I was at my sister's house this weekend and Saturday at around 11 am CST I saw it pop up on her old Dell machine.
The big problem I had with it was what it was called which was "iPhone Configuration Utility" and the kicker is she owns an iPhone. Which confused me because she had nothing installed on there for her iPhone, only her iPod. So there I was debating on whether or not to install this for her because it sounded applicable and useful to her. I didn't install it but if I did, I would pissed to know that her five year old piece of crap Windows machine is now running an Apache server. Additionally, I had to uncheck Safari. Then I have to go into msconfig and uncheck the damned Quicktime (try installing iTunes without that!) run on startup shit that is always reset when you install iTunes. Because everyone wants that running non stop in the background especially when you have only 512 MB of SDRAM. So I did the little dance and I've bitched about it before but no one seems to care. It's bloatware and it sucks. Her computer can't even run iTunes videos, she just uses it for music but no one seems to care about that. Apple's the king of usability, design and interface chic!
Now we get this story where someone points it out. Do we see people roll in and viciously attack Apple like we all would attack Microsoft if IE8 had Bing's Javascript Attackable Toolbar checked by default on installation? Or Microsoft's indexing service that eats up all your cycles whenever it feels like it? No, no, what we get is "there were maybe a thousand people, relax" or "it's not pushing, you could have unchecked it" or "the Windows people don't know how to update anyway."
Unbelievable. How many free passes does Apple get before you start to question their infallibility? Hey, everyone makes mistakes but you guys are dreaming up probables and likely scenarios that somehow excuse Apple. Why?
Also, if anyone has Don Hertzfeldt's e-mail address I'd chuck $20 at a paypal fund to commission him to make a video for a Win7 launch party. I mean his video for Johnson's Bean Lard (now with 50% more sodium!) made me want to purchase it.
I remember for the Heinz Ketchup creativity contest they had recently there were a bunch of videos they kept removing despite them getting a lot of votes. Like this one that showed a wicked old lady chugging ketchup and then at the end she holds the bottle up and smiles and has this awesome snaggletooth grin with missing teeth.
So Microsoft will have to put with questionable content and I'll be there to vote it up and love it. Example:
*man sits behind TV set with only shoulders and head visible and upper arm working vigorously while expressions of joy cross his face* Narrator: So there I was watching some kitten snuff films before my friends arrived for the Win7 Launch party. *doorbell rings, narrator gets up to open door behind which are three guys with sunglasses on and a white powder visibly smeared across their upper lips* Narrator: Guys, what's the deal, where are the hookers? Christian Slater Sounding Partier: Yeah, Fred, about that, we had a little accident. One of the hookers got a bit lippy and they're not gonna make it. Narrator: They're coming later? Christian Slater Sounding Partier: Just make sure you don't leave any fingerprints on your dumpster if you go there tonight. Narrator: Awesome, well, you all brought your stolen laptops so let's fire 'em up and start doing something better than snorting coke and killing hookers: installing Win7.
Remember, it's not just the comments that are impressively stupid on YouTube. There's also videos. Opening up your company to a video contest? Yeah, I'll be searching YouTube for "Win7 Launch Party REJECTED."
Higher percentage of "noob" users. Idaho came to the table pretty late...
Not sure if you're trying to be funny but it's more likely that Idaho has a smaller population than most states (1.5 million?) and therefore if they get the same amount of spam as another state, it's going to skew their percentages. I'm guessing spam is sent in indifferent loads to companies and spam targeting companies is probably common. I guess usage of Gmail or Hotmail wouldn't skew this but I'm betting we're seeing an outlier because of the low population in Idaho. Not because they're any more 'n00bs' than we are. Tried my hardest to find the report but came up empty handed. Your odd superiority toward a state with a lower population is confusing but I guess you must think whatever state you're in to be the most advanced of all fifty... no matter what state it is, that's not true. Hell, Iowa might have the most advanced storage technology right now... as odd as that may sound it's cheap to build them out there!
I will introduce myself I am Mr. Dave Fu Wong, a potato farmer working in a field in South Korea Until now I am the master potato grower of three million hectres to most of the South Korea government kitchens and I have since discovered that most of the potatoes lay dormant in silos with a lot of starch in the silo on further investigation I found out that one particular silo belong to the former president of South Korean MR PARK CHUNG HEE, who ruled south Korean from 1963-1979 and this particular silo has a deposit of grade A lucky golden variety potato with no next of kin. As you know, lucky goldens do not only taste like food from the gods but can be consumed raw like an apple as well as grown anywhere even during the winter.
My proposal is that since I am the master potato growing officer and the potatoes or the silo is dormant and there is no next of kin obviously the potato owner the former president of South Korea has died long time ago, that you should provide an account for the potatoes to be transferred.
The potatoes that are floating in the silo right now are some fifty kilotonnes and this is what I want to transfer to your farm in Idoho for our mutual benefit South Korean post office is so super efficient that a single postage stamp will get these potatoes to you post haste! Unfortunately postage stamp cost fifty Korean currencies or $10,000 American Dollars (apologies for your economy) please send bank account information or cash money order for immediate shipping.
Please if this is okay by you I will advice that you contact me through my direct email address.
Please this transaction should be kept confidential. For your assistance as the account owner we shall share the potatoes on equal basis.
Demon Internet Yesman: Christ! We're getting murdered out there! Demon Internet CEO: Okay, okay, calm down. We've got a little issue on our hands here and we kinda need to sweep this little thing under the carpet. Now, you're not getting paid six figures to agree with me, what have you got? Demon Internet Yesman: I've drafted an e-mail that explains to our customers that for Halloween we decided to be evil -- after all, we areDemon Internet? Huh? Huh? Demon Internet CEO: Not bad, not bad... if it was fucking October! And we're dealing with internet users here, not AOL USERS! Jesus, has anyone else got something better? Demon Internet Yesman: I've got it! We tell them that we're trying to be transparent and an "open information" company because information wants to be free and so we sent everyone everyone's log on and contact information so they can... Demon Internet CEO: Did you just personify the noun 'information'? That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. Who are you? Pack your shit, you're fired. Next. Demon Internet Yeswoman: *tentatively raises her had* Well, we could tell them that we suspected one of them was an evil dirty file sharer... Demon Internet CEO:... I'm listening... Demon Internet Yeswoman:... and now that the evil person tried to do something evil with that data, we have caught them and they are safely behind bars but if you're receiving this message you are not evil so you have nothing to worry about and only good people have your information. Demon Internet CEO: *nods slowly and approvingly* Yes, yes, that's good. We are law enforcers, we are providers, in their eyes we have done only good and now they fear and respect us and think they have escaped the sickle of justice. I like it. Sally, you're off of blow job duty. Frank, you're on blow job duty -- it's simple: my office every weekday at noon. Sally, I knew that equal opportunity employment shit that made me hire you was on to something. Okay folks, listen up, I want everyone in Great Britain to open their mouths 'cause I'm about to put my big fat cock in it.
From the report, which is linked to in the article and you obviously didn't care to read before criticizing:
NULL Pointer Deference
Resource Leak
Unintentional Ignored Expressions
Use Before Test (NULL)
Use After Free
Buffer Overflow (statically allocated)
Unsafe Use of Returned NULL
Uninitialized Values Read
Unsafe Use of Returned Negative
Type and Allocation Size Mismatch
Buffer Overflow (dynamically allocated)
Use Before Test (negative)
They then go on to discuss Function Length and Complexity Metrics.
C: The numbers aren't normalized nor broken by application size.
I don't understand how this is statistically relevant. The summary I gave lists by static code defect per line of code and looks at function length. Of course a project with 4 million lines of code would have more defects than one of 4 thousand lines of the code. The lines of code is the normalization!
D: The use of a bug reporting database needs to be measured in regards to a baseline filing\fix % not a total volume (as we need to correlate new lines of code being added)
Does it make any difference to the end user whether 90% of the project is new lines of code or 9% of the project is new lines of code?
It reads like something from the Onion.
You didn't read the report so you can't really speak.
Dear Lord journalism is dead...
Says the poster who didn't read or understand the report.
So, not only are the/. summaries merely paragraphs copied from the article nowadays, they're paragraphs copied incorrectly.
So if my summary was "merely paragraphs copied from the article" then where did I get the 1 in 3,333 and 1 in 4,000 numbers from?
Also, if all I did was copy/paste the article, I'd be plagiarizing and -- not only that -- I would have copy/pasted the correct count of the projects in Rung 3 status. Instead I skimmed the report and was thinking "Rung 3" when I wrote that sentence the three was put in instead of the four. Doesn't make me any less wrong but I hate anonymous non-constructive criticism that's modded up. I apologize for my human error, obviously the human editor also missed it. Since you're anonymous, I can't assume you're human and beg you to relate to my plight of errors. I'm sure my error made the summary completely unreadable. I'm also certain that you've published hundreds of articles on Slashdot without so much as a single error in any of them.
You do know that the number of submissions I've had recently, almost all have had some flaw or error in them. Simply because I realize there's no reward for fact checking. And there's no penalty for getting an error published. So assuming the summary sells to eyeballs and there's no error large enough to get it rejected the next thing is timing. I've written submissions that have been beat out by a few minutes and I get marked "dupe" by firehose. So that pushes me from taking 10-15 minutes to create a summary to 2-3 minutes. Oh well, the worse penalty is if I respond to the article (like this) I'm modded down by righteous moderators. Doesn't really bother me.
If the editors aren't catching the errors and I've got no incentive to reduce the errors, do you think they're going to go away?
Just like dogs have been genetically modified to produce everything from chihuahuas to great danes.
Indeed, take a look at this scientific video of a freak accident that somehow avoided natural selection. At one point in that beast's ancestry it was a magnificent wolf or even dingo.
Google tried a fast one, the global publishing equivalent of tightly packaging a web browser with an OS, and got caught.
How is that exactly?
The only "negotiations" up to this point had been akin to the conversation the kid has with the candy jar. Now, perhaps, a genuine dialogue can begin.
There was a genuine dialogue between the Author's Guild and Google. What, you think this rejection is going to result in Microsoft and librarians testifying in the DoJ's analysis of this deal? I highly doubt it. The official word makes it sound like they want it to be 100 pages of clauses instead of 2 pages but we all know it's essentially going to come down to one hundred million dollars from Google to the Authors Guild with opt out abilities for any author or publisher. Some clauses on orphaned works, some clauses on allowing your competitors sales rights (already promised), subscriptions for libraries (already promised) some more clauses on this and that. And BOOM! it's done. Even Google seems to think they're just going to rework and resubmit. Is this what you mean by "genuine dialogue" and how does that make this deal less evil?
Wow how did you ever find that link? Did you actually read the summary or something?
The interesting thing now is if they're gonna remove that texture, remaster, repackage and send the new ones to all stores again, even more so because the game is over an month old now and the best sales are already gone.
Dissemination of Means of Propaganda of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever domestically disseminates or produces, stocks, imports or exports or makes publicly accessible through data storage media for dissemination domestically or abroad, means of propaganda: 1. of a party which has been declared to be unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court or a party or organization, as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a party; [...] 4. means of propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. [...] (3) Subsection (1) shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes. [...] Section 86a StGB Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever: 1. domestically distributes or publicly uses, in a meeting or in writings (Â 11 subsection (3)) disseminated by him, symbols of one of the parties or organizations indicated in Section 86 subsection (1), nos. 1, 2 and 4; or 2. produces, stocks, imports or exports objects which depict or contain such symbols for distribution or use domestically or abroad, in the manner indicated in number 1, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. (2) Symbols, within the meaning of subsection (1), shall be, in particular, flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting. Symbols which are so similar as to be mistaken for those named in sentence 1 shall be deemed to be equivalent thereto.
Note: I do not agree with the German governments staunch policy against symbols but they're free to govern as they see fit (pending the EU's approval). If they want to keep selling the game in Germany, they might want to uphold German laws. I don't know how many gamers are in Germany but they have a population of about 82 million and I think that it's a safe bet some "texture, remaster, repackage" can be afforded for that market.
Now a group from researchers from UT Austin, Princeton, and U Michigan has come up with a way to break this approach, by mking a single computer appear to be many nodes
I've performed similar procedures. The last time I mortal kombatted my computer, it became several pieces on my floor.
Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?
Rather like the lock company demanding he reimburse them the cost of redesigning their badly designed locks?
From what I can find of his "hacking" abilities on the black vault:
Somewhat frustrated by the common avenues of UFO research, Gary began some basic computer hacking techniques from his girlfriend's Aunt's house in the mid-late 1990s. Soon he began using a system of scanning for blank administrator passwords on supposedly secure networks...
Sounds more like the lock company distributed a working lock to many U.S. government entities and they put the locks on their sensitive possessions but some individuals simply forgot to close the clasp and had no policy for walking around double checking locks. If he did do $700k of damage and bring the system to a halt, he should pay for it. If they are charging him $700k for a script that scans for blank passwords on accounts on their systems and drop it in a chron job, I'll gladly fulfill the work order for half that price!
Uh, I'd love to say we have a plan. I mean, sometimes it's a bit sad that we are definitely not the streamlined, small, hyper-efficient kernel that I envisioned 15 years ago...The kernel is huge and bloated, and our icache footprint is scary. I mean, there is no question about that. And whenever we add a new feature, it only gets worse.
And also:
He maintains, however, that stability is not a problem. "I think we've been pretty stable," he said. "We are finding the bugs as fast as we're adding them -- even though we're adding more code." Bottomley took this to mean that Torvalds views that the current level of integration acceptable under those terms. But Mr. Linux corrected him. "No. I'm not saying that," Torvalds answered. "Acceptable and avoidable are two different things. It's unacceptable but it's also probably unavoidable."
I think that's very important to note. His quote by itself is very self-loathing but to add that tit's unavoidable really says a lot. You want to be popular? You have to satisfy more people and in doing so you become more bloated. He does maintain that Linux remains stable and that's usually the biggest problem I have with bloat. It decreases stability. I don't think there's any reason to get excited about level headed rational and reflection.
I'm not sure if you're fishing for a defensive response or are just playing the part of your curmudgeonly moniker. Either way, I grew up unable to afford comic books although a friend had every Punisher comic book and reading through them was okay but left a lot to be desired. It wasn't until three years ago that I read The Watchmen -- the first comic book that made me think and expressed depth of characters. By now you've heard of the movie but this comic book showed me that there are more to comic books than flash and outrageous super powers. In fact, I did a review on a collection of non-superhero comics today and was thoroughly impressed with the kinds of issues people are tackling out there with comic books (please don't jump on me for not calling them graphic novels, I really don't care as either term is just as respectable to me). Since then I've ventured out to publishers that aren't one of the big three or four (although Image has some series that I find interesting).
Isn't it mostly the 30-50 year old crowd trying to make an investment?
If they're the only ones buying them it's probably not a good investment. While you might be able to show a stagnation in sales, the comic book publishers have no one to blame but themselves. If you can't survive changes in technology and you constantly rely on the same old tired franchises or crossovers, you're going to lose fans and you're not going to attract people like me that know the premise and details of all existing superheros. At least that's my opinion.
Woo boy am I holding my breath for spiderman 4 in 2011...
I share your remorse for the painful drivel that Hollywood (seq|pre)qualizes but to be fair comic books are based on this leave-you-wanting-more teaser serialization of the story... so it should come as no surprise that Spiderman and X-Men are into this. Perhaps that's why I loved The Watchmen? I can't say for sure. One thing's for sure it might not be the 30-50 year old crowd looking to make an investment but rather (as the article put it) "superhero hungry Hollywood" looking to make an investment. The medium of the comic book may be dying but what they sold to youngsters will never die: the hero. It will live on in movies and video games until those methods succumb to emerging markets and we get retina implants or something.
I predict that Jack Kirby's heirs are in for the legal battle of their lives. Oh well, he's dead and I'm sure they're contributing to society somehow. I'm not really concerned about what they get out of this. And I will make the prediction that if by some miracle Disney opens up its animation resources to the folks at Marvel and leaves them as Marvel that we will see some good things come out of this. But if they (and this is a more likely scenario) just turn Marvel into Disney and homogenize them and scare away/fire the people who aren't afraid to try something new... then we're just going to see Disney style Marvel heroes in surefire movies with the formulaic love plot + slapstick comedy + action + Disney ending = $$$$$.
You might take this with a grain of salt as this Scientific American article points out it relies on fMRI (with the researcher also expressing caution). The same sort of scans were used to recently show that dead salmon think and also was called into question before that. From what I understand, there's a potentially huge problem with the statistical correlation done on the data to reach the images and conclusion (basically you are able to decide how much of a result you get). Given these sequential very controversial findings, I think it's time to push for research on these tools and research processes to ensure they are robust and reporting correct findings.
Their religion tells them to oppress and be oppressed...
Uh, I don't think that's true. At least not from what I've read in the Qur'an, there wasn't anything detailing what's going on in Iran right now and saying that that is how you must run your nation state. In fact, if you look at a lot of laws like the extreme forms of Sharia they are more founded on what leaders after Muhammad's death decided he meant. In my mind I liken it to the perversion that several Popes have put in place... in the name of The Bible. Despite the Popes calling themselves Christians, they spent their lives very comfortably unlike Jesus Christ. Similarly certain leaders today call themselves Christians and Muslims yet do not live their lives like either Christ or Muhammad. Usually it's not safe to compare religions like this but I'm trying to illustrate that these historical religious figures suffer distortion today across the world in Iran and the United States. Perhaps one is worse than the other but your criticism of "mudslums" religion telling them to be oppressed is no more apt than me saying that Christianity tells Christians to be oppressed. Indeed, speaking for any religion that has hundreds of diverse sects is a ridiculous act in and of itself.
I might also warn you that Western media (especially in the United States) concentrated on only the bad things from "The Middle East" from the 1980s to the 1990s. Although it's recently become much better, I read a book by Edward Said called Covering Islam that itemized a few publications and looked at the hilarious slant. Granted, he cherry picked those works and the book was not as even handed as I had hoped, he did point out to me that I do not know the average life of a regular citizen in Tehran... much less most of "The Middle East." Because we weren't paying our media outlets to disperse that, we were only rewarding them on shock reporting mostly spurred by the Iranian hostage crisis. That's all we saw of Iran on the news and for a while that's all Iran was to us, a hostage crisis... not a country with millions of citizens doing a lot of the same stuff we do here in the states.
This is not about brain activity post-mortem! This is about the stupidity of some fMRI data. This is about the voodoo correlations that come out of fMRI data in popular research that is peer reviewed. They did this to prove a point, not claim dead fish think. Even if we did, I could use your logic to claim that every time we bury a dead person we are burying them with cognitive abilities -- obviously not true! I thought the summary covered that very well as the paper being titled "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction."
Alex Trebek: "Hmmm, Bob is making over $X. I see he's the most productive, but we could higher two new grads and an intern for the same amount. They'd be at least that productive right?" Contestant: "What is the final nail on a project's coffin, Alex?" Alex Trebek: "Right you are!" Contestant: "I'll stay in the same category and take 'Stupid Managers' for $800." Alex Trebek: "The answer is: Half your team has been fired and your manager has moved software modules to be developed in this country." Contestant: "What is India?" Alex Trebek: "Correct again!"
After reading this article, it sure puts things into perspective about how I was raised. It seems that Eric Spiegel and I have very different perspectives and work ethic. If you do a good job, you will be rewarded. Three things that will do nothing for you are bitching, bragging and blaming. Avoid them like the plague -- that is, of course, unless they're listed in your job description.
However, some people truly have their heads buried in the sand (or their code).
Yes, imagine the shock and horror that you would see on people's faces if I spent my time doing what I'm getting paid to do: develop code. Yes, I'm young. No, I've never been fired but I've been "hired then unhired" out of college because of a poor job environment in the locale of my origin. No matter, plenty of jobs were out there for me.
Spiegel claims he's fired people. I wonder how he would have chosen people if he saw through an employee's thinly veiled attempts to make himself look better? Or if he knew that employee spent time trying to cover his or her own ass instead of -- you know -- just get work done? These points aren't addressed in the blog.
So for those of you reading this, I will offer you an alternative to what the blog suggests. I imagine most developers (even agile developers) have a system for tracking completed requirements and also for fixing reported errors/bugs. If you spend your time chewing up those outstanding items and forget about all this near-Machiavellian bullshit manipulation Spiegel is proposing then you've got nothing to worry about. If your manager wants to fire you, just pull up the numbers if he or she hasn't already and show them. You can't fire a developer that's leading in resolutions and completed requirements. It's that simple. Skip the drama and get to work.
Why not just make people pay the full price of the electricity they're using so they can leave lights, heating and AC on 24/7 but it's only they who are suffering.
But that's not true. If we look at this like an ideal demand causes prices to go up scenario, then the increased demand in energy causes prices to go up for people that make less than those with the money to keep the lights, heating and AC (wtf?) on 24/7. The brownouts might also cause needs for more infrastructure which raises the average cost per kilowatt hour for every consumer -- rich and poor.
I'm not advocating this regulation but I'm do recognize the argument against your counterpoint and I think you need to account for that. Think about what the other viewpoints are in a situation and you're guaranteed to win the argument. I hate to play the devil's advocate and give you the bleeding heart liberal scenario of the poor single mother that can't operate a condom and now can't afford heating but there it is.
Slashdot Mirror
I was at my sister's house this weekend and Saturday at around 11 am CST I saw it pop up on her old Dell machine.
The big problem I had with it was what it was called which was "iPhone Configuration Utility" and the kicker is she owns an iPhone. Which confused me because she had nothing installed on there for her iPhone, only her iPod. So there I was debating on whether or not to install this for her because it sounded applicable and useful to her. I didn't install it but if I did, I would pissed to know that her five year old piece of crap Windows machine is now running an Apache server. Additionally, I had to uncheck Safari. Then I have to go into msconfig and uncheck the damned Quicktime (try installing iTunes without that!) run on startup shit that is always reset when you install iTunes. Because everyone wants that running non stop in the background especially when you have only 512 MB of SDRAM. So I did the little dance and I've bitched about it before but no one seems to care. It's bloatware and it sucks. Her computer can't even run iTunes videos, she just uses it for music but no one seems to care about that. Apple's the king of usability, design and interface chic!
Now we get this story where someone points it out. Do we see people roll in and viciously attack Apple like we all would attack Microsoft if IE8 had Bing's Javascript Attackable Toolbar checked by default on installation? Or Microsoft's indexing service that eats up all your cycles whenever it feels like it? No, no, what we get is "there were maybe a thousand people, relax" or "it's not pushing, you could have unchecked it" or "the Windows people don't know how to update anyway."
Unbelievable. How many free passes does Apple get before you start to question their infallibility? Hey, everyone makes mistakes but you guys are dreaming up probables and likely scenarios that somehow excuse Apple. Why?
Anyone have a link to that heinz video?
I tried hard to find it as I got a kick out of it but came up empty handed. I do have a link to our discussion on this as well as from there you can see that the videos were deleted on YouTube and have broken links on the NY Times. If only the NY Times was ballsy enough to cache them locally in the name of journalism :) Unfortunately there's not much left in the name of journalism these days ...
Also, if anyone has Don Hertzfeldt's e-mail address I'd chuck $20 at a paypal fund to commission him to make a video for a Win7 launch party. I mean his video for Johnson's Bean Lard (now with 50% more sodium!) made me want to purchase it.
I remember for the Heinz Ketchup creativity contest they had recently there were a bunch of videos they kept removing despite them getting a lot of votes. Like this one that showed a wicked old lady chugging ketchup and then at the end she holds the bottle up and smiles and has this awesome snaggletooth grin with missing teeth.
So Microsoft will have to put with questionable content and I'll be there to vote it up and love it. Example:
*man sits behind TV set with only shoulders and head visible and upper arm working vigorously while expressions of joy cross his face*
Narrator: So there I was watching some kitten snuff films before my friends arrived for the Win7 Launch party.
*doorbell rings, narrator gets up to open door behind which are three guys with sunglasses on and a white powder visibly smeared across their upper lips*
Narrator: Guys, what's the deal, where are the hookers?
Christian Slater Sounding Partier: Yeah, Fred, about that, we had a little accident. One of the hookers got a bit lippy and they're not gonna make it.
Narrator: They're coming later?
Christian Slater Sounding Partier: Just make sure you don't leave any fingerprints on your dumpster if you go there tonight.
Narrator: Awesome, well, you all brought your stolen laptops so let's fire 'em up and start doing something better than snorting coke and killing hookers: installing Win7.
Remember, it's not just the comments that are impressively stupid on YouTube. There's also videos. Opening up your company to a video contest? Yeah, I'll be searching YouTube for "Win7 Launch Party REJECTED."
Higher percentage of "noob" users. Idaho came to the table pretty late ...
Not sure if you're trying to be funny but it's more likely that Idaho has a smaller population than most states (1.5 million?) and therefore if they get the same amount of spam as another state, it's going to skew their percentages. I'm guessing spam is sent in indifferent loads to companies and spam targeting companies is probably common. I guess usage of Gmail or Hotmail wouldn't skew this but I'm betting we're seeing an outlier because of the low population in Idaho. Not because they're any more 'n00bs' than we are. Tried my hardest to find the report but came up empty handed. Your odd superiority toward a state with a lower population is confusing but I guess you must think whatever state you're in to be the most advanced of all fifty ... no matter what state it is, that's not true. Hell, Iowa might have the most advanced storage technology right now ... as odd as that may sound it's cheap to build them out there!
What's your evidence that Idaho came pretty late?
Hey guys, hott tip, Quantum Tubers stock at five cents, tomorrow at five dollars! Can't lose, like printing money. Buy Buy Buy!
From: Mr. Dave Fu Wong
Seoul, South Korea.
I will introduce myself I am Mr. Dave Fu Wong, a potato farmer working in a field in South Korea Until now I am the master potato grower of three million hectres to most of the South Korea government kitchens and I have since discovered that most of the potatoes lay dormant in silos with a lot of starch in the silo on further investigation I found out that one particular silo belong to the former president of South Korean MR PARK CHUNG HEE, who ruled south Korean from 1963-1979 and this particular silo has a deposit of grade A lucky golden variety potato with no next of kin. As you know, lucky goldens do not only taste like food from the gods but can be consumed raw like an apple as well as grown anywhere even during the winter.
My proposal is that since I am the master potato growing officer and the potatoes or the silo is dormant and there is no next of kin obviously the potato owner the former president of South Korea has died long time ago, that you should provide an account for the potatoes to be transferred.
The potatoes that are floating in the silo right now are some fifty kilotonnes and this is what I want to transfer to your farm in Idoho for our mutual benefit South Korean post office is so super efficient that a single postage stamp will get these potatoes to you post haste! Unfortunately postage stamp cost fifty Korean currencies or $10,000 American Dollars (apologies for your economy) please send bank account information or cash money order for immediate shipping.
Please if this is okay by you I will advice that you contact me through my direct email address.
Please this transaction should be kept confidential. For your assistance as the account owner we shall share the potatoes on equal basis.
Your reply will be appreciated,
Thank you.
Dave Fu Wong
Great, I just got an diabetes and an erection from reading your post.
"Too good to be true" says the empty bottle of Three Philosophers Quadruple sitting next to me.
Demon Internet Yesman: Christ! We're getting murdered out there! ... if it was fucking October! And we're dealing with internet users here, not AOL USERS! Jesus, has anyone else got something better? ... ... ... I'm listening ... ... and now that the evil person tried to do something evil with that data, we have caught them and they are safely behind bars but if you're receiving this message you are not evil so you have nothing to worry about and only good people have your information.
Demon Internet CEO: Okay, okay, calm down. We've got a little issue on our hands here and we kinda need to sweep this little thing under the carpet. Now, you're not getting paid six figures to agree with me, what have you got?
Demon Internet Yesman: I've drafted an e-mail that explains to our customers that for Halloween we decided to be evil -- after all, we are Demon Internet? Huh? Huh?
Demon Internet CEO: Not bad, not bad
Demon Internet Yesman: I've got it! We tell them that we're trying to be transparent and an "open information" company because information wants to be free and so we sent everyone everyone's log on and contact information so they can
Demon Internet CEO: Did you just personify the noun 'information'? That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. Who are you? Pack your shit, you're fired. Next.
Demon Internet Yeswoman: *tentatively raises her had* Well, we could tell them that we suspected one of them was an evil dirty file sharer
Demon Internet CEO:
Demon Internet Yeswoman:
Demon Internet CEO: *nods slowly and approvingly* Yes, yes, that's good. We are law enforcers, we are providers, in their eyes we have done only good and now they fear and respect us and think they have escaped the sickle of justice. I like it. Sally, you're off of blow job duty. Frank, you're on blow job duty -- it's simple: my office every weekday at noon. Sally, I knew that equal opportunity employment shit that made me hire you was on to something. Okay folks, listen up, I want everyone in Great Britain to open their mouths 'cause I'm about to put my big fat cock in it.
A: We know they didn't check the code by hand.
Of course not, do you know what static code analysis is? I repeatedly said that in the summary.
B: The methodology didn't classify defects (cosmetic, seucrity, minor, major. etc.)
From the report, which is linked to in the article and you obviously didn't care to read before criticizing:
NULL Pointer Deference
Resource Leak
Unintentional Ignored Expressions
Use Before Test (NULL)
Use After Free
Buffer Overflow (statically allocated)
Unsafe Use of Returned NULL
Uninitialized Values Read
Unsafe Use of Returned Negative
Type and Allocation Size Mismatch
Buffer Overflow (dynamically allocated)
Use Before Test (negative)
They then go on to discuss Function Length and Complexity Metrics.
C: The numbers aren't normalized nor broken by application size.
I don't understand how this is statistically relevant. The summary I gave lists by static code defect per line of code and looks at function length. Of course a project with 4 million lines of code would have more defects than one of 4 thousand lines of the code. The lines of code is the normalization!
D: The use of a bug reporting database needs to be measured in regards to a baseline filing\fix % not a total volume (as we need to correlate new lines of code being added)
Does it make any difference to the end user whether 90% of the project is new lines of code or 9% of the project is new lines of code?
It reads like something from the Onion.
You didn't read the report so you can't really speak.
Dear Lord journalism is dead...
Says the poster who didn't read or understand the report.
TFA says four.
So, not only are the /. summaries merely paragraphs copied from the article nowadays, they're paragraphs copied incorrectly.
So if my summary was "merely paragraphs copied from the article" then where did I get the 1 in 3,333 and 1 in 4,000 numbers from?
Also, if all I did was copy/paste the article, I'd be plagiarizing and -- not only that -- I would have copy/pasted the correct count of the projects in Rung 3 status. Instead I skimmed the report and was thinking "Rung 3" when I wrote that sentence the three was put in instead of the four. Doesn't make me any less wrong but I hate anonymous non-constructive criticism that's modded up. I apologize for my human error, obviously the human editor also missed it. Since you're anonymous, I can't assume you're human and beg you to relate to my plight of errors. I'm sure my error made the summary completely unreadable. I'm also certain that you've published hundreds of articles on Slashdot without so much as a single error in any of them.
You do know that the number of submissions I've had recently, almost all have had some flaw or error in them. Simply because I realize there's no reward for fact checking. And there's no penalty for getting an error published. So assuming the summary sells to eyeballs and there's no error large enough to get it rejected the next thing is timing. I've written submissions that have been beat out by a few minutes and I get marked "dupe" by firehose. So that pushes me from taking 10-15 minutes to create a summary to 2-3 minutes. Oh well, the worse penalty is if I respond to the article (like this) I'm modded down by righteous moderators. Doesn't really bother me.
If the editors aren't catching the errors and I've got no incentive to reduce the errors, do you think they're going to go away?
Just like dogs have been genetically modified to produce everything from chihuahuas to great danes.
Indeed, take a look at this scientific video of a freak accident that somehow avoided natural selection. At one point in that beast's ancestry it was a magnificent wolf or even dingo.
Google tried a fast one, the global publishing equivalent of tightly packaging a web browser with an OS, and got caught.
How is that exactly?
The only "negotiations" up to this point had been akin to the conversation the kid has with the candy jar. Now, perhaps, a genuine dialogue can begin.
There was a genuine dialogue between the Author's Guild and Google. What, you think this rejection is going to result in Microsoft and librarians testifying in the DoJ's analysis of this deal? I highly doubt it. The official word makes it sound like they want it to be 100 pages of clauses instead of 2 pages but we all know it's essentially going to come down to one hundred million dollars from Google to the Authors Guild with opt out abilities for any author or publisher. Some clauses on orphaned works, some clauses on allowing your competitors sales rights (already promised), subscriptions for libraries (already promised) some more clauses on this and that. And BOOM! it's done. Even Google seems to think they're just going to rework and resubmit. Is this what you mean by "genuine dialogue" and how does that make this deal less evil?
Here's a huge list of screenshots of differences between uncensored and german version
Wow how did you ever find that link? Did you actually read the summary or something?
The interesting thing now is if they're gonna remove that texture, remaster, repackage and send the new ones to all stores again, even more so because the game is over an month old now and the best sales are already gone.
German law Strafgesetzbuch Section 86:
Dissemination of Means of Propaganda of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever domestically disseminates or produces, stocks, imports or exports or makes publicly accessible through data storage media for dissemination domestically or abroad, means of propaganda: 1. of a party which has been declared to be unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court or a party or organization, as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a party; [...] 4. means of propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. [...] (3) Subsection (1) shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes. [...] Section 86a StGB Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever: 1. domestically distributes or publicly uses, in a meeting or in writings (Â 11 subsection (3)) disseminated by him, symbols of one of the parties or organizations indicated in Section 86 subsection (1), nos. 1, 2 and 4; or 2. produces, stocks, imports or exports objects which depict or contain such symbols for distribution or use domestically or abroad, in the manner indicated in number 1, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. (2) Symbols, within the meaning of subsection (1), shall be, in particular, flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting. Symbols which are so similar as to be mistaken for those named in sentence 1 shall be deemed to be equivalent thereto.
Note: I do not agree with the German governments staunch policy against symbols but they're free to govern as they see fit (pending the EU's approval). If they want to keep selling the game in Germany, they might want to uphold German laws. I don't know how many gamers are in Germany but they have a population of about 82 million and I think that it's a safe bet some "texture, remaster, repackage" can be afforded for that market.
Now a group from researchers from UT Austin, Princeton, and U Michigan has come up with a way to break this approach, by mking a single computer appear to be many nodes
I've performed similar procedures. The last time I mortal kombatted my computer, it became several pieces on my floor.
Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?
Rather like the lock company demanding he reimburse them the cost of redesigning their badly designed locks?
From what I can find of his "hacking" abilities on the black vault:
Somewhat frustrated by the common avenues of UFO research, Gary began some basic computer hacking techniques from his girlfriend's Aunt's house in the mid-late 1990s. Soon he began using a system of scanning for blank administrator passwords on supposedly secure networks ...
Sounds more like the lock company distributed a working lock to many U.S. government entities and they put the locks on their sensitive possessions but some individuals simply forgot to close the clasp and had no policy for walking around double checking locks. If he did do $700k of damage and bring the system to a halt, he should pay for it. If they are charging him $700k for a script that scans for blank passwords on accounts on their systems and drop it in a chron job, I'll gladly fulfill the work order for half that price!
Uh, I'd love to say we have a plan. I mean, sometimes it's a bit sad that we are definitely not the streamlined, small, hyper-efficient kernel that I envisioned 15 years ago...The kernel is huge and bloated, and our icache footprint is scary. I mean, there is no question about that. And whenever we add a new feature, it only gets worse.
And also:
He maintains, however, that stability is not a problem. "I think we've been pretty stable," he said. "We are finding the bugs as fast as we're adding them -- even though we're adding more code." Bottomley took this to mean that Torvalds views that the current level of integration acceptable under those terms. But Mr. Linux corrected him. "No. I'm not saying that," Torvalds answered. "Acceptable and avoidable are two different things. It's unacceptable but it's also probably unavoidable."
I think that's very important to note. His quote by itself is very self-loathing but to add that tit's unavoidable really says a lot. You want to be popular? You have to satisfy more people and in doing so you become more bloated. He does maintain that Linux remains stable and that's usually the biggest problem I have with bloat. It decreases stability. I don't think there's any reason to get excited about level headed rational and reflection.
Of course, the possibility that they bugger it up is always there. :)
It wouldn't surprise me, Disney has been known to ruin even the very thing that made them popular.
Isn't it mostly the 30-50 year old crowd trying to make an investment?
If they're the only ones buying them it's probably not a good investment. While you might be able to show a stagnation in sales, the comic book publishers have no one to blame but themselves. If you can't survive changes in technology and you constantly rely on the same old tired franchises or crossovers, you're going to lose fans and you're not going to attract people like me that know the premise and details of all existing superheros. At least that's my opinion.
Woo boy am I holding my breath for spiderman 4 in 2011...
I share your remorse for the painful drivel that Hollywood (seq|pre)qualizes but to be fair comic books are based on this leave-you-wanting-more teaser serialization of the story ... so it should come as no surprise that Spiderman and X-Men are into this. Perhaps that's why I loved The Watchmen? I can't say for sure. One thing's for sure it might not be the 30-50 year old crowd looking to make an investment but rather (as the article put it) "superhero hungry Hollywood" looking to make an investment. The medium of the comic book may be dying but what they sold to youngsters will never die: the hero. It will live on in movies and video games until those methods succumb to emerging markets and we get retina implants or something.
... then we're just going to see Disney style Marvel heroes in surefire movies with the formulaic love plot + slapstick comedy + action + Disney ending = $$$$$.
I predict that Jack Kirby's heirs are in for the legal battle of their lives. Oh well, he's dead and I'm sure they're contributing to society somehow. I'm not really concerned about what they get out of this. And I will make the prediction that if by some miracle Disney opens up its animation resources to the folks at Marvel and leaves them as Marvel that we will see some good things come out of this. But if they (and this is a more likely scenario) just turn Marvel into Disney and homogenize them and scare away/fire the people who aren't afraid to try something new
You might take this with a grain of salt as this Scientific American article points out it relies on fMRI (with the researcher also expressing caution). The same sort of scans were used to recently show that dead salmon think and also was called into question before that. From what I understand, there's a potentially huge problem with the statistical correlation done on the data to reach the images and conclusion (basically you are able to decide how much of a result you get). Given these sequential very controversial findings, I think it's time to push for research on these tools and research processes to ensure they are robust and reporting correct findings.
Their religion tells them to oppress and be oppressed...
Uh, I don't think that's true. At least not from what I've read in the Qur'an, there wasn't anything detailing what's going on in Iran right now and saying that that is how you must run your nation state. In fact, if you look at a lot of laws like the extreme forms of Sharia they are more founded on what leaders after Muhammad's death decided he meant. In my mind I liken it to the perversion that several Popes have put in place ... in the name of The Bible. Despite the Popes calling themselves Christians, they spent their lives very comfortably unlike Jesus Christ. Similarly certain leaders today call themselves Christians and Muslims yet do not live their lives like either Christ or Muhammad. Usually it's not safe to compare religions like this but I'm trying to illustrate that these historical religious figures suffer distortion today across the world in Iran and the United States. Perhaps one is worse than the other but your criticism of "mudslums" religion telling them to be oppressed is no more apt than me saying that Christianity tells Christians to be oppressed. Indeed, speaking for any religion that has hundreds of diverse sects is a ridiculous act in and of itself.
... much less most of "The Middle East." Because we weren't paying our media outlets to disperse that, we were only rewarding them on shock reporting mostly spurred by the Iranian hostage crisis. That's all we saw of Iran on the news and for a while that's all Iran was to us, a hostage crisis ... not a country with millions of citizens doing a lot of the same stuff we do here in the states.
I might also warn you that Western media (especially in the United States) concentrated on only the bad things from "The Middle East" from the 1980s to the 1990s. Although it's recently become much better, I read a book by Edward Said called Covering Islam that itemized a few publications and looked at the hilarious slant. Granted, he cherry picked those works and the book was not as even handed as I had hoped, he did point out to me that I do not know the average life of a regular citizen in Tehran
God bless you, Terri Schiavo.
Not sure if this was a troll but I'll bite.
This is not about brain activity post-mortem! This is about the stupidity of some fMRI data. This is about the voodoo correlations that come out of fMRI data in popular research that is peer reviewed. They did this to prove a point, not claim dead fish think. Even if we did, I could use your logic to claim that every time we bury a dead person we are burying them with cognitive abilities -- obviously not true! I thought the summary covered that very well as the paper being titled "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction."
Yeah, except it doesn't actually work that way.
Actually, yes that is how Jeopardy works. Both on TV and in corporate America: Stupid people get something wrong and lose.
Alex Trebek: "Hmmm, Bob is making over $X. I see he's the most productive, but we could higher two new grads and an intern for the same amount. They'd be at least that productive right?"
Contestant: "What is the final nail on a project's coffin, Alex?"
Alex Trebek: "Right you are!"
Contestant: "I'll stay in the same category and take 'Stupid Managers' for $800."
Alex Trebek: "The answer is: Half your team has been fired and your manager has moved software modules to be developed in this country."
Contestant: "What is India?"
Alex Trebek: "Correct again!"
However, some people truly have their heads buried in the sand (or their code).
Yes, imagine the shock and horror that you would see on people's faces if I spent my time doing what I'm getting paid to do: develop code. Yes, I'm young. No, I've never been fired but I've been "hired then unhired" out of college because of a poor job environment in the locale of my origin. No matter, plenty of jobs were out there for me.
Spiegel claims he's fired people. I wonder how he would have chosen people if he saw through an employee's thinly veiled attempts to make himself look better? Or if he knew that employee spent time trying to cover his or her own ass instead of -- you know -- just get work done? These points aren't addressed in the blog.
So for those of you reading this, I will offer you an alternative to what the blog suggests. I imagine most developers (even agile developers) have a system for tracking completed requirements and also for fixing reported errors/bugs. If you spend your time chewing up those outstanding items and forget about all this near-Machiavellian bullshit manipulation Spiegel is proposing then you've got nothing to worry about. If your manager wants to fire you, just pull up the numbers if he or she hasn't already and show them. You can't fire a developer that's leading in resolutions and completed requirements. It's that simple. Skip the drama and get to work.
Why not just make people pay the full price of the electricity they're using so they can leave lights, heating and AC on 24/7 but it's only they who are suffering.
But that's not true. If we look at this like an ideal demand causes prices to go up scenario, then the increased demand in energy causes prices to go up for people that make less than those with the money to keep the lights, heating and AC (wtf?) on 24/7. The brownouts might also cause needs for more infrastructure which raises the average cost per kilowatt hour for every consumer -- rich and poor.
I'm not advocating this regulation but I'm do recognize the argument against your counterpoint and I think you need to account for that. Think about what the other viewpoints are in a situation and you're guaranteed to win the argument. I hate to play the devil's advocate and give you the bleeding heart liberal scenario of the poor single mother that can't operate a condom and now can't afford heating but there it is.