If Rupert had his way, supplying a link to one of his rehashed press releases would require a payment to him
Spain is trying that out right as we speak. I'm gearing up to laugh heartily when that entire concept explodes spectacularly in their face, and they're forced to rescind their ridiculous laws.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I appreciate many traditional arts, crafts, or paintings, although I probably wouldn't go out of my way to go see them. I do enjoy classical symphonic music, theater, and musicals. I've never been to an opera, but I suspect I might enjoy it. Ballet or just about any other sort of dance? Yeah, not my thing at all.
Everyone has things they enjoy and don't enjoy. I'm not sure why you feel classical and/or modern arts are necessary to enjoying science and technology. Those seem fairly orthogonal to me. Sure, they *can* cross over on occasion, but they don't have to. Some people simply find science, math, or technology beautiful or enriching on its own. I don't see anything "hollow" about that.
I've never understood the appeal of museums. They are the most boring place in the world to be dragged to. It's not like you can learn anything or interact with anything there. It's like people are afraid to admit they are boring because they are afraid to appear uncultured. Does anyone honestly enjoy museums?
It depends on if you're genuinely interested in the subject being presented. For me, modern art? No thanks - total snore-fest. I'd probably enjoy most any sort of science or tech themed museum though. Museums are also more fun if you make it part of an evening out, and are with someone you enjoy spending time with.
You should read the article. Patrons talked about being able to build a mini mars rover, creating a bubble that you can stand inside, and a number of other interactive, entertaining, and educational activities. Science and tech museums are often a lot more interactive than the traditional museums you're imagining where you just walk around and look at stuff in static displays. It sounded like fun to me.
The quotas exist for many reasons -- too many taxis means the typical taxi driver will starve due to over supply. And the flip side is, too few taxis means the customer will get price gouged.
How is this different from any other service or business? What you just described is exactly how the market tends to self-balance. I'm not really sure why taxis merit that sort of regulation, but not other businesses. You could make the same argument with Chinese restaurants. If too many of them are built, it might force prices down, and they could not earn a living.
I get licensing, as they're transporting potentially vulnerable people around what may be an unfamiliar city. I just don't get the quotas.
Interesting, I can see the inherent advantage of being able to derive some meaning from combined pictographic characters. A new English word typically has absolutely no context, and so must be learned with rote memorization. I guess it just goes to show that there aren't really any shortcuts to language learning - at some point you're just going to have to memorize a bunch of stuff - either characters or word combinations.
I think what you mentioned about alternate Japanese readings explains why I've heard Japanese write out or otherwise indicate which kanji are used in their name when meeting someone.
Languages are pretty fascinating things - especially Asian languages and writing systems, since they're so different from the Latin-based systems most of us know. The pragmatic side of me sometimes wishes everyone simply spoke a common language, but the artistic side of my brain would certainly lament the loss of so much culture that a multitude of languages represents. Hanzi/kanji characters are quite beautiful as an art form, even if I don't know the meaning of them.
I have no idea how the Chinese learn their hanzi characters though. A quick search indicates the answer is probably a crapload of study and rote memorization...
So everything that got to do with the Chinese must be "crapload" of whatever stuffs? Have you really search for the answer or you are talking out of your ass, again?
If nothing else, I suppose you've aptly demonstrating how language barriers can cause misunderstandings between cultures.
I'm guessing that you're a Chinese national? In case you weren't aware, "crapload" is just rough slang for "a lot", and should not be taken as an insult in any way. In other words, my answer in more 'proper' English would read: "it appears learning Chinese characters requires a lot of study and rote memorization".
I'm not passing judgment on the Chinese writing system or insulting the Chinese, and I've already explained I don't know much about it. In fact, I'd be much more interested in learning how you actually do learn your characters, but if you're more interested in slinging insults at me, it's your prerogative. Too bad, since I rarely get to converse with Chinese people.
I don't know much about the Chinese language, but I've learned a bit about Japanese writing, which is derived from it.
For Japanese, there's a distinct set of symbols that are entirely phonetic, called kana, which is divided into two systems. Hirigana is used for learning pronounciation of the imported Chinese characters (called kanji), while katakana is used for foreign words and names. In literature meant for children, you'll see small hirigana symbols above the kanji characters. I presume that once they know the pronunciation, the kids can pick up the meaning by context. Even though there are 80,000+ kanji, Japanese apparently only teach the most common ~2000 in school. No one but scholars and specialists know more than that.
I have no idea how the Chinese learn their hanzi characters though. A quick search indicates the answer is probably a crapload of study and rote memorization.
In answer to your question about the dictionary - I believe they're ordered by the number of brush strokes in the character.
I've heard that Chinese relies much more on subtle pronunciation cues than other languages - many different words and phrases sound very similar except for a slight difference in intonation. I'm not sure if this would be a serious impediment or not when a beginner is speaking.
My guess is that similar to any other language, native Chinese listeners would be able to pick up a lot from context to help them guess what was being said. I think this is why humans are so good at recognizing spoken languages and why computers are so bad at it. We can help to fill in the blanks and resolve ambiguities thanks to context and what we *expect* is likely to be said. Our brain can even do the same thing to some extent with written languages as well.
As such, I think it's not so much a matter of the language being fault tolerant than humans being able to very effectively fill in any gaps or auto-correct mistakes.
I disagree. I believe this stems from an innate desire both to explore and to propagate our own kind. These are both powerful evolutionary drives, not something implanted into us via religion. I'm betting you can find plenty of atheists and agnostics who would like to see humankind survive and prosper out in the larger universe.
Whether you feel this is a good idea or not is largely a philosophical debate. The universe likely doesn't care one way or another. As such, my feeling is that we might as well then do what's best for humanity, and having backups of your critical data is always a good idea.
All it would take is a swift kick to my front door for any burglar to gain access to my living room. A small fire set outside would torch my house. My car is sitting in my driveway, waiting for it's tires to be slashed. Boy, I'm just asking for it, aren't it?
It's incredibly difficult to practically protect against a very large DDOS attack. Sure, we should look for ways to mitigate this, but at the moment, the only real way to do so is a brute force content of bandwidth versus capacity.
An open and free society is incredibly vulnerable to vandalism of all sorts. Part of living in a free society means taking responsibility for your own actions. This "kid" is seventeen, old enough to know exactly what the hell he was doing. Assuming he gets found guilty, I hope he's tried as an adult, and he's punished sufficiently to make other kids think twice about pulling stunts like this. In the mean time, we need to figure out how to prevent a kid from being able to take down global networks at a whim.
The title is badly worded (surprise, surprise). It should have read Bats May Be Source of Ebola Patient Zero's Infection, or something like that. The article and summary text both correctly makes that distinction.
Ok, people are getting distracted by my statement that MS is "taking security seriously". Let's put aside how *effectively* they're "taking security seriously" for now, because that's entirely besides the point. What my point was is this: MS has well-established machinery and procedures in place for accepting bug reports and getting them fixed. This is indisputable; a lot of bugs has been responsibly reported to them in confidence and subsequently fixed. We see them every month on Patch Tuesday. Did the machinery fail here, or is it just a back-burner bug that's taking a long time to fix? It's hard to say. Did Google make any attempt to contact MS before this went public?
More importantly, is Google justified in releasing details of an exploit that hasn't been fixed yet? In the security world, this is typically considered black hat behavior, not white hat. 90 days is an annoyingly long time for MS to get a bug fixed, true, but I haven't seen any indication that this is a high-priority fix either - that is, like it's currently being exploited in the wild and is a critical security breach.
Sorry, but I'm just having a hard time justifying Google's behavior here. It seems pretty irresponsible to set up a system to automatically push out bug details after 90 days automatically, regardless of whether or not it's been fixed. This seems more like a political move against MS to embarrass them (and yeah, they probably should be embarrassed that it's taking them so long). What I don't understand is why people think this is acceptable, regardless of how you feel about MS.
Microsoft got serious about security a decade ago when it became obvious that their customers cared about security, and made it a company-wide priority. They've taken reported security exploits seriously for a very long time now, and disclosing any vulnerability before a patch is deployed is absolutely irresponsible. It's arrogant as hell for Google to decide that 90 days is long enough, thank you. Recently, though, that seems to be nothing new for Google, as they now seem fairly comfortable dictating timelines to the rest of the internet about all sorts of recent security-related issues.
Keep in mind that if Microsoft screws up a patch (something that's happened a few times recently), it causes very real problems for a massive number of people... much more so than security issues that may not have even been seen in the wild yet (I saw no indication in the linked article that this was the case) - but now probably will since the attack is known. If that happens, Google is as culpable for any harm done as Microsoft is because of their disclosure policy.
Sorry if I sound like an MS shill, but Google is really starting to piss me off with their high-handed attitude on stuff like this lately.
As sad as this is, I'd suggest that it's not honest government that's needed, but simply a stable government. After all, businesses didn't seem to mind the rampant corruption in China. Knowing who's palm to grease is just part of doing business. However, when a government falls, things tend to get destroyed and people tend to get killed, and afterwords you don't know who you need to pay off any more.
If we look at examples of other countries with declining birth rates, we see that governments get a bit nervous when birth rates decline too much, and so you start to see more official support and benefits for having children. So, we may see a reduction to some extent, but after a while, society and/or the economy will start encouraging and supporting larger families in some other ways. As one example, in a negative population growth country, buying a home should be more affordable on average due to decreased demand. So, even if birth rates continue to drop for a while, I think they'll probably eventually bounce back to sustainable levels once those factors offset some of the negative pressure to have larger families.
"Entrenched in religion"? Not so much in the US, really.
According to recent census data, the number of households with four or more children is about two percent. Since eighty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Catholics are 22 percent of that Christian group. Another four percent identify as various others, and the rest no religion). If religious people were more prone to having large families, it wouldn't make sense that our birth rate is still so low.
Though some denominations (most notably Catholicism, and not surprisingly, the Amish) have official doctrines opposed to contraception, most of the popular Christian denominations officially support family planning. Many Catholics in the US ignore this anyhow, and there's a lot of official opposition to that teaching.
In other words, in practice, religion is probably not much of a factor.
It's not really about genes, it's about education and economics. As women become more educated, they start to take control of their own reproduction, and that inevitably means lower birth rates. And as for economics, in undeveloped countries, a large number of kids is economically advantageous, as they serve as a work force for whatever business the family is engaged in. In developed nations, large numbers of children is typically an economic drain (since you're more likely to work for someone else as an employee), not a financial advantage, so there's pressure to have fewer children.
My mother and father both came from families of five children each. That generation had considerably fewer children themselves - around three on average. Children from those families (my generation) had fewer still, averaging about two. So, within my own extended family, I've seen the exact same trend that we're seeing nationally. As such, anecdotally, I'd have to disagree with your prediction, as I've seen evidence to the contrary across three generations now.
I'm fine with catching speeders, but I just think it sets a bad precedent to do this in an automated fashion with cameras and radar. I generally don't speed myself (been well over twenty years since I've gotten a ticket), so it's not like I'm worried that this will affect me. It really is just the principle involved.
Setting up these sorts of automated speed traps is just asking for abuse. Tell me - would you complain if one of these cameras were set up on your street to send you a $50 fine every time you went over the speed limit? If so, why? After all, if you don't break the law, you wouldn't get fined, right?
Ah, of course, it's unreasonable since you might make a mistake and go a few miles an hour over, right? Wouldn't it be nice if, say, there were a mediator involved who could apply some common-sense judgement right on the spot as to whether someone is speeding enough to deserve a ticket?
Just because you CAN automate some things doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD.
They definitely help, but they're not without issues. Headphones can get uncomfortable when worn all day. For me, though, the real problem is that I actually concentrate best without music. Noise cancelling headphones will reduce the volume by a considerable amount, but will certainly not eliminate it. If I absolutely must drown out nearby noise, I'd play classical music or movie soundtracks, as that seems to stay in the background of my brain without grabbing my attention as much as music with lyrics.
Yeah, it's not really cut and dried either way. At my last job (a great company), everyone used mobile desks that could be rolled around, so people could easily be relocated to be close to co-workers when working on subprojects, etc. This was a great company with a lot of really talented people. I don't think it was necessarily just a cost-saving measure, because even the company president sat out in the same areas as everyone else and used the exact same desks as the contract QA workers. It was done to help improve coordination and collaboration between team members. In this regard, I think it was successful, as it makes it really convenient to talk to your co-workers about whatever you're working on and get advice, or make sure you're both on the same page design-wise, etc.
It has to be acknowledged that it certainly has downsides. For me, the biggest problem was that my concentration was often broken by random conversations or movement within my peripheral vision. You definitely have to learn how to cope with it. Noise-cancelling headphones are an absolute must. The company actually bought us some, which was nice and did help. Unfortunately, I tend to find music distracting to a degree as well. I actually prefer to code in silence, as I can concentrate best that way.
I work at home for myself now, so the only distractions are the ones I create myself (like taking too long of a break to real slashdot). But I have blessed silence and solitude when I need to really concentrate on some difficult problem. Of course, the downside is that I don't have anyone to ask when I get stumped on a difficult problem. Thank God for stackoverflow.com!
Well, I'll be giving WD a try for my next set of drives. It's really hard to know with such small sets of sample data, and nothing equivalent to compare them against. I guess I'll just have to see how those drives are holding up in two years time!
No, they're undoubtedly script kiddies. They did not write anything of these tools, malware, or attacks themselves. These things are all nicely packaged and easily available to anyone who wants to use them. Seriously, go look around at what's out there. All you need is a bit of technical competence, which most power-users have, and enough time to look through forums and figure out how to use all this stuff.
This isn't hacking. It barely qualifies as clever. It's electronic vandalism, plain and simple. Frankly, this nonsense only works because there are millions of users who are seemingly willing to click on any random shit and get their computers infected with all sorts of nasty malware, and it's easy to subvert those computers into your own personal botnet army. Nearly any competent programmer I personally know of could do this if they really wanted to spend the time and effort doing so, but we choose not to, for pretty obvious reasons.
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If Rupert had his way, supplying a link to one of his rehashed press releases would require a payment to him
Spain is trying that out right as we speak. I'm gearing up to laugh heartily when that entire concept explodes spectacularly in their face, and they're forced to rescind their ridiculous laws.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I appreciate many traditional arts, crafts, or paintings, although I probably wouldn't go out of my way to go see them. I do enjoy classical symphonic music, theater, and musicals. I've never been to an opera, but I suspect I might enjoy it. Ballet or just about any other sort of dance? Yeah, not my thing at all.
Everyone has things they enjoy and don't enjoy. I'm not sure why you feel classical and/or modern arts are necessary to enjoying science and technology. Those seem fairly orthogonal to me. Sure, they *can* cross over on occasion, but they don't have to. Some people simply find science, math, or technology beautiful or enriching on its own. I don't see anything "hollow" about that.
I've never understood the appeal of museums. They are the most boring place in the world to be dragged to. It's not like you can learn anything or interact with anything there. It's like people are afraid to admit they are boring because they are afraid to appear uncultured. Does anyone honestly enjoy museums?
It depends on if you're genuinely interested in the subject being presented. For me, modern art? No thanks - total snore-fest. I'd probably enjoy most any sort of science or tech themed museum though. Museums are also more fun if you make it part of an evening out, and are with someone you enjoy spending time with.
You should read the article. Patrons talked about being able to build a mini mars rover, creating a bubble that you can stand inside, and a number of other interactive, entertaining, and educational activities. Science and tech museums are often a lot more interactive than the traditional museums you're imagining where you just walk around and look at stuff in static displays. It sounded like fun to me.
The quotas exist for many reasons -- too many taxis means the typical taxi driver will starve due to over supply. And the flip side is, too few taxis means the customer will get price gouged.
How is this different from any other service or business? What you just described is exactly how the market tends to self-balance. I'm not really sure why taxis merit that sort of regulation, but not other businesses. You could make the same argument with Chinese restaurants. If too many of them are built, it might force prices down, and they could not earn a living.
I get licensing, as they're transporting potentially vulnerable people around what may be an unfamiliar city. I just don't get the quotas.
Ah, that's sort of how I imagined it might happen, but it's interesting to hear about it second-hand. Thanks!
Interesting, I can see the inherent advantage of being able to derive some meaning from combined pictographic characters. A new English word typically has absolutely no context, and so must be learned with rote memorization. I guess it just goes to show that there aren't really any shortcuts to language learning - at some point you're just going to have to memorize a bunch of stuff - either characters or word combinations.
I think what you mentioned about alternate Japanese readings explains why I've heard Japanese write out or otherwise indicate which kanji are used in their name when meeting someone.
Languages are pretty fascinating things - especially Asian languages and writing systems, since they're so different from the Latin-based systems most of us know. The pragmatic side of me sometimes wishes everyone simply spoke a common language, but the artistic side of my brain would certainly lament the loss of so much culture that a multitude of languages represents. Hanzi/kanji characters are quite beautiful as an art form, even if I don't know the meaning of them.
I have no idea how the Chinese learn their hanzi characters though. A quick search indicates the answer is probably a crapload of study and rote memorization ...
So everything that got to do with the Chinese must be "crapload" of whatever stuffs? Have you really search for the answer or you are talking out of your ass, again?
If nothing else, I suppose you've aptly demonstrating how language barriers can cause misunderstandings between cultures.
I'm guessing that you're a Chinese national? In case you weren't aware, "crapload" is just rough slang for "a lot", and should not be taken as an insult in any way. In other words, my answer in more 'proper' English would read: "it appears learning Chinese characters requires a lot of study and rote memorization".
I'm not passing judgment on the Chinese writing system or insulting the Chinese, and I've already explained I don't know much about it. In fact, I'd be much more interested in learning how you actually do learn your characters, but if you're more interested in slinging insults at me, it's your prerogative. Too bad, since I rarely get to converse with Chinese people.
Languages evolve. Deal with it.
I don't know much about the Chinese language, but I've learned a bit about Japanese writing, which is derived from it.
For Japanese, there's a distinct set of symbols that are entirely phonetic, called kana, which is divided into two systems. Hirigana is used for learning pronounciation of the imported Chinese characters (called kanji), while katakana is used for foreign words and names. In literature meant for children, you'll see small hirigana symbols above the kanji characters. I presume that once they know the pronunciation, the kids can pick up the meaning by context. Even though there are 80,000+ kanji, Japanese apparently only teach the most common ~2000 in school. No one but scholars and specialists know more than that.
I have no idea how the Chinese learn their hanzi characters though. A quick search indicates the answer is probably a crapload of study and rote memorization.
In answer to your question about the dictionary - I believe they're ordered by the number of brush strokes in the character.
I've heard that Chinese relies much more on subtle pronunciation cues than other languages - many different words and phrases sound very similar except for a slight difference in intonation. I'm not sure if this would be a serious impediment or not when a beginner is speaking.
My guess is that similar to any other language, native Chinese listeners would be able to pick up a lot from context to help them guess what was being said. I think this is why humans are so good at recognizing spoken languages and why computers are so bad at it. We can help to fill in the blanks and resolve ambiguities thanks to context and what we *expect* is likely to be said. Our brain can even do the same thing to some extent with written languages as well.
As such, I think it's not so much a matter of the language being fault tolerant than humans being able to very effectively fill in any gaps or auto-correct mistakes.
I disagree. I believe this stems from an innate desire both to explore and to propagate our own kind. These are both powerful evolutionary drives, not something implanted into us via religion. I'm betting you can find plenty of atheists and agnostics who would like to see humankind survive and prosper out in the larger universe.
Whether you feel this is a good idea or not is largely a philosophical debate. The universe likely doesn't care one way or another. As such, my feeling is that we might as well then do what's best for humanity, and having backups of your critical data is always a good idea.
All it would take is a swift kick to my front door for any burglar to gain access to my living room. A small fire set outside would torch my house. My car is sitting in my driveway, waiting for it's tires to be slashed. Boy, I'm just asking for it, aren't it?
It's incredibly difficult to practically protect against a very large DDOS attack. Sure, we should look for ways to mitigate this, but at the moment, the only real way to do so is a brute force content of bandwidth versus capacity.
An open and free society is incredibly vulnerable to vandalism of all sorts. Part of living in a free society means taking responsibility for your own actions. This "kid" is seventeen, old enough to know exactly what the hell he was doing. Assuming he gets found guilty, I hope he's tried as an adult, and he's punished sufficiently to make other kids think twice about pulling stunts like this. In the mean time, we need to figure out how to prevent a kid from being able to take down global networks at a whim.
The title is badly worded (surprise, surprise). It should have read Bats May Be Source of Ebola Patient Zero's Infection, or something like that. The article and summary text both correctly makes that distinction.
Ok, people are getting distracted by my statement that MS is "taking security seriously". Let's put aside how *effectively* they're "taking security seriously" for now, because that's entirely besides the point. What my point was is this: MS has well-established machinery and procedures in place for accepting bug reports and getting them fixed. This is indisputable; a lot of bugs has been responsibly reported to them in confidence and subsequently fixed. We see them every month on Patch Tuesday. Did the machinery fail here, or is it just a back-burner bug that's taking a long time to fix? It's hard to say. Did Google make any attempt to contact MS before this went public?
More importantly, is Google justified in releasing details of an exploit that hasn't been fixed yet? In the security world, this is typically considered black hat behavior, not white hat. 90 days is an annoyingly long time for MS to get a bug fixed, true, but I haven't seen any indication that this is a high-priority fix either - that is, like it's currently being exploited in the wild and is a critical security breach.
Sorry, but I'm just having a hard time justifying Google's behavior here. It seems pretty irresponsible to set up a system to automatically push out bug details after 90 days automatically, regardless of whether or not it's been fixed. This seems more like a political move against MS to embarrass them (and yeah, they probably should be embarrassed that it's taking them so long). What I don't understand is why people think this is acceptable, regardless of how you feel about MS.
Microsoft got serious about security a decade ago when it became obvious that their customers cared about security, and made it a company-wide priority. They've taken reported security exploits seriously for a very long time now, and disclosing any vulnerability before a patch is deployed is absolutely irresponsible. It's arrogant as hell for Google to decide that 90 days is long enough, thank you. Recently, though, that seems to be nothing new for Google, as they now seem fairly comfortable dictating timelines to the rest of the internet about all sorts of recent security-related issues.
Keep in mind that if Microsoft screws up a patch (something that's happened a few times recently), it causes very real problems for a massive number of people... much more so than security issues that may not have even been seen in the wild yet (I saw no indication in the linked article that this was the case) - but now probably will since the attack is known. If that happens, Google is as culpable for any harm done as Microsoft is because of their disclosure policy.
Sorry if I sound like an MS shill, but Google is really starting to piss me off with their high-handed attitude on stuff like this lately.
As sad as this is, I'd suggest that it's not honest government that's needed, but simply a stable government. After all, businesses didn't seem to mind the rampant corruption in China. Knowing who's palm to grease is just part of doing business. However, when a government falls, things tend to get destroyed and people tend to get killed, and afterwords you don't know who you need to pay off any more.
If we look at examples of other countries with declining birth rates, we see that governments get a bit nervous when birth rates decline too much, and so you start to see more official support and benefits for having children. So, we may see a reduction to some extent, but after a while, society and/or the economy will start encouraging and supporting larger families in some other ways. As one example, in a negative population growth country, buying a home should be more affordable on average due to decreased demand. So, even if birth rates continue to drop for a while, I think they'll probably eventually bounce back to sustainable levels once those factors offset some of the negative pressure to have larger families.
"Entrenched in religion"? Not so much in the US, really.
According to recent census data, the number of households with four or more children is about two percent. Since eighty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Catholics are 22 percent of that Christian group. Another four percent identify as various others, and the rest no religion). If religious people were more prone to having large families, it wouldn't make sense that our birth rate is still so low.
Though some denominations (most notably Catholicism, and not surprisingly, the Amish) have official doctrines opposed to contraception, most of the popular Christian denominations officially support family planning. Many Catholics in the US ignore this anyhow, and there's a lot of official opposition to that teaching.
In other words, in practice, religion is probably not much of a factor.
It's not really about genes, it's about education and economics. As women become more educated, they start to take control of their own reproduction, and that inevitably means lower birth rates. And as for economics, in undeveloped countries, a large number of kids is economically advantageous, as they serve as a work force for whatever business the family is engaged in. In developed nations, large numbers of children is typically an economic drain (since you're more likely to work for someone else as an employee), not a financial advantage, so there's pressure to have fewer children.
My mother and father both came from families of five children each. That generation had considerably fewer children themselves - around three on average. Children from those families (my generation) had fewer still, averaging about two. So, within my own extended family, I've seen the exact same trend that we're seeing nationally. As such, anecdotally, I'd have to disagree with your prediction, as I've seen evidence to the contrary across three generations now.
Correct, except for the part about the US. Not sure why you're misinformed about that. It's been declining for six years now, and is at an all-time low.
I'm fine with catching speeders, but I just think it sets a bad precedent to do this in an automated fashion with cameras and radar. I generally don't speed myself (been well over twenty years since I've gotten a ticket), so it's not like I'm worried that this will affect me. It really is just the principle involved.
Setting up these sorts of automated speed traps is just asking for abuse. Tell me - would you complain if one of these cameras were set up on your street to send you a $50 fine every time you went over the speed limit? If so, why? After all, if you don't break the law, you wouldn't get fined, right?
Ah, of course, it's unreasonable since you might make a mistake and go a few miles an hour over, right? Wouldn't it be nice if, say, there were a mediator involved who could apply some common-sense judgement right on the spot as to whether someone is speeding enough to deserve a ticket?
Just because you CAN automate some things doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD.
They definitely help, but they're not without issues. Headphones can get uncomfortable when worn all day. For me, though, the real problem is that I actually concentrate best without music. Noise cancelling headphones will reduce the volume by a considerable amount, but will certainly not eliminate it. If I absolutely must drown out nearby noise, I'd play classical music or movie soundtracks, as that seems to stay in the background of my brain without grabbing my attention as much as music with lyrics.
Yeah, it's not really cut and dried either way. At my last job (a great company), everyone used mobile desks that could be rolled around, so people could easily be relocated to be close to co-workers when working on subprojects, etc. This was a great company with a lot of really talented people. I don't think it was necessarily just a cost-saving measure, because even the company president sat out in the same areas as everyone else and used the exact same desks as the contract QA workers. It was done to help improve coordination and collaboration between team members. In this regard, I think it was successful, as it makes it really convenient to talk to your co-workers about whatever you're working on and get advice, or make sure you're both on the same page design-wise, etc.
It has to be acknowledged that it certainly has downsides. For me, the biggest problem was that my concentration was often broken by random conversations or movement within my peripheral vision. You definitely have to learn how to cope with it. Noise-cancelling headphones are an absolute must. The company actually bought us some, which was nice and did help. Unfortunately, I tend to find music distracting to a degree as well. I actually prefer to code in silence, as I can concentrate best that way.
I work at home for myself now, so the only distractions are the ones I create myself (like taking too long of a break to real slashdot). But I have blessed silence and solitude when I need to really concentrate on some difficult problem. Of course, the downside is that I don't have anyone to ask when I get stumped on a difficult problem. Thank God for stackoverflow.com!
Well, I'll be giving WD a try for my next set of drives. It's really hard to know with such small sets of sample data, and nothing equivalent to compare them against. I guess I'll just have to see how those drives are holding up in two years time!
No, they're undoubtedly script kiddies. They did not write anything of these tools, malware, or attacks themselves. These things are all nicely packaged and easily available to anyone who wants to use them. Seriously, go look around at what's out there. All you need is a bit of technical competence, which most power-users have, and enough time to look through forums and figure out how to use all this stuff.
This isn't hacking. It barely qualifies as clever. It's electronic vandalism, plain and simple. Frankly, this nonsense only works because there are millions of users who are seemingly willing to click on any random shit and get their computers infected with all sorts of nasty malware, and it's easy to subvert those computers into your own personal botnet army. Nearly any competent programmer I personally know of could do this if they really wanted to spend the time and effort doing so, but we choose not to, for pretty obvious reasons.