Some current stars have made a career out of much less than what you have simply by signing a record deal with a label. Your song "Still Alive" from the Portal Soundtrack could easily have some filler phoned in around it for a 10 track album. Have you ever been approached by a major record label with a multi-million dollar signing? If not, what would be your response to such a proposal? Since you've already experienced success, would you admit to a point in your career when you would have been vulnerable to such an offer? Have you considered throwing your lot in with an independent record label? There are hundreds in Brooklyn, what stops you from joining one or forming your own to foster more artists like yourself?
This is sort of offtopic but did anyone else find it odd that the bulk of edits for Bennett Haselton's wikipedia article are made by Reservoirhill alias Hugh Pickens alias pickens alias Reservoir Hill alias Ponca City, We Love You? Nearly all of the content from that article originates from Hugh Pickens and also one of the other editors is the Seth Finkelstein mentioned in today's contribution to Slashdot.
Hugh Pickens is a prolific contributor to Slashdot and I am thankful for his submissions but it is my humble opinion that this sort of... wikipedic inbreeding? wikinepotism?... somewhat deteriorates Wikiepdia's credibility. Should an encyclopedia have an article for Bennett Haselton or is he just friends with the right people inside Wikipedia?
In response to the discussion, Facebook has always been about violating privacy first to make cash and then asking the users what was wrong after it was violated. Remember when the news feed went live unexpectedly and was by default enabled? People were up in arms and privacy was the big discussion point but here we are today with everyone using it. Sometimes it works out for Facebook, sometimes it doesn't. They just too big to care about individual privacy and if they can make cash by sacrificing it, they will. Only after enough kick back will they change it.
If you didnt already begin in a high school class, or at the very least on hobby projects?
I think this is the wrong way to approach a defense of these practices. Computer Science (CS) gets made fun of a lot... or at least it did when I was in it. "What's the matter, couldn't you handle an actual engineering major like Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering?" And, you know, those course paths are tighter in the electives area (I should mention I went to school at the U of MN in case it's different elsewhere). Anyway, CS has many dimensions to it. The foundation is mathematics, statistics, algorithms and logic to name a few without getting into theory like automata. After all that, you have what I'll call the "cosmetics" (for lack of a better word) which are what the flavor of the year is for most popular language. Now it's either Java or Ruby but when I was in undergrad, it was C++ and Java. And there was PHP for web, MySQL for Databases, etc. And I think the reason we need to keep the weed-out course structure is that it was fun for me to learn Ruby on Rails on my own. It was an adventure I enjoyed (albeit a ridiculously easy adventure). And if you're going to be in CS, you need to have the attitude that the cosmetic stuff either comes naturally to you or is something you do in your free time. When I took my Java course, I had already worked through java.sun.com's tutorial "pathways" online and knew what all the keywords were in the language and why we use them ahead of the course. To learn recursion with this background was fairly trivial. Honestly, I don't remember learning much else in that course. And I think that's why it's important to keep that minor level of entry. Because people who have a passion don't want to have to go through course after course of learning a language or basic programming so that they can get to the good stuff.
And those languages are a dime a dozen and they could change at the drop of a hat. As time goes on, there's only more implementations to choose from. When I went through college, functional languages were almost dead. And now Ruby is more functional than object oriented and I use it daily. So I'm glad I got to the theory instead of ever being forced to take a course on how to code PHP or how to set up JDBC connectors. But in my later courses, they demanded that implicitly in order to fulfill understanding the functionality of a transactional RDBMS.
I think it's actually a very kind thing to say after 15 weeks: "Hey, if you don't play around with this stuff in your free time, what are you going to do when we teach you Java and five years later you need to sink-or-swim learn Ruby?" Because that's exactly what happened to me and sometimes I come across much older developers that say "Pshaw, Ruby, who the hell would want to code that? I can write the same thing in C and it's fifty times faster." And they're right but they fail to see that my manager doesn't care about speed, they care about maintainability (it's often running on top of a VM anyway)... and I have no clue if that developer learned C in college and thinks they'll never need to know another language. A lot of my free time is spent experimenting with new languages that I'll often never use professionally and I think it makes me a better programmer. To try to identify an unwillingness to do this in 15 weeks might be saving a lot of people a lot of time and money. And maybe even protecting them from unemployment later in life.
When you're a CS major, your learning should never stop or you will be quickly unemployed. That might be true with other majors but I've heard people brag they haven't picked up a book since college. Did I find it wrong or unfair for my university to engage in these practices? Maybe when I was in college or maybe if I had only ever been in academia but now it doesn't seem so harsh.
When people tell me they want to code as a hobby I usually say: "T
Three years ago, I used to recieve endless "Come Join Us on LinkedIn" e-mails to several e-mail accounts. Because at some point an old boss had somehow gave LinkedIn access to his Hotmail or Outlook book or something and created a place holder for me with my first and last name (and also my e-mail address) because my boss had that and only that information in his address book for me. Creeped me right the %*#@ out.
It wasn't hard to get the e-mails to stop but I'd wager that shell of a profile is out there floating around linking my old coworkers in a web -- for any of them that added that profile or had one of the e-mail addresses in their book. At the time, no one seemed to find this alarming but me so whatever. And now Facebook and a lot of sites will harvest your address book for you from Hotmail or whatever and then it will aggressively market that person to come to said social networking site on your behalf. Each site wants to boast fifty billion users (or some factor higher than living human beings), right?
So I was wondering what had gone wrong when I heard about its IPO the other day. After all, it's one of the creepiest spammiest social networking sites I've encountered. But that's just it, its methods are effective and so it is rewarded. If privacy abuser Facebook is "worth" the yearly GDP of a small nation, surely a website implementing the same APIs and plugins while experimenting with creepin' it up a notch is going to drive investors crazy. I think it's more a sign of overvaluation of a privacy abuse bubble--one I've been hoping to see pop for quite sometime now.
Consumers wanting to read books electronically can now choose from many competing devices, including Sony's Reader, Barnes & Noble's Nook, and a variety of touchscreen tablets, including Apple's iPad.
They make it sound so easy and effortless! But they fail to address the matrix of which service and format is support/authorized for which device. You can blame it on DRM or competitor lockout greed or whatever but it's still a major inhibitor in my mind.
Meanwhile, you have the CEO of the company dismissing this whole thing as a "hiccup," which pretty aptly demonstrates just how seriously Sony apparently takes its security. No way I want my CC number or private info involved in their next "hiccup."
And also saying he can't promise you security after this attack. "It's the beginning, unfortunately, or the shape of things to come. It's not a brave new world — it's a bad new world" is what he said exactly. So is he preparing us for an endless number of "hiccups"?
According to the interview with one of the study's authors on NPR today, one of the very important factors is that decaf works as well. Which is to say, the measured benefit probably is not from caffeine.
Indeed. Here's a PDF of the paper which has all the actual numbers. It also lists in their conclusions several possible investigation routes:
Coffee contains chlorogenic acids (CGAs), which inhibit glucose absorption in the intestine and may favorably alter levels of gut hormones, which affect insulin response (1). Quinides, the roasting products of CGAs, inhibit liver glucose production in experimental models (1). Coffee also contains lignans, phytoestrogens with potent antioxidant activity, which may have positive effects on glucose handling (37). In humans, coffee drinking has been cross-
sectionally associated with lower glucose levels after oral glucose loads and better insulin sensitivity (38–40). A cross-sectional study in women found a negative correlation between coffee consumption and circulating C-peptide, a marker of insulin secretion (41).
Insulin may promote tumor progression through the insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) receptors in cancer cells. Insulin levels have been associated with a greater risk of cancer progression or mortality among men diagnosed with prostate cancer (9–11), even though insulin has been unassociated (12,13) or inversely associated (14) with overall incidence.
Coffee is a major source of antioxidants and is estimated to provide half of total antioxidant intake in several populations (2,3). Coffee has been associated with improved markers of inflammation in cross-sectional studies and in a recent trial (4,42,43). Inflammation is hypothesized to play a role in the development of prostate cancer through the generation of proliferative inflammatory atrophy lesions (15). Various dietary antioxidants may reduce inflammation and have been associated with lower risk of advanced prostate cancer (44,45).
Coffee drinking may be associated with increased sex hormone–binding globulin (SHBG) and total testosterone levels (5). One study in Greek men found a positive association with estradiol levels but not with SHBG or testosterone (6), whereas another found no association between coffee and sex hormones in young Greek men (7). Coffee has been consistently associated with higher SHBG levels in women (46–49).
Sex hormones play a role in prostate cancer, though the relationships between circulating levels within normal ranges and risk have been difficult to elucidate. It has been hypothesized that although testosterone is necessary for the initial development of prostate cancer, it may limit progression of the disease (50,51). A pooled analysis of 18 prospective studies found an inverse association between SHBG levels and prostate cancer risk (51).
No, it's a fairly common viewpoint among rational Nintendo customers. But it does omit Nintendo's battle with pirates. I think the DS and its latest incarnations is a neat little device and so I purchased a certain cartridge for it recently for $5 from some Chinese site. Unfortunately upon visiting the site to retrieve the latest firmware for their cart, I noticed that they were also hosting movies and roms for the latest games (of all regions) in their file directory tree. This is reality. You might not see it here but you can walk down the street in some Asian nations and pick up every game for the DS on a tiny little cart for very little money ($50?). On the other hand, I want to tinker with what I paid for! My device? Then I'll run what I want to run on it.
Nintendo does well because their business model is sensible. They make money on their hardware.
So that's interesting because if they make money on their hardware, why do they care what I do with it after I buy it? Why don't they market it as a gaming/development platform? Why don't they just release all their tool chains for everyone to use to develop on their systems if they already make money on the hardware? I mean, you'd probably sell more platforms that way, right? Why do I need to pay some absurd amount of money for a developer's license and a kit to play with them? Perhaps because their business model also relies on a walled garden and though they may make money on the console, the real money comes from sales of games for that console. I think if you had the numbers, you'd see that their profit model is not a whole lot different than Sony or MS. Everyone plays that game.
They also offer things that everyone wants. MS fanboys need to realise that not everyone wants to play as a big fat space marine or some other "extreme" character doing the same damn thing in every sequel while spurting out god awful dialog that sounds like it was written by the 13 year olds play the game.
Having just played through Beautiful Katamari and Rapala Bass Pro Fishing on my 360 last night, I have to question this statement (not that fishing games don't exist for the Wii). I think your statement works well generically. Observe: (MS|Nintendo|Sony) fanboys need to realise that not everyone wants to play as a (big fat space marine|big fat Italian plumber) or some other ("extreme"|"cute") character doing the same damn thing in every sequel while spurting out (god awful dialog|It's a me, a Mario|PikaPikachu) that sounds like it was written by the (13 year olds|racists) play the game.
So I'm not seeing how you feel Nintendo is worse than the competition. Your comment is uneducated fanboy verbal masturbation at best and not surprisingly all the other little uneducated xbots gave you a +5 interesting for spouting crap.
I think the key here is that the three big names have their ups and downs. Why on earth do you act like there are no "downs" with Nintendo? If price is important to you, go with Nintendo. The Wii was the first of the three I bought. If graphics are important to you, go with the PS3. If online FPS is important to you, go with the XBox 360. If offline multiplayer is important to you, go with the Wii. Etc, etc. I own all three. And I play all three. Your post ironically makes you look like the fan boy and RogueyWon look like a well tempered gamer. Some of your acclamations for Nintendo are more than questionable...
I stand against the Fairness Doctrine because I see it as an adjustment to free speech. I'm not claiming it blocks free speech but I see it as detrimental because it partially instructs broadcasters what to present. On top of that, I think it's a little shortsighted and subjective in how it aims to enforce each broadcaster to pose all sides of the issue.
What I like about Clinton's suggestion (though flawed for many other reasons) is that it is a passive system. Anyone can say anything that they want or broadcast what they want but the next day they could be labeled a liar or at least someone who spouts half truths. The article lists many sites like factcheck.org that already do this so why not publicly fund an even bigger and more active site for the public good? It would cite its sources and it might even lead to better transparency in the government if it was also devoted to FOIAs in order to make statements about budgets and spending have real numbers instead of the bland "We spend too much on social programs!"
His suggestion is a little naive but at least it lets everyone say what they want to... if this agency can establish a neutral reputation and if it's done correctly, it could be invaluable to the nations' citizens. I think the cost of such an operation would be quite trivial to the public good... people like Glenn Beck have had a reign of stupidity for far too long in this country.
I think the solution is the not the active regulation like the Fairness Doctrine but something more passive where the broadcasters go back to regulating themselves before they become the laughing stock of the press. The fact checkers would just sit back and watch and check and report. No need to fine the infractions or hand out warnings or demand so and so should get airtime.
Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin. A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership.
Then it says:
Of course, since bitcoin transactions are untraceable, you would have zero recourse if you sent a dozen bitcoins to someone for a couple of tabs of LSD. Just like you might lose your $10 if you gave it to a kid in the school yard for a dime bag and he never came back.
Well, which is it?
I first read about BitCoins on Slashdot a while ago and what intuition I have seems to wager there's a lot of Catch-22s with this pseudo-fiat currency. I mean the value is derived from scarcity but is also tied to what... computational complexity? They serve absolutely no purpose with no possible side usages (like gold). The only purpose they serve is being a resource in contention. So what happens when people just decide to stop contending for it?
I think that the title of this article being "BitCoin, the Most Dangerous Project Ever?" is a crude attempt at a self fulfilling prophecy as it's no danger unless people start to use it and actually value the BitCoins at their trading rate. I liked the section titled "BitCoins in Real Life" that says:
In the next year you’ll hear about people in casinos in Vegas buying and sell bitcoins for cash and casino chips.
Riiiiight. I somehow doubt that.
I think this amounts to some very smart people engaging in a cute little experiment that will experience initial success as those with GPU farms get some of this novel currency. But it can never grow very large because you need a pretty expensive infrastructure even to handle BitCoins and the only interests it serves will be those industries that want easy untraceable ways to exchange value for illegal products or to avoid taxation. And once that's exhausted, I suspect it will flounder.
Does anyone honestly think the promise of protection from inflation will cause people to ask for their paycheck in BitCoins?
The owner is allegedly worth way more than that. From the article:
During his damages hearing last week, RIAA lawyers suggested his net worth was larger than that.
They noted he possessed $100 million in an IRA account. His Manhattan home is worth more than $4 million. In addition to Lime Wire, Gorton operates a hedge fund and a medical-software company. Gorton's lawyers claimed in court that he made little money from Lime Wire. Maybe, but records show the privately owned company generated $26 million in revenue in 2006 and sales climbed dramatically after that. During most of Lime Wire's 10-year history, Gorton was chairman, CEO, and only board member.
Disclaimer: I'm the submitter so I'm probably the only person that read the article which gives me an unfair advantage.
And I've never seen anything even vaguely pro-copyright get above a 2.
Right here, in at least twostories there are many counters to your claim. GPL is a form of copyright and people demand that be protected and be upheld.
I think what you are complaining about is that everyone on Slashdot is upset with "The Mickey Mouse Act" and is disgusted that lobbyists determine how long copyright stands so now it's an unreasonable length of time. And yeah, anyone defending that deserves to be modded down. But you're not going to find anybody other than massive studios defending that because why would an artist care that their work is copyrighted past their death? Hell, I would demand it be public domain so that more people could enjoy my work.
You can post positions counter to "group think" but you have to pose them intelligently and try to achieve a neutral point of view when you do it. An example might be proposing copyright reform down to twenty years but enforcing it even more rigorously to ensure that the artist truly gets royalties for those twenty years. Swearing at people and calling them thieves only illustrates you don't understand the nature of copyright infringement nor how the biggest most powerful players have the public by the balls and all politicians in their pockets.
I assure you on copyright and patents, I have often posted comments asking people what they thought a responsible length of time was or asking them how biotech firms should recoup their losses on searching for/developing drugs if they should not be able to patent them.
The review was probably written and edited by the morons at Packt, therefore most useful information is overlooked.
Nope, seems to be Johnny Gee who was asked to review it by Packt. Not a bad thing, I've been asked to review things for Slashdot and have, at times, refused because the book was garbage. Right now I'm fiddling with an Arduino and a couple XBee Pros in order to review a book for O'Reilly. It's a good book but the Arduino is proving to be too fun to fiddle with so I'm having a hard time getting around to the review.
I myself take a lot of heat when I review a book that has content which is already available online and I would have to question what this book offers in addition to Wiki information and the nicely formatted guides and manuals. I also downloaded the code examples from Packt and found a couple spreadsheets and a very sparse tomcat file tree. Wish the reviewer would have commented on this stuff.
Even as rivals like Mozilla and Google have introduced bug bounty program, the Redmond Washington giant has stuck doggedly with a position it articulated almost a decade ago, refusing to offer monetary rewards for information on software holes. But security experts say that position may have to change.
Here is the source for Mozilla projects. Here is the source for Google Chrome. And where do I find Internet Explorer's source code? Oh, right. Well, I'm sure if they truly wanted my help making their browser better and more secure, they'd be okay with letting me take a peek at the source code. How can they start a bug bounty program when they won't even trust the community with seeing their code?
To put it another way: when you practice security through obscurity, offering monetary incentives for bug discovery is not a financially sound decision.
Furthermore, there have been times when a bug submitted to Google was deemed not a bug and a discussion ensued why that was with the source code referenced. I believe Microsoft could just say, "Oh, sorry, we don't owe you anything for discovering that feature but since you can't see the source code you'll have to take our word for it."
Microsoft doesn't need bug bounties. They need to achieve the prerequisite of code inspection before they can even consider putting their money where their mouth is.
I know I’m out of the web dev loop, but as I recall, in most cases the web mantra seems to be to crank it out as quick as possible before it’s obsolete.
I think ECMAScript standards are here to stay for quite a while. I wouldn't worry about too much changing between 5 and 6. This book actually considers all versions of ECMAScript and ES5 was standardized in 2009, 10 years after the last standardized version. While it takes a while for JavaScript engines to catch up on implementing those standards, I wouldn't spin this sort of stuff as "crank it out quick."
The exposure I’ve had (which admittedly is a small sampling) leads me to believe that even basic core principles of traditional software development are thrown out the window in a mad dash to get something that “looks right”.
Certainly the tools that have become the most popular around web dev would spell this out. Javascript, PHP, python, etc. Weakly types languages with loose structure, built in shortcuts, and lots of automagic. The whole concept of prototype based coding is to me just another example of rapid development trumping solid coding.
I believe this is a false dichotomy that may have been true years ago. Once you see the maturity level of some JavaScript projects that companies like Google are working on, JavaScript doesn't have to be the slap dash crap you are speaking of. It just becomes clear that the language produces products equivalent to how much time is put into it. Here's one of many good counterexamples to your rule. I am interested though: how do you define "solid coding?" That sounds like an ambiguous phrased designed to pick and choose language features as the user personally desires. The recent removal of OO programming from CMU's curriculum might point out how yesterday's mentality goes out of style and comes back in two decades later.
And I’ve heard the “compensate with better QA” or the even more ludicrous “just hire people who never make mistakes” arguments. I’ll take my programming with strong typing and lots of built in idiot-proofing please, and I’m not afraid to admit that even with years of dev experience, I still make the occasional bone headed mistake and I figure the more chances it gets caught, the better.
I think it’s good that _someone_ is trying to mix solid software development with web whimsy, but I don’t see it catching on, even in places where it really should!
Ima let you finish. But I just want to say that that is a totally respectable position. Me, personally, I recognize that I have a huge diverse toolbox full of all sorts of tools. Some better for jobs inside the browser, some better for servers and some better for embedded systems. But I would ask you to consider that it's going to be a while before any of these tools to be your silver bullet.
I’d like to note, that while this may start a flame war (or get harmlessly modded down to oblivion), this really wasn’t my intention.
I’d also like to note, that I dislike TDD in general (yeah, I know, another flame war)! In my experience, most bugs I find are from running through some kind of manual procedure and noticing something ”odd” that an automated system wouldn’t have picked up. I imagine in web design, where the end result is mainly visual, this would be even more common. Sure, the table has the right values but they are all cut off and too tiny to read.
There are certainly problems with rendering and layouts being difficult to automatically test. But there are a lot of tools out there (like firebug) that help you pin down what is going wrong in certain browsers. While the book doesn't delve deeply into it, it's something that is easier to deal with than, say, a weir
That Safari link is especially useful if you're on the fence about getting this title, you can view some of the book there. Also, I'm not seeing my score (9/10), publisher information, number of pages (475) or ISBN or any of that.
Ah, eldavojohn, posting math research stories but unable to do subtraction.
Don't worry, I only posted it here because I was unable to post it to reddit due to heavy usage. You won't have to put up with me or my apologies anymore.
Did they just wait around for Murdoch's The Daily experiment for this? Is this just round two of wait-for-third-parties-to-develop-apps-and-then-hold-them-ransom like with eBooks? What's next?
If I were a mobile app developer I'd be asking myself right now if it's a smart idea to try to plan a viable business plan around iOS right now. Any good will you build by bringing people to iOS with your app is totally overlooked by Apple while any customers "they bring" to you runs a hefty 30% Apple tax.
I think it's highway robbery but I'm okay with it because I didn't buy into that bullshit. I bought into Android and instead of lording my decision over everybody I'm just going to remind everyone that the long run has been predicted by many industries. Apple and Blackberry will remain as niche players but it's going to be an Android future. So go ahead and hold publisher's -- who already hemorrhage cash -- feet to the fire. It's just going to hasten your fall.
Apple sits atop a crumbling marketshare (Schmidt claims 300,000 activations a day) and their response is to turn the screws on the third parties that set them apart from the competition? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me...
I would look into all the people the State Department are working with; MSNBC, CBS, gosh, MTV.
Just say it, every news outlet but Fox, right? It's the only thing stopping you from busting out the "trust no one" hyperbole, right?
Maybe we should start watching those networks a little bit and seeing what their news coverage is like.
Why don't we watch all of them and judge them fairly against each other? Or do you just want scrutiny only on the networks you're not on?
Who are these groups? Who are they? Are they right, are they left, are they clean, are they dirty, are they front groups? I don't know.
Wait, wait, wait, so what are you accusing them of? Absolutely nothing? And if you don't know then why are you telling us to investigate them? Maybe because you know nobody will do it and instead they'll just continue listening to you? "Is Glenn Beck, good, bad, is he left, is he right, is he clean, is he dirty? I don't know. Maybe you should keep your eye on him?"
May I recommend, if you're doing your own homework, don't do a Google search. Seems to me that Google is pretty deeply in bed with the government. Maybe this is explaining why Google is being kicked out of all the other countries?
My god, would you please just make a statement instead of repeated leading questions?! How is Google any more "in bed" with the government than Microsoft or Yahoo?
Are they just a shill now for the United States government? Who is Jared Cohen? Is he private citizen or government operative? And isn't this the second Google guy we've found? This is the second Google executive now being exposed as an instigator of a revolution.
Your little pointer stick and board didn't do much to lead to conclusive evidence that Cohen has "instigated a revolution."
I couldn't get the MM site to load but the Youtube version worked for me and holy crap what a load of horseshit. I saw Glenn Beck on TV in a waiting room once and thought it was a joke. The amount of faulty, leading, incomplete logic here is just staggering, even in this video. Instead of wasting my time itemizing everything wrong about what he's saying and pointing out the obvious, I should have just taken Salon's advice and done something more constructive.
Slashdot Mirror
Some current stars have made a career out of much less than what you have simply by signing a record deal with a label. Your song "Still Alive" from the Portal Soundtrack could easily have some filler phoned in around it for a 10 track album. Have you ever been approached by a major record label with a multi-million dollar signing? If not, what would be your response to such a proposal? Since you've already experienced success, would you admit to a point in your career when you would have been vulnerable to such an offer? Have you considered throwing your lot in with an independent record label? There are hundreds in Brooklyn, what stops you from joining one or forming your own to foster more artists like yourself?
All they need to do is add a bunch more PSN subscribers, and they can make it up in monthly subscription fees.
Problem solved. You're welcome, Sony.
And how do you propose they recoup the lost confidence from their developers and publishers?
This is sort of offtopic but did anyone else find it odd that the bulk of edits for Bennett Haselton's wikipedia article are made by Reservoirhill alias Hugh Pickens alias pickens alias Reservoir Hill alias Ponca City, We Love You? Nearly all of the content from that article originates from Hugh Pickens and also one of the other editors is the Seth Finkelstein mentioned in today's contribution to Slashdot.
... wikipedic inbreeding? wikinepotism? ... somewhat deteriorates Wikiepdia's credibility. Should an encyclopedia have an article for Bennett Haselton or is he just friends with the right people inside Wikipedia?
Hugh Pickens is a prolific contributor to Slashdot and I am thankful for his submissions but it is my humble opinion that this sort of
In response to the discussion, Facebook has always been about violating privacy first to make cash and then asking the users what was wrong after it was violated. Remember when the news feed went live unexpectedly and was by default enabled? People were up in arms and privacy was the big discussion point but here we are today with everyone using it. Sometimes it works out for Facebook, sometimes it doesn't. They just too big to care about individual privacy and if they can make cash by sacrificing it, they will. Only after enough kick back will they change it.
If you didnt already begin in a high school class, or at the very least on hobby projects?
I think this is the wrong way to approach a defense of these practices. Computer Science (CS) gets made fun of a lot ... or at least it did when I was in it. "What's the matter, couldn't you handle an actual engineering major like Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering?" And, you know, those course paths are tighter in the electives area (I should mention I went to school at the U of MN in case it's different elsewhere). Anyway, CS has many dimensions to it. The foundation is mathematics, statistics, algorithms and logic to name a few without getting into theory like automata. After all that, you have what I'll call the "cosmetics" (for lack of a better word) which are what the flavor of the year is for most popular language. Now it's either Java or Ruby but when I was in undergrad, it was C++ and Java. And there was PHP for web, MySQL for Databases, etc. And I think the reason we need to keep the weed-out course structure is that it was fun for me to learn Ruby on Rails on my own. It was an adventure I enjoyed (albeit a ridiculously easy adventure). And if you're going to be in CS, you need to have the attitude that the cosmetic stuff either comes naturally to you or is something you do in your free time. When I took my Java course, I had already worked through java.sun.com's tutorial "pathways" online and knew what all the keywords were in the language and why we use them ahead of the course. To learn recursion with this background was fairly trivial. Honestly, I don't remember learning much else in that course. And I think that's why it's important to keep that minor level of entry. Because people who have a passion don't want to have to go through course after course of learning a language or basic programming so that they can get to the good stuff.
... and I have no clue if that developer learned C in college and thinks they'll never need to know another language. A lot of my free time is spent experimenting with new languages that I'll often never use professionally and I think it makes me a better programmer. To try to identify an unwillingness to do this in 15 weeks might be saving a lot of people a lot of time and money. And maybe even protecting them from unemployment later in life.
And those languages are a dime a dozen and they could change at the drop of a hat. As time goes on, there's only more implementations to choose from. When I went through college, functional languages were almost dead. And now Ruby is more functional than object oriented and I use it daily. So I'm glad I got to the theory instead of ever being forced to take a course on how to code PHP or how to set up JDBC connectors. But in my later courses, they demanded that implicitly in order to fulfill understanding the functionality of a transactional RDBMS.
I think it's actually a very kind thing to say after 15 weeks: "Hey, if you don't play around with this stuff in your free time, what are you going to do when we teach you Java and five years later you need to sink-or-swim learn Ruby?" Because that's exactly what happened to me and sometimes I come across much older developers that say "Pshaw, Ruby, who the hell would want to code that? I can write the same thing in C and it's fifty times faster." And they're right but they fail to see that my manager doesn't care about speed, they care about maintainability (it's often running on top of a VM anyway)
When you're a CS major, your learning should never stop or you will be quickly unemployed. That might be true with other majors but I've heard people brag they haven't picked up a book since college. Did I find it wrong or unfair for my university to engage in these practices? Maybe when I was in college or maybe if I had only ever been in academia but now it doesn't seem so harsh.
When people tell me they want to code as a hobby I usually say: "T
Three years ago, I used to recieve endless "Come Join Us on LinkedIn" e-mails to several e-mail accounts. Because at some point an old boss had somehow gave LinkedIn access to his Hotmail or Outlook book or something and created a place holder for me with my first and last name (and also my e-mail address) because my boss had that and only that information in his address book for me. Creeped me right the %*#@ out.
It wasn't hard to get the e-mails to stop but I'd wager that shell of a profile is out there floating around linking my old coworkers in a web -- for any of them that added that profile or had one of the e-mail addresses in their book. At the time, no one seemed to find this alarming but me so whatever. And now Facebook and a lot of sites will harvest your address book for you from Hotmail or whatever and then it will aggressively market that person to come to said social networking site on your behalf. Each site wants to boast fifty billion users (or some factor higher than living human beings), right?
But LinkedIn is really outpacing those sites: an outlook plugin/hijacker, drupal integration, actually a plugin for virtually anything and of course APIs to put it in your site.
So I was wondering what had gone wrong when I heard about its IPO the other day. After all, it's one of the creepiest spammiest social networking sites I've encountered. But that's just it, its methods are effective and so it is rewarded. If privacy abuser Facebook is "worth" the yearly GDP of a small nation, surely a website implementing the same APIs and plugins while experimenting with creepin' it up a notch is going to drive investors crazy. I think it's more a sign of overvaluation of a privacy abuse bubble--one I've been hoping to see pop for quite sometime now.
Consumers wanting to read books electronically can now choose from many competing devices, including Sony's Reader, Barnes & Noble's Nook, and a variety of touchscreen tablets, including Apple's iPad.
They make it sound so easy and effortless! But they fail to address the matrix of which service and format is support/authorized for which device. You can blame it on DRM or competitor lockout greed or whatever but it's still a major inhibitor in my mind.
Meanwhile, you have the CEO of the company dismissing this whole thing as a "hiccup," which pretty aptly demonstrates just how seriously Sony apparently takes its security. No way I want my CC number or private info involved in their next "hiccup."
And also saying he can't promise you security after this attack. "It's the beginning, unfortunately, or the shape of things to come. It's not a brave new world — it's a bad new world" is what he said exactly. So is he preparing us for an endless number of "hiccups"?
According to the interview with one of the study's authors on NPR today, one of the very important factors is that decaf works as well. Which is to say, the measured benefit probably is not from caffeine.
Indeed. Here's a PDF of the paper which has all the actual numbers. It also lists in their conclusions several possible investigation routes:
Coffee contains chlorogenic acids (CGAs), which inhibit glucose absorption in the intestine and may favorably alter levels of gut hormones, which affect insulin response (1). Quinides, the roasting products of CGAs, inhibit liver glucose production in experimental models (1). Coffee also contains lignans, phytoestrogens with potent antioxidant activity, which may have positive effects on glucose handling (37). In humans, coffee drinking has been cross- sectionally associated with lower glucose levels after oral glucose loads and better insulin sensitivity (38–40). A cross-sectional study in women found a negative correlation between coffee consumption and circulating C-peptide, a marker of insulin secretion (41). Insulin may promote tumor progression through the insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) receptors in cancer cells. Insulin levels have been associated with a greater risk of cancer progression or mortality among men diagnosed with prostate cancer (9–11), even though insulin has been unassociated (12,13) or inversely associated (14) with overall incidence. Coffee is a major source of antioxidants and is estimated to provide half of total antioxidant intake in several populations (2,3). Coffee has been associated with improved markers of inflammation in cross-sectional studies and in a recent trial (4,42,43). Inflammation is hypothesized to play a role in the development of prostate cancer through the generation of proliferative inflammatory atrophy lesions (15). Various dietary antioxidants may reduce inflammation and have been associated with lower risk of advanced prostate cancer (44,45). Coffee drinking may be associated with increased sex hormone–binding globulin (SHBG) and total testosterone levels (5). One study in Greek men found a positive association with estradiol levels but not with SHBG or testosterone (6), whereas another found no association between coffee and sex hormones in young Greek men (7). Coffee has been consistently associated with higher SHBG levels in women (46–49). Sex hormones play a role in prostate cancer, though the relationships between circulating levels within normal ranges and risk have been difficult to elucidate. It has been hypothesized that although testosterone is necessary for the initial development of prostate cancer, it may limit progression of the disease (50,51). A pooled analysis of 18 prospective studies found an inverse association between SHBG levels and prostate cancer risk (51).
This comment is all kinds of stupid.
No, it's a fairly common viewpoint among rational Nintendo customers. But it does omit Nintendo's battle with pirates. I think the DS and its latest incarnations is a neat little device and so I purchased a certain cartridge for it recently for $5 from some Chinese site. Unfortunately upon visiting the site to retrieve the latest firmware for their cart, I noticed that they were also hosting movies and roms for the latest games (of all regions) in their file directory tree. This is reality. You might not see it here but you can walk down the street in some Asian nations and pick up every game for the DS on a tiny little cart for very little money ($50?). On the other hand, I want to tinker with what I paid for! My device? Then I'll run what I want to run on it.
Nintendo does well because their business model is sensible. They make money on their hardware.
So that's interesting because if they make money on their hardware, why do they care what I do with it after I buy it? Why don't they market it as a gaming/development platform? Why don't they just release all their tool chains for everyone to use to develop on their systems if they already make money on the hardware? I mean, you'd probably sell more platforms that way, right? Why do I need to pay some absurd amount of money for a developer's license and a kit to play with them? Perhaps because their business model also relies on a walled garden and though they may make money on the console, the real money comes from sales of games for that console. I think if you had the numbers, you'd see that their profit model is not a whole lot different than Sony or MS. Everyone plays that game.
They also offer things that everyone wants. MS fanboys need to realise that not everyone wants to play as a big fat space marine or some other "extreme" character doing the same damn thing in every sequel while spurting out god awful dialog that sounds like it was written by the 13 year olds play the game.
Having just played through Beautiful Katamari and Rapala Bass Pro Fishing on my 360 last night, I have to question this statement (not that fishing games don't exist for the Wii). I think your statement works well generically. Observe: (MS|Nintendo|Sony) fanboys need to realise that not everyone wants to play as a (big fat space marine|big fat Italian plumber) or some other ("extreme"|"cute") character doing the same damn thing in every sequel while spurting out (god awful dialog|It's a me, a Mario|PikaPikachu) that sounds like it was written by the (13 year olds|racists) play the game.
So I'm not seeing how you feel Nintendo is worse than the competition. Your comment is uneducated fanboy verbal masturbation at best and not surprisingly all the other little uneducated xbots gave you a +5 interesting for spouting crap.
I think the key here is that the three big names have their ups and downs. Why on earth do you act like there are no "downs" with Nintendo? If price is important to you, go with Nintendo. The Wii was the first of the three I bought. If graphics are important to you, go with the PS3. If online FPS is important to you, go with the XBox 360. If offline multiplayer is important to you, go with the Wii. Etc, etc. I own all three. And I play all three. Your post ironically makes you look like the fan boy and RogueyWon look like a well tempered gamer. Some of your acclamations for Nintendo are more than questionable ...
I stand against the Fairness Doctrine because I see it as an adjustment to free speech. I'm not claiming it blocks free speech but I see it as detrimental because it partially instructs broadcasters what to present. On top of that, I think it's a little shortsighted and subjective in how it aims to enforce each broadcaster to pose all sides of the issue.
... if this agency can establish a neutral reputation and if it's done correctly, it could be invaluable to the nations' citizens. I think the cost of such an operation would be quite trivial to the public good ... people like Glenn Beck have had a reign of stupidity for far too long in this country.
What I like about Clinton's suggestion (though flawed for many other reasons) is that it is a passive system. Anyone can say anything that they want or broadcast what they want but the next day they could be labeled a liar or at least someone who spouts half truths. The article lists many sites like factcheck.org that already do this so why not publicly fund an even bigger and more active site for the public good? It would cite its sources and it might even lead to better transparency in the government if it was also devoted to FOIAs in order to make statements about budgets and spending have real numbers instead of the bland "We spend too much on social programs!"
His suggestion is a little naive but at least it lets everyone say what they want to
I think the solution is the not the active regulation like the Fairness Doctrine but something more passive where the broadcasters go back to regulating themselves before they become the laughing stock of the press. The fact checkers would just sit back and watch and check and report. No need to fine the infractions or hand out warnings or demand so and so should get airtime.
Taken by a friend of mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIYVjqAd3Y
Awesome video, I'm glad he decided to go with a tripod or at least keep it stationary. Here's an amateur picture from the other side.
Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin. A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership.
Then it says:
Of course, since bitcoin transactions are untraceable, you would have zero recourse if you sent a dozen bitcoins to someone for a couple of tabs of LSD. Just like you might lose your $10 if you gave it to a kid in the school yard for a dime bag and he never came back.
Well, which is it?
... computational complexity? They serve absolutely no purpose with no possible side usages (like gold). The only purpose they serve is being a resource in contention. So what happens when people just decide to stop contending for it?
I first read about BitCoins on Slashdot a while ago and what intuition I have seems to wager there's a lot of Catch-22s with this pseudo-fiat currency. I mean the value is derived from scarcity but is also tied to what
I think that the title of this article being "BitCoin, the Most Dangerous Project Ever?" is a crude attempt at a self fulfilling prophecy as it's no danger unless people start to use it and actually value the BitCoins at their trading rate. I liked the section titled "BitCoins in Real Life" that says:
In the next year you’ll hear about people in casinos in Vegas buying and sell bitcoins for cash and casino chips.
Riiiiight. I somehow doubt that.
I think this amounts to some very smart people engaging in a cute little experiment that will experience initial success as those with GPU farms get some of this novel currency. But it can never grow very large because you need a pretty expensive infrastructure even to handle BitCoins and the only interests it serves will be those industries that want easy untraceable ways to exchange value for illegal products or to avoid taxation. And once that's exhausted, I suspect it will flounder.
Does anyone honestly think the promise of protection from inflation will cause people to ask for their paycheck in BitCoins?
During his damages hearing last week, RIAA lawyers suggested his net worth was larger than that. They noted he possessed $100 million in an IRA account. His Manhattan home is worth more than $4 million. In addition to Lime Wire, Gorton operates a hedge fund and a medical-software company. Gorton's lawyers claimed in court that he made little money from Lime Wire. Maybe, but records show the privately owned company generated $26 million in revenue in 2006 and sales climbed dramatically after that. During most of Lime Wire's 10-year history, Gorton was chairman, CEO, and only board member.
Disclaimer: I'm the submitter so I'm probably the only person that read the article which gives me an unfair advantage.
And I've never seen anything even vaguely pro-copyright get above a 2.
Right here, in at least two stories there are many counters to your claim. GPL is a form of copyright and people demand that be protected and be upheld.
I think what you are complaining about is that everyone on Slashdot is upset with "The Mickey Mouse Act" and is disgusted that lobbyists determine how long copyright stands so now it's an unreasonable length of time. And yeah, anyone defending that deserves to be modded down. But you're not going to find anybody other than massive studios defending that because why would an artist care that their work is copyrighted past their death? Hell, I would demand it be public domain so that more people could enjoy my work.
You can post positions counter to "group think" but you have to pose them intelligently and try to achieve a neutral point of view when you do it. An example might be proposing copyright reform down to twenty years but enforcing it even more rigorously to ensure that the artist truly gets royalties for those twenty years. Swearing at people and calling them thieves only illustrates you don't understand the nature of copyright infringement nor how the biggest most powerful players have the public by the balls and all politicians in their pockets.
I assure you on copyright and patents, I have often posted comments asking people what they thought a responsible length of time was or asking them how biotech firms should recoup their losses on searching for/developing drugs if they should not be able to patent them.
The review was probably written and edited by the morons at Packt, therefore most useful information is overlooked.
Nope, seems to be Johnny Gee who was asked to review it by Packt. Not a bad thing, I've been asked to review things for Slashdot and have, at times, refused because the book was garbage. Right now I'm fiddling with an Arduino and a couple XBee Pros in order to review a book for O'Reilly. It's a good book but the Arduino is proving to be too fun to fiddle with so I'm having a hard time getting around to the review.
I am a little confused as to why Johnny gave the book 8/10 here on Slashdot but 5/5 stars on Amazon with a similar worded review. Does he add a Slashdot bias to his scores here?
I myself take a lot of heat when I review a book that has content which is already available online and I would have to question what this book offers in addition to Wiki information and the nicely formatted guides and manuals. I also downloaded the code examples from Packt and found a couple spreadsheets and a very sparse tomcat file tree. Wish the reviewer would have commented on this stuff.
Even as rivals like Mozilla and Google have introduced bug bounty program, the Redmond Washington giant has stuck doggedly with a position it articulated almost a decade ago, refusing to offer monetary rewards for information on software holes. But security experts say that position may have to change.
Here is the source for Mozilla projects. Here is the source for Google Chrome. And where do I find Internet Explorer's source code? Oh, right. Well, I'm sure if they truly wanted my help making their browser better and more secure, they'd be okay with letting me take a peek at the source code. How can they start a bug bounty program when they won't even trust the community with seeing their code?
To put it another way: when you practice security through obscurity, offering monetary incentives for bug discovery is not a financially sound decision.
Furthermore, there have been times when a bug submitted to Google was deemed not a bug and a discussion ensued why that was with the source code referenced. I believe Microsoft could just say, "Oh, sorry, we don't owe you anything for discovering that feature but since you can't see the source code you'll have to take our word for it."
Microsoft doesn't need bug bounties. They need to achieve the prerequisite of code inspection before they can even consider putting their money where their mouth is.
I know I’m out of the web dev loop, but as I recall, in most cases the web mantra seems to be to crank it out as quick as possible before it’s obsolete.
I think ECMAScript standards are here to stay for quite a while. I wouldn't worry about too much changing between 5 and 6. This book actually considers all versions of ECMAScript and ES5 was standardized in 2009, 10 years after the last standardized version. While it takes a while for JavaScript engines to catch up on implementing those standards, I wouldn't spin this sort of stuff as "crank it out quick."
The exposure I’ve had (which admittedly is a small sampling) leads me to believe that even basic core principles of traditional software development are thrown out the window in a mad dash to get something that “looks right”.
Certainly the tools that have become the most popular around web dev would spell this out. Javascript, PHP, python, etc. Weakly types languages with loose structure, built in shortcuts, and lots of automagic. The whole concept of prototype based coding is to me just another example of rapid development trumping solid coding.
I believe this is a false dichotomy that may have been true years ago. Once you see the maturity level of some JavaScript projects that companies like Google are working on, JavaScript doesn't have to be the slap dash crap you are speaking of. It just becomes clear that the language produces products equivalent to how much time is put into it. Here's one of many good counterexamples to your rule. I am interested though: how do you define "solid coding?" That sounds like an ambiguous phrased designed to pick and choose language features as the user personally desires. The recent removal of OO programming from CMU's curriculum might point out how yesterday's mentality goes out of style and comes back in two decades later.
And I’ve heard the “compensate with better QA” or the even more ludicrous “just hire people who never make mistakes” arguments. I’ll take my programming with strong typing and lots of built in idiot-proofing please, and I’m not afraid to admit that even with years of dev experience, I still make the occasional bone headed mistake and I figure the more chances it gets caught, the better.
I think it’s good that _someone_ is trying to mix solid software development with web whimsy, but I don’t see it catching on, even in places where it really should!
Ima let you finish. But I just want to say that that is a totally respectable position. Me, personally, I recognize that I have a huge diverse toolbox full of all sorts of tools. Some better for jobs inside the browser, some better for servers and some better for embedded systems. But I would ask you to consider that it's going to be a while before any of these tools to be your silver bullet.
I’d like to note, that while this may start a flame war (or get harmlessly modded down to oblivion), this really wasn’t my intention.
I’d also like to note, that I dislike TDD in general (yeah, I know, another flame war)! In my experience, most bugs I find are from running through some kind of manual procedure and noticing something ”odd” that an automated system wouldn’t have picked up. I imagine in web design, where the end result is mainly visual, this would be even more common. Sure, the table has the right values but they are all cut off and too tiny to read.
There are certainly problems with rendering and layouts being difficult to automatically test. But there are a lot of tools out there (like firebug) that help you pin down what is going wrong in certain browsers. While the book doesn't delve deeply into it, it's something that is easier to deal with than, say, a weir
To sample some of the book, check out the Safari Books page. Test-Driven Javascript Development is available in many open formats with watermarks or from Amazon.com.
That Safari link is especially useful if you're on the fence about getting this title, you can view some of the book there. Also, I'm not seeing my score (9/10), publisher information, number of pages (475) or ISBN or any of that.
Ah, eldavojohn, posting math research stories but unable to do subtraction.
Don't worry, I only posted it here because I was unable to post it to reddit due to heavy usage. You won't have to put up with me or my apologies anymore.
The Fields Medal winner named in the article has a blog about using it to prove the Szemeredi-Trotter theorem and of course there's the wikipedia article on the generalized form of it. Also, I screwed up the summary, the reward was offered in '46 not '35.
Interesting title to select. Sounds a lot like the story I submitted at 9:30 AM ET -- 11 hours prior to PCM2's submission above. Or maybe PCM2 just ripped off my comment earlier today? Figures, this is Slashdot ...
Ars has a really good summary of the attack that used really run-of-the-mill stuff from social engineering via e-mail to an SQL injection of HBGary's CMS using this URL: http://www.hbgaryfederal.com/pages.php?pageNav=2&page=27
To get 70% of the subscription money, all of the ad money, and have no printing/postage costs actually doesn't sound too bad for publishers.
Okay but why not just go to the Android Market where you get 100% of the subscription money, all of the ad money, and have no printing/postage costs?
Did they just wait around for Murdoch's The Daily experiment for this? Is this just round two of wait-for-third-parties-to-develop-apps-and-then-hold-them-ransom like with eBooks? What's next?
...
If I were a mobile app developer I'd be asking myself right now if it's a smart idea to try to plan a viable business plan around iOS right now. Any good will you build by bringing people to iOS with your app is totally overlooked by Apple while any customers "they bring" to you runs a hefty 30% Apple tax.
I think it's highway robbery but I'm okay with it because I didn't buy into that bullshit. I bought into Android and instead of lording my decision over everybody I'm just going to remind everyone that the long run has been predicted by many industries. Apple and Blackberry will remain as niche players but it's going to be an Android future. So go ahead and hold publisher's -- who already hemorrhage cash -- feet to the fire. It's just going to hasten your fall.
Apple sits atop a crumbling marketshare (Schmidt claims 300,000 activations a day) and their response is to turn the screws on the third parties that set them apart from the competition? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me
I would look into all the people the State Department are working with; MSNBC, CBS, gosh, MTV.
Just say it, every news outlet but Fox, right? It's the only thing stopping you from busting out the "trust no one" hyperbole, right?
Maybe we should start watching those networks a little bit and seeing what their news coverage is like.
Why don't we watch all of them and judge them fairly against each other? Or do you just want scrutiny only on the networks you're not on?
Who are these groups? Who are they? Are they right, are they left, are they clean, are they dirty, are they front groups? I don't know.
Wait, wait, wait, so what are you accusing them of? Absolutely nothing? And if you don't know then why are you telling us to investigate them? Maybe because you know nobody will do it and instead they'll just continue listening to you? "Is Glenn Beck, good, bad, is he left, is he right, is he clean, is he dirty? I don't know. Maybe you should keep your eye on him?"
May I recommend, if you're doing your own homework, don't do a Google search. Seems to me that Google is pretty deeply in bed with the government. Maybe this is explaining why Google is being kicked out of all the other countries?
My god, would you please just make a statement instead of repeated leading questions?! How is Google any more "in bed" with the government than Microsoft or Yahoo?
Are they just a shill now for the United States government? Who is Jared Cohen? Is he private citizen or government operative? And isn't this the second Google guy we've found? This is the second Google executive now being exposed as an instigator of a revolution.
Your little pointer stick and board didn't do much to lead to conclusive evidence that Cohen has "instigated a revolution."
I couldn't get the MM site to load but the Youtube version worked for me and holy crap what a load of horseshit. I saw Glenn Beck on TV in a waiting room once and thought it was a joke. The amount of faulty, leading, incomplete logic here is just staggering, even in this video. Instead of wasting my time itemizing everything wrong about what he's saying and pointing out the obvious, I should have just taken Salon's advice and done something more constructive.