>> That seems a bit like "Playboy on the Future of Potato Yields". >> Which is to say, superficially interesting,...
Depends on the potatoes.
Re:taking it a big further - no logging at all
on
Software Logging Schemes?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I just had occasion to try and optimize an old C++ app that was having performance issues in certain sections. This app had its own custom logging system using Unix message queues, and was always a little suspect. I noticed as I tried to instrument the code that whenever I seemed to get close to the bottleneck, the problem seemed to move to a different part of the code. Finally, it dawned on me that the log system itself was part of the problem. In fact, the log object constructor was taking significant time, including (in some places) within critical (as in lock/unlock) sections. Most critical classes had been defined with an instance of the logger as a member, which was overkill. Doing nothing more than changing the definitions of the log objects to static dropped critical section performance by an entire order of magnitude.
Moral: Do logging, but do it judiciously. Know what you're doing - and know what the log system is doing too.
>>I'll take his direct claims - right or wrong - >>over your nonfactual bias any day.
Personally, I'll reject both, until I see the extraordinary proof required for extraordinary claims - which should frankly be the only criteria people consider (neither ad hominem nor wild unsubstantiated claims being allowed).
Sadly, there's not much chance of Bush facing an international court for his war crimes... Bush himself withdrew the U.S from our treaty commitment to the very court which would have prosecuted such crimes. Convenient, eh?
"...criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research..."
No. There is no "benefit for society" rationale for this. This is a private, commercial work, done purely for the author's own profit. There is nothing "fair use" about this book AT ALL.
On the other hand, there is an interesting question of whether it actually infringes on *copyright*, per se, due to not really using significant portions of the original work, at least not word-for-word. But that's a different issue.
When people water down the meaning of Fair Use, they're poisoning the well for legitimate uses of it, which are already being trampled left and right.
Wait, wait... the FCC is *thinking* of imposing an ownership cap on cable companies? How can you "think" of an idea you already had?
My understanding was that in the late '90s, there basically already *was* an ownership cap on cable. AT&T's entire strategy through that period was to obtain as much of the cable industry as possible and then to use those facilities as a new local-calling infrastructure, so they could take on the Bells head-on again. I was developing at Bell Atlantic in '99, and we were working on creating CLEC interfaces - I was working directly with the AT&T staff that were trying to establish local competition with BA in New York. AT&T's local services were all facilities-based (i.e. cable), nothing leased from the Bells.
Then they ran into a roadblock. They had been promised by the FCC in merger after merger that nobody would stand in their way. This was AT&T's whole gameplan - to build a brand-new local calling empire based on the cable infrastructure. But once they passed 33% share (I forget who they were going to merge with), the FCC suddenly stood up and said no. AT&T was billions and billions in the hole, and suddenly their whole gameplan was in the garbage thanks to the FCC. It was effectively the end of real competition for the telcos, at least at that time.
At least that's my recollection; I could be wrong. Anyway, it doesn't matter one hill of beans one way or the other whether they limit ownership of cable. Until they start forcing competition to be allowed in each metro market, it's all meaningless. My cable/phone bills are more expensive than ever, with even less choices than I had in the late '90s. It seems like the FCC has been *useless* to the American consumer over the past 10 years.
>>If you're going to talk science exclusively, let's make sure to talk science policy
>>and philosophy, not just science fact. Presidents aren't scientists, but they need to be
>>good managers who will create sound policy capable of representing us without saying
>>"gee, you elected me, but I delegated it and have no responsibility."
Best reply in the entire thread, and I can't believe there aren't more responses to it saying, "hear hear". We don't need a science debate between candidates - the candidates aren't scientists, and I would be stunned (and frankly a bit dismayed) if they could answer intelligently to every possible scientific question. (If they could, then they probably aren't spending enough time figuring out how to navigate the economic and international political waters.) Their philosophy on scientific matters is more important in sniffing out what kind of staffing they would pursue as President, and that's what will ultimately affect the quality of research and inquiry under their potential administration. Lord knows the nominees that Bush has put forward speak quite plainly to his philosophy of science - namely, that truth should be subjugated to ideology.
>>People can call Greenpeace an attention whore all they like, >>but it's no different from the money whoring of publicly owned corporations.
Actually, it is different. Greenpeace is registered as a 501(c)(3) organization in the U.S. Public corporations are owned by stockholders, and exist to serve the stockholders. When they money-whore, it's for their private interests - no great surprise. But 501(c)(3) organizations are given their tax exemptions by the government because they are supposed to serve specific charitable or educational functions - not mere self-promotion. Charities get in trouble all the time for spending too much effort and money on fund-raising and self-promotion instead of on the issue or niche they're supposed to be involved in.
There have been many questions raised over the last ten years about whether Greenpeace's money-raising activities have gone outside the bounds set by the 501(c)(3) guidelines. Admitting publicly, "Sure, we deliberately make stuff up to promote ourselves" probably doesn't help that.
>> It makes me wonder who those people are who are complaining the loudest >>...While I have no doubt that there is a significant amount of pro-government >> propaganda, I wonder if all this bellowing isn't just a bit overly melodramatic.
It's not. Sorry. My wife (who is from Beijing) has taken me back over there twice, and we've spent time with a lot of her friends, most of whom are fairly well to-do (relatively speaking), and/or have connections in the government. The adults all recognize, and talk about (in hushed tones), the current state of things. Though things have opened up somewhat, there's still no way to talk openly about the government. Even doing so in your own home, at your own table, makes people distinctly uncomfortable.
Go to a magazine or newspaper stand in Beijing (or any major city in China); the difference is immediately obvious. There are *no* political or public affairs publications. At all. None. All the magazines are about fashion, tourism, whatever else. Nobody talks about the government, unless they're prepared to go to jail.
The censorship is real, the political repression is real, the impact on the real, day-to-day life of the citizens, even in Beijing, is real. Things are way better than they used to be (for some), but there is still a long way to go.
>Imagine if a store took a similar tactic: Some people steal merchandise, and others
>simply choose to go to other stores. Rather than perhaps raise prices a bit to cover
>costs and work on advertising and loss prevention the owner says "Well because people
>aren't buying, I have to double prices."
What's that? Here in the US, that's a perfectlyvalid business model. Well, except that there are no other stores, and you should also sue the customers in hopes of raising more revenue.
From The Pragmatic Programmer: "Don't program by coincidence. Never confuse a happy coincidence with a thoughtful plan."
I can't tell you how many times that advice has helped me, not just writing software, but configuring hardware issues, diagnosing home repair problems, etc. Never just guess.
Sounds like the engineers in question were so eager to avoid responsibility they just guessed at the first thing that came to mind. "Oh look, random jumper cables worked. Don't know what happened, but I'm sure it couldn't happen again!" Yikes.
>>The title "Blank Slate" was chosen because humanity is basically starting over. >>We've been nearly wiped out by aliens and must completely rebuild, away from Earth.
Actually, I always assumed that it was *Richard Garriott* who was starting over, with a completely new universe separated from the Ultima legacy. Regardless, the title has some nice nuances to it.
While everything you say is true, this *still* makes me think "BS". AT&T wouldn't be in their position today if they were not a government subsidized monopoly for, what, nearly 80 years? And the entire structure of the telco industry is in large part decided by FCC regulations and stances. And the same Constitution that gives the Federal government sole regulatory control over interstate commerce in the US is the same power that, ultimately, have allowed the FCC to create the situation where AT&T can do this to its customers. If our courts cannot say, "Hey, the government has indirectly (via regulation) bypassed the intent of the Constitution by creating a situation where free speech was improprerly suppressed!", then the First Amendment is, effectively, meaningless - it can be supplanted at-will. Assuming the original intent of TFA isn't being blown out of proportion, this should NOT be able to stand.
Let's just say you shouldn't bet your life on that. Nobody I know of in Beijing (my wife is from there, I've been twice) drinks tap water, filtered or not, without boiling it first. As for the filtering, there's filtering, and then there's filtering. For one thing, tap water would have to be filtered at least lightly to pass it off as bottled, since the water coming from the tap has heavy white sediment in it. Seriously, pour a glass from the tap, and just wait - you'll literally see the sediment settling to the bottom. So you would have to filter that out. But filtered for *safety*? Nah, that would take effort, and cut into the fakers' profits. My inlaws have passed on stories from CCTV about bootleg bottled water; it's relatively well known that you have to be careful about it.
Supposed to turn the address bar in IE 7 (and upcoming Firefox releases) green. Not that it will matter much, they're still only ~ $2K, easily within reach of even casual phishers.
Slashdot Mirror
>> That seems a bit like "Playboy on the Future of Potato Yields". ...
>> Which is to say, superficially interesting,
Depends on the potatoes.
I just had occasion to try and optimize an old C++ app that was having performance issues in certain sections. This app had its own custom logging system using Unix message queues, and was always a little suspect. I noticed as I tried to instrument the code that whenever I seemed to get close to the bottleneck, the problem seemed to move to a different part of the code. Finally, it dawned on me that the log system itself was part of the problem. In fact, the log object constructor was taking significant time, including (in some places) within critical (as in lock/unlock) sections. Most critical classes had been defined with an instance of the logger as a member, which was overkill. Doing nothing more than changing the definitions of the log objects to static dropped critical section performance by an entire order of magnitude.
Moral: Do logging, but do it judiciously. Know what you're doing - and know what the log system is doing too.
>>I'll take his direct claims - right or wrong -
>>over your nonfactual bias any day.
Personally, I'll reject both, until I see the extraordinary proof required for extraordinary claims - which should frankly be the only criteria people consider (neither ad hominem nor wild unsubstantiated claims being allowed).
You know, I've been thinking about it for the last ten minutes and "urea" is just not a word that lends itself well to puns.
Urea-lly need to try harder. :-)
>In no court in the land is that perjury.
No court except U.S. district courts, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Arkansas Supreme Court, that is.
Sadly, there's not much chance of Bush facing an international court for his war crimes... Bush himself withdrew the U.S from our treaty commitment to the very court which would have prosecuted such crimes. Convenient, eh?
Bzzzt.... in fact, she's the one who told me the joke (and has repeated it to her friends often). Thanks for playing, though.
Actually the original punch line is, "Two Wongs don't make a white", which for some reason my Chinese wife finds endlessly amusing...
>>No - it is called an exception lie algebra.
Not to be confused with a damned lie algebra, which is close to statistics.
From the Fair Use doctrine itself:
"...criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research..."
No. There is no "benefit for society" rationale for this. This is a private, commercial work, done purely for the author's own profit. There is nothing "fair use" about this book AT ALL.
On the other hand, there is an interesting question of whether it actually infringes on *copyright*, per se, due to not really using significant portions of the original work, at least not word-for-word. But that's a different issue.
When people water down the meaning of Fair Use, they're poisoning the well for legitimate uses of it, which are already being trampled left and right.
Wait, wait... the FCC is *thinking* of imposing an ownership cap on cable companies? How can you "think" of an idea you already had?
My understanding was that in the late '90s, there basically already *was* an ownership cap on cable. AT&T's entire strategy through that period was to obtain as much of the cable industry as possible and then to use those facilities as a new local-calling infrastructure, so they could take on the Bells head-on again. I was developing at Bell Atlantic in '99, and we were working on creating CLEC interfaces - I was working directly with the AT&T staff that were trying to establish local competition with BA in New York. AT&T's local services were all facilities-based (i.e. cable), nothing leased from the Bells.
Then they ran into a roadblock. They had been promised by the FCC in merger after merger that nobody would stand in their way. This was AT&T's whole gameplan - to build a brand-new local calling empire based on the cable infrastructure. But once they passed 33% share (I forget who they were going to merge with), the FCC suddenly stood up and said no. AT&T was billions and billions in the hole, and suddenly their whole gameplan was in the garbage thanks to the FCC. It was effectively the end of real competition for the telcos, at least at that time.
At least that's my recollection; I could be wrong. Anyway, it doesn't matter one hill of beans one way or the other whether they limit ownership of cable. Until they start forcing competition to be allowed in each metro market, it's all meaningless. My cable/phone bills are more expensive than ever, with even less choices than I had in the late '90s. It seems like the FCC has been *useless* to the American consumer over the past 10 years.
>>chicken
Chicken chicken. Chicken:
1. Chicken
2. ???
3. Chicken!
>>and philosophy, not just science fact. Presidents aren't scientists, but they need to be
>>good managers who will create sound policy capable of representing us without saying
>>"gee, you elected me, but I delegated it and have no responsibility."
Best reply in the entire thread, and I can't believe there aren't more responses to it saying, "hear hear". We don't need a science debate between candidates - the candidates aren't scientists, and I would be stunned (and frankly a bit dismayed) if they could answer intelligently to every possible scientific question. (If they could, then they probably aren't spending enough time figuring out how to navigate the economic and international political waters.) Their philosophy on scientific matters is more important in sniffing out what kind of staffing they would pursue as President, and that's what will ultimately affect the quality of research and inquiry under their potential administration. Lord knows the nominees that Bush has put forward speak quite plainly to his philosophy of science - namely, that truth should be subjugated to ideology.
>>People can call Greenpeace an attention whore all they like,
>>but it's no different from the money whoring of publicly owned corporations.
Actually, it is different. Greenpeace is registered as a 501(c)(3) organization in the U.S. Public corporations are owned by stockholders, and exist to serve the stockholders. When they money-whore, it's for their private interests - no great surprise. But 501(c)(3) organizations are given their tax exemptions by the government because they are supposed to serve specific charitable or educational functions - not mere self-promotion. Charities get in trouble all the time for spending too much effort and money on fund-raising and self-promotion instead of on the issue or niche they're supposed to be involved in.
There have been many questions raised over the last ten years about whether Greenpeace's money-raising activities have gone outside the bounds set by the 501(c)(3) guidelines. Admitting publicly, "Sure, we deliberately make stuff up to promote ourselves" probably doesn't help that.
>> It makes me wonder who those people are who are complaining the loudest ...While I have no doubt that there is a significant amount of pro-government
>>
>> propaganda, I wonder if all this bellowing isn't just a bit overly melodramatic.
It's not. Sorry. My wife (who is from Beijing) has taken me back over there twice, and we've spent time with a lot of her friends, most of whom are fairly well to-do (relatively speaking), and/or have connections in the government. The adults all recognize, and talk about (in hushed tones), the current state of things. Though things have opened up somewhat, there's still no way to talk openly about the government. Even doing so in your own home, at your own table, makes people distinctly uncomfortable.
Go to a magazine or newspaper stand in Beijing (or any major city in China); the difference is immediately obvious. There are *no* political or public affairs publications. At all. None. All the magazines are about fashion, tourism, whatever else. Nobody talks about the government, unless they're prepared to go to jail.
The censorship is real, the political repression is real, the impact on the real, day-to-day life of the citizens, even in Beijing, is real. Things are way better than they used to be (for some), but there is still a long way to go.
>Imagine if a store took a similar tactic: Some people steal merchandise, and others
>simply choose to go to other stores. Rather than perhaps raise prices a bit to cover
>costs and work on advertising and loss prevention the owner says "Well because people
>aren't buying, I have to double prices."
What's that? Here in the US, that's a perfectly valid business model. Well, except that there are no other stores, and you should also sue the customers in hopes of raising more revenue.
From The Pragmatic Programmer:
"Don't program by coincidence. Never confuse a happy coincidence with a thoughtful plan."
I can't tell you how many times that advice has helped me, not just writing software, but configuring hardware issues, diagnosing home repair problems, etc. Never just guess.
Sounds like the engineers in question were so eager to avoid responsibility they just guessed at the first thing that came to mind. "Oh look, random jumper cables worked. Don't know what happened, but I'm sure it couldn't happen again!" Yikes.
>>You can have a trademark all you want, if someone has at
>>least the same "reason" to have a domain, you have no case.
Tell that to People Eating Tasty Animals....
>>Why not "credit"?!?
Because it isn't a cool acronym. Cool acronyms always make things cooler. Just look at what "AJAX" did for - uh, AJAX.
Easily remedied though:
CALCULATED
RATE of
EXCHANGE
DENOMINATION for
INTERPLANETARY
TRAVELERS
There - CREDIT. That oughtta just about do it. Lot better than QUID, to be sure...
>>The title "Blank Slate" was chosen because humanity is basically starting over.
>>We've been nearly wiped out by aliens and must completely rebuild, away from Earth.
Actually, I always assumed that it was *Richard Garriott* who was starting over, with a completely new universe separated from the Ultima legacy. Regardless, the title has some nice nuances to it.
Our world's language families are suffering. Please, think of the language children...
While everything you say is true, this *still* makes me think "BS". AT&T wouldn't be in their position today if they were not a government subsidized monopoly for, what, nearly 80 years? And the entire structure of the telco industry is in large part decided by FCC regulations and stances. And the same Constitution that gives the Federal government sole regulatory control over interstate commerce in the US is the same power that, ultimately, have allowed the FCC to create the situation where AT&T can do this to its customers. If our courts cannot say, "Hey, the government has indirectly (via regulation) bypassed the intent of the Constitution by creating a situation where free speech was improprerly suppressed!", then the First Amendment is, effectively, meaningless - it can be supplanted at-will. Assuming the original intent of TFA isn't being blown out of proportion, this should NOT be able to stand.
Let's just say you shouldn't bet your life on that. Nobody I know of in Beijing (my wife is from there, I've been twice) drinks tap water, filtered or not, without boiling it first. As for the filtering, there's filtering, and then there's filtering. For one thing, tap water would have to be filtered at least lightly to pass it off as bottled, since the water coming from the tap has heavy white sediment in it. Seriously, pour a glass from the tap, and just wait - you'll literally see the sediment settling to the bottom. So you would have to filter that out. But filtered for *safety*? Nah, that would take effort, and cut into the fakers' profits. My inlaws have passed on stories from CCTV about bootleg bottled water; it's relatively well known that you have to be careful about it.
>>extending the mission past this to support a weak government
>>has dropped the probability of ultimate success to 26%.
"So you're telling me there's a chance!"
- Lloyd, "Dumb and Dumber"
THANK YOU. My very first thought on seeing this - gee, my credit union probably won't like the .bank domain so much, and neither would my brokerage.
r /faq/extended-validation-ssl-certificates.html
Re: having a special certificate class, there kind of already is - they're called Extended Validation certificates, from Verisign:
http://www.verisign.com/ssl/ssl-information-cente
Supposed to turn the address bar in IE 7 (and upcoming Firefox releases) green. Not that it will matter much, they're still only ~ $2K, easily within reach of even casual phishers.