I'm assuming you mean overdose to death and not just overdose, because it's pretty easy to overdose on a bezo. You don't necessarily feel an overdose and you're not going to know you did it until you wake up later with amnesia.
Combine a normal dose of benzos with alcohol and you can die. It's extremely easy to overdose and die, I'm not sure why you minimize the risk. Many, many people mix alcohol and other drugs thinking it's no big deal. Sometimes they live, sometimes they die. Please don't do it.
You're correct though, taken by themselves you can take 100 or even 1,000 times a therapeutic dose and be fine. You'll sleep for days, or even weeks, but you'll eventually wake up.
First off, I am not a doctor or a pharmacist, but I do have an interest in chemicals/drugs/medications and research them frequently. That being stated, the drugs you mentioned are all benzodiazepines. They are GABA agonists which slow the electrical signaling in the brain and can produce a relaxing/sedating effect similar to alcohol (imagine feeling drunk, but without the loss of motor coordination). They are used as sedatives and as anxiolytics (anxiety reducing drugs) for SHORT TERM USE ONLY (2-4 weeks)! Sorry about the caps, but it's important. Many, many people have been harmed by doctors who prescribed the drugs inappropriately. Benzo withdrawal is far worse than, say, opiate (heroin, morphine) withdrawal and it can take years for the body to undo the changes the drugs induce in the brains of users. People have committed suicide while going through benzo withdrawal.
Now, how safe are the benzos? Relatively speaking, they're pretty safe when used properly, and it's difficult to overdose to the point of death. You can take 100 times the effective dose and live, you'll just take a nice long nap (coma) and be okay when you awake. However, and this is extremely important, if you combine alcohol with a normal dose of benzos you may die. Seriously, please don't do this to yourself!
More common problems with the benzos arise from the fact that they also lower inhibitions. I have read stories of people going on gambling/sex/whatever binges because their inhibitions were reduced from the drug. There's also the possibility that people will re-dose once they're feeling nice and happy from the drug.
Another serious problem with the drugs is something called anterograde amnesia. This typically occurs in overdose situations when the user doesn't realize they have overdosed (it's subtle and sneaks up on you). Anterograde amnesia occurs when the brain cannot commit items in short-term memory to long-term memory. What happens in this situation is that the user is completely in the moment and coherent, but because memories don't make it to the part of the brain that does long-term storage, the user will have no recollection of events later on when the drug has worn off! I have experienced this myself and it is not a good feeling to have no recollection of the past two days. In my case, I woke up on Monday thinking it was Saturday, as I had no recollection of the weekend, and I started doing some activities that had been planned for Saturday that I had already completed. I spoke to people on the phone in my overdosed state and they said I sounded fine when I asked them about it later. I felt weird all day (and for a couple of days after that), I'm guessing this is what the parents meant by saying they had a hangover.
The main point I'm trying to make is that "sleep aids" can be deadly and should not be treated as benign drugs. Those two kids could have easily killed someone with their damn milkshake.
I grew up in a more rural area of central Illinois where it was very common to have bars that could only be reached by vehicle (or foot I suppose) as there was no public transportation to speak of. Sure, you could probably call for a cab and wait a long time for it to arrive, but what are the odds of doing that once you've driven yourself to the bar?
I learned to program in the early 80's on Apple ]['s as part of my school district's gifted program when I was in first grade. We started with Logo and those plastic CRT overlays and then moved on to Apple Basic using some programming manuals developed by our school district (IL #66). Kids are capable of learning to program while they are learning to read and when they start that early there's no need for typing classes later since they've already developed the skill.
My mother was a school teacher which certainly helped and she brought a computer home each summer, at about the same time my Dad bought a TRS-80 which I setup and programmed and I was into video games since I got an Atari in, I think, '82. Video games definitely encouraged my experimentation with computers as did my interest in those choose your own adventure books and the Infocom text adventure games. My public library had an Apple lab and I was there several times a week using the computers and playing games with the high school students; this was as an elementary school student.
You need to cultivate the interest by creating a supportive environment at an early age. Public schools tend to fail students by focusing on boring things like tests and facts that turn kids off to school instead of just making learning fun. Kids learn a lot more when they're having fun at play; there is plenty of time to focus on course material at the high school and collegiate level.
I know this sounds like I'm trolling, but I'm not - it's a serious question. How do you know you can trust open source projects? I've always assumed that large projects - particularly linux distros and their package repositories - have some kind of QA and code audit system in place, but how do they work? Are a couple of naughty obsfucated lines really going to get caught?
I know it's a cliche, but unless you actually audit the code (and don't miss something) you can't really trust it. The best that you can do is trust a group like the OpenBSD guys to perform code audits for you.
I didn't see anyone mention the infamous Debian SSL bug, so here's a link:
Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL/SSH Keys Guessable. The gist of the story is that some random package maintainer was getting warnings about a memory region containing an uninitialized value in some OpenSSL code. Rather than actually looking at the code and trying to understand what was going on, the maintainer incorrectly assumed that their debugging/profiling tool was flagging an actual problem and simply initialized the region to 0. The problem was that this memory region was intended to be used as a source of entropy. To make matters worse, this bug went unnoticed for about two years.
So, to answer your question, yes, the QA/audit process is probably broken; it's most likely geared towards testing application functionality versus testing for correctness. And no, two lines of incorrect code are probably not going to be noticed.
As far as real solutions go, I suppose it depends on your level of paranoia. Sure you can use an OpenBSD based firewall at home and limit your inbound/outbound traffic, but as soon as you connect to a remote service, you have to trust them as well. In "Secrets and Lies", Bruce Schneier comes to the conclusion that technical measures are simply not enough and that you have to manage sofware-related risks the same way you would manage risks to your home, automobile, or life, with insurance.
A friend of mine is looking to replace his car and we've had this buy new versus buy used conversation several times. It's true that if you buy a new car you will typically be covered by a long warranty and won't need to do much other than routine maintenance (oil, brakes, air filters, wiper blades, coolant, etc.) for several years.
That being said, if you're willing to work on a vehicle yourself, you can save thousands of dollars by buying a used vehicle. If you buy used (or even new) and take it into a repair shop, you will get screwed out of your money. For example, my Saturn SC2 needed a new radiator this past spring. The local Saturn dealership wanted $600 to replace the thing; they charge more than a hundred dollars an hour for labor. I ordered a new one for about $150 from radiator.com and received it the next day. New hoses and coolant ran me about another $40 and it took me about five hours to install (I flushed the coolant system otherwise it would have taken closer to 2-3 hours). I know some people are intimidated by cars, but for the most part (basically everything except engine internals and transmissions) they're relatively simple machines.
As for cars being an investment, that all depends on the type of vehicle. Corvettes for example are known to start appreciating in value after a few decades. The same thing goes for many other cars (eg. old Pontiacs), but you're typically dealing with restored or partially restored vehicles at that point.
Oh BTW, I hope you have a new mechanic. I'm curious as to how your brakes suddenly gave out while driving. The brake system isn't very complex and a proper inspection should have revealed any outstanding issues like rusty brake lines, sticking or seized calipers, loose mounting hardware, etc.
I'm very interested in single-use credit card numbers, but everyone that claims to offer them really don't. From what I've seen, what they offer are credit card numbers that have user-specified expiration dates and/or set spending limits.
What I'm interested in is to be able to generate a list of twenty single-use credit card numbers (think one-time pad) and then be able to use each number once after which it becomes invalid. As far as I know, no one's offering this service.
So yes, signaling your wealth IS a useful product function. The problem with the app is not that it "merely" signals wealth, but that it... doesn't, because it could easily be faked.
First of all, I've got to say that the application developer was a genius; he's made the equivalent of a Gucci handbag for the iPhone. It's a real shame that Apple's trying to prevent people from selling iPhone applications that other people want to buy.
I wouldn't be surprised if the developer had a legal case against Apple since they approved the application, then pulled it without cause and have now cost him sales. I'm just waiting for Apple to pull some stunt like refund everyones' money and then refuse to pay the developer what he's owed.
I was actually getting excited yesterday after reading about this applicaton. I was just waiting to hear about someone creating knock-off "I Am Rich" applications like you see happen with other luxury goods (watches, handbags, etc).
I read that as meaning the insurer can avoid a costly test to determine if you have a cholesterol problem. The idea being that the insurer is going to want to run a battery of tests against an individual before it accepts them for coverage.
Intelligent people have better health care and better resources making them more likely to reproduce and afford more children.
Clearly you've never watched Idiocracy. The idea is that the intelligent people in society delay having children in order to focus on their careers. The problem is that they never get around to having those kids. Meanwhile the trailer-trash have tons of kids. Fast forward a thousand years and you end up with a society of idiots.
Couldn't one still argue that such a person is not really interested in the other's well-being, but is simply donating money to charitable organizations in order to feel better about themselves? Thus the reason behind the donation is not to help others, but to help oneself?
Stock analysts make daily predictions based on past behavior. This is not only predictive, but if it wasn't for this past analysis, the predictions would be largely meaningless and highly inaccurate.
But I thought those analysts' predictions were largely meaningless and highly inaccurate? It's my understanding that the index funds (which I believe are managed by computers and not people) do much over the long term than any analyst.
IMHO the father screwed up by waiting until the kid was a teenager. I started programming computers when I was five; I would have killed to have a parent that could have mentored me instead of having to teach myself from books and magazines (no Internet back then, but there was RAINBOW and some Apple(?) rag that I can't recall the name to, I just remember they had an issue about computer graphics that talked about the Don Bluth games and Tron).
I got my start with computers in my school district's gifted program (Illinois district #66 FTW); this was back in 1982 and Apple had donated a bunch of equipment (thank you!!!). My Mom was a teacher so she was able to bring a computer home for the summer. I spent a lot of my early years working on the computers at the local library during the school year and then working at home over the summer. I got some pirated games from the high schoolers that also used the library's lab and I spent a lot of time going through some BASIC programming texts (up through peek/poke IIRC). I also played with LOGO quite a bit. At about the same time, my Dad picked up a TRS-80 from Radio Shack and I learned how to operate that system as well (gotta love the cassette tapes).
At the time I was really into video games since my Mom had bought me an Atari 2600 for Christmas (and later, the 5200); don't ask me how a five year-old knows to ask for an Atari. I was also into those choose your own adventure books and started writing my own (admittedly primitive) text adventure games.
I attended high school at the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Once again fortune smiled upon me and the school had a UNIX lab (SunOS) and access to the Internet(!). I got turned on to news groups and discovered Phrack Magazine; that taught me some cool things, but also got me in some trouble. I eventually moved on to the University where I studied CS in the department of Engineering with a focus on computer architecture and operating systems. I had pretty much known from an early age that I wanted to program computers for a living and it was more than a little strange to realize that not everyone at college knew absolutely what they wanted to do.
Now that you know how I got excited about computers, I suppose my advice would be to focus on encouraging your son to keep at it and not focus on the fact that they might not yet have the background/ability to take on some of the projects that they want to do. Also, try to find some non-computer interest that can be expanded to include computers.
Sadly, you're absolutely correct. We've got a Web team here that's all into 2.0 and Ruby and the latest fad language/tool. The funny thing is that these guys don't seem to know anything about Web 1.0. They're totally clueless about the HTTP protocol and will say silly things like you can't have ampersands or periods in URLs. RFC? What's an RFC?
It doesn't help matters that they're Linux fans (I'm an old school UNIX admin/systems programmer and see nothing compelling about Linux; sue me). I swear, it's like these guys think they're coming up with something new when in fact they're reinventing the wheel, poorly. Whenever I read something from a Linux fan (recently it was about package management) it always seems like they've never heard of Solaris or the BSDs.
The way I see it, people are doing two things wrong.
First, they're listing their actual names on the registration form for gmail when they could be using an alias, their initials, etc.
Secondly, they're giving out their actual email address. Instead, people should be setting up single-use accounts at gmail by sending invites to themselves. The single-use account is then setup to forward mail to your main account where it can be tagged appropriately. You give out one of your single-use accounts to people and then if it starts receiving spam, you know who distributed your information and you can simply turn the account off by disabling the forwarding. I'm really surprised that single-use email addresses aren't built into these web-based email services.
And how exactly am I supposed to find out about a company's poor privacy practices?
My bank has twice now sent me notices in the mail about security breaches at some vendor with whom I have transacted. Unfortunately the bank does not tell me who the vendor is so I may avoid them in the future.
It's really sad that the identify theft situation has gotten so out of control when there's an extremely simple fix. If an institution does not properly check someone's identity (by an in-person visit with government issued credentials), then that institution should be held liable and not the innocent party. Unfortunately some people feel that properly identifying people is too costly and have decided that we should just let the common man deal with getting his identity stolen.
This sort of legislation could even spawn an entire industry devoted to identity verification. Maybe it's simply not practical for the operator of a web-based service to verify someone's identity in person, instead the operator could subscribe to a service. This service would operate offices in various locations, do the in-person verification process and then clear the individual.
Unless you can cite some examples of a big name company (eg a major bank) having had their certificate subverted in this way, and not having said certificate revoked almost immediately, i'll stick with what works thanks.
While not exactly the same situation, there was this story about Verisign issuing certificates that allowed code to be signed, "Microsoft Corporation", to someone not affiliated with Microsoft. I don't recall exactly how long it took Verisign to realize the mistake.
As far as self-signed certificates go, there's really no issue using them so long as you understand how they work. They're pretty common on private networks, but it's poor form to use them for servers on the Internet.
Bush and his henchmen need to answer for their crimes.
Perhaps they could be labeled enemy combatants and shipped off to Gitmo? We wouldn't even have to worry about Bush complaining about the treatment since he himself argued the President has such power.
Your numbers look good, but I still don't think that the fuel savings make up for the additional expense of the hybrid vehicle.
You say you get close to $5,000 per 100,000 miles in fuel savings, but the car cost $5,000 more than comparable models with lower MPG ratings. In the first 6.5 years of ownership (assuming 15,000 miles driven per year) you just recouped that extra $5,000. You also need to replace the batteries at this point (or earlier) which you say costs less than $5,000 and is going to require an additional 50,000 miles or so in fuel savings.
At this point your car has 150,000 miles on it and is about 10 years old, this is when you'll start spending money on maintenance. You're going to have to replace the suspension, the exhaust, possibly the transmission and the engine will most likely need a rebuild in the next 50,000 miles. I'm not sure if you do your own work (you'll save about 50% compared to the dealer), but I'm guessing that some of the more advanced components are going to have to be repaired/replaced at the dealership. What are they charging per hour?
If you really want to save some money, buy an old car ('95 or earlier if possible so you get exempted from emissions regulations) with a high MPG or possibly a motorcycle. Some of my friends recommend the Honda CRX since it gets great mileage and does well on icy or snowy roads. Sure the vehicle's probably got a lot of miles on it, but if you do your own work I think you'll find that even with the repairs it's cheaper than a new vehicle.
There is strong pressure on the education system to "improve"; and these improvements are measured by tests.
And therein lies the entire problem. The best teacher in the world cannot make a student who does not want to learn do well on exams, and yet we hold the teacher responsible for the pupil's performance.
A few years ago at a tech conference I met someone who worked for the data storage division at Dell. Some of the technical manuals that the engineer needed for their work were classified as secret (product hadn't gone to market yet) and the engineer had to sign various NDAs with the company to get access to the documents.
Said engineer compared their copy of a manual with another engineer's copy and discovered that each manual had a different set of spelling errors. Apparently Dell was generating documents with unique sets of typos in order to be able to track down the identify of the person who leaked a document.
Video games exist to give you experiences that you normally wouldn't be able to get in real life without years of training or superhuman powers.
Have you played the Guitar Hero series? I've been jamming since the first version was released and after four years of practice, I _still_ can't beat some of the songs on expert. Let's not even talk about trying to get perfect scores.
I'm just hoping the new version maintains the current difficulty level. I've tried playing Rock Band a couple of times, but was really disappointed with how easy the tracks were. I was able to complete songs on expert difficulty that I'd never played before; that just shouldn't be possible. Try comparing some of the songs that appear in both Rock Band and Guitar Hero and you'll see that the Rock Band version is much, much easier.
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I'm assuming you mean overdose to death and not just overdose, because it's pretty easy to overdose on a bezo. You don't necessarily feel an overdose and you're not going to know you did it until you wake up later with amnesia.
Combine a normal dose of benzos with alcohol and you can die. It's extremely easy to overdose and die, I'm not sure why you minimize the risk. Many, many people mix alcohol and other drugs thinking it's no big deal. Sometimes they live, sometimes they die. Please don't do it.
You're correct though, taken by themselves you can take 100 or even 1,000 times a therapeutic dose and be fine. You'll sleep for days, or even weeks, but you'll eventually wake up.
First off, I am not a doctor or a pharmacist, but I do have an interest in chemicals/drugs/medications and research them frequently. That being stated, the drugs you mentioned are all benzodiazepines. They are GABA agonists which slow the electrical signaling in the brain and can produce a relaxing/sedating effect similar to alcohol (imagine feeling drunk, but without the loss of motor coordination). They are used as sedatives and as anxiolytics (anxiety reducing drugs) for SHORT TERM USE ONLY (2-4 weeks)! Sorry about the caps, but it's important. Many, many people have been harmed by doctors who prescribed the drugs inappropriately. Benzo withdrawal is far worse than, say, opiate (heroin, morphine) withdrawal and it can take years for the body to undo the changes the drugs induce in the brains of users. People have committed suicide while going through benzo withdrawal.
Now, how safe are the benzos? Relatively speaking, they're pretty safe when used properly, and it's difficult to overdose to the point of death. You can take 100 times the effective dose and live, you'll just take a nice long nap (coma) and be okay when you awake. However, and this is extremely important, if you combine alcohol with a normal dose of benzos you may die. Seriously, please don't do this to yourself!
More common problems with the benzos arise from the fact that they also lower inhibitions. I have read stories of people going on gambling/sex/whatever binges because their inhibitions were reduced from the drug. There's also the possibility that people will re-dose once they're feeling nice and happy from the drug.
Another serious problem with the drugs is something called anterograde amnesia. This typically occurs in overdose situations when the user doesn't realize they have overdosed (it's subtle and sneaks up on you). Anterograde amnesia occurs when the brain cannot commit items in short-term memory to long-term memory. What happens in this situation is that the user is completely in the moment and coherent, but because memories don't make it to the part of the brain that does long-term storage, the user will have no recollection of events later on when the drug has worn off! I have experienced this myself and it is not a good feeling to have no recollection of the past two days. In my case, I woke up on Monday thinking it was Saturday, as I had no recollection of the weekend, and I started doing some activities that had been planned for Saturday that I had already completed. I spoke to people on the phone in my overdosed state and they said I sounded fine when I asked them about it later. I felt weird all day (and for a couple of days after that), I'm guessing this is what the parents meant by saying they had a hangover.
The main point I'm trying to make is that "sleep aids" can be deadly and should not be treated as benign drugs. Those two kids could have easily killed someone with their damn milkshake.
I grew up in a more rural area of central Illinois where it was very common to have bars that could only be reached by vehicle (or foot I suppose) as there was no public transportation to speak of. Sure, you could probably call for a cab and wait a long time for it to arrive, but what are the odds of doing that once you've driven yourself to the bar?
My mother was a school teacher which certainly helped and she brought a computer home each summer, at about the same time my Dad bought a TRS-80 which I setup and programmed and I was into video games since I got an Atari in, I think, '82. Video games definitely encouraged my experimentation with computers as did my interest in those choose your own adventure books and the Infocom text adventure games. My public library had an Apple lab and I was there several times a week using the computers and playing games with the high school students; this was as an elementary school student.
You need to cultivate the interest by creating a supportive environment at an early age. Public schools tend to fail students by focusing on boring things like tests and facts that turn kids off to school instead of just making learning fun. Kids learn a lot more when they're having fun at play; there is plenty of time to focus on course material at the high school and collegiate level.
I would still argue that they're bidding improperly. They're offering what they want and not what they'll take.
I know it's a cliche, but unless you actually audit the code (and don't miss something) you can't really trust it. The best that you can do is trust a group like the OpenBSD guys to perform code audits for you.
I didn't see anyone mention the infamous Debian SSL bug, so here's a link: Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL/SSH Keys Guessable. The gist of the story is that some random package maintainer was getting warnings about a memory region containing an uninitialized value in some OpenSSL code. Rather than actually looking at the code and trying to understand what was going on, the maintainer incorrectly assumed that their debugging/profiling tool was flagging an actual problem and simply initialized the region to 0. The problem was that this memory region was intended to be used as a source of entropy. To make matters worse, this bug went unnoticed for about two years.
So, to answer your question, yes, the QA/audit process is probably broken; it's most likely geared towards testing application functionality versus testing for correctness. And no, two lines of incorrect code are probably not going to be noticed.
As far as real solutions go, I suppose it depends on your level of paranoia. Sure you can use an OpenBSD based firewall at home and limit your inbound/outbound traffic, but as soon as you connect to a remote service, you have to trust them as well. In "Secrets and Lies", Bruce Schneier comes to the conclusion that technical measures are simply not enough and that you have to manage sofware-related risks the same way you would manage risks to your home, automobile, or life, with insurance.
A friend of mine is looking to replace his car and we've had this buy new versus buy used conversation several times. It's true that if you buy a new car you will typically be covered by a long warranty and won't need to do much other than routine maintenance (oil, brakes, air filters, wiper blades, coolant, etc.) for several years.
That being said, if you're willing to work on a vehicle yourself, you can save thousands of dollars by buying a used vehicle. If you buy used (or even new) and take it into a repair shop, you will get screwed out of your money. For example, my Saturn SC2 needed a new radiator this past spring. The local Saturn dealership wanted $600 to replace the thing; they charge more than a hundred dollars an hour for labor. I ordered a new one for about $150 from radiator.com and received it the next day. New hoses and coolant ran me about another $40 and it took me about five hours to install (I flushed the coolant system otherwise it would have taken closer to 2-3 hours). I know some people are intimidated by cars, but for the most part (basically everything except engine internals and transmissions) they're relatively simple machines.
As for cars being an investment, that all depends on the type of vehicle. Corvettes for example are known to start appreciating in value after a few decades. The same thing goes for many other cars (eg. old Pontiacs), but you're typically dealing with restored or partially restored vehicles at that point.
Oh BTW, I hope you have a new mechanic. I'm curious as to how your brakes suddenly gave out while driving. The brake system isn't very complex and a proper inspection should have revealed any outstanding issues like rusty brake lines, sticking or seized calipers, loose mounting hardware, etc.
I'm very interested in single-use credit card numbers, but everyone that claims to offer them really don't. From what I've seen, what they offer are credit card numbers that have user-specified expiration dates and/or set spending limits.
What I'm interested in is to be able to generate a list of twenty single-use credit card numbers (think one-time pad) and then be able to use each number once after which it becomes invalid. As far as I know, no one's offering this service.
First of all, I've got to say that the application developer was a genius; he's made the equivalent of a Gucci handbag for the iPhone. It's a real shame that Apple's trying to prevent people from selling iPhone applications that other people want to buy.
I wouldn't be surprised if the developer had a legal case against Apple since they approved the application, then pulled it without cause and have now cost him sales. I'm just waiting for Apple to pull some stunt like refund everyones' money and then refuse to pay the developer what he's owed.
I was actually getting excited yesterday after reading about this applicaton. I was just waiting to hear about someone creating knock-off "I Am Rich" applications like you see happen with other luxury goods (watches, handbags, etc).
I read that as meaning the insurer can avoid a costly test to determine if you have a cholesterol problem. The idea being that the insurer is going to want to run a battery of tests against an individual before it accepts them for coverage.
Clearly you've never watched Idiocracy. The idea is that the intelligent people in society delay having children in order to focus on their careers. The problem is that they never get around to having those kids. Meanwhile the trailer-trash have tons of kids. Fast forward a thousand years and you end up with a society of idiots.
Couldn't one still argue that such a person is not really interested in the other's well-being, but is simply donating money to charitable organizations in order to feel better about themselves? Thus the reason behind the donation is not to help others, but to help oneself?
In general I think people don't understand what the word "racist" means. In many cases it would be more appropriate to use the term "bigot".
I wonder if he'll he get an achievement if he manages to stay alive for two minutes?
But I thought those analysts' predictions were largely meaningless and highly inaccurate? It's my understanding that the index funds (which I believe are managed by computers and not people) do much over the long term than any analyst.
IMHO the father screwed up by waiting until the kid was a teenager. I started programming computers when I was five; I would have killed to have a parent that could have mentored me instead of having to teach myself from books and magazines (no Internet back then, but there was RAINBOW and some Apple(?) rag that I can't recall the name to, I just remember they had an issue about computer graphics that talked about the Don Bluth games and Tron).
I got my start with computers in my school district's gifted program (Illinois district #66 FTW); this was back in 1982 and Apple had donated a bunch of equipment (thank you!!!). My Mom was a teacher so she was able to bring a computer home for the summer. I spent a lot of my early years working on the computers at the local library during the school year and then working at home over the summer. I got some pirated games from the high schoolers that also used the library's lab and I spent a lot of time going through some BASIC programming texts (up through peek/poke IIRC). I also played with LOGO quite a bit. At about the same time, my Dad picked up a TRS-80 from Radio Shack and I learned how to operate that system as well (gotta love the cassette tapes).
At the time I was really into video games since my Mom had bought me an Atari 2600 for Christmas (and later, the 5200); don't ask me how a five year-old knows to ask for an Atari. I was also into those choose your own adventure books and started writing my own (admittedly primitive) text adventure games.
I attended high school at the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Once again fortune smiled upon me and the school had a UNIX lab (SunOS) and access to the Internet(!). I got turned on to news groups and discovered Phrack Magazine; that taught me some cool things, but also got me in some trouble. I eventually moved on to the University where I studied CS in the department of Engineering with a focus on computer architecture and operating systems. I had pretty much known from an early age that I wanted to program computers for a living and it was more than a little strange to realize that not everyone at college knew absolutely what they wanted to do.
Now that you know how I got excited about computers, I suppose my advice would be to focus on encouraging your son to keep at it and not focus on the fact that they might not yet have the background/ability to take on some of the projects that they want to do. Also, try to find some non-computer interest that can be expanded to include computers.
Sadly, you're absolutely correct. We've got a Web team here that's all into 2.0 and Ruby and the latest fad language/tool. The funny thing is that these guys don't seem to know anything about Web 1.0. They're totally clueless about the HTTP protocol and will say silly things like you can't have ampersands or periods in URLs. RFC? What's an RFC?
It doesn't help matters that they're Linux fans (I'm an old school UNIX admin/systems programmer and see nothing compelling about Linux; sue me). I swear, it's like these guys think they're coming up with something new when in fact they're reinventing the wheel, poorly. Whenever I read something from a Linux fan (recently it was about package management) it always seems like they've never heard of Solaris or the BSDs.
The way I see it, people are doing two things wrong.
First, they're listing their actual names on the registration form for gmail when they could be using an alias, their initials, etc.
Secondly, they're giving out their actual email address. Instead, people should be setting up single-use accounts at gmail by sending invites to themselves. The single-use account is then setup to forward mail to your main account where it can be tagged appropriately. You give out one of your single-use accounts to people and then if it starts receiving spam, you know who distributed your information and you can simply turn the account off by disabling the forwarding. I'm really surprised that single-use email addresses aren't built into these web-based email services.
And how exactly am I supposed to find out about a company's poor privacy practices?
My bank has twice now sent me notices in the mail about security breaches at some vendor with whom I have transacted. Unfortunately the bank does not tell me who the vendor is so I may avoid them in the future.
It's really sad that the identify theft situation has gotten so out of control when there's an extremely simple fix. If an institution does not properly check someone's identity (by an in-person visit with government issued credentials), then that institution should be held liable and not the innocent party. Unfortunately some people feel that properly identifying people is too costly and have decided that we should just let the common man deal with getting his identity stolen.
This sort of legislation could even spawn an entire industry devoted to identity verification. Maybe it's simply not practical for the operator of a web-based service to verify someone's identity in person, instead the operator could subscribe to a service. This service would operate offices in various locations, do the in-person verification process and then clear the individual.
While not exactly the same situation, there was this story about Verisign issuing certificates that allowed code to be signed, "Microsoft Corporation", to someone not affiliated with Microsoft. I don't recall exactly how long it took Verisign to realize the mistake.
As far as self-signed certificates go, there's really no issue using them so long as you understand how they work. They're pretty common on private networks, but it's poor form to use them for servers on the Internet.
Perhaps they could be labeled enemy combatants and shipped off to Gitmo? We wouldn't even have to worry about Bush complaining about the treatment since he himself argued the President has such power.
You say you get close to $5,000 per 100,000 miles in fuel savings, but the car cost $5,000 more than comparable models with lower MPG ratings. In the first 6.5 years of ownership (assuming 15,000 miles driven per year) you just recouped that extra $5,000. You also need to replace the batteries at this point (or earlier) which you say costs less than $5,000 and is going to require an additional 50,000 miles or so in fuel savings.
At this point your car has 150,000 miles on it and is about 10 years old, this is when you'll start spending money on maintenance. You're going to have to replace the suspension, the exhaust, possibly the transmission and the engine will most likely need a rebuild in the next 50,000 miles. I'm not sure if you do your own work (you'll save about 50% compared to the dealer), but I'm guessing that some of the more advanced components are going to have to be repaired/replaced at the dealership. What are they charging per hour?
If you really want to save some money, buy an old car ('95 or earlier if possible so you get exempted from emissions regulations) with a high MPG or possibly a motorcycle. Some of my friends recommend the Honda CRX since it gets great mileage and does well on icy or snowy roads. Sure the vehicle's probably got a lot of miles on it, but if you do your own work I think you'll find that even with the repairs it's cheaper than a new vehicle.
And therein lies the entire problem. The best teacher in the world cannot make a student who does not want to learn do well on exams, and yet we hold the teacher responsible for the pupil's performance.
That reminds me of a neat story.
A few years ago at a tech conference I met someone who worked for the data storage division at Dell. Some of the technical manuals that the engineer needed for their work were classified as secret (product hadn't gone to market yet) and the engineer had to sign various NDAs with the company to get access to the documents.
Said engineer compared their copy of a manual with another engineer's copy and discovered that each manual had a different set of spelling errors. Apparently Dell was generating documents with unique sets of typos in order to be able to track down the identify of the person who leaked a document.
Have you played the Guitar Hero series? I've been jamming since the first version was released and after four years of practice, I _still_ can't beat some of the songs on expert. Let's not even talk about trying to get perfect scores.
I'm just hoping the new version maintains the current difficulty level. I've tried playing Rock Band a couple of times, but was really disappointed with how easy the tracks were. I was able to complete songs on expert difficulty that I'd never played before; that just shouldn't be possible. Try comparing some of the songs that appear in both Rock Band and Guitar Hero and you'll see that the Rock Band version is much, much easier.