Yeah, I know, the way I read it was that he took credit for something that just kind of happened. I just brought that up to show that it seems to be anecdote that totalitarian governments seem to have less crime, etc. I wonder if anyone has any firsthand knowledge, though. It seems like a logical conclusion.
Moral of the story is that if cracking down on crimes leads to a police state, then no thanks. The US wasn't intended to be a totalitarian government.
"I hear that Saudi Arabia is really tough on crime." I'll go you one further: It's a well held notion that totalitarian governments have the lowest crime rates. I don't have any stats to back that up, but it seems logical. Anyone here ever been to N Korea or anywhere like that? I'll bet the crime rate (not including govt crimes, of course) is super low. I have heard that Pyongyang is very clean, for example. It's kind of like the old saying that Mussolini made the trains run on time. I guess a firing squad is a good deterrent to littering.
What is my point? Crime sucks, and I'd be mad if someone stole my car. But what's the alternative? Living in a police state?
And several other posters have nailed it: it only starts here. What will this system be used for next? That's the scary part, not that they are using this to track felons and stolen cars. The potential for abuse is quite high. When that potential is realized, then everyone will be sorry they let this happen.
I have been on both sides of the bill paying game too. Actually, the second method is how I work. I pay bills as late as possible because I want to hang onto the money as long as possible. Especially since that's how most companies operate -- bill early and pay late. Businesses work like many people do, that is, they pay their bills as late as possible (sometimes even after the due date).
There is a difference between not paying bills until they're due and defaulting on loans. One can pay bills at the last possible second and never default on a loan. Your post teed off on people paying bills at the due date, not people who default on loans. Two different things.
And a happy bad analogy day to you too! Paying bills and working on assignments, not exactly a perfect match there, buddy.
Your statement, like most blanket statements, is just plain wrong for several reasons.
1) Some people are poor. They may not have the money to pay everything as soon as it is received. These people have to wait for another paycheck. 2) Some people may not be so poor. They might want to let their money collect interest for as long as possible in their savings account.
There, two legitimate reasons for not paying bills as soon as they come.
Exactly. This will do exactly what DRM does: punish some legitimate users and be cracked by anyone with a little bit of know-how. Why isn't this fact obvious to everyone?
How about not walking through dark alleys flashing your iPod? How about not leaving it in your parked car in plain sight? In other words, this is not the way to deter theft.
You make a good point, but in the arena NASA plays in, namely the great grab for public funds, marketing is essential.
Do you work in IT? The decision in favor of a solution/team/product/company often comes down to marketing. Well, NASA is in the same boat.
Imagine yourself in a position to make a decision that affects mountains of taxpayer money, and therefore your reputation, and in turn your future employment prospects. You certainly don't have time to critically evaluate everything that comes your way. You too would most likely choose the thing that seemed the most well packaged, because all you can look at is the packaging.
So many people in IT don't realize the need for good marketing. I'll leave you with one last example: MSFT. Suspect engineering, aggressive marketing == monopoly. Maybe it's not right, but that's how it is.
If people chose their OS based on looks, OSX would have to win.
I use ubuntu, and I really do like it. The aesthetics/UI aren't _bad_, mind you, but they are also nothing to phone home about. In fact, I think (and of course, this part is purely subjective) that Windows (XP and Vista) looks more professional. Not necessarily better, though, just more polished. Compared with OSX, both are turds: one is just polished a bit more.
For me, a problem with Linux is that many of the applications use different UI conventions (placing of buttons, fonts, widget spacing, etc) and it looks kind of hodgepodge. MSFT apps, since they have the advantage of coming from one vendor, tend to have more consistency in the UI elements. And that is important not just because it looks better -- it makes for better usability. Consistency is a cornerstone of usability.
Things like Beryl are cool, but they don't really fix the real problem. I think that the Linux dev community could use more UI experts. The folks making all this F/OSS stuff are clearly brilliant programmers, but a brilliant programmer does not necessarily imply brilliant UI design skills. I am sure they are UI design standards are documented somewhere, but there needs to be some sort of UI/usability certification or review process before an app gets included in the Multiverse.
I am sure that when compared to the iPod, it's a decent product at least from a technical perspective. I always hear people talk about the better screen. Of course it has things like wi-fi ability, etc. The problem is not the device itself, it's the company pushing it. You may get a better product (although, let's be honest, marginally better) but MSFT cripples the dang thing with DRM. It's the RIAA's dream device, so buried in DRM that it's capabilities count for nothing, since you cannot really take advantage of them.
I do not know much about the actual hardware versus an iPod, so I cannot really comment on that. I am just talking about obvious hardware (like the screen) and features. I have always said that if someone could figure out how to hack a Zune so that one could take advantage of the features, I'd want one. Good capabilities, it's just that MSFT totally shackles it.
It's a shame really (from MSFT's perspective). In their greed and blatant pandering to the RIAA, they missed a valuable opportunity.
If you are ever in a plane and a crash is imminent, the best position for you is this: put your head between your knees, hold tight...and kiss your ass goodbye.
heh, it sure is fun watching you slug it out with a bunch of ACs. Looks like trolls beget trolls. They are killing you, though, son, and you'd better quit before they finish the job.
"Your post is very clear about the type of person that you are." Ditto. Beside being a troll and a mongoloid, you appear to be an inbred elementary school janitor with a millimeter peter and a Napoleon complex to match.
Look: I don't come to your job and kick your mop bucket down the hall, so go back to your trailer park and go troll elsewhere. The good news is that you don't have to worry about someone outsourcing your $5 / hour job, so you can continue to live in your mother's trailer and wank on llama pr0n all day. Of course, once it is found out that you like to fondle the little boys at school, you'll be doing hard time in the retard room at the state pen.
Speaking of your mother, is she still so fat she oozes mayonnaise?
well, I was making a joke (but only sort of), but the text honestly did not read like a serious argument. It read like a troll or someone using hyperbole to ridicule a point or argument. To me, that was an example of an almost indefensible argument, or at least a plausible one taken to an absurd extreme. That's different than calling the OP stupid because I disagree. It just wasn't a good argument.
Of course, we all know you are being paid by the evil Fermilab / Particle Research Industry for that last post.
No, submit it to foldoc.org. Also, it needs a corollary, which we'll call The Hobo Tangent: Enhancements are the root of all evil.
Let's cue the scene...
An application's code is written by a competent developer and is nice and clean and pretty. He releases the application, and its a success. He gets moved to the next high profile project, and then the application's code gets handed to the maintenance droid, you know, the new guy on the team who shops *exclusively* at Whole Foods, listens to Nickelback, and has stacks of People magazine in his cubicle. He took a semester of VB while at Party U pursuing a liberal arts degree, and so he is a programmer too, you know!
Then, some PM or business manager who probably gets paid more than the original competent developer gets some bright ideas to make the application do things it never was intended to do. Let's say its a scheduling tool. Well, hey, they say, let's make it ALSO have an RSS feed! And a document repository! And a calculator! Can can you create some little project management software to work with it? A requirements document gets written, and a timeline is assigned.
Everyone does their little piece, totally oblivious to the steaming pile of dung spaghetti they are turning the application's code into.
Two years later, the original developer gets called to fix a problem that is simply beyond the dimwits holding the code. Poor guy doesn't even recognize his own application, and for him, it's like getting called to the morgue to ID the remains of a family member.
And that, friends, is why people complain about bad code.
"I also would never be dumb enough to expose any microsoft machines to the internets." Not a huge MSFT fan here, but that is a bit of an overblown statement. Just use common sense. I have a dual boot PC (XP, Feisty) and my wife uses the web all the time using XP, and I have never (I mean NEVER) had a problem.
Get a good firewall. Or, an OK firewall for that matter (I use Zonealarm). Don't use IE. You cannot uninstall it, but you can hide it pretty well so that nobody can use it. Use legitimate F/OSS (with GPL, Mozilla, BSD licenses), otherwise, grabbing all the latest "free" software is risky. If you install software and it tells you that in order for it to be installed, it also needs to install its "friends", halt the installation unless you know those friends. Stay away from warez sites, those are the dark alleys of the intarwebs.
Like I said, use common sense and you will be fine.
The biggest danger to your XP computer is not malware (assuming a certain level of proficiency here, see above). It is all of the retarded software that leaves system cruft (I call them roaches) whenever you upgrade that will slow you down to a crawl. Yes, looking at you, iTunes (about ready to roll back to version 6 here), and your stupid inbred cousin named Quicktime (must you reinstate your automatic startup every time I upgrade you? curses!). And let's not forget Office or Visual Studio, with its myriad of mostly useless startup services. I'd say it takes more knowhow to clean all that crap because retarded MSFT provides all kinds of nooks and crannies for all the damn roaches to hide in (like the registry!). That's why using Windows is a pain, not because of security problems.
Everyone who cares about the net should read the text of the original proposal. It is found at http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html. This shows us what the original intent of the net was, a storehouse of information. No wonder he always speaks of a semantic web, that's really the original vision. I guess we always knew that, but seeing it in the original text is quite interesting.
The Huns were European / central Asian, a long way from Mongolia. They controlled a large area in the final days of the Roman Empire (the one based in Rome, not Constantinople.) While it is held by some that Attila the Hun was of Mongolian origins, the area over which his rulership held sway was in what we would consider Europe / the Caucasus.
I tell ya, there is nothing that screams "I am a VB programmer stuck writing [insert language]..." more than camel case, or *gasp* the evil that is Hungarian notation.
The huns should have stuck to terrorizing Rome and left variable naming alone!
Slashdot Mirror
"You are "licensed" to use it under their conditions."
Says you and the EULA.
Rip the DRM off already and use the music YOU PAID FOR as you see fit.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, Apple's DRM is unbreakable. Yeah...um, don't change a thing Apple, it works perfectly! Keeps me out! Yessireeee Boberty!
LOLz!!one!!!!! THA TWAS FUNNIEZ!
MICR0$)Ft is teh suxx0r!!!!~!! VSITA IS A PEECE OF KRAP! IT"S SOO bad TahT peepul will die frum it! ROFLCOPTERZ@@!!!
Ok, may I please have my funny mod now?
Seriously, that post was the humor equivalent of a beer fart in a crowded elevator. Stale, made nobody laugh, and hung around way too long.
Yeah, I know, the way I read it was that he took credit for something that just kind of happened. I just brought that up to show that it seems to be anecdote that totalitarian governments seem to have less crime, etc. I wonder if anyone has any firsthand knowledge, though. It seems like a logical conclusion.
Moral of the story is that if cracking down on crimes leads to a police state, then no thanks. The US wasn't intended to be a totalitarian government.
"I hear that Saudi Arabia is really tough on crime."
I'll go you one further: It's a well held notion that totalitarian governments have the lowest crime rates. I don't have any stats to back that up, but it seems logical. Anyone here ever been to N Korea or anywhere like that? I'll bet the crime rate (not including govt crimes, of course) is super low. I have heard that Pyongyang is very clean, for example. It's kind of like the old saying that Mussolini made the trains run on time. I guess a firing squad is a good deterrent to littering.
What is my point? Crime sucks, and I'd be mad if someone stole my car. But what's the alternative? Living in a police state?
And several other posters have nailed it: it only starts here. What will this system be used for next? That's the scary part, not that they are using this to track felons and stolen cars. The potential for abuse is quite high. When that potential is realized, then everyone will be sorry they let this happen.
I have been on both sides of the bill paying game too. Actually, the second method is how I work. I pay bills as late as possible because I want to hang onto the money as long as possible. Especially since that's how most companies operate -- bill early and pay late. Businesses work like many people do, that is, they pay their bills as late as possible (sometimes even after the due date).
There is a difference between not paying bills until they're due and defaulting on loans. One can pay bills at the last possible second and never default on a loan. Your post teed off on people paying bills at the due date, not people who default on loans. Two different things.
And a happy bad analogy day to you too! Paying bills and working on assignments, not exactly a perfect match there, buddy.
Your statement, like most blanket statements, is just plain wrong for several reasons.
1) Some people are poor. They may not have the money to pay everything as soon as it is received. These people have to wait for another paycheck.
2) Some people may not be so poor. They might want to let their money collect interest for as long as possible in their savings account.
There, two legitimate reasons for not paying bills as soon as they come.
Exactly. This will do exactly what DRM does: punish some legitimate users and be cracked by anyone with a little bit of know-how. Why isn't this fact obvious to everyone?
How about not walking through dark alleys flashing your iPod? How about not leaving it in your parked car in plain sight? In other words, this is not the way to deter theft.
You make a good point, but in the arena NASA plays in, namely the great grab for public funds, marketing is essential.
Do you work in IT? The decision in favor of a solution/team/product/company often comes down to marketing. Well, NASA is in the same boat.
Imagine yourself in a position to make a decision that affects mountains of taxpayer money, and therefore your reputation, and in turn your future employment prospects. You certainly don't have time to critically evaluate everything that comes your way. You too would most likely choose the thing that seemed the most well packaged, because all you can look at is the packaging.
So many people in IT don't realize the need for good marketing. I'll leave you with one last example: MSFT. Suspect engineering, aggressive marketing == monopoly. Maybe it's not right, but that's how it is.
If people chose their OS based on looks, OSX would have to win.
I use ubuntu, and I really do like it. The aesthetics/UI aren't _bad_, mind you, but they are also nothing to phone home about. In fact, I think (and of course, this part is purely subjective) that Windows (XP and Vista) looks more professional. Not necessarily better, though, just more polished. Compared with OSX, both are turds: one is just polished a bit more.
For me, a problem with Linux is that many of the applications use different UI conventions (placing of buttons, fonts, widget spacing, etc) and it looks kind of hodgepodge. MSFT apps, since they have the advantage of coming from one vendor, tend to have more consistency in the UI elements. And that is important not just because it looks better -- it makes for better usability. Consistency is a cornerstone of usability.
Things like Beryl are cool, but they don't really fix the real problem. I think that the Linux dev community could use more UI experts. The folks making all this F/OSS stuff are clearly brilliant programmers, but a brilliant programmer does not necessarily imply brilliant UI design skills. I am sure they are UI design standards are documented somewhere, but there needs to be some sort of UI/usability certification or review process before an app gets included in the Multiverse.
I am sure that when compared to the iPod, it's a decent product at least from a technical perspective. I always hear people talk about the better screen. Of course it has things like wi-fi ability, etc. The problem is not the device itself, it's the company pushing it. You may get a better product (although, let's be honest, marginally better) but MSFT cripples the dang thing with DRM. It's the RIAA's dream device, so buried in DRM that it's capabilities count for nothing, since you cannot really take advantage of them.
I do not know much about the actual hardware versus an iPod, so I cannot really comment on that. I am just talking about obvious hardware (like the screen) and features. I have always said that if someone could figure out how to hack a Zune so that one could take advantage of the features, I'd want one. Good capabilities, it's just that MSFT totally shackles it.
It's a shame really (from MSFT's perspective). In their greed and blatant pandering to the RIAA, they missed a valuable opportunity.
"It's the second generation Zune, taking failure to a whole new level!"
It will probably be incompatible with music from the 1G Zune, and won't work with Vista. In other words, nothing new here.
If you are ever in a plane and a crash is imminent, the best position for you is this: put your head between your knees, hold tight...and kiss your ass goodbye.
Sad for the US, because this just shows us, once more, how far the US is behind Europe in terms of human rights, freedoms, etc.
heh, it sure is fun watching you slug it out with a bunch of ACs. Looks like trolls beget trolls. They are killing you, though, son, and you'd better quit before they finish the job.
"Your post is very clear about the type of person that you are."
Ditto. Beside being a troll and a mongoloid, you appear to be an inbred elementary school janitor with a millimeter peter and a Napoleon complex to match.
Look: I don't come to your job and kick your mop bucket down the hall, so go back to your trailer park and go troll elsewhere. The good news is that you don't have to worry about someone outsourcing your $5 / hour job, so you can continue to live in your mother's trailer and wank on llama pr0n all day. Of course, once it is found out that you like to fondle the little boys at school, you'll be doing hard time in the retard room at the state pen.
Speaking of your mother, is she still so fat she oozes mayonnaise?
It perfectly describes about three or four things I have designed and what happened to them over time, and I know I'm not alone.
Experience is indeed the best teacher, trouble is, it often leaves you too bitter to care.
well, I was making a joke (but only sort of), but the text honestly did not read like a serious argument. It read like a troll or someone using hyperbole to ridicule a point or argument. To me, that was an example of an almost indefensible argument, or at least a plausible one taken to an absurd extreme. That's different than calling the OP stupid because I disagree. It just wasn't a good argument.
Of course, we all know you are being paid by the evil Fermilab / Particle Research Industry for that last post.
No, submit it to foldoc.org. Also, it needs a corollary, which we'll call The Hobo Tangent: Enhancements are the root of all evil.
Let's cue the scene...
An application's code is written by a competent developer and is nice and clean and pretty. He releases the application, and its a success. He gets moved to the next high profile project, and then the application's code gets handed to the maintenance droid, you know, the new guy on the team who shops *exclusively* at Whole Foods, listens to Nickelback, and has stacks of People magazine in his cubicle. He took a semester of VB while at Party U pursuing a liberal arts degree, and so he is a programmer too, you know!
Then, some PM or business manager who probably gets paid more than the original competent developer gets some bright ideas to make the application do things it never was intended to do. Let's say its a scheduling tool. Well, hey, they say, let's make it ALSO have an RSS feed! And a document repository! And a calculator! Can can you create some little project management software to work with it? A requirements document gets written, and a timeline is assigned.
Everyone does their little piece, totally oblivious to the steaming pile of dung spaghetti they are turning the application's code into.
Two years later, the original developer gets called to fix a problem that is simply beyond the dimwits holding the code. Poor guy doesn't even recognize his own application, and for him, it's like getting called to the morgue to ID the remains of a family member.
And that, friends, is why people complain about bad code.
Does this post make me sound cynical?
I knew we used a lot of gas, but that was amazing.
So, according to this, in the UK they pay the equivalent of 9 or 10 USD / gallon. Oh my!
Troll? I thought he was a petrol lobbyist!
"I also would never be dumb enough to expose any microsoft machines to the internets."
Not a huge MSFT fan here, but that is a bit of an overblown statement. Just use common sense. I have a dual boot PC (XP, Feisty) and my wife uses the web all the time using XP, and I have never (I mean NEVER) had a problem.
Get a good firewall. Or, an OK firewall for that matter (I use Zonealarm). Don't use IE. You cannot uninstall it, but you can hide it pretty well so that nobody can use it. Use legitimate F/OSS (with GPL, Mozilla, BSD licenses), otherwise, grabbing all the latest "free" software is risky. If you install software and it tells you that in order for it to be installed, it also needs to install its "friends", halt the installation unless you know those friends. Stay away from warez sites, those are the dark alleys of the intarwebs.
Like I said, use common sense and you will be fine.
The biggest danger to your XP computer is not malware (assuming a certain level of proficiency here, see above). It is all of the retarded software that leaves system cruft (I call them roaches) whenever you upgrade that will slow you down to a crawl. Yes, looking at you, iTunes (about ready to roll back to version 6 here), and your stupid inbred cousin named Quicktime (must you reinstate your automatic startup every time I upgrade you? curses!). And let's not forget Office or Visual Studio, with its myriad of mostly useless startup services. I'd say it takes more knowhow to clean all that crap because retarded MSFT provides all kinds of nooks and crannies for all the damn roaches to hide in (like the registry!). That's why using Windows is a pain, not because of security problems.
Everyone who cares about the net should read the text of the original proposal. It is found at http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html. This shows us what the original intent of the net was, a storehouse of information. No wonder he always speaks of a semantic web, that's really the original vision. I guess we always knew that, but seeing it in the original text is quite interesting.
hahahahaha, and whomever modded you offtopic is a real lame-o.
Clearly, said moderator has an infected humour gland. Maybe we give him a dose of antibiotics via a knitting needle?
The Huns were European / central Asian, a long way from Mongolia. They controlled a large area in the final days of the Roman Empire (the one based in Rome, not Constantinople.) While it is held by some that Attila the Hun was of Mongolian origins, the area over which his rulership held sway was in what we would consider Europe / the Caucasus.
/ attilathehun.htm
/. so enjoyable!
http://www.boglewood.com/timeline/attila.html
http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/attilathehun/a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attilla_the_hun
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02061b.htm
Also, that the Huns were not the descendants of the Hungarians is a bit in question (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maygar).
All this in a story about 80 column terminals. This is, like, a tangent of a tangent of a tangent. But then again, that's what makes
I tell ya, there is nothing that screams "I am a VB programmer stuck writing [insert language]..." more than camel case, or *gasp* the evil that is Hungarian notation.
The huns should have stuck to terrorizing Rome and left variable naming alone!