I personally don't buy CDs so I wasn't affected but from what I've heard there are some serious problems with the "patch" Sony provided. I'm just a bit curious... Does the patch keep the rootkit permanently disabled and removed? It seems to me that if we put a deviant Sony CD back into our computer that the rootkit would just be reinstalled. Then do we have to run the patch again? This is rediculous. I've do not intend on purchasing any music that has the SONY lable on it. This to me is just plain stupid. What gives Sony the right to install deviant software on "MY" pc and then make it stealth so that I don't know it's there. As far as I'm concerned I think that's the lowest a company can go. That's stooping to the level of those bastard red headed step children Spammers/Spyware installer/Virus/worm pushing assholes.
I'm to the point now watching this rediculous attempt from Sony to attach it's controls on something that I purchase the rights to use/listen/backup and trying to enforce through deviant means. What is this rootkit supposed to do!? They just wanted to install it for the Hell Of It? Nope, it's supposed to reinforce their stupid DRM bullshit and keep me from listening to the music that I paid for. I'm to the end of my rope. I think that there needs to be a group or mutiple groups put together that should purposefully break what Sony is trying to do. I've been years out of the programming/Computer industry and thus lack the skills to do it, but I think that we should form Anti-DRM, anti-Sony groups to demolish the protection that they put on their stupid CD's. I will not from this day forward purchase anymore music from Sony until they drop their Bullshit practices. I call for a Boycot of Sony's Music. I'm not sure what one man can start, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand around any longer and watch Sony impose itself on me! They want me to buy their shit, then they want to enforce by deviance their policy, and after all that they hijack my PC for WHo knows what! Ahhh! Time for a Revolution. I love my PS2, but am refusing to play it again until SONY stops all this Bullshit! No more video games purchased either. Damn you Sony! Leave me the Hell alone! Stay off of my Computer and my CD's! Damn you!
With that said, I feel somewhat better, but am still disturbed deep inside that they would have to stoop to that level to try and enforce their protection. Maybe they don't realize that as the sound comes out of the speakers it can be recorded with a MIC and pirated that way, or through LINE OUT. Damn them. Rant Over.
"You can't control a car with one hand (unless specially adapted), let alone control it with one hand while you focus on going "oh really? Yes? wow? cool!" over and over down a phone."
Really? What's so difficult about it? You can talk to a passenger in your car while driving can't you? Talking to a passenger is in most cases even more distracting because you're so used to looking at people when you talk that it may cause you to take your eyes off the road (especially if they say something like "it looked like this *hand motion*". As for driving with one hand, anyone who drives a stick shift car has to do this for at least part of their driving and personally I never really had a problem with it. Growing up driving a manual, I still drive my automatic today with one hand most of the time. It's not that difficult once you get used to it.
The real problem here is just bad drivers. There are people who don't pay enough attention to their driving. They focus on the cell phone, referee kids in the back seat, etc, etc instead of focusing on the road. THIS is the real problem. I suppose what this article is saying is that gamers tend to be able to focus on multiple tasks at once and therefore are less likely to focus too intensely on the cell phone or the kids (gamers wouldn't have these btw) or what have you.
Ive been in enough classes this year (well below my level.. dammit, I need the "letters") that Ive come to the conclusion that introductory programming courses are taught all wrong.
Write 5 lines. Write 20 lines. Write 100 lines. Of useless and pointless code.
What should be done is: Take this 1000 line programme. Add on 5 lines. Add on 20 lines. Add on 100 lines. Beacuse that would require being able to read code, too. Being able to understand what is already there is frequently more then half the battle. Saying "What the fuck does this mean?" a few dozen times is the only way to get to write comments. Being a sysadmin, rather then a full time programmer, this took me litteraly years to learn. And it was usualy "What the fuck were you doing here, brain? Dammit, one of these days were going to have to start commenting our code."
About 6 months ago, I read through a project request on one of these ebay-for-coders sites. Language optional; 1 comment per 5 LOC, but if using Perl, 1 comment per 2 LOC.. With requrements like that you are only asking to get BS comments like "Print X to the console".
Well, in your case, it very well may be cheaper. I'm just saying don't automatically assume that VoIP will be cheaper just because it's VoIP. In our situation it very clearly was the more expensive option. As always, YMMV.
Having seen smart people struggle to get Asterisk working (cool a system as it is!), I imagine there would be quite a brisk market for a pre-configured, low-power box running asterisk ready for the user to plug in some custom messages, and / or rely on existing generic ones. That is, something truly plug-and-play, providing your have at least one POTS line to which it can be connected.
Such a system needn't be *cheap* exactly in order to be quite a bit less expensive than typical PBXes, which are usually overkill for small businesses, as well as for any but the most elaborate homes. (Should be doable for a few hundred dollars, I'd guess.)
Or am I just missing that someone is selling such a beast already?
... at least for us (a small business). Once you add in all of the per-line charges, the hardware, the setup fees, the broadband, and the fact that if you want to use DSL, you still have to buy at least one phone line from the phone company. Plus, of course, the reliability of broadband still isn't nearly at the level of hard telephone lines. After taking this into consideration, unfortunately, going through the local Ma Bell monopoly was still the cheapest and most reliable option for us (a business needing 3-5 phone lines).
As I see it, one of the problems with this is simply determining where "phone" services begin and end. For example, while Vonage or Lingo may be a real 'phone replacement' and for 99.9% of users should be able to do 911 service, how about Skype? If you only use Skypeout and you only use it via a headset on a laptop, is that VoIP? It certainly *is* "Voice over IP", but does that make it a phone service that should need 911 service?
If they start classifying things like Skype as a voice telecommunications service and requiring 911 calls to function, then what's next? 911 requirements for Teamspeak?
Maybe a VoIP "phone" is one which can place a call which eventually gets circuit switched on one end, even if 99% of the transit is packet switched.
It seems to me that what really needs to happen is a revamping of the 911 system to deal with the portability of numbers. You want 911? Fine, go somewhere and configure your address any time you move the phone around. When you dial 911, it transmits your entered address. Possibly the hardware/software acting as your phone also monitors the MAC address of its default gateway after you change the address associated; if the MAC address changes but the address has not, a warning goes out to emergency services that notes that there is reason to believe the address may not be completely reliable (and thus, hopefully an emergency operator can confirm it with you when you call).
Lots of little things rely on the phone network. My house alarm, for example, will freak out completely if I cut my phone service entirely, because it uses the phone line to keep in touch with the alarm monitoring service.
Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office. It's not just a philosophical argument, everyone I know has ran into problems with a.doc from a different version that doesn't open. It is hard for some people to do work at home, then bring it to work/school and use it! If it's a.doc, it should work in every version of work. The same goes for all the other formats.
Site overloaded. Either this has been linked from somewhere with heavy traffic, or you're experimenting with a clever script to try and mess with the pictures. Come back later, or stop it.
I swear this is SO true. I remember the last console wars when PS2 and Xbox were both trying to replace the PC / become home entertainment solutions. I ALMOST bought a PS2 when I saw the keyboard and mouse adapter, plus all the hype talking about how soon you would be able to use the PS2 instead of your PC for things like surfing and email. Hell, I thought, a PC for $300 can't be bad right?
Then there was the Xbox that again was supposed to be the CENTER OF HOME ENTERTAINMENT. I ended up buying an Xbox when I realized that all I really wanted was a gaming system and the Xbox seemed like the best one at the time (graphics-wise). Currently I hardly even use it (all the games I want are on my PC) and really only use it as a $300 DVD player, since it's easier than hooking up my computer to play on my TV.
"Actually corporations are ment to place profit above all else. If the aditional profits likely to result from breaking a law are likely to be greater than the likely losses from fines and lawsuits then they could argue an "obligation" to break the law. Even to treat fines as a "cost of doing business"."
Using this logic a drug dealer could claim an "obligation" to traffic drugs since if the risk of getting caught was outweighed by the potential profits from selling dope. Similarly, if an athlete thought steroids could increase his chances of winning and the chance of getting caught was small, he could argue an "obligation" to use performance enhancing drugs.
While the MAIN function of a business is to make money, making money does not absolve a corporation from all moral obligations. There's still a little something called "Business Ethics", and to me it's sad that people like you could actually think it doesn't exist.
"if x==456 then//checks for conditional x and executes code if x is true - this is not a good comment if x==456 then//checks to see if x is equal to 456."
Actually, IMHO, those are bad comments. Too much commenting, while not as bad as too little commenting, is still a problem. Writing too many comments is not only time consuming for the developer, but it makes it harder to find the important comments in the sea of crap. Also, if the program is modified, all the comments must be changed as well. This can be a tedious and time consuming process for large projects.
Personally, I try to use comments for parts in the code that might be confusing. Even for a novice programmer, code like if(x == 456) is self-explanatory, no comments are needed. But complicated statements involving many different variables from different parts of the file may be confusing, and likewise merit comments. Also, comments with input/output or precondition/postcondition for functions might not be a bad idea either.
Use comments when you need them, but don't write so many comments that they become useless.
Sony still not "getting it". c writes "Mark Russinovich continues his investigation of Sony's DRM as he tries out the official uninstaller. His verdict? 'I've analyzed virulent forms of spyware/adware that provide more straightforward means of uninstall.'" Relatedly Cronos1388 writes "According to the Inquirer an Italian group is also suing Sony over the rootkit." Also, an unexpected side effect of this technology is that script kiddies have been able to leverage Sony's tool to hide unauthorized cheat programs from the watchful eye of MMO creators.
Intelligent design supporters ousted. PMuse writes "The Register and others are reporting that all eight of the members of the Dover, PA school board that had required Intelligent Design to be taught alongside Evolution have been canned by voters in yesterday's election."
What does avian flu look like? DevL writes "Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson has managed to capture images of a H5N1 (bird flu) virus entering and taking control of a cell. While the text is in Swedish, the images speak for themselves."
Torrent user goes up the river. stinerman writes to tell us that the Hong Kong man who was recently arrested for making several movies available via BitTorrent has had his sentence handed down. Chan aka "Big Crook" uploaded Daredevil, Red Planet, and Miss Congeniality which landed him 3 months in jail.
Golden weighs in on OpenDocument debate. OSS_ilation writes "With so much FUD and anti-FUD flying in the face of Massachusetts' decision to go with OpenDocument, it's no surprise that open source advocate Bernard Golden weighs in with his take on current events."
User says new downloadable television just plain "sucks." Thomas Hawk writes "In the past few weeks the three major studios have all announced deals to begin offering downloadable television for consumers -- Apple/ABC, DirecTV/NBC, and Comcast/CBS. The problem with each of these respective offerings is that they largely suck. Apple sells expensive low res limited television from ABC. NBC's new service will only work on DirecTV DVRs (uh hello McFly, why pay money for this service when I can just record it for free). And CBS' downloadable programming could contain commercials."
Gimme karma now, kthx.
-your friendly neighborhood karma whore.
(I would like to say in advance: "I didn't mean THAT kind of karma")
Actually, for me, it's far better to do the reverse. Personally I use Windows mostly for games, something that I cannot really do effectively with WINE. For work stuff, I use mostly Windows applications like firefox, openoffice, notepad++, etc and then use cygwin for all the linux tools I need that either are not ported or are not ported effectively to Windows.
Most applications you would use Linux for are not necessarily performance intensive (I'm sure some of you out there do use performance intensive apps on your Linux box, but most people don't), while stuff like games (and I'm sure there are other things, perhaps photoshop, 3ds max, etc) that you can only run on Windows really are demanding performance wise. In this case, using windows with cygwin is the best way to go.
" One the one hand it's useful, but on the other it contradicts our constitutuion."
No, actually it doesn't. That's something privacy nazis seem to forget. There is NOT a right to privacy in the constitution. The right to privacy is a result of several Supreme Court decisions over the years, but it is not written in the constitution at all.
Of course, I was assuming you were talking about the gathering of the information (which may or may not be a violation of the right to privacy). If you were talking about holding the information well then you really just don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Are you really serious? Now I must preface with this by saying that I don't necessarily support this kind of stuff, but honestly, it just isn't that big of a deal. I live in America and plan to for the rest of my life and I just don't see it affecting me in any serious way. I'm a more or less law-abiding citizen, and if my government wants to collect some information on me like whether I stayed at a hotel or not, I really just don't care that much. They don't personally know me and I will probably never come in contact with any of the people that know I stayed at that hotel. Even if I did, SO WHAT? I just don't buy all these conspiracy theories like what if the government thinks you're a terrorist and interrogates you and holds you without trial, etc, etc. Sure, there are a few horror stories (and I'm pretty sure most of them are embellished) but in reality that kind of stuff just doesn't happen.
Now I don't want to sound like a troll, but it seems like most of the privacy nazis posting on here are the type of people that just want to fight the system. They are generally against government because of some kind of latent teenage rebellion or what have you. In general the government is not out to get you and does not need to be constantly treated by contempt.
Fair enough. What I really meant was that the company's actions result in something that is commendable e.g. the abolition of segregation laws or in this case the creation of a federal privacy law.
First of all, I agree, companies' primary job is to make money. But the fact that a company's actions may be motivated by profit does not mean they aren't commendable. Think about it, when google supported OSS development, everyone praised it, even though google was just in it for the money.
Likewise, just because MS supports a federal privacy law doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Too many people on Slashdot seem to be looking for reasons to hate microsoft.
Secondly, while companies PRIMARY goal is to make money, many companies have foundations that are entirely non profit charity organizations. Just because a corporation is involved, do not automatically assume evil as the first reply to the parent did. Now I'm not saying that this particular MS move is out of the goodness of their heart, just that companies in general are not solely greedy money-making machines.
I would say that the majority of users who switch to firefox came from IE. But as users realize there are more browser options than just the one that came with their computer, they will begin to pick and choose between them. Personally, I switched to firefox but then realized that Opera loaded much faster and had a more intuitive (to me) user interface. Now it doesn't have all the crazy extensions firefox has, but I don't really use those and I wouldn't imagine most users would either.
Of course I must admit that I soon switched back to firefox because Opera still has a few bugs in it, specifically one that keeps me from using personalized google (it tells me cookies have been disabled, but they haven't!). BTW, if I'm simply doing something wrong and it's just a fix in the options, let me know.
Anyways, as more users migrate away from IE, firefox will have to step it up if it wants to retain all of its users. I think in the end we will see a distribution that looks something like ~70% IE, and 30% other browsers, with the 30% divided according to the most useful third party browser.
Would you ever WANT "a playlist of all songs in your library, over 2 minutes and under 5 minutes, by an artist with a name containing a 'Q', rated over four stars, in the dance genre or the hip hop genre, that haven't been played in over two weeks and have been played more than 27 times, with a bitrate over 96kHz, added to the library after June of 2004 ?"
Maybe you would, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. All those options are interesting but in practical use the only things useful out of there are the last play time, total times played, and time added to the library.
When are you going to make a playlist of artists with 'Q'? Won't you just pick certain artists? I can't think of a time when I would exclude songs of a certain length (most songs are around the same time or they're trance/techno). Who needs a star rating AND a number of times played? Finally, I don't really give a shit about bitrate because I can't tell the difference.
Granted, I have a DECENT (though not amazing, Athlon 2600+ w/ 512 MB RAM) computer and OpenOffice Writer loads in less than 10 seconds from a cold start. Not as fast as say, notepad, but certainly not anything of substance. If you don't have 10 seconds to spare, you might need to loosen up your schedule;)
If a company can set cookies on half of the pages you visit, linking "millions of variables" to an email address is just a matter of time and cooperations with other companies.
And? I still fail to see the actual harm that can come of this besides google knowing that I read slashdot more than I should. Privacy advocates seem obsessed with other people not knowing anything about them. My question is why? What exactly could this innocent information harm? I want an actual scenario where this is a danger not just some vague "it's a good idea" type bullshit.
Well, where do you think those fossils came from? Why don't we see any remains of humans dating back that far? An obvious conclusion would be that humans weren't around then, and must have come from something that was alive. There's some empirical evidence. Granted, it is questionable, and that is why evolution is a theory. Intelligent design on the other hand, has no empirical evidence to suggest that it is even partially true. That is why intelligent design is a religion.
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I personally don't buy CDs so I wasn't affected but from what I've heard there are some serious problems with the "patch" Sony provided. I'm just a bit curious... Does the patch keep the rootkit permanently disabled and removed? It seems to me that if we put a deviant Sony CD back into our computer that the rootkit would just be reinstalled. Then do we have to run the patch again? This is rediculous. I've do not intend on purchasing any music that has the SONY lable on it. This to me is just plain stupid. What gives Sony the right to install deviant software on "MY" pc and then make it stealth so that I don't know it's there. As far as I'm concerned I think that's the lowest a company can go. That's stooping to the level of those bastard red headed step children Spammers/Spyware installer/Virus/worm pushing assholes.
I'm to the point now watching this rediculous attempt from Sony to attach it's controls on something that I purchase the rights to use/listen/backup and trying to enforce through deviant means. What is this rootkit supposed to do!? They just wanted to install it for the Hell Of It? Nope, it's supposed to reinforce their stupid DRM bullshit and keep me from listening to the music that I paid for. I'm to the end of my rope. I think that there needs to be a group or mutiple groups put together that should purposefully break what Sony is trying to do. I've been years out of the programming/Computer industry and thus lack the skills to do it, but I think that we should form Anti-DRM, anti-Sony groups to demolish the protection that they put on their stupid CD's. I will not from this day forward purchase anymore music from Sony until they drop their Bullshit practices. I call for a Boycot of Sony's Music. I'm not sure what one man can start, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand around any longer and watch Sony impose itself on me! They want me to buy their shit, then they want to enforce by deviance their policy, and after all that they hijack my PC for WHo knows what! Ahhh! Time for a Revolution. I love my PS2, but am refusing to play it again until SONY stops all this Bullshit! No more video games purchased either. Damn you Sony! Leave me the Hell alone! Stay off of my Computer and my CD's! Damn you!
With that said, I feel somewhat better, but am still disturbed deep inside that they would have to stoop to that level to try and enforce their protection. Maybe they don't realize that as the sound comes out of the speakers it can be recorded with a MIC and pirated that way, or through LINE OUT. Damn them. Rant Over.
"You can't control a car with one hand (unless specially adapted), let alone control it with one hand while you focus on going "oh really? Yes? wow? cool!" over and over down a phone."
Really? What's so difficult about it? You can talk to a passenger in your car while driving can't you? Talking to a passenger is in most cases even more distracting because you're so used to looking at people when you talk that it may cause you to take your eyes off the road (especially if they say something like "it looked like this *hand motion*". As for driving with one hand, anyone who drives a stick shift car has to do this for at least part of their driving and personally I never really had a problem with it. Growing up driving a manual, I still drive my automatic today with one hand most of the time. It's not that difficult once you get used to it.
The real problem here is just bad drivers. There are people who don't pay enough attention to their driving. They focus on the cell phone, referee kids in the back seat, etc, etc instead of focusing on the road. THIS is the real problem. I suppose what this article is saying is that gamers tend to be able to focus on multiple tasks at once and therefore are less likely to focus too intensely on the cell phone or the kids (gamers wouldn't have these btw) or what have you.
Ive been in enough classes this year (well below my level.. dammit, I need the "letters") that Ive come to the conclusion that introductory programming courses are taught all wrong.
Write 5 lines. Write 20 lines. Write 100 lines. Of useless and pointless code.
What should be done is: Take this 1000 line programme. Add on 5 lines. Add on 20 lines. Add on 100 lines. Beacuse that would require being able to read code, too. Being able to understand what is already there is frequently more then half the battle. Saying "What the fuck does this mean?" a few dozen times is the only way to get to write comments. Being a sysadmin, rather then a full time programmer, this took me litteraly years to learn. And it was usualy "What the fuck were you doing here, brain? Dammit, one of these days were going to have to start commenting our code."
About 6 months ago, I read through a project request on one of these ebay-for-coders sites. Language optional; 1 comment per 5 LOC, but if using Perl, 1 comment per 2 LOC.. With requrements like that you are only asking to get BS comments like "Print X to the console".
Well, in your case, it very well may be cheaper. I'm just saying don't automatically assume that VoIP will be cheaper just because it's VoIP. In our situation it very clearly was the more expensive option. As always, YMMV.
Having seen smart people struggle to get Asterisk working (cool a system as it is!), I imagine there would be quite a brisk market for a pre-configured, low-power box running asterisk ready for the user to plug in some custom messages, and / or rely on existing generic ones. That is, something truly plug-and-play, providing your have at least one POTS line to which it can be connected.
Such a system needn't be *cheap* exactly in order to be quite a bit less expensive than typical PBXes, which are usually overkill for small businesses, as well as for any but the most elaborate homes. (Should be doable for a few hundred dollars, I'd guess.)
Or am I just missing that someone is selling such a beast already?
... at least for us (a small business). Once you add in all of the per-line charges, the hardware, the setup fees, the broadband, and the fact that if you want to use DSL, you still have to buy at least one phone line from the phone company. Plus, of course, the reliability of broadband still isn't nearly at the level of hard telephone lines. After taking this into consideration, unfortunately, going through the local Ma Bell monopoly was still the cheapest and most reliable option for us (a business needing 3-5 phone lines).
As I see it, one of the problems with this is simply determining where "phone" services begin and end. For example, while Vonage or Lingo may be a real 'phone replacement' and for 99.9% of users should be able to do 911 service, how about Skype? If you only use Skypeout and you only use it via a headset on a laptop, is that VoIP? It certainly *is* "Voice over IP", but does that make it a phone service that should need 911 service?
If they start classifying things like Skype as a voice telecommunications service and requiring 911 calls to function, then what's next? 911 requirements for Teamspeak?
Maybe a VoIP "phone" is one which can place a call which eventually gets circuit switched on one end, even if 99% of the transit is packet switched.
It seems to me that what really needs to happen is a revamping of the 911 system to deal with the portability of numbers. You want 911? Fine, go somewhere and configure your address any time you move the phone around. When you dial 911, it transmits your entered address. Possibly the hardware/software acting as your phone also monitors the MAC address of its default gateway after you change the address associated; if the MAC address changes but the address has not, a warning goes out to emergency services that notes that there is reason to believe the address may not be completely reliable (and thus, hopefully an emergency operator can confirm it with you when you call).
Lots of little things rely on the phone network. My house alarm, for example, will freak out completely if I cut my phone service entirely, because it uses the phone line to keep in touch with the alarm monitoring service.
Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office. It's not just a philosophical argument, everyone I know has ran into problems with a.doc from a different version that doesn't open. It is hard for some people to do work at home, then bring it to work/school and use it! If it's a.doc, it should work in every version of work. The same goes for all the other formats.
py
Definately a 5, Insightful comment.
At least!
Site overloaded. Either this has been linked from somewhere with heavy traffic, or you're experimenting with a clever script to try and mess with the pictures. Come back later, or stop it.
I swear this is SO true. I remember the last console wars when PS2 and Xbox were both trying to replace the PC / become home entertainment solutions. I ALMOST bought a PS2 when I saw the keyboard and mouse adapter, plus all the hype talking about how soon you would be able to use the PS2 instead of your PC for things like surfing and email. Hell, I thought, a PC for $300 can't be bad right?
Then there was the Xbox that again was supposed to be the CENTER OF HOME ENTERTAINMENT. I ended up buying an Xbox when I realized that all I really wanted was a gaming system and the Xbox seemed like the best one at the time (graphics-wise). Currently I hardly even use it (all the games I want are on my PC) and really only use it as a $300 DVD player, since it's easier than hooking up my computer to play on my TV.
Yeah well, what can you do? Pimping ain't easy.
"Actually corporations are ment to place profit above all else. If the aditional profits likely to result from breaking a law are likely to be greater than the likely losses from fines and lawsuits then they could argue an "obligation" to break the law. Even to treat fines as a "cost of doing business"."
Using this logic a drug dealer could claim an "obligation" to traffic drugs since if the risk of getting caught was outweighed by the potential profits from selling dope. Similarly, if an athlete thought steroids could increase his chances of winning and the chance of getting caught was small, he could argue an "obligation" to use performance enhancing drugs.
While the MAIN function of a business is to make money, making money does not absolve a corporation from all moral obligations. There's still a little something called "Business Ethics", and to me it's sad that people like you could actually think it doesn't exist.
"if x==456 then //checks for conditional x and executes code if x is true - this is not a good comment if x==456 then //checks to see if x is equal to 456."
Actually, IMHO, those are bad comments. Too much commenting, while not as bad as too little commenting, is still a problem. Writing too many comments is not only time consuming for the developer, but it makes it harder to find the important comments in the sea of crap. Also, if the program is modified, all the comments must be changed as well. This can be a tedious and time consuming process for large projects.
Personally, I try to use comments for parts in the code that might be confusing. Even for a novice programmer, code like if(x == 456) is self-explanatory, no comments are needed. But complicated statements involving many different variables from different parts of the file may be confusing, and likewise merit comments. Also, comments with input/output or precondition/postcondition for functions might not be a bad idea either.
Use comments when you need them, but don't write so many comments that they become useless.
Sony still not "getting it". c writes "Mark Russinovich continues his investigation of Sony's DRM as he tries out the official uninstaller. His verdict? 'I've analyzed virulent forms of spyware/adware that provide more straightforward means of uninstall.'" Relatedly Cronos1388 writes "According to the Inquirer an Italian group is also suing Sony over the rootkit." Also, an unexpected side effect of this technology is that script kiddies have been able to leverage Sony's tool to hide unauthorized cheat programs from the watchful eye of MMO creators.
Intelligent design supporters ousted. PMuse writes "The Register and others are reporting that all eight of the members of the Dover, PA school board that had required Intelligent Design to be taught alongside Evolution have been canned by voters in yesterday's election."
What does avian flu look like? DevL writes "Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson has managed to capture images of a H5N1 (bird flu) virus entering and taking control of a cell. While the text is in Swedish, the images speak for themselves."
Torrent user goes up the river. stinerman writes to tell us that the Hong Kong man who was recently arrested for making several movies available via BitTorrent has had his sentence handed down. Chan aka "Big Crook" uploaded Daredevil, Red Planet, and Miss Congeniality which landed him 3 months in jail.
Golden weighs in on OpenDocument debate. OSS_ilation writes "With so much FUD and anti-FUD flying in the face of Massachusetts' decision to go with OpenDocument, it's no surprise that open source advocate Bernard Golden weighs in with his take on current events."
User says new downloadable television just plain "sucks." Thomas Hawk writes "In the past few weeks the three major studios have all announced deals to begin offering downloadable television for consumers -- Apple/ABC, DirecTV/NBC, and Comcast/CBS. The problem with each of these respective offerings is that they largely suck. Apple sells expensive low res limited television from ABC. NBC's new service will only work on DirecTV DVRs (uh hello McFly, why pay money for this service when I can just record it for free). And CBS' downloadable programming could contain commercials."
Gimme karma now, kthx.
-your friendly neighborhood karma whore.
(I would like to say in advance: "I didn't mean THAT kind of karma")
Actually, for me, it's far better to do the reverse. Personally I use Windows mostly for games, something that I cannot really do effectively with WINE. For work stuff, I use mostly Windows applications like firefox, openoffice, notepad++, etc and then use cygwin for all the linux tools I need that either are not ported or are not ported effectively to Windows. Most applications you would use Linux for are not necessarily performance intensive (I'm sure some of you out there do use performance intensive apps on your Linux box, but most people don't), while stuff like games (and I'm sure there are other things, perhaps photoshop, 3ds max, etc) that you can only run on Windows really are demanding performance wise. In this case, using windows with cygwin is the best way to go.
" One the one hand it's useful, but on the other it contradicts our constitutuion."
No, actually it doesn't. That's something privacy nazis seem to forget. There is NOT a right to privacy in the constitution. The right to privacy is a result of several Supreme Court decisions over the years, but it is not written in the constitution at all.
Of course, I was assuming you were talking about the gathering of the information (which may or may not be a violation of the right to privacy). If you were talking about holding the information well then you really just don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
P.S.
Before making any more statements about what is / is not in the constitution please check out http://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html
Are you really serious? Now I must preface with this by saying that I don't necessarily support this kind of stuff, but honestly, it just isn't that big of a deal. I live in America and plan to for the rest of my life and I just don't see it affecting me in any serious way. I'm a more or less law-abiding citizen, and if my government wants to collect some information on me like whether I stayed at a hotel or not, I really just don't care that much. They don't personally know me and I will probably never come in contact with any of the people that know I stayed at that hotel. Even if I did, SO WHAT? I just don't buy all these conspiracy theories like what if the government thinks you're a terrorist and interrogates you and holds you without trial, etc, etc. Sure, there are a few horror stories (and I'm pretty sure most of them are embellished) but in reality that kind of stuff just doesn't happen.
Now I don't want to sound like a troll, but it seems like most of the privacy nazis posting on here are the type of people that just want to fight the system.
They are generally against government because of some kind of latent teenage rebellion or what have you. In general the government is not out to get you and does not need to be constantly treated by contempt.
Fair enough. What I really meant was that the company's actions result in something that is commendable e.g. the abolition of segregation laws or in this case the creation of a federal privacy law.
First of all, I agree, companies' primary job is to make money. But the fact that a company's actions may be motivated by profit does not mean they aren't commendable. Think about it, when google supported OSS development, everyone praised it, even though google was just in it for the money.
Likewise, just because MS supports a federal privacy law doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Too many people on Slashdot seem to be looking for reasons to hate microsoft.
Secondly, while companies PRIMARY goal is to make money, many companies have foundations that are entirely non profit charity organizations. Just because a corporation is involved, do not automatically assume evil as the first reply to the parent did. Now I'm not saying that this particular MS move is out of the goodness of their heart, just that companies in general are not solely greedy money-making machines.
I would say that the majority of users who switch to firefox came from IE. But as users realize there are more browser options than just the one that came with their computer, they will begin to pick and choose between them. Personally, I switched to firefox but then realized that Opera loaded much faster and had a more intuitive (to me) user interface. Now it doesn't have all the crazy extensions firefox has, but I don't really use those and I wouldn't imagine most users would either. Of course I must admit that I soon switched back to firefox because Opera still has a few bugs in it, specifically one that keeps me from using personalized google (it tells me cookies have been disabled, but they haven't!). BTW, if I'm simply doing something wrong and it's just a fix in the options, let me know. Anyways, as more users migrate away from IE, firefox will have to step it up if it wants to retain all of its users. I think in the end we will see a distribution that looks something like ~70% IE, and 30% other browsers, with the 30% divided according to the most useful third party browser.
Would you ever WANT "a playlist of all songs in your library, over 2 minutes and under 5 minutes, by an artist with a name containing a 'Q', rated over four stars, in the dance genre or the hip hop genre, that haven't been played in over two weeks and have been played more than 27 times, with a bitrate over 96kHz, added to the library after June of 2004 ?"
Maybe you would, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. All those options are interesting but in practical use the only things useful out of there are the last play time, total times played, and time added to the library.
When are you going to make a playlist of artists with 'Q'? Won't you just pick certain artists? I can't think of a time when I would exclude songs of a certain length (most songs are around the same time or they're trance/techno). Who needs a star rating AND a number of times played? Finally, I don't really give a shit about bitrate because I can't tell the difference.
Granted, I have a DECENT (though not amazing, Athlon 2600+ w/ 512 MB RAM) computer and OpenOffice Writer loads in less than 10 seconds from a cold start. Not as fast as say, notepad, but certainly not anything of substance. If you don't have 10 seconds to spare, you might need to loosen up your schedule ;)
If a company can set cookies on half of the pages you visit, linking "millions of variables" to an email address is just a matter of time and cooperations with other companies.
And? I still fail to see the actual harm that can come of this besides google knowing that I read slashdot more than I should. Privacy advocates seem obsessed with other people not knowing anything about them. My question is why? What exactly could this innocent information harm? I want an actual scenario where this is a danger not just some vague "it's a good idea" type bullshit.
Well, where do you think those fossils came from? Why don't we see any remains of humans dating back that far? An obvious conclusion would be that humans weren't around then, and must have come from something that was alive. There's some empirical evidence. Granted, it is questionable, and that is why evolution is a theory. Intelligent design on the other hand, has no empirical evidence to suggest that it is even partially true. That is why intelligent design is a religion.