I was interested in reading "zero bugs", but it doesn't come in ebook format. Who releases a book in paper only format in 2015... especially a programming book?
Anyhow, if your organization is dysfunctional enough to let things degrade into a holy hell of a mess in the first place: don't request "bugfixing time" or "code reorganization time", as it will probably never happen. Bugs are just incomplete or broken features. They don't exist in isolation. Reduce the rate of new features until you've fixed the old ones. When you're in a pit, you need to first stop digging. In this case, its probably better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. I'm not suggesting you lie by any means, but don't treat bugs like they exist in isolation from the rest of the features you were working on. It's a huge mistake to slap out a half-finished feature and then move on without fixing all the little issues that crop up as a result of that feature.
In cases like this, the root cause is very often some architectural issue with the software that somehow makes it rather fragile and susceptible to creating tricky bugs. Unless a company/team is willing to dig deep and fix these underlying issues, often involving much short-term pain and a temporary regression of bugs and features, the negative trends will simply continue. I've been involved in several of these projects, and the root cause was always fragile, messy code (and yes, I was guilty of writing some of it). In hindsight, in nearly every case, it would have been worth taking a very large step back, declare "this isn't working", and taking some serious steps to fix it. Instead, human nature being what it is, we almost always try to do the minimal amount of work to patch things up just enough to fix the symptoms, when in fact the patient is bleeding out internally.
In my own code, I'll occasionally run into "smells"... things which seemed reasonable enough or perhaps simply expedient at the time, but later started bugging me whenever I looked at the code or thought about how its organized. Every so often, between new features, I'll dig deep and clean up one of those "smells", which often has no tangible benefit other than making the code cleaner and safer. You can't just endlessly rewrite code without moving forward or course, and tinkering with working, stable code for its own sake is a horrible idea, but every once in a while, it's a great idea to go back and make sure you're not leaving too much nasty detritus behind. Code detritus has a way of multiplying, because it encourages NEW code and features to be written in the same style and methodology as the old.
I've never bought the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory. Normal, well-adjusted people don't suddenly become assholes when they become anonymous on the net. That's an excuse for assholes to act like assholes without fear of repercussions... which otherwise happens in real life, like a punch to the face, or getting fired from your job. Decent people empathize with others and treat them with respect with no expectation of personal reward or recognition for their decent behavior. Or, as John Wooden famously quipped, "Character is what you do when nobody is looking."
Most of the people I've interacted with here on Slashdot seem to be decent sorts who are just interested in tech news and an interesting conversation or debate with other like-minded geeks and nerds, marred by a few trolls and assholes like any community. So, no, I don't buy into the "most guys are just assholes" theory either. If you want to put the Slashdot community under a microscope, I'd take you up on that as a reasonable example that refutes your general assertion.
The tricky part of the "few trolls and assholes" bit is always what happens when a troll or asshole gets into a position of power. That's not a problem here on Slashdot, because the most power any normal person gets is a few mod points, so the damage is limited. In many other situations, it's entirely possible to poison the entire well because of just a few people.
I agree that more integration can only be a good thing, as asserted in TFA, but I'm a firm believer that this has to happen naturally, or else it tends to actually defeat the purpose. The author cites "busing" (forced racial integration by making kids go to non-local schools), which was actually a disaster of a program, and horribly unfair to people to moved to better neighborhoods specifically to send their kids to the better local schools, all for the sake of a massive social experiment.
Wikipedia is a pretty decent reference for any subject that hasn't attracted much attention, either by trolls, vandals, or an overbearing editor. Avoid using it for any sort of controversial subject (religion, politics, current events), and it's still a pretty decent source of information.
The sheer breadth of knowledge contained there still continues to be very helpful to me personally. Need to know something about a particular computer algorithm? Wikipedia will likely have a pretty decent article explaining it. Need to find an episode list of a particular TV series? Wikipedia is almost sure to have it. How about some basic information about a historical figure or event? Yep, that too. Just understand the source of the information, and take it with a grain of salt. The odds are it's probably accurate, but there's no real guarantee.
Most of the complaints I hear revolve around the editing process, which I'd imagine most people don't get involved in. Personally, I typically just *use* the site (although I'll occasionally make minor corrections or improvements when I see the need), which I think is probably true of most people as well. I'm sure as hell not interested enough to get in pissing matches about edits with an editor. I can understand why that would turn you away, and I suspect its done the same for a lot of people, which is too bad, but I'm not sure I'd go as far to call that a "decline" in the website. Maybe "potential for decline" is more suitable.
Or, it was on a diplomatic mission to establish the first contact with the hungry bags, mostly water, as the squid's ready their power grab on the total sea domination.
I think it's helpful to envision hard drives as serving two roles: one for fast, persistent data storage and access (OS, program files, documents) in which you want to prioritize access speed and throughput, and another for mass storage, in which you want as much storage capacity for as little cost as possible. SSDs excel in the first role, while spinning HDDs excel in the latter.
So, I wouldn't characterized spinning HDD drives as "dying"... they're just becoming more specialized, like PCs. The significant improvements have been made to capacity (or cost per GB), which is what's important in spinning drives now - much more than transfer speed. There's only so fast you really need to pull data off a media server, for instance. And capacity, as well as cost per GB, has *dramatically* improved over the past 15 years.
A computer is really just a big set of cascading slower and larger data caches with the ultimate destination as the registers on the CPU. I've also long viewed the computer architecture like that, although I admit I never viewed networks and the internet as part of that system (that definitely makes sense). Here's how I'd revise your graph:
CPU > L1 Cache > L2 Cache > L3 Cache > RAM > Fast Local Storage (SSD) > Mass/Local Network Storage (HDD) > Cloud Storage > Archival Storage
I also wouldn't differentiate between RAM and RAM Cached Storage, because you're making a distinction based on usage type, where everything else is about the type of hardware you're working with.
1) Losing their initial focus on their core audience and core use, which is gaming. 2) Their ham-handed, arrogant approach to once-per-day mandatory connected DRM. 3) Their insistence that Kinnect be an integral part of the console before belatedly realizing that it kind of sucked for most types of games.
It was only when the market slapped them down that they backpedaled. Windows 8 was also a similar display of incredible hubris / arrogance, ignoring the very loud early feedback that told them that this was going to be a disaster in the market.
Microsoft has *always* been best at connecting with business clients, really (although they blew that with Win 8 as well). I'd posit that consumers just sort of came along for the ride with Windows since that's where the ecosystem was, but very little they did actually resonated with most of them otherwise.
Yep, that's true. I suppose only time will tell if new rockets actually turn out to be more reliable than used, or even any statistical difference at all. The great thing about recovering the rocket like they do is that they can perform post-flight structural analyses on the entire system and strengthen / reinforce any components that appear to be suffering more stress because of the repeated launches.
When safety is prioritized, humans can actually build highly complex machines that are put under significant stress and are still amazingly reliable - modern airliners are one example of this. I don't see any reason why we can't eventually achieve the same high levels of efficiency and reliability with rocket launches. It just requires a lot of engineering experience. Engineering is about pushing boundaries, making mistakes, analyzing *why* those mistakes occurred, and then correcting them in the next iteration.
Is a new rocket really the best option for a manned or otherwise critical launch? Wouldn't you rather be on the rocket's second or third ride up instead of the first?
Don't expect anything but the thinnest veneer of an excuse as to why they're doing this. They're going this because they're angsty teenage males with lots of testosterone and no power, so this is how they vent their frustration at the unfairness of the (first) world. Taking down a multi-billion-dollar international corporation's network is undoubtedly a power trip for them.
It's really nothing more than digital vandalism. I wish the media would label it as such rather than "hacking".
Since when did we start referring to any reasonably advanced computer algorithms as "robots". I thought a robot, by definition, had to have a body being controlled by the computer. Or is that definition passé now?
This is not the first time I've heard this. Recall "robots will be taking over your programming jobs", as though a C3PO-like droid is going to sit down at a desk and start punching away at a keyboard.
How sad to be that cynical about one of the greatest achievements in the history of humanity.
As for the practicality of humans in space... it really depends what your goals are. If it's to learn about the universe, human space flight is indeed rather silly, as it's vastly more difficult (and dangerous) to get a human into space than a machine. If your end-game is to get a permanent and self-sustainable human colony off world in the distance future, it's important that we as a species become comfortable living and working in space. Obviously, with your "real science" comment, you're interested in the former. Personally, I like to see us doing both.
The "television" aspect of space flight is because it's pretty exciting to watch in general, and I suppose because we also like to see how our investments are doing, considering most of the big stuff is still publicly financed. Getting people interested and excited about space is also a good idea to ensure the public (and hence, Congress) remains willing to fund all this science, which still takes a shitload of money to do.
Well, I guess I might be willing to give it one more shot, given that people keep recommending that particular story. It might be fun to compare and contrast it against Weir's new story.
I'll try to avoid disliking Heinlein even more out of spite, having just received a "Troll" rating from someone who apparently can't stand the fact that not everyone loves him. Gosh, how dare I have an opinion about what I like to read! Unbelievable.
Interestingly enough, the same thought also crossed my mind after I wrote that.
Of course, we could certainly re-visit the moon if we had the political will to do so... meaning if we wanted to spend the money and accept the risks. It's not a question of capabilities, really. Here's hoping NASA puts their budget to good use in the next few years and gets the SLS ready for deployment.
Yes, but I'd like to see a modern take on what technology might actually be applicable in the near future - rather than future tech envisioned in 1966. This will likely be a movie for people like me who are just as interested in the science as the science-fiction. Even good science fiction doesn't always age as well as fans sometimes pretend it does. For instance, Childhood's End, while still an interesting story, certainly has to be read with a caveat about its age in mind, not to mention the paranormal focus, of which Clarke later seemed somewhat embarrassed about.
Besides, the first Heinlein I read involved four unbelievably irritating protagonists, a flying car, and visiting the land of Oz (wtf?). Starship Troopers was decent, but nothing spectacular. I still can't figure out why everyone gushes over Heinlein. I've heard his earlier works were better, but at this point, I don't care enough to find out.
Flash is a fully-functioning content system with a built-in programming language, written in a day when no thought was given to security, and it shows. It's a massive, massive attack surface that's been horribly exploited for over a decade, and it shows no sign of running out of flaws to exploit. It's not open source, so no one can proactively search for exploits or flaws, which means we must rely on Adobe's good graces to fix issues (which to their credit, they have so far).
Flash is demonstrably dangerous, and with HTML5 now broadly supported everywhere, it's also largely irrelevant. There's very little need for it to exist in today's world - at least, not connected to a network where it can be easily exploited. Adobe's own tools can output either Flash OR HTML5 content equally well, and only one of those technologies is open and supported by all browsers without a dangerous, third-party, closed source plugin.
There are good, technical, reasoned arguments for Flash to disappear. Comparing it to book burning is ludicrous. Also... "generations of beloved Internet content"? You're kidding me, right? Hyperbole much? My mother didn't grow up with Flash. Whatever content we lose, I'm sorry to say, will be sacrificed on the alter of public internet safety. Any time someone's machine gets pwned, it hurts them much more than whatever value the content had, and what's more, each infected machine is likely to turn around and harm the greater internet as well.
HTML5/Javascript is, to be honest, just as potentially dangerous, but has the advantage of being both open and a broadly implemented standard, and thus has received much more security-related scrutiny from the wider community. Notice how there are much fewer system-compromising exploits that use only Javascript/HTML5 these days - aside from using Javascript to invoke Flash or Java, naturally. So, since we've already got one dangerous system and have been hardening it against attacks for many years now, it's probably best to keep content limited to that domain. Why keep a second, more dangerous target on our system as well?
Well, yes, there's some common sense that has to happen here. Naturally it has to be a compatible model (Synology has a chart). And how many times do we have to say it? "RAID is not a backup". It's for high availability and local redundancy, nothing more.
RAID is useful for when one of your drives inevitably craps out on you, and you can just swap it on the fly without any downtime. I actually have a Synology NAS as well, and I've replaced failing/questionable drives several times so far over the years. I just unplugged the old one and shoved in a new one, simple as that, all while the NAS was still running. About half a day later, the drive was synced up with the rest of the system. Almost zero down time after three years of continuous operation.
However, should the worst happen, my critical data is all backed up to an Amazon S3 account.
The correct answer, of course, is to always prioritize the safety of the driver. Things work out reasonably well if everyone looks after themselves - and that includes the pedestrians.
The odds of some ridiculous "trolley-car thought experiment" happening in real life is so low as to not be worth serious consideration. Or at least not *special* consideration, as they'll simply be handed by the ultra-fast reflexes the car software will naturally have. All those thought experiments are predicated on the notion that you have to make a last-minute decision to either hit A or B, with no consideration given to the notion that had you been paying attention, at least in the vast majority of cases, you could have easily avoided both by slowing down well in advance - and that's something an AI will have no trouble doing. To humans, it often looks like things just "come out of nowhere", but that's because of the limits of our processing power and attention spans.
You just buy a new enclosure at that point. The discs are still good, and you can migrate your data. And if you've got two brain cells to rub together, you're also backing up your most critical data remotely.
There are "single points of failure" all over the place in a home or small office. The vast majority only have a single router, a single internet connection, and a single source of power. Most homes probably only have a single computer. The only place you really don't want a single point of failure is with your data. Everything else can be easily replaced.
Why does "with an autonomous car" make this such an issue? Human drivers are doing stupid shit like this every day, and killing themselves and others to the tune of roughly a hundred deaths per day on average here in the US.
And I guarantee you there will be extensive black box data systems that preserve exactly what the computer was thinking, what the car was doing, and what the driver may or may not have done. No guesswork required as to the cause of any accident with these cars.
Yep. The term "zero-day" indicates that the bug was discovered because it was being exploited in the wild. I saw no specific mention of this, so it looks like the article got it wrong, and the summary picked up on that incorrect usage.
Ransomeware like Cryptolocker or banking trojans like Zeus are far more damaging than what the worst of the AV products do. A statement like that either means you're ignorant about what real dangers malware can pose or are simply prone to statements slathered in a good helping of hyperbole.
Note: I'm not defending MacKeeper, as it sounds like crap, but that's at a whole different level than real malware.
ublock-origins blocks sourceforge as a malware site now, and while I occasionally override it to peek at some actual source code, I'm glad for the reminder to never download anything from that site. There was a kerfuffle a while ago when they started doing this, and despite some backpedaling after some initial bad press, the site should probably be considered toxic.
True, but if it's a hoax, it would have to be one of the lamest topics I could think of. Is anyone so enthusiastic about the new Edge browser that they'd go to so much trouble? I'd guess someone just stumbled on an internal testing site they weren't supposed to see, that's all. And it's not like those plugins sound all that implausible for a couple of early tests.
Or, for people who would prefer not to install some third-party crapware to get rid of other third-party crapware... you could type "windows start" into search, and it shows "See which processes start up automatically when you start Windows". Click on this (or press CTRL-Shift-Escape and click on the "Startup" tab), and you see a list of these processes. You'll see a category called "Startup Impact", with values of Low, High, or None (if disabled). You can right-click and disable these items right from that list, or open the folder location so you can figure out what they are, etc.
It would be great if the patches could be released sooner than at one month intervals, but everything has a trade-off. Fast patches mean sloppy patches or buggy code (remember the Stagefright patches?), especially when you're talking about a billion machine in nearly that many unique configurations. Keep in mind that non-corporate customers still needs the benefit of QA to ensure things don't break on our computer. It's probably even more important for us, because unlike at a corporation, we don't first install the patches on test machines to see if things are broken, since we probably only have one or two machines to begin with.
There's another issue here as well: patches have to be released at the same time for everyone. The release of the patch itself, oddly enough, tends to generate more immediate exploits shortly after. This is because patches are analyzed to discover what exactly was fixed, and those exploits tend to be added to kits rather quickly. So, it's not really practical to push out consumer patches ad-hoc, because it would essentially force everyone to begin the testing and integration cycle over for each new patch.
I completely understand not liking the idea of patches being held back for a time because of a release schedule, but MS has to balance the needs of all its customers here.
Slashdot Mirror
I was interested in reading "zero bugs", but it doesn't come in ebook format. Who releases a book in paper only format in 2015... especially a programming book?
Anyhow, if your organization is dysfunctional enough to let things degrade into a holy hell of a mess in the first place: don't request "bugfixing time" or "code reorganization time", as it will probably never happen. Bugs are just incomplete or broken features. They don't exist in isolation. Reduce the rate of new features until you've fixed the old ones. When you're in a pit, you need to first stop digging. In this case, its probably better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. I'm not suggesting you lie by any means, but don't treat bugs like they exist in isolation from the rest of the features you were working on. It's a huge mistake to slap out a half-finished feature and then move on without fixing all the little issues that crop up as a result of that feature.
In cases like this, the root cause is very often some architectural issue with the software that somehow makes it rather fragile and susceptible to creating tricky bugs. Unless a company/team is willing to dig deep and fix these underlying issues, often involving much short-term pain and a temporary regression of bugs and features, the negative trends will simply continue. I've been involved in several of these projects, and the root cause was always fragile, messy code (and yes, I was guilty of writing some of it). In hindsight, in nearly every case, it would have been worth taking a very large step back, declare "this isn't working", and taking some serious steps to fix it. Instead, human nature being what it is, we almost always try to do the minimal amount of work to patch things up just enough to fix the symptoms, when in fact the patient is bleeding out internally.
In my own code, I'll occasionally run into "smells"... things which seemed reasonable enough or perhaps simply expedient at the time, but later started bugging me whenever I looked at the code or thought about how its organized. Every so often, between new features, I'll dig deep and clean up one of those "smells", which often has no tangible benefit other than making the code cleaner and safer. You can't just endlessly rewrite code without moving forward or course, and tinkering with working, stable code for its own sake is a horrible idea, but every once in a while, it's a great idea to go back and make sure you're not leaving too much nasty detritus behind. Code detritus has a way of multiplying, because it encourages NEW code and features to be written in the same style and methodology as the old.
I've never bought the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory. Normal, well-adjusted people don't suddenly become assholes when they become anonymous on the net. That's an excuse for assholes to act like assholes without fear of repercussions... which otherwise happens in real life, like a punch to the face, or getting fired from your job. Decent people empathize with others and treat them with respect with no expectation of personal reward or recognition for their decent behavior. Or, as John Wooden famously quipped, "Character is what you do when nobody is looking."
Most of the people I've interacted with here on Slashdot seem to be decent sorts who are just interested in tech news and an interesting conversation or debate with other like-minded geeks and nerds, marred by a few trolls and assholes like any community. So, no, I don't buy into the "most guys are just assholes" theory either. If you want to put the Slashdot community under a microscope, I'd take you up on that as a reasonable example that refutes your general assertion.
The tricky part of the "few trolls and assholes" bit is always what happens when a troll or asshole gets into a position of power. That's not a problem here on Slashdot, because the most power any normal person gets is a few mod points, so the damage is limited. In many other situations, it's entirely possible to poison the entire well because of just a few people.
I agree that more integration can only be a good thing, as asserted in TFA, but I'm a firm believer that this has to happen naturally, or else it tends to actually defeat the purpose. The author cites "busing" (forced racial integration by making kids go to non-local schools), which was actually a disaster of a program, and horribly unfair to people to moved to better neighborhoods specifically to send their kids to the better local schools, all for the sake of a massive social experiment.
Wikipedia is a pretty decent reference for any subject that hasn't attracted much attention, either by trolls, vandals, or an overbearing editor. Avoid using it for any sort of controversial subject (religion, politics, current events), and it's still a pretty decent source of information.
The sheer breadth of knowledge contained there still continues to be very helpful to me personally. Need to know something about a particular computer algorithm? Wikipedia will likely have a pretty decent article explaining it. Need to find an episode list of a particular TV series? Wikipedia is almost sure to have it. How about some basic information about a historical figure or event? Yep, that too. Just understand the source of the information, and take it with a grain of salt. The odds are it's probably accurate, but there's no real guarantee.
Most of the complaints I hear revolve around the editing process, which I'd imagine most people don't get involved in. Personally, I typically just *use* the site (although I'll occasionally make minor corrections or improvements when I see the need), which I think is probably true of most people as well. I'm sure as hell not interested enough to get in pissing matches about edits with an editor. I can understand why that would turn you away, and I suspect its done the same for a lot of people, which is too bad, but I'm not sure I'd go as far to call that a "decline" in the website. Maybe "potential for decline" is more suitable.
Or, it was on a diplomatic mission to establish the first contact with the hungry bags, mostly water, as the squid's ready their power grab on the total sea domination.
Hey, it could happen.
I think it's helpful to envision hard drives as serving two roles: one for fast, persistent data storage and access (OS, program files, documents) in which you want to prioritize access speed and throughput, and another for mass storage, in which you want as much storage capacity for as little cost as possible. SSDs excel in the first role, while spinning HDDs excel in the latter.
So, I wouldn't characterized spinning HDD drives as "dying"... they're just becoming more specialized, like PCs. The significant improvements have been made to capacity (or cost per GB), which is what's important in spinning drives now - much more than transfer speed. There's only so fast you really need to pull data off a media server, for instance. And capacity, as well as cost per GB, has *dramatically* improved over the past 15 years.
A computer is really just a big set of cascading slower and larger data caches with the ultimate destination as the registers on the CPU. I've also long viewed the computer architecture like that, although I admit I never viewed networks and the internet as part of that system (that definitely makes sense). Here's how I'd revise your graph:
CPU > L1 Cache > L2 Cache > L3 Cache > RAM > Fast Local Storage (SSD) > Mass/Local Network Storage (HDD) > Cloud Storage > Archival Storage
I also wouldn't differentiate between RAM and RAM Cached Storage, because you're making a distinction based on usage type, where everything else is about the type of hardware you're working with.
And they damned near hobbled the Xbox One by:
1) Losing their initial focus on their core audience and core use, which is gaming.
2) Their ham-handed, arrogant approach to once-per-day mandatory connected DRM.
3) Their insistence that Kinnect be an integral part of the console before belatedly realizing that it kind of sucked for most types of games.
It was only when the market slapped them down that they backpedaled. Windows 8 was also a similar display of incredible hubris / arrogance, ignoring the very loud early feedback that told them that this was going to be a disaster in the market.
Microsoft has *always* been best at connecting with business clients, really (although they blew that with Win 8 as well). I'd posit that consumers just sort of came along for the ride with Windows since that's where the ecosystem was, but very little they did actually resonated with most of them otherwise.
Yep, that's true. I suppose only time will tell if new rockets actually turn out to be more reliable than used, or even any statistical difference at all. The great thing about recovering the rocket like they do is that they can perform post-flight structural analyses on the entire system and strengthen / reinforce any components that appear to be suffering more stress because of the repeated launches.
When safety is prioritized, humans can actually build highly complex machines that are put under significant stress and are still amazingly reliable - modern airliners are one example of this. I don't see any reason why we can't eventually achieve the same high levels of efficiency and reliability with rocket launches. It just requires a lot of engineering experience. Engineering is about pushing boundaries, making mistakes, analyzing *why* those mistakes occurred, and then correcting them in the next iteration.
Is a new rocket really the best option for a manned or otherwise critical launch? Wouldn't you rather be on the rocket's second or third ride up instead of the first?
Don't expect anything but the thinnest veneer of an excuse as to why they're doing this. They're going this because they're angsty teenage males with lots of testosterone and no power, so this is how they vent their frustration at the unfairness of the (first) world. Taking down a multi-billion-dollar international corporation's network is undoubtedly a power trip for them.
It's really nothing more than digital vandalism. I wish the media would label it as such rather than "hacking".
Since when did we start referring to any reasonably advanced computer algorithms as "robots". I thought a robot, by definition, had to have a body being controlled by the computer. Or is that definition passé now?
This is not the first time I've heard this. Recall "robots will be taking over your programming jobs", as though a C3PO-like droid is going to sit down at a desk and start punching away at a keyboard.
How sad to be that cynical about one of the greatest achievements in the history of humanity.
As for the practicality of humans in space... it really depends what your goals are. If it's to learn about the universe, human space flight is indeed rather silly, as it's vastly more difficult (and dangerous) to get a human into space than a machine. If your end-game is to get a permanent and self-sustainable human colony off world in the distance future, it's important that we as a species become comfortable living and working in space. Obviously, with your "real science" comment, you're interested in the former. Personally, I like to see us doing both.
The "television" aspect of space flight is because it's pretty exciting to watch in general, and I suppose because we also like to see how our investments are doing, considering most of the big stuff is still publicly financed. Getting people interested and excited about space is also a good idea to ensure the public (and hence, Congress) remains willing to fund all this science, which still takes a shitload of money to do.
Well, I guess I might be willing to give it one more shot, given that people keep recommending that particular story. It might be fun to compare and contrast it against Weir's new story.
I'll try to avoid disliking Heinlein even more out of spite, having just received a "Troll" rating from someone who apparently can't stand the fact that not everyone loves him. Gosh, how dare I have an opinion about what I like to read! Unbelievable.
Interestingly enough, the same thought also crossed my mind after I wrote that.
Of course, we could certainly re-visit the moon if we had the political will to do so... meaning if we wanted to spend the money and accept the risks. It's not a question of capabilities, really. Here's hoping NASA puts their budget to good use in the next few years and gets the SLS ready for deployment.
Yes, but I'd like to see a modern take on what technology might actually be applicable in the near future - rather than future tech envisioned in 1966. This will likely be a movie for people like me who are just as interested in the science as the science-fiction. Even good science fiction doesn't always age as well as fans sometimes pretend it does. For instance, Childhood's End, while still an interesting story, certainly has to be read with a caveat about its age in mind, not to mention the paranormal focus, of which Clarke later seemed somewhat embarrassed about.
Besides, the first Heinlein I read involved four unbelievably irritating protagonists, a flying car, and visiting the land of Oz (wtf?). Starship Troopers was decent, but nothing spectacular. I still can't figure out why everyone gushes over Heinlein. I've heard his earlier works were better, but at this point, I don't care enough to find out.
Flash is a fully-functioning content system with a built-in programming language, written in a day when no thought was given to security, and it shows. It's a massive, massive attack surface that's been horribly exploited for over a decade, and it shows no sign of running out of flaws to exploit. It's not open source, so no one can proactively search for exploits or flaws, which means we must rely on Adobe's good graces to fix issues (which to their credit, they have so far).
Flash is demonstrably dangerous, and with HTML5 now broadly supported everywhere, it's also largely irrelevant. There's very little need for it to exist in today's world - at least, not connected to a network where it can be easily exploited. Adobe's own tools can output either Flash OR HTML5 content equally well, and only one of those technologies is open and supported by all browsers without a dangerous, third-party, closed source plugin.
There are good, technical, reasoned arguments for Flash to disappear. Comparing it to book burning is ludicrous. Also... "generations of beloved Internet content"? You're kidding me, right? Hyperbole much? My mother didn't grow up with Flash. Whatever content we lose, I'm sorry to say, will be sacrificed on the alter of public internet safety. Any time someone's machine gets pwned, it hurts them much more than whatever value the content had, and what's more, each infected machine is likely to turn around and harm the greater internet as well.
HTML5/Javascript is, to be honest, just as potentially dangerous, but has the advantage of being both open and a broadly implemented standard, and thus has received much more security-related scrutiny from the wider community. Notice how there are much fewer system-compromising exploits that use only Javascript/HTML5 these days - aside from using Javascript to invoke Flash or Java, naturally. So, since we've already got one dangerous system and have been hardening it against attacks for many years now, it's probably best to keep content limited to that domain. Why keep a second, more dangerous target on our system as well?
Well, yes, there's some common sense that has to happen here. Naturally it has to be a compatible model (Synology has a chart). And how many times do we have to say it? "RAID is not a backup". It's for high availability and local redundancy, nothing more.
RAID is useful for when one of your drives inevitably craps out on you, and you can just swap it on the fly without any downtime. I actually have a Synology NAS as well, and I've replaced failing/questionable drives several times so far over the years. I just unplugged the old one and shoved in a new one, simple as that, all while the NAS was still running. About half a day later, the drive was synced up with the rest of the system. Almost zero down time after three years of continuous operation.
However, should the worst happen, my critical data is all backed up to an Amazon S3 account.
The correct answer, of course, is to always prioritize the safety of the driver. Things work out reasonably well if everyone looks after themselves - and that includes the pedestrians.
The odds of some ridiculous "trolley-car thought experiment" happening in real life is so low as to not be worth serious consideration. Or at least not *special* consideration, as they'll simply be handed by the ultra-fast reflexes the car software will naturally have. All those thought experiments are predicated on the notion that you have to make a last-minute decision to either hit A or B, with no consideration given to the notion that had you been paying attention, at least in the vast majority of cases, you could have easily avoided both by slowing down well in advance - and that's something an AI will have no trouble doing. To humans, it often looks like things just "come out of nowhere", but that's because of the limits of our processing power and attention spans.
You just buy a new enclosure at that point. The discs are still good, and you can migrate your data. And if you've got two brain cells to rub together, you're also backing up your most critical data remotely.
There are "single points of failure" all over the place in a home or small office. The vast majority only have a single router, a single internet connection, and a single source of power. Most homes probably only have a single computer. The only place you really don't want a single point of failure is with your data. Everything else can be easily replaced.
Why does "with an autonomous car" make this such an issue? Human drivers are doing stupid shit like this every day, and killing themselves and others to the tune of roughly a hundred deaths per day on average here in the US.
And I guarantee you there will be extensive black box data systems that preserve exactly what the computer was thinking, what the car was doing, and what the driver may or may not have done. No guesswork required as to the cause of any accident with these cars.
Yep. The term "zero-day" indicates that the bug was discovered because it was being exploited in the wild. I saw no specific mention of this, so it looks like the article got it wrong, and the summary picked up on that incorrect usage.
Ransomeware like Cryptolocker or banking trojans like Zeus are far more damaging than what the worst of the AV products do. A statement like that either means you're ignorant about what real dangers malware can pose or are simply prone to statements slathered in a good helping of hyperbole.
Note: I'm not defending MacKeeper, as it sounds like crap, but that's at a whole different level than real malware.
ublock-origins blocks sourceforge as a malware site now, and while I occasionally override it to peek at some actual source code, I'm glad for the reminder to never download anything from that site. There was a kerfuffle a while ago when they started doing this, and despite some backpedaling after some initial bad press, the site should probably be considered toxic.
http://www.howtogeek.com/21876...
True, but if it's a hoax, it would have to be one of the lamest topics I could think of. Is anyone so enthusiastic about the new Edge browser that they'd go to so much trouble? I'd guess someone just stumbled on an internal testing site they weren't supposed to see, that's all. And it's not like those plugins sound all that implausible for a couple of early tests.
Or, for people who would prefer not to install some third-party crapware to get rid of other third-party crapware... you could type "windows start" into search, and it shows "See which processes start up automatically when you start Windows". Click on this (or press CTRL-Shift-Escape and click on the "Startup" tab), and you see a list of these processes. You'll see a category called "Startup Impact", with values of Low, High, or None (if disabled). You can right-click and disable these items right from that list, or open the folder location so you can figure out what they are, etc.
It would be great if the patches could be released sooner than at one month intervals, but everything has a trade-off. Fast patches mean sloppy patches or buggy code (remember the Stagefright patches?), especially when you're talking about a billion machine in nearly that many unique configurations. Keep in mind that non-corporate customers still needs the benefit of QA to ensure things don't break on our computer. It's probably even more important for us, because unlike at a corporation, we don't first install the patches on test machines to see if things are broken, since we probably only have one or two machines to begin with.
There's another issue here as well: patches have to be released at the same time for everyone. The release of the patch itself, oddly enough, tends to generate more immediate exploits shortly after. This is because patches are analyzed to discover what exactly was fixed, and those exploits tend to be added to kits rather quickly. So, it's not really practical to push out consumer patches ad-hoc, because it would essentially force everyone to begin the testing and integration cycle over for each new patch.
I completely understand not liking the idea of patches being held back for a time because of a release schedule, but MS has to balance the needs of all its customers here.