I don't know... I just bought a 2003 Honda Pilot, and the gas mileage isn't significantly lower than my 99 Grand Am (17mpg mostly city vs 20mpg mostly city -- actual averages, not EPA estimates). Bad for the Pontiac, or good for the Honda? We report. You decide.
BTW, the reason for the switch is that I have five people to move around on a regular basis, and fitting 5 people into a Grand Am (or, really, any sedan) when two are in car seats is no fun at all. Not that I should need to justify my decision, but I know the topic will come up.
It's also nice to have AWD/4WD during the winter, and especially in the 20"+ of snow we just got this past weekend.
I've heard this line of thought more times than I care to remember, and the standard response is that it's possible to write good or bad code in any language.
I've seen (in school) C++ programs where the "programmer" had named all of their variables after fruits (strawberry, kiwi...), and all of their methods after greek letters (theta, alpha...). Style is style is style. You can't put a bad programmer in front of a c++ compiler and expect their code to be any better than it would have been in perl or python.
On the other hand, any good programmer can sit down with any language *that they know well* and write beautiful code. The learning process certainly impacts style in the short term, which is why I emphasize this.
I don't understand this insistence that a compiler somehow makes code better. After all, even the more complex "scripting" languages are basically JIT compiled to some fashion of bytecode these days (read: perl, python, and, I think, ruby, among others). They'll barf at compile-time, as opposed to running until they hit a syntax error, like shell or the old BASICs.
So, I call "strawman" on the compiler argument, and say that the real problem is bad programmers.
The whole issue is a lot like this recent hot topic of "free speech." Just because you *can* say something doesn't mean you *should* say it at the first opportunity. A certain consideration must be made. The analogy is a direct one. Human language to computer language. You've been given more power with a scripting language. Use it responsibly. A good programmer will do this, just as a gentleman will consider his words carefully.
Heh. Those who have been successfully married for more than a year know this to be true. It's damn difficult to love a person sometimes, because sometimes even the best mate is almost unlovable. If love was no more than a kind of "wanna get some" reflex, most marriages would be annulled after the first week.
...they implemented it like boneheads. If you're logging on from a different computer, or have cleared your cookies, you are REQUIRED to enter your card number and pin at the first screen -- sans SiteKey.
Once they see that you've set up SiteKey, they do as you described. They show the picture you picked and the phrase you typed in - AND THEN MAKE YOU ENTER YOUR PIN AGAIN.
I get around this by entering my card number in the main page and an invalid pin. THEN it shows me my sitekey based on my card number, and I can enter my PIN, secure in the thought that this is the site I think it is.
It's a good shot, and certainly a better attempt than I've ever seen before, but they REALLY need to:
1. NOT require that you enter your friggin bank card number and PIN BEFORE seeing your SiteKey. Duh. This leads to #2: 2. NOT require that you enter your friggin bank card number EVER. Besides being insecure, it's a huge pain in the butt to have to type in my credit card number as a userID when I set my browser to clear cookies after the current session.
While I can get around the problem of entering my PIN before the SiteKey by entering a bogus PIN in the field, I'm still forecd to use my bank card number so they can retrieve the SiteKey. Ugh. Never heard of usernames, apparently.
Bank of America, if you're reading this, be advised that you are in need of a security and usability manager with an ounce of common sense. I can bill highly enough that you should be comfortable hiring me, and I work in New York, where I'm sure you have office space. Drop me a line, and we'll work something out.
First of all, the question is: How does the hardware know which OSs to allow? Does it simply check to see if the boot disk (installation CD/DVD) is signed by SOMEONE? Or does it need to be a SPECIFIC someone?
In the first case, then the distros could simply sign their discs appropriately, and it's business as usual. Bits go into the kernel/necessary software to work with/around "trusted computing".
In the second case, who determines which OSs to allow? In other words, this would require that motherboards are shipped with the public keys/signatures/whatever of EVERY manufacturer of EVERY allowed operating system on a ROM (EEPROMS kinda defeat the purpose). Who gets to decide? Who holds the keys to the 'key list'? Certainly not Microsoft, since it would be an obvious and glaring conflict of interest. So it would have to be some third party, who would have some sort of process for addition to the lists, and who would need to maintain at least the illusion of impartiality.
In the event that AMD and Intel both went this route (unlikely, due to competition), I think you'd still see VIA and other x86 manufacturers holding back. Their mini-ITX motherboards are generally used for appliances and by hobbyists that stand a pretty high chance of requiring linux, bsd, or some custom OS for the project. For example, VIA already makes complete x86 motherboards and processors (Eden, I think it's called?) that run in excess of 1GHz, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind the influx of money from disenfranchised Intel/AMD customers for R&D.
Point is, if Intel and AMD shut out FOSS OSs, they'll find that there's suddenly a 3rd and 4th major competitor in the market who doesn't. They'll also find that they've shut out every business that runs FOSS in the data center, and given up lots and lots of server sales. Remember -- it's gonna cost business DEARLY to take Linux applications and convert them to ANYTHING else. Sun would get the Sparc x86 sales, since they've committed to supporting Linux, and would require AMD to give them un-TC-ified chips or would switch to VIA or some other non-TC manufacturer.
Don't worry. FOSS isn't going anywhere because of Trusted Computing. You'll still be able to install the Penguin somewhere. Like any business, if they tell their customers that they are no longer welcome, those customers can vote with their feet. And that includes all of the business who run Linux in their data centers, too.
Sorry for rambling. I just think there are a lot of reasons that this is never gonna happen (shut out FOSS, I mean), because too many people already depend on it for their businesses, if nothing else.
Even Hastert had a blog where he related his thoughts about starting a blog, old dogs and new tricks, promised to try to post new content from time to time, etc, etc. Don't know if he kept it up, but it really was him writing the content.
I'm sure many people who agree with the spirit of the GPL3 will use it to ensure that the fruits of their labors don't infringe on the rights of others.
For those who don't like the DRM language, the V2 is always available. Just specify which version in your dist package.
I'm also amused by my stint in big companies that they seem to be alright with waking people up in the middle of the night in order to have them fix something on multi-million-dollar systems doing huge financial transactions.
For a while, I was the guy staying up all night for a large bank, calling the day-shifters when something broke. The people were very good about it, and generally were able to cope with this, but I always thought it was a recipie for disaster.
I find it difficult to make good decisions during my normal waking hours if I'm very tired, let alone being awakened a few hours after having gone to sleep and asked complex questions during my normal sleep time.
Get a domain name, pay for a web host (1GB+ disk for ~$7/month, generally). Plus you get a web server, database, and any number of other features for less than ten bucks per month.
Most web hosts support pop and imap, for the portability-oriented folks.
If you need that kind of service, pay a little for it and support your fellow techies. Believe me, it won't break the bank, and you'll get more services for the money.
Indeed. My wife is perfectly happy with gaim/kopete, and she's no techie. She enjoys the fact that she can be on yahoo and aim at the same time without lots of glitzy flashy insane windows and sounds. They work without being annoying, and that's all she cares about.
Maybe this money would be better spent by paying the developers of the major applications, or hiring new developers to work on them. A major part of their job descriptions would be securing and vetting patches for the software they're working on.
I'd think this would improve security greatly, and speed up development in general.
Somebody, probably not me or you will compile the final code to be run on some computer that we don't know the details of anyway. That somebody may know how to alter the code, maybe not.
What's wrong with an interpreted language? PERL? Python? If the code can be edited, presumably a binary can be swapped just as easily. At least that way you know that the code on the machine is what the machine is running (unless someone is fooling with the compilers / interpreters themselves).
Because that would make it really easy to pass around copies of the installation. If the whole install was encapsulated in a single folder, it's a trivial matter to duplicate it to another USB stick.
Currently, MS Office is a mess of registry settings, DLLs in every thinkable system directory, etc, etc. Criminy, just try to back up office by simply burning the Program Files subdir to disk. I doubt it'd work so well once you copy it back after a format of your disk. You really need the Office install disks as your backup.
Hairballs hard to copy. Neatly packaged installation, easy.
George Gallup said "I could prove God statistically". I think that sums up the reasons for belief in superbeings rather nicely.
The fact is that, when unlikely events continue to happen against their probability -- not just once, not twice, but over a person's entire lifetime -- that influences people to believe that some power is working against the natural flow of events.
When those things lead to much better outcomes than one might suppose the alternatives would have been (I might not have met my wife, I might not have ever ______), one begins to believe that the Power is a beneficent one, holding a plan for their lives and wishing the best for them.
What people here tend not to realize is that, when you tell someone that they believe in a work of fiction, you're telling them to ignore a lifetime's accumulated "evidence" to the contrary. I quote "evidence" here not to trivialize it, but to mean that it's not evidence in the experimental sense, but in the anecdotal sense, which is still extremely powerful - even if it doesn't live up to "The Scientific Method".
And perhaps that's where the rub is. There's no control group for an individual's life. What muddies the water even more is that some atheists thrive while some Christians suffer. And, even more, it's difficult to tell what was "best" for each person. For some people, "best" is a little house in suburbia with their wife and kids. For others, extreme wealth, others, a life of slavery or prison. Saint Paul "endured hardships on [his] journeys: he was imprisoned in Philippi, was lashed and stoned several times and almost murdered once", but he believed it all to be in God's plan for his life.
The point is that people have their own perceptions of God in their lives, and simply claiming that it's unprovable doesn't make it any less real to them. For them, it's not only NOT 'unprovable', is's already proven through a lifetime of experiences.
If you're not afraid to challenge your "unprovable" assertion, then do an experiement. Ask God to do something completely unpredictable and that wouldn't harm anyone else, and then wait and honestly observe. You just might be surprised.
While I agree with the concept of what you're saying (abstraction), I think you've missed the point of the OP's question. He's asking about "portability", not "scriptability". In other words, he doesn't want to re-write his VB Macros. Or, if he has to, he doesn't want to re-write them for every suite that supports ODF. In other words, take the format abstraction one step further into the functionality of the document as well.
Like it or not, the tech industry opened up a (extremely useful) can of worms by making documents into mini programs. If MS supports ODF, but OSS suites don't support VB Script, guess what? MS wins on features for the set of people who've written extensive macros in Office! For the abstraction you're talking about to be complete, it needs to include the macro language.
That said, I thought there was a project at one point that was writing vbscript for.... OoO, maybe? Don't know what ever happened to it. Maybe it's already in there and this is a non-issue. Honestly don't know.
Me too. Odd thing is, they've logged the fact that I saw a page telling me that my IP has been logged for viewing the page. I've never used Grokster, and only have a topical idea even of what it is.
Apparently, viewing Grokster.Com in a web browser may bring the *IAA to my door if the web server logs are used to generate a hit list. Never mind that I've never downloaded a thing from Grokster.
Sounds like the site is being used as a honeypot -- and not in a very intelligent way, either.
Re:Make your own blast furnace, huh?
on
Makers
·
· Score: 1
Heh. I see someone else reads Hack-a-Day.:-)
I just got done reading about the Radioactive Boy Scout about 15 minutes ago. Pretty wild. Sometimes I wish I had that kind of ambition.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know... I just bought a 2003 Honda Pilot, and the gas mileage isn't significantly lower than my 99 Grand Am (17mpg mostly city vs 20mpg mostly city -- actual averages, not EPA estimates). Bad for the Pontiac, or good for the Honda? We report. You decide.
BTW, the reason for the switch is that I have five people to move around on a regular basis, and fitting 5 people into a Grand Am (or, really, any sedan) when two are in car seats is no fun at all. Not that I should need to justify my decision, but I know the topic will come up.
It's also nice to have AWD/4WD during the winter, and especially in the 20"+ of snow we just got this past weekend.
I've heard this line of thought more times than I care to remember, and the standard response is that it's possible to write good or bad code in any language.
I've seen (in school) C++ programs where the "programmer" had named all of their variables after fruits (strawberry, kiwi...), and all of their methods after greek letters (theta, alpha...). Style is style is style. You can't put a bad programmer in front of a c++ compiler and expect their code to be any better than it would have been in perl or python.
On the other hand, any good programmer can sit down with any language *that they know well* and write beautiful code. The learning process certainly impacts style in the short term, which is why I emphasize this.
I don't understand this insistence that a compiler somehow makes code better. After all, even the more complex "scripting" languages are basically JIT compiled to some fashion of bytecode these days (read: perl, python, and, I think, ruby, among others). They'll barf at compile-time, as opposed to running until they hit a syntax error, like shell or the old BASICs.
So, I call "strawman" on the compiler argument, and say that the real problem is bad programmers.
The whole issue is a lot like this recent hot topic of "free speech." Just because you *can* say something doesn't mean you *should* say it at the first opportunity. A certain consideration must be made. The analogy is a direct one. Human language to computer language. You've been given more power with a scripting language. Use it responsibly. A good programmer will do this, just as a gentleman will consider his words carefully.
Gentleman == Good programmer
It's easy.
Next to General Agamemmnon, he was the most ruthless of the Titans during the Butlerian Jihad.
Heh. Those who have been successfully married for more than a year know this to be true. It's damn difficult to love a person sometimes, because sometimes even the best mate is almost unlovable. If love was no more than a kind of "wanna get some" reflex, most marriages would be annulled after the first week.
Sure they do. It goes something like this:
"Win, or we'll sponsor someone else."
...they implemented it like boneheads. If you're logging on from a different computer, or have cleared your cookies, you are REQUIRED to enter your card number and pin at the first screen -- sans SiteKey.
Once they see that you've set up SiteKey, they do as you described. They show the picture you picked and the phrase you typed in - AND THEN MAKE YOU ENTER YOUR PIN AGAIN.
I get around this by entering my card number in the main page and an invalid pin. THEN it shows me my sitekey based on my card number, and I can enter my PIN, secure in the thought that this is the site I think it is.
It's a good shot, and certainly a better attempt than I've ever seen before, but they REALLY need to:
1. NOT require that you enter your friggin bank card number and PIN BEFORE seeing your SiteKey. Duh. This leads to #2:
2. NOT require that you enter your friggin bank card number EVER. Besides being insecure, it's a huge pain in the butt to have to type in my credit card number as a userID when I set my browser to clear cookies after the current session.
While I can get around the problem of entering my PIN before the SiteKey by entering a bogus PIN in the field, I'm still forecd to use my bank card number so they can retrieve the SiteKey. Ugh. Never heard of usernames, apparently.
Bank of America, if you're reading this, be advised that you are in need of a security and usability manager with an ounce of common sense. I can bill highly enough that you should be comfortable hiring me, and I work in New York, where I'm sure you have office space. Drop me a line, and we'll work something out.
At least real slime molds aren't susceptible to bribery and corruption [...] ...yet.
Leave it to the Abramoff's of the world. They'll find a way.
Seriously. I noticed that too, and had to look at the source to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks.
Note, the font doesn't show all of them. The actual letter groupings are:
'F' 'r' 'os' 't' 'y' 'p' 'i' 's' 't' '!!'
Dude -- WTF?
Nah.
First of all, the question is: How does the hardware know which OSs to allow? Does it simply check to see if the boot disk (installation CD/DVD) is signed by SOMEONE? Or does it need to be a SPECIFIC someone?
In the first case, then the distros could simply sign their discs appropriately, and it's business as usual. Bits go into the kernel/necessary software to work with/around "trusted computing".
In the second case, who determines which OSs to allow? In other words, this would require that motherboards are shipped with the public keys/signatures/whatever of EVERY manufacturer of EVERY allowed operating system on a ROM (EEPROMS kinda defeat the purpose). Who gets to decide? Who holds the keys to the 'key list'? Certainly not Microsoft, since it would be an obvious and glaring conflict of interest. So it would have to be some third party, who would have some sort of process for addition to the lists, and who would need to maintain at least the illusion of impartiality.
In the event that AMD and Intel both went this route (unlikely, due to competition), I think you'd still see VIA and other x86 manufacturers holding back. Their mini-ITX motherboards are generally used for appliances and by hobbyists that stand a pretty high chance of requiring linux, bsd, or some custom OS for the project. For example, VIA already makes complete x86 motherboards and processors (Eden, I think it's called?) that run in excess of 1GHz, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind the influx of money from disenfranchised Intel/AMD customers for R&D.
Point is, if Intel and AMD shut out FOSS OSs, they'll find that there's suddenly a 3rd and 4th major competitor in the market who doesn't. They'll also find that they've shut out every business that runs FOSS in the data center, and given up lots and lots of server sales. Remember -- it's gonna cost business DEARLY to take Linux applications and convert them to ANYTHING else. Sun would get the Sparc x86 sales, since they've committed to supporting Linux, and would require AMD to give them un-TC-ified chips or would switch to VIA or some other non-TC manufacturer.
Don't worry. FOSS isn't going anywhere because of Trusted Computing. You'll still be able to install the Penguin somewhere. Like any business, if they tell their customers that they are no longer welcome, those customers can vote with their feet. And that includes all of the business who run Linux in their data centers, too.
Sorry for rambling. I just think there are a lot of reasons that this is never gonna happen (shut out FOSS, I mean), because too many people already depend on it for their businesses, if nothing else.
Hah!! *shakes head*
muszek: How long are you gonna lead this guy on? His sarcasm detector is clearly out to lunch.
Even Hastert had a blog where he related his thoughts about starting a blog, old dogs and new tricks, promised to try to post new content from time to time, etc, etc. Don't know if he kept it up, but it really was him writing the content.
I'm sure many people who agree with the spirit of the GPL3 will use it to ensure that the fruits of their labors don't infringe on the rights of others.
For those who don't like the DRM language, the V2 is always available. Just specify which version in your dist package.
...the Massachusetts ones have Ted Kennedy
:-)
He fits on a penny?! Who'da thunk?
I just used one of those machines in Pennsylvania last weekend, to the amusement of my 5-year-old son and my wife, who'd never seen one.
Yep - Still exist. Still fun.
It's not just that it's the wrong input, it's that it's the one specific value of wrong input that triggers the behavior. That seems like design.
:-P
Oh, come now. Don't ascribe to Design what can be ascribed to complete, random Chance. Maybe the FSM is in control of Microsoft.
I'm also amused by my stint in big companies that they seem to be alright with waking people up in the middle of the night in order to have them fix something on multi-million-dollar systems doing huge financial transactions.
For a while, I was the guy staying up all night for a large bank, calling the day-shifters when something broke. The people were very good about it, and generally were able to cope with this, but I always thought it was a recipie for disaster.
I find it difficult to make good decisions during my normal waking hours if I'm very tired, let alone being awakened a few hours after having gone to sleep and asked complex questions during my normal sleep time.
Get a domain name, pay for a web host (1GB+ disk for ~$7/month, generally). Plus you get a web server, database, and any number of other features for less than ten bucks per month.
Most web hosts support pop and imap, for the portability-oriented folks.
If you need that kind of service, pay a little for it and support your fellow techies. Believe me, it won't break the bank, and you'll get more services for the money.
Indeed. My wife is perfectly happy with gaim/kopete, and she's no techie. She enjoys the fact that she can be on yahoo and aim at the same time without lots of glitzy flashy insane windows and sounds. They work without being annoying, and that's all she cares about.
Maybe this money would be better spent by paying the developers of the major applications, or hiring new developers to work on them. A major part of their job descriptions would be securing and vetting patches for the software they're working on.
I'd think this would improve security greatly, and speed up development in general.
You will be. You will beeee. -- Yoda
Somebody, probably not me or you will compile the final code to be run on some computer that we don't know the details of anyway. That somebody may know how to alter the code, maybe not.
What's wrong with an interpreted language? PERL? Python? If the code can be edited, presumably a binary can be swapped just as easily. At least that way you know that the code on the machine is what the machine is running (unless someone is fooling with the compilers / interpreters themselves).
Because that would make it really easy to pass around copies of the installation. If the whole install was encapsulated in a single folder, it's a trivial matter to duplicate it to another USB stick.
Currently, MS Office is a mess of registry settings, DLLs in every thinkable system directory, etc, etc. Criminy, just try to back up office by simply burning the Program Files subdir to disk. I doubt it'd work so well once you copy it back after a format of your disk. You really need the Office install disks as your backup.
Hairballs hard to copy. Neatly packaged installation, easy.
George Gallup said "I could prove God statistically". I think that sums up the reasons for belief in superbeings rather nicely.
The fact is that, when unlikely events continue to happen against their probability -- not just once, not twice, but over a person's entire lifetime -- that influences people to believe that some power is working against the natural flow of events.
When those things lead to much better outcomes than one might suppose the alternatives would have been (I might not have met my wife, I might not have ever ______), one begins to believe that the Power is a beneficent one, holding a plan for their lives and wishing the best for them.
What people here tend not to realize is that, when you tell someone that they believe in a work of fiction, you're telling them to ignore a lifetime's accumulated "evidence" to the contrary. I quote "evidence" here not to trivialize it, but to mean that it's not evidence in the experimental sense, but in the anecdotal sense, which is still extremely powerful - even if it doesn't live up to "The Scientific Method".
And perhaps that's where the rub is. There's no control group for an individual's life. What muddies the water even more is that some atheists thrive while some Christians suffer. And, even more, it's difficult to tell what was "best" for each person. For some people, "best" is a little house in suburbia with their wife and kids. For others, extreme wealth, others, a life of slavery or prison. Saint Paul "endured hardships on [his] journeys: he was imprisoned in Philippi, was lashed and stoned several times and almost murdered once", but he believed it all to be in God's plan for his life.
The point is that people have their own perceptions of God in their lives, and simply claiming that it's unprovable doesn't make it any less real to them. For them, it's not only NOT 'unprovable', is's already proven through a lifetime of experiences.
If you're not afraid to challenge your "unprovable" assertion, then do an experiement. Ask God to do something completely unpredictable and that wouldn't harm anyone else, and then wait and honestly observe. You just might be surprised.
While I agree with the concept of what you're saying (abstraction), I think you've missed the point of the OP's question. He's asking about "portability", not "scriptability". In other words, he doesn't want to re-write his VB Macros. Or, if he has to, he doesn't want to re-write them for every suite that supports ODF. In other words, take the format abstraction one step further into the functionality of the document as well.
Like it or not, the tech industry opened up a (extremely useful) can of worms by making documents into mini programs. If MS supports ODF, but OSS suites don't support VB Script, guess what? MS wins on features for the set of people who've written extensive macros in Office! For the abstraction you're talking about to be complete, it needs to include the macro language.
That said, I thought there was a project at one point that was writing vbscript for.... OoO, maybe? Don't know what ever happened to it. Maybe it's already in there and this is a non-issue. Honestly don't know.
Me too. Odd thing is, they've logged the fact that I saw a page telling me that my IP has been logged for viewing the page. I've never used Grokster, and only have a topical idea even of what it is.
Apparently, viewing Grokster.Com in a web browser may bring the *IAA to my door if the web server logs are used to generate a hit list. Never mind that I've never downloaded a thing from Grokster.
Sounds like the site is being used as a honeypot -- and not in a very intelligent way, either.
Heh. I see someone else reads Hack-a-Day. :-)
I just got done reading about the Radioactive Boy Scout about 15 minutes ago. Pretty wild. Sometimes I wish I had that kind of ambition.