If a programmer has never written their own compiler, how good a programmer can they be?
If a programmer has never written in assembly, how good a programmer can they be?
If a programmer has never designed their own CPU, how good a programmer can they be?
And with any of these things, not having done them doesn't imply that they couldn't do them, just that they haven't needed to. And it certainly doesn't mean that they couldn't be extremely good in other areas.
So, I guess servers are now going to have to start doing widespread cryptographic signing of web pages so that users can tell whether or not the content they asked for has been tainted by going through a dirty inter-tube.
>Phone taxes provide revenue for a state, regardless of the medium. If you take those away, as some short-sighted people want, the money will need to come from somewhere else, and it will.
I agree, and that's fine.
Put the tax on something clearly defined, rather than trying to tax 'certain kinds' of internet communications. That way, everyone knows where they stand, nobody needs to worry about having to classify what kind of data you are sending, and there'll be no need for lots of lawyers arguing over whether a particular service offering is or isn't VOIP for tax purposes.
Well if that was the classification rule then it would really be a tax on POTS/VOIP bridges, not on VOIP itself, since a VOIP system doesn't have to be connected to the POTS. Admittedly, not being connected to POTS in any way limits the usefulness - at least until most people switch away from POTS.
The idea that some internet based services are taxable and some aren't, when there's no reliable way to classify them makes for a rather broken system.
If pure VOIP starts getting taxed, then it'll just be adjusted so that it's not technically a VOIP service. E.g. is it VOIP if it includes video? What about in-game voice systems? What if it does some random surfing in the background at the same time? Is a system that sends voice clips via email a VOIP system? What if I'm exchanging music or sound effects - do they count as a 'voice'?
Indeed. It only seems to make any sense if the objective is to make a stress-level modulator, rather than to reduce your stress. That way, they switch in the stress-inducing UI when you aren't stressed enough.
Tends to be very noise and quantisation sensitive, so you can remove/reduce the blurring, but tend to get lots of artefacts instead. Probably isn't going to work too well on 8-bit compressed image data, but would be interesting to see how far it could be pushed.
Restoring images of numbers on cheques is a lot easier than restoring fine detail in a map, since your numbers become readable even when still significantly blurred.
> The medal presented to Professor Hawking was sent into space onboard Space Shuttle Discovery and spent some time on the International Space Station in July of this year.
Well that's just a shocking display of incompetence.
When will someone finally get around to creating a competent courier service that sends parcels straight to where they are supposed to be, rather than mis-directing them, and losing them for months on end.
Parent is right - and I can't see why this isn't the obvious way of looking at it.
> On paper, with color ink, we've got storage bins that can be in many more states than just binary.
The parent already considered that. 256 distinguishable colours are being assumed in this thread so, as he said, each dot has 256 possible values, i.e. it encodes 8 bits.
> Part of the reason is because we can assign meaning to combinations of different colors, and there are a lot of possible combinations.
Yes there are. For example let's combine two dots as a 'combination'. Each dot can have 256 values, so there are 256*256 = 65536 unique combinations in total. Which is 16 bits worth. I.e. 8+8, 8 bits per dot.
So why does looking at it as a combination help?
Now when it comes to adding error-correction, you need to start restricting the permissible patterns, but that's nothing to do with the theoretical capacity.
>It means you can get away with all sorts of stuff and then claim "It wasn't me mate", someone must have cloned my passport.
Only if the Government accepts that the system is not secure.
That's the real scary thing - if they refuse to accept that it isn't secure and just insist that it is (remember - as a politician, repeating something makes it true), and someone does copy your passport, you're going to have a hell of a time trying to sort the mess out.
I've never been able to understand why, despite endless experiences of computer systems being unreliable, insecure, and generally crappily designed, people still believe that computer systems are also infallible.
Yeah, because when you kick up dust in a swimming pool it looks exactly the same as it does on the moon...
The moon conspiracy argument has been done to death so very many times, and there is simply no credible evidence that Apollo was a fake. And there's a ton of evidence that it was real. I've heard all the usual conspiracy arguments, and for all of them there are entirely reasonable explanations for the supposed problems. In most cases the 'evidence' amounts to nothing more than a lack of scientific/technical understanding - all too common these days.
Why do some people have such a hard time believing that at enormous cost, with vast numbers of people working on it and committed to making it a success, you couldn't do this, just because we aren't doing it now?
But surely if you tried to change email address, the bank would send an email
to your existing one with a magic link to confirm that 1. you have access to the
original account, and 2. you actually want to make this change.
"Or not allowed to eat in their car? I've had seen several businessmen veer out of their lane after spilling some sort of sauce on their shirt."
Damn right - no way you should be eating if you are driving.
"How about we eliminate carpool lanes and not allow passengers, since you are more likely to have more engrossing conversations with them since you also have body language to process and pay attention to."
How about we be realistic and accept the fact that if you are driving you aren't going to be looking at the body language of your passenger, and unless they are particularly stupid they know that. Since they are in the car with you, they've also got a vested interest in you not crashing, and as they can also see the road situation and know that you are driving, they also can tell when is a good time to shut up. Unlike the person wittering on on the end of the mobile, who is oblivious to your situation, is much more distracting, and quite frankly doesn't care whether you crash.
"How so? Surely the net effect is zero - whether people spent their money on the movies in question or on other things, the same amount of money is moving around, its just the eventual destinations that differ."
No, no, no! You don't understand how these pesky pirates operate!
You see, each time they download something, they find out what it would have cost at retail, then they take out that exact amount of money from their own pocket and burn it. As in set fire to it.
And the worst thing is that they don't even tell anyone they've done it!
So, the money is lost to society, but because people don't know that it has been destroyed, then it doesn't increase the value of everyone else's money. Truly they have no souls.
If only they could be persuaded to spend the money on something else instead of just burning it, then the economy would be saved. But you just can't talk to these people.
"If BlueRay or HD-DVD becomes a pupular format, expect to see these players less that 100 bucks next year. Chinese brand of course."
Actually, the price will drop faster if it's an UNpopular format (which I hope it will be). If it's selling nicely, why would anyone drop the price in a hurry? (Of course manufacturing costs will drop, but there's no reason that would be reflected in retail prices).
But if it looks like it's going to flop then prices will plummet in a desperate attempt to get at least some money back.
"Does Windows have the ability to attach devices with a "noexec" option? That seems like it'd be handy in this situation."
Dunno, but if it does then people would just copy the files to somewhere where they can execute. They want to see the promised sexy pictures (or whatever), remember.
I wonder whether 'dontClickMe.exe' would also be a good hook?
Slashdot Mirror
If a programmer has never written their own compiler, how good a programmer can they be?
If a programmer has never written in assembly, how good a programmer can they be?
If a programmer has never designed their own CPU, how good a programmer can they be?
And with any of these things, not having done them doesn't imply that they couldn't do them, just that they haven't needed to. And it certainly doesn't mean that they couldn't be extremely good in other areas.
Z.
Z.
I agree, and that's fine.
Put the tax on something clearly defined, rather than trying to tax 'certain kinds' of internet communications. That way, everyone knows where they stand, nobody needs to worry about having to classify what kind of data you are sending, and there'll be no need for lots of lawyers arguing over whether a particular service offering is or isn't VOIP for tax purposes.
Z.
Z.
If pure VOIP starts getting taxed, then it'll just be adjusted so that it's not technically a VOIP service. E.g. is it VOIP if it includes video? What about in-game voice systems? What if it does some random surfing in the background at the same time? Is a system that sends voice clips via email a VOIP system? What if I'm exchanging music or sound effects - do they count as a 'voice'?
Z.
Z.
Indeed. It only seems to make any sense if the objective is to make a stress-level modulator, rather than to reduce your stress. That way, they switch in the stress-inducing UI when you aren't stressed enough.
Z.
Z.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Have you tried attaching a flag to aid visibility?
Z.
Tends to be very noise and quantisation sensitive, so you can remove/reduce the blurring, but tend to get lots of artefacts instead. Probably isn't going to work too well on 8-bit compressed image data, but would be interesting to see how far it could be pushed.
Restoring images of numbers on cheques is a lot easier than restoring fine detail in a map, since your numbers become readable even when still significantly blurred.
Z.
Z.
Well that's just a shocking display of incompetence.
When will someone finally get around to creating a competent courier service that sends parcels straight to where they are supposed to be, rather than mis-directing them, and losing them for months on end.
It's a disgrace.
Z.
So what's the problem? Put the game down, and go play.
Z.
Which is now the grand-grand parent...
Z.
> On paper, with color ink, we've got storage bins that can be in many more states than just binary.
The parent already considered that. 256 distinguishable colours are being assumed in this thread so, as he said, each dot has 256 possible values, i.e. it encodes 8 bits.
> Part of the reason is because we can assign meaning to combinations of different colors, and there are a lot of possible combinations.
Yes there are. For example let's combine two dots as a 'combination'. Each dot can have 256 values, so there are 256*256 = 65536 unique combinations in total. Which is 16 bits worth. I.e. 8+8, 8 bits per dot.
So why does looking at it as a combination help?
Now when it comes to adding error-correction, you need to start restricting the permissible patterns, but that's nothing to do with the theoretical capacity.
Z.
Only if the Government accepts that the system is not secure.
That's the real scary thing - if they refuse to accept that it isn't secure and just insist that it is (remember - as a politician, repeating something makes it true), and someone does copy your passport, you're going to have a hell of a time trying to sort the mess out.
I've never been able to understand why, despite endless experiences of computer systems being unreliable, insecure, and generally crappily designed, people still believe that computer systems are also infallible.
Z.
Yeah, because when you kick up dust in a swimming pool it looks exactly the same as it does on the moon...
The moon conspiracy argument has been done to death so very many times, and there is simply no credible evidence that Apollo was a fake. And there's a ton of evidence that it was real. I've heard all the usual conspiracy arguments, and for all of them there are entirely reasonable explanations for the supposed problems. In most cases the 'evidence' amounts to nothing more than a lack of scientific/technical understanding - all too common these days.
Why do some people have such a hard time believing that at enormous cost, with vast numbers of people working on it and committed to making it a success, you couldn't do this, just because we aren't doing it now?
Z.
If people complain about that, then essentially they are saying they don't want their bank to take security seriously.
Personally, I'd much rather my bank erred on the side of caution if there seems to be anything in the least suspicious going on.
Z.
Z.
"Its ease of use, speed, lack of viruses and spyware and affordable pricing are in line with what college students' seek today."
Z.
Damn right - no way you should be eating if you are driving.
"How about we eliminate carpool lanes and not allow passengers, since you are more likely to have more engrossing conversations with them since you also have body language to process and pay attention to."
How about we be realistic and accept the fact that if you are driving you aren't going to be looking at the body language of your passenger, and unless they are particularly stupid they know that. Since they are in the car with you, they've also got a vested interest in you not crashing, and as they can also see the road situation and know that you are driving, they also can tell when is a good time to shut up. Unlike the person wittering on on the end of the mobile, who is oblivious to your situation, is much more distracting, and quite frankly doesn't care whether you crash.
Z.
No, no, no! You don't understand how these pesky pirates operate!
You see, each time they download something, they find out what it would have cost at retail, then they take out that exact amount of money from their own pocket and burn it. As in set fire to it.
And the worst thing is that they don't even tell anyone they've done it!
So, the money is lost to society, but because people don't know that it has been destroyed, then it doesn't increase the value of everyone else's money. Truly they have no souls.
If only they could be persuaded to spend the money on something else instead of just burning it, then the economy would be saved. But you just can't talk to these people.
Z.
Actually, the price will drop faster if it's an UNpopular format (which I hope it will be). If it's selling nicely, why would anyone drop the price in a hurry? (Of course manufacturing costs will drop, but there's no reason that would be reflected in retail prices).
But if it looks like it's going to flop then prices will plummet in a desperate attempt to get at least some money back.
Z.
Dunno, but if it does then people would just copy the files to somewhere where they can execute. They want to see the promised sexy pictures (or whatever), remember.
I wonder whether 'dontClickMe.exe' would also be a good hook?
Z.
Z.