don't care if it's any good.... hell, I don't even care if it works: I'll gladly pay good money just to see the expression on Ballmer's face when Google beats them at their own game.
Google has given us back the enjoyment of computing. I'll support just about anything they're doing at the moment.
(For an example of what I mean, check out google earth)
I just hope Google always remembers that we love them because they are the good guys, so they keep doing the good guy thing....
So.... by your argument, if I gave each of my friends (and anyone I happened to meet on the street) 20 bucks to e.g. take a crap on... say... your car bonnet (I'm assuming here there isn't actually a law against this), you think they should do this? Because, as you say, this would be the "rational economic choice". Any concept of 'doing the right thing' or not harming others unless you have no choice, or at least a really good reason is just "ephemeral rot". When people like yourself look down on someone because they are "trying to save the planet", it always make me wonder whether you realise that this is the same planet you are living on (and currently the only known inhabitable planet in the universe.) If you don't think that anything you do affects the environment, then you should try an experiment: Step 1. leave your garbage in the front room, use your kitchen as a toilet, do an oil change on your SUV in the dining room, then fill it up with gas and leave the engine running. Step 2. after one week, see if your environment has changed for the better or for the worse. Step 3. re-evaluate whether damaging the environment is "ephemeral rot"
Ok... I'll drop the term "real world" if it offends anyone.
But I thought that the point was to make free software available to the masses (free software for everyone, as you say yourself - and I take it we're talking free as in freedom, not necessarily free as in beer). It's no good making the most wonderful free software if no-one ever gets to use it. And there are two things preventing people from using it at the moment:
1. They have never heard of it
2. It isn't quite a credible competitor to Microsoft, yet.
Now, I don't have any personal agenda against Bill Gates: he is very good at what he does. He saw early on that the way to conquer the software market was to make sure his software got into ordinary people's homes.
I just wish that the people who care deeply about great, free software also could see this.
The problem for OSS is that ordinary people usually don't research what software is best or cheapest or most free. They go with what they know, or else with what they're given, or else with what they can find in the shops.
Or did I get it completely wrong????? Am I the only one who wants to see ordinary people using OpenOffice??????
No my friend, it is you who needs to get a grip.
Why is it that Nerds have no vision... they are happy to just wallow in their own nerdiness and build solutions that no real people can use/want to use because only nerds can join the club. And don't tell me that Gates is a nerd too - because he isn't - he doesn't give a crap about technology, he only cares about big business.
And the only thing that matters at the moment is getting a real alternative to Microsoft products, because Microsoft is like a huge, doubly bloated, beached whale, rolling around and crushing the software market, squeezing the life out of all other products around it.
The only way out of this situation is to become credible competition to Microsoft, and you can't do that with a "no can do" attitude.
No one in the real world cares whether Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu or Oogabooga ship with or without Java, all they need to know is where to download their software from, or where they can get it on a CD. ("And by the way will it work the same as Word?")
Just today I tried to get a friend to use OpenOffice instead of Word, but they needed a swedish thesaurus and spell checker, which I couldn't rustle up. There is still work to be done, guys..... it's fantastic that you are doing it....
now get out there and do it....
"nothing renewable comes close to the energy return of fossil fuels or nuclear (at current production)."
Am I the only person to have noticed the success of wind power these days?
Current state-of-the-art wind turbines (1.5+ MW) are able to compete with other power sources on equal terms (and before you rant about PTCs, Production tax credits, remember that other power sources also receive massive direct and indirect subsidies). I don't know how you calculate your "energy return", but I hope you include e.g. for nuclear, the astronomical cost of decomissioning, which can be greater than the cost of running the plant for the whole of it's lifetime.
Wind power has the potential to fulfill a great deal of our energy needs. Denmark, for example, already gets 20% of it's energy from wind power.
It's unfortunate that older wind projects like Altamont Pass have given so much bad press. Newer projects, and especially offshore wind farms are much easier on the eye and on the environment. e.g. A Vestas V90 3MW turbine pays for itself energetically within the first 7 months of its 20 year rated liftime.
And anyone who says that reducing energy consumption is not part of the solution has lost touch with reality. This is the same sort of person who has maxed out all their credit cards, has massive debts and doesn't intend to reduce their spending. (Did someone say National debt, Mr. Bush?)
However much energy we produce, we will always be able to consume it all if we waste it. And the expense is no barrier - if there is oversupply in our market economy, the price falls. So energy saving schemes must always be part of the solution.