You're angry because the US is taking a fingerprint they already have, or could easily get digitally, and comparing it to the one in the passport.
Here's the funny thing - my passport doesn't have a fingerprint in it. Many world passports don't have finger prints in them. I've watched this particular claim in defense of the finger printing be regurgitated on here several times (that the finger prints are being compared to the passport, which is a ridiculous notion anyways as matching fingerprints isn't a trivial exercise and would slow any port crossings to a crawl) to great humor. Maybe repetition will make it true.
It's amazing how Europe has taken a dozen plus countries with wildly different histories and values, merged them into the European Union, and you can travel uninhibited throughout the entire entity. People like you would go nuts over this.
However I'm most certainly not angry about the US fingerprinting or taking pictures : It truly is their prerogative (personally I think it's a good measure from an immigration control perspective, though it has absolutely zilch to do with avoiding terrorism). Also the parent poster indicated no displeasure with the US fingerprinting. This all started with a classic jab at Canada, which is so common in these parts. The only reason countries like Brazil got angry is that they weren't in the "exclusion" list.
Thanks for the Mad Cow disease too. Notice how we're being big about it?
Oh how I knew that this would pop up. Absolutely classic (just like how Ontario was to blame for the blackout...It's always those damn foreigners! Oops, it was actually Ohio.) Here's the funny thing: The beef industry in North America is totally integrated, and has been for decades, yet when `Canada' got a case of mad cow (which we got via some cows imported from Britain [with shipments shared with the US], yet strangely I've never seen a righteous Canadian railing against those damn Brits -- biological entities are the world's children) the US slammed the door shut as fast as it could because it was some great posturing to get around WTO rules while patting US cattlemen (such as Texans) on the back. When the US got mad cow, we banned a couple of basic products but didn't shut our border, and actually petitioned other world traders to be more reasonable this time. What does the US do? Attempt to pretend that the cow is actually Canada's problem (all while recalling meat because of a horrendously risky lack of basic food safety). How absurd. It is entirely conceivable (and debatable) that the whole source of this issue came from a US cow at the outset, and there is a festering latent mad cow issue in the US (given the total lack of effective guards against against it).
Blaming mad cow on Canada is like the asswipe who tries to assign a chain of blame everytime he gets a cold: The guy that everyone wants to punch in the face.
And you have a lot of Middle Eastern immigrants in your major cities, don't you? Some of those, percentage wise, are bound to be terrorists
You're a real man of the world, aren't you? You've clearly shown how cultured you are with this statement.
However, no, I would state that I doubt many, if any, of the Middle Eastern descent individuals in Canada have committed a terrorist act, thereby making them a terrorist. Are they potential terrorists? Sure they are, but then again so are you and I.
you gotta admit, you don't screen very well
No, I wouldn't admit to that, nor do I think you have any information whatsoever to validate such a thing...easy to say though, right, so why not say it? Maybe repetition will make it true (such as claims by some early after 9/11 that some of the terrorist came from the Canadian border based upon the US right's propensity to xenophobia and finger pointing -- nope,they found it easier just to land right in the US of A).
The reality is that our port of entry controls are as stringent as any Western nation, or moreso. We're not the one with 10 million illegal aliens.
Before you disagree, why did most of the guns that Reagan and friends sent to the Contras get shipped into YOUR country before they came here? Because it was easier, that's why.
Firstly, I've never heard of any Canadian connection to the Iran Contra affair, but nonetheless I will humor your imaginary "guns floating across the Great Lakes" scenario: You're entirely correct that it's relatively easy to get stuff from the US into Canada. This is due to the fact that a) there are few malicious reasons why someone would do this (though we do get our share of illegal US weapons and drugs up here, proliferating and sourcing large urban crime), b) we share a 6400 km border. Regarding point b, maybe in your imaginary, simpleton world it's easy to secure such a "Swiss Cheese" border, but in reality it's next to impossible. Note that the US has virtually no control on the Mexican border despite it being tremendously more hospitable to securing, and being less than 1/3 the length. 6000 potential terrorists streaming across the border uncaught every single day. Billions in guns and illegal weapons floating into US harbours. Keep on pointing fingers.
However, I think you're a little confused in any case. You see we are a sovereign nation with our own foreign policy. Sometimes this foreign policy differs from the US, and to avoid US restrictions US organizations come through Canada (breaking their own laws, but not ours) to do something that they couldn't do directly, such as invest or deal with Cuba. There is no loophole here -- it's simple policy differences.
I wonder why Canada doesn't have an illegal alien problem
The point, that you so clearly missed, was that it's humorous that the poster made a weak little comment about Canada failing to protect it when there is half the population of Canada in illegal aliens living in the grand old US of A as we speak, and the Southern border is so pourous that it's a complete joke. Hell, for anyone with any resources and a couple of boats, the entire East and West coast are impossible to defend against (well unless you ban all maritime traffic -- strangely I wouldn't be surprized...).
However the general attempt at subtle disparaging humors me -- Canada has the highest legal migration of any Western nation per capita, and a massive backlog of applicants.
Who do we expect to protect our boarders for us? Canada?
Uh, no you shouldn't expect Canada to protect your borders for you, and the moral implication repeated constantly (such as your pathetic little sheep-like "oh wait") that we should is absolutely ludicrous. As a Canadian, I personally have no problem with the US crawling down into the basement, curling up into the fetal position and sucking its thumb -- It is your country, and as a visitor people simply have to accept each country's sovereign right to self-protection. Of course this measure would have done absolutely nothing to prevent 9/11, nor does it do anything to affect the hundreds of sleeper cells in the US, nor does it do anything but provide the illusion of safety for the ignorant (such as yourself). Of course this is from the same administration that is so bloody uninventive and unoriginal that they can only imagine that terrorist could only possibly conceive of hijacking airliners and smashing them into buildings -- until the terrorists put toxins in the water supply, at which point they'll then imagine that the world's terrorists are perpetually focused on putting toxins in water supplies...rinse and repeat.
Having said that, it is fascinating, though -- The United States currently hosts some 8 to 11 MILLION illegal aliens. The United States has rampant illegal weapons and drug trade. The United States Southern border has a guesstimated 6,000, uncaught, illegals crossing it every single day. Yeah, keep up the Canada jokes...You and Hillary Clinton can keep up the charade that we're the source of your security ills.
I mean, I'm willing to wager that a lot more burned CDs are full of video rather than audio, based on my friends' collections.
Your friends are geeks. In the mainstream (the vast majority of people) burned Divx movies or whatever are quite rare. Mind you when dual-layer DVD hits its stride, I'm sure it'll start taking off at pretty rapid pace.
"Wouldn't the organisation with a vested interest in raping money off of someone else's talent want to continue raping that money?"
And wouldn't a bunch of music pirates with a vested interest in keeping the status quo want to continue raping the music industry, hence trying to spin whatever they can into P2P and CD-Rs being a win/win for the music industry? Indeed it would.
This whole discussion is so absolutely ludicrous -- the idea proposed that, on the whole, P2P (or CD2CD) has been beneficial to the music industry is so absolutely proposterous that it boggles the mind. While there is obvious advantages to P2P for garage bands, unsigned acts, or even smaller music labels that want to use innovative techniques, the overwhelming majority of music sales consist, basically, of "top 40" type CDs. How many people hear a cool song on the radio, pull up whatever client they use, grab said song, and that's it? The idea that they then go and buy the CD is absurd (especially when many people absurdly call the rest of the music "filler" -- this term has been used on here countless times, for example).
I saw a quote on a board recently that went something like "Where you stand depends on where you sit". Sadly, this is entirely true, and it undermines the ultimate goal of democracy. Instead of people standing for and promoting what is right, they stand for and promote whatever short term self-serving bullshit and rhetoric fits their personal situation. I'm talking about both the music industry as well as the self-serving nonsense constantly spewed out from the pro-P2Per just trying to ensure that nothing upsets their free ride.
The guy's advice to see your doctor was lame, karma whore advice. Seriously unless your doctor is a neurologist with a specialty in chemical addiction, he likely is similarly informed as any single Slashdot drone -- the idea that doctors are all knowing bastions of information is absurd.
Having said that, I personally had exactly the same issue -- I literally drank probably 24-32 "metric" (250ml) cups of coffee a day (in real coffee mug sized cups this was like 10-15). I drank so much coffee that I went through a KG bag of sugar about every 4 days (I'm not exaggerating).
Anyways my personal vow to cutback came not only because I was tired of, well, being tired all the time (which excessive caffeine does), but because my wife (fiance at the time) were preparing for a trip to Italy, and being a Canadian I wasn't looking forward to Italy style coffee (which is much stronger than we normally have it here -- to the degree that many here consider a laxative), and I knew that coffee wouldn't have the availability there that it has here (with a Tim Hortons on every block).
My solution was the addition of decaf coffee into my daily grind -- I would either get 1/2 decaf/1/2 caf mixes at coffee retailers, or would alternate getting a cup of decaf and a cup of regular. I never planned on fully "kicking the habit" (I like coffee), but currently I'm at maybe 5 "metric" cups of coffee a day, with about 70% of it being decaf. If I go a day without coffee now there is no symptoms of caffeine withdrawl.
Places like India are getting more expensive because they are getting way better at doing the jobs well.
They've been very good at what they're doing for several years now. Instead they're getting more expensive because they've gone from being a "secret" for a couple of companies to leverage the first-world education (for some) with third-world wages, to being a well known fact that every organization and their brother is racing to join the trend. Obviously there are a finite amount of highly trained, intelligent software engineers in India, so there is now competition for their services. Hence you have salary inflation. I've heard that the ascent of salaries has been absolutely dramatic. Capitalism at work.
Much of the really low grade work now goes elsewhere.
Some time ago there was an idiotic outer-worldly statement by one of the execs of one of the big outsourcers that if Indian developers got too expensive, they'd just switch to Vietnam, etc. This is so ridiculously imaginary that it boggles the mind. India, as you know, is a hot spot because of three things:
-They have a fabulous education system for some -They are a reasonably stable, generally low corruption country -Because of being a British controlled area, they have a large number of English speakers
Without all three of these factors, it's a no-go except in exceptional circumstances. It's for this reason that even in the high-education countries of Russia and China they are only a drop in the bucket compared to India. The idea of other areas like Vietnam is just absurd.
Are you replying to the wrong story, or are you just dense? The point is that many of the offshore markets are becoming much more expensive. I just read another editorial by a fervent advocate of offshoring (6 months ago) proclaiming that it now makes more sense to cost-effectively develop domestically (cost-effective meaning that maybe you shouldn't rent a floor in an expensive office tower in downtown manhattan).
I think the idea is that the Clik! appeared around the dying days of the Zip drive, so it followed the Zip as it headed to oblivion.
Around the time I got a Syquest SparQ drive: While it never caught on, it was useful as it stored a GB (this was before CD-Rs were even remotely close to affordable, if even available) on each disk, and as the disk was in essence a hard drive platter it also offered hard drive speeds. Great little device.
...You cannot fire me......but you can just outsource the whole thing to a country that doesn't run such a protection racket and let the whole free economy run its course...
I have seen banking software, to be used by the national banks of brittle developing economies being worked on by high school students with no engineering techniques being used at all.
This tells me a lot about the software development firm, and little about the software developers. I've worked with many levels of software developers -- from self-taught high school dropouts to professional certified engineers -- and I have noticed that there is incredibly little correlation between those "classic" indicators of skill and actual dedication to good quality code. (Indeed, the worst programmer I've ever worked with was a professional engineer).
I have worked in software development for over 20 years now and, while most people advocate the careful processes you describe, nowhere I have worked actually does it
And that is the core of the problem with software quality. It has nothing to do with blessing certain developers, but actually getting real quality processes in place (and audited) at software firms.
If a license was required, then programmers who cannot meet a minimum level of demonstrable competency wouldn't be allowed to get started writing critical code.
What organization is this developer working for that they threw an incompetent programmer onto critical code? Do they do appropriate code audits given that it's critical code? Do they have external code audits if it's for a critical medical or government system?
A programmer who manages to get certified but who then writes sloppy code could have his license revoked (like disbarment for a lawyer) thereby preventing that programmer from writing any more critical code.
Do you know how rare a disbarment actually is? It generally only occurs when a lawyer does something publicly that draws public interest. Otherwise those sorts of boards are generally protective huddles.
A person coding a fly-by-wire system might need a higher rating than someone writing a video game.
Here's the thing that makes this, and all similar examples, absolutely ridiculous -- Boeing doesn't call up Joe Programmer and say "Hey, could you throw together a fly-by-wire system for me?" and Joe whips up something in vi, compiles it and sends in the lib. Instead they have a _huge_ interest in ensuring that the code is as perfect as they can possibly get it, because as an organization they have huge fiscal and possibly criminal liabilities if the process that created the code was insatisfactory. Because of this Boeing, and organizations like it, go to great lengths to ensure that the coders on this team are the best of the best. They further build a heavily regimented and strictly enforced process of code audits, analysis, walk-throughs, reviews, etc.
Do they really believe that licensing software developers will lead to more secure software?
Most licensing advocates propose licensing as some sort of magical solution that will do everything from improving security, speeding development, improving estimates, lowering bug counts, etc. The trouble is that they never provide any metrics or actual examples to back this up. It'll just happen, apparently.
I say this with interest as I'm currently reading the book "Professional Software Development", a book by an author that I otherwise think is fabulous -- Steve C McConnell (of "Rapid Development" fame). This book basically goes on and on about the disasters in software development, and continually pushes the idea of licensing as a magical fix-all. Never, at least from what I've seen, does it show an example of where a licensing simile improved software development in any way, but simply holds up failures in the cutting edge world of software development and implies that with licensing it would all go away. To say that this is weak and unreasoned wouldn't be an overstatement.
Code audits, and code certification by external auditors of any system critical software is reasonable to me. Software team and organizational standards to improve productivity and estimates seem reasonable to me. Holding organizations responsible for software that they release, for factors stipulated as important (i.e. security for certain pieces of software) seems reasonable to me. Getting large internet peers to have proactive measures to deal with trojans and worms seems reasonable (i.e. shutting down DDOS zombie connections).
Licensing software developers as some sort of illusion of improving software is not reasonable. Enforcing a universally high level of security for all software and eliminating the markets choice to weight security with all other purchasing factors (the market knows that Microsoft software has a long history of security exploits, but strangely they still buy and install it) is not reasonable.
Licensing is protectionism and "barrier to entry" under another name. How hilarious that this would be proposed under the auspices of the "Anything goes free for all" that is Homeland Security.
Not that it really matters since the industry will be going to a new standard in 2k5 that supports 720p. The current DVD format doesn't take advantage of what HDTV has to offer. The good thing is that the new players will reportedly be backwards compatible with the old format.
The + and - standards are, in a sense, "physical" standards dictating how data is laid on the tracks -- whether you're laying MPEG2, Divx, or MPEG4+++ is irrelevant. In other words if you're talking about a new data format that encodes HDTV (which I've heard about them attempting through better codecs on the current DVDs), that's just a burning software upgrade. If, on the other hand, you're talking about a greatly increased data density that's a whole different story.
Note that they're "90% done" several parts of it. An old saying that I remember frequently when seeing the "90%" claim is "90% of software is 90% done 90% of the time". So very, very true...
Totally offtopic, but as a note of interest: When I was a young lad, around 14, I had several nasty warts on my hand. You see I'd previously gotten the nitrogen treatment on them, but one survived and my fear of the nitrogen (even though it didn't "hurt", per se, there still is a survival instinct to avoid having your flesh frozen) kept me away from further treatment.
Anyways, and to get to the point of the story, I then had a summer job "priming tobacco" (I lived in an agricultural area) -- within a week of priming tobacco my hands were completely clear. The conclusion is that either it was an amazing coincidence, physical work with your hands eliminates warts, or the most likely is that tobacco plant juices eliminate warts.
This is the first I've told anyone publicly about this amazing discovery, so I urge you to rush to isolate the tobacco constituents responsible for the anti-wart behaviour.
As a sidenote - the most memorable part of priming was when I reached into a plant and gripped around the plant to feel the goo of a huge tobacco caterpillar bursting in your grip.
While I'll agree that it would be interesting to see the itemized "wish list" (because it's being operated like a charity), quoting unfinished auctions isn't really valid -- most auctions see the majority of action in the last hour, often in the last minutes, and the value a day or more out is entirely irrelevant.
Microsoft fanboy? Thanks for revealing your idiocity and zealotry.
Being a fan or a foe of Microsoft shouldn't affect the reading and understanding of 10Q statements and obvious market factors. Do you really think SQL Server (a tremendous success) is losing money? Do you think Exchange is losing money? Do you think Biztalk, or SMS, or Application Center are losing money? If you answered yes to any of the prior points, then you should question how coloured your perception of reality by your zealotry and anti-Microsoft rage. Whether they're a success because Windows is a success (or vice-versa) is immaterial to the fact that Microsoft has a tremendous number of successful products.
As a sidenote, four divisions (including MSN) are currently profitable (maybe they split the Windows and Office revenue among four of them?). I suppose this basic understanding of financial facts colours me a MS "fanboy".
"The people I know who complain the most about the Inquirer are the types who rely on quoting others to support their arguments, instead of thinking for themselves."
How in the world can this statement possibly make any logical sense? So if someone thinks for themself and questions the legitimacy of an article, they "rely on others..instead of thinking for themselves"? Could you explain how exactly that is even remotely a credible statement.
I can't stand people that immediately refer to "group mentality" without providing proof that the mentality is wrong
Please feel free to read the Register article, and then the Slashdot summary of it (which claims that two products make money, and all the rest are money losers). This isn't overly complex.
but do not just make comments that slam a parent just to get more karma...
Would you mind pointing out where I slammed the parent post? The parent post was talking with suspicion of the conclusions of the article, and I replied with another concern with the article. The only one I'm slamming is an Inquirer author who posts unsubstantiated bullshit just because it's been repeated countless times on extremist sites.
and sadly people like you repeat the same response without any proof either
That's a pretty flawed method of debating. If he is going to proclaim that only two Microsoft products make money, then let HIM provide the proof. Strangely it is missing. Of course by your proclamation that it needs to be third party proof, it's pretty clear that you're just an extremist nutbar looking to slam Microsoft.
However in this case I know exactly where he got his "proof" -- Some time ago there was a Register article, discussed on Slashdot. This eventually got paraphrased into the statement "Microsoft only makes money on two products!", and I've seen this piece of nonsense repeated perpetually on here and other extremist sites.
For the record, in its current filing Microsoft is making money (at a tremendous pace) on four segments : Client, Server and Tools, Information Worker, and MSN. These four segments comprise the overwhelming majority of Microsoft products, such as SQL Server, Exchange, SMS Server, etc. Saying that Microsoft only makes money on Windows and Office is not only ignorant FUD, but it reeks of fantastical delusion.
Even among the money losing divisions, a few deadweights can make a whole line of products seem unprofitable. Flight Simulator, a perennial best seller for about two decades now, is in the money losing home and entertainment segment, but the whole segment is dragged down by the Xbox. There are numerous other Microsoft winners like the gaming hardware, Age of Empires, etc, that clearly are not money losers.
Slashdot Mirror
You're angry because the US is taking a fingerprint they already have, or could easily get digitally, and comparing it to the one in the passport.
Here's the funny thing - my passport doesn't have a fingerprint in it. Many world passports don't have finger prints in them. I've watched this particular claim in defense of the finger printing be regurgitated on here several times (that the finger prints are being compared to the passport, which is a ridiculous notion anyways as matching fingerprints isn't a trivial exercise and would slow any port crossings to a crawl) to great humor. Maybe repetition will make it true.
It's amazing how Europe has taken a dozen plus countries with wildly different histories and values, merged them into the European Union, and you can travel uninhibited throughout the entire entity. People like you would go nuts over this.
However I'm most certainly not angry about the US fingerprinting or taking pictures : It truly is their prerogative (personally I think it's a good measure from an immigration control perspective, though it has absolutely zilch to do with avoiding terrorism). Also the parent poster indicated no displeasure with the US fingerprinting. This all started with a classic jab at Canada, which is so common in these parts. The only reason countries like Brazil got angry is that they weren't in the "exclusion" list.
Thanks for the Mad Cow disease too. Notice how we're being big about it?
Oh how I knew that this would pop up. Absolutely classic (just like how Ontario was to blame for the blackout...It's always those damn foreigners! Oops, it was actually Ohio.) Here's the funny thing: The beef industry in North America is totally integrated, and has been for decades, yet when `Canada' got a case of mad cow (which we got via some cows imported from Britain [with shipments shared with the US], yet strangely I've never seen a righteous Canadian railing against those damn Brits -- biological entities are the world's children) the US slammed the door shut as fast as it could because it was some great posturing to get around WTO rules while patting US cattlemen (such as Texans) on the back. When the US got mad cow, we banned a couple of basic products but didn't shut our border, and actually petitioned other world traders to be more reasonable this time. What does the US do? Attempt to pretend that the cow is actually Canada's problem (all while recalling meat because of a horrendously risky lack of basic food safety). How absurd. It is entirely conceivable (and debatable) that the whole source of this issue came from a US cow at the outset, and there is a festering latent mad cow issue in the US (given the total lack of effective guards against against it).
Blaming mad cow on Canada is like the asswipe who tries to assign a chain of blame everytime he gets a cold: The guy that everyone wants to punch in the face.
And you have a lot of Middle Eastern immigrants in your major cities, don't you? Some of those, percentage wise, are bound to be terrorists
You're a real man of the world, aren't you? You've clearly shown how cultured you are with this statement.
However, no, I would state that I doubt many, if any, of the Middle Eastern descent individuals in Canada have committed a terrorist act, thereby making them a terrorist. Are they potential terrorists? Sure they are, but then again so are you and I.
you gotta admit, you don't screen very well
No, I wouldn't admit to that, nor do I think you have any information whatsoever to validate such a thing...easy to say though, right, so why not say it? Maybe repetition will make it true (such as claims by some early after 9/11 that some of the terrorist came from the Canadian border based upon the US right's propensity to xenophobia and finger pointing -- nope,they found it easier just to land right in the US of A).
The reality is that our port of entry controls are as stringent as any Western nation, or moreso. We're not the one with 10 million illegal aliens.
Before you disagree, why did most of the guns that Reagan and friends sent to the Contras get shipped into YOUR country before they came here? Because it was easier, that's why.
Firstly, I've never heard of any Canadian connection to the Iran Contra affair, but nonetheless I will humor your imaginary "guns floating across the Great Lakes" scenario: You're entirely correct that it's relatively easy to get stuff from the US into Canada. This is due to the fact that a) there are few malicious reasons why someone would do this (though we do get our share of illegal US weapons and drugs up here, proliferating and sourcing large urban crime), b) we share a 6400 km border. Regarding point b, maybe in your imaginary, simpleton world it's easy to secure such a "Swiss Cheese" border, but in reality it's next to impossible. Note that the US has virtually no control on the Mexican border despite it being tremendously more hospitable to securing, and being less than 1/3 the length. 6000 potential terrorists streaming across the border uncaught every single day. Billions in guns and illegal weapons floating into US harbours. Keep on pointing fingers.
However, I think you're a little confused in any case. You see we are a sovereign nation with our own foreign policy. Sometimes this foreign policy differs from the US, and to avoid US restrictions US organizations come through Canada (breaking their own laws, but not ours) to do something that they couldn't do directly, such as invest or deal with Cuba. There is no loophole here -- it's simple policy differences.
I wonder why Canada doesn't have an illegal alien problem
The point, that you so clearly missed, was that it's humorous that the poster made a weak little comment about Canada failing to protect it when there is half the population of Canada in illegal aliens living in the grand old US of A as we speak, and the Southern border is so pourous that it's a complete joke. Hell, for anyone with any resources and a couple of boats, the entire East and West coast are impossible to defend against (well unless you ban all maritime traffic -- strangely I wouldn't be surprized...).
However the general attempt at subtle disparaging humors me -- Canada has the highest legal migration of any Western nation per capita, and a massive backlog of applicants.
Which really, if it wasn't for us, it's what you'd be anyway.
Bwahahaha. This is brilliant stuff. Keep sucking that thumb.
Who do we expect to protect our boarders for us? Canada?
Uh, no you shouldn't expect Canada to protect your borders for you, and the moral implication repeated constantly (such as your pathetic little sheep-like "oh wait") that we should is absolutely ludicrous. As a Canadian, I personally have no problem with the US crawling down into the basement, curling up into the fetal position and sucking its thumb -- It is your country, and as a visitor people simply have to accept each country's sovereign right to self-protection. Of course this measure would have done absolutely nothing to prevent 9/11, nor does it do anything to affect the hundreds of sleeper cells in the US, nor does it do anything but provide the illusion of safety for the ignorant (such as yourself). Of course this is from the same administration that is so bloody uninventive and unoriginal that they can only imagine that terrorist could only possibly conceive of hijacking airliners and smashing them into buildings -- until the terrorists put toxins in the water supply, at which point they'll then imagine that the world's terrorists are perpetually focused on putting toxins in water supplies...rinse and repeat.
Having said that, it is fascinating, though -- The United States currently hosts some 8 to 11 MILLION illegal aliens. The United States has rampant illegal weapons and drug trade. The United States Southern border has a guesstimated 6,000, uncaught, illegals crossing it every single day. Yeah, keep up the Canada jokes...You and Hillary Clinton can keep up the charade that we're the source of your security ills.
We already have data theft and identity theft. Neither of those are physical.
Whaaaaaa? You mean when someone commits identity theft, they aren't stealing people's souls?
I mean, I'm willing to wager that a lot more burned CDs are full of video rather than audio, based on my friends' collections.
Your friends are geeks. In the mainstream (the vast majority of people) burned Divx movies or whatever are quite rare. Mind you when dual-layer DVD hits its stride, I'm sure it'll start taking off at pretty rapid pace.
"Wouldn't the organisation with a vested interest in raping money off of someone else's talent want to continue raping that money?"
And wouldn't a bunch of music pirates with a vested interest in keeping the status quo want to continue raping the music industry, hence trying to spin whatever they can into P2P and CD-Rs being a win/win for the music industry? Indeed it would.
This whole discussion is so absolutely ludicrous -- the idea proposed that, on the whole, P2P (or CD2CD) has been beneficial to the music industry is so absolutely proposterous that it boggles the mind. While there is obvious advantages to P2P for garage bands, unsigned acts, or even smaller music labels that want to use innovative techniques, the overwhelming majority of music sales consist, basically, of "top 40" type CDs. How many people hear a cool song on the radio, pull up whatever client they use, grab said song, and that's it? The idea that they then go and buy the CD is absurd (especially when many people absurdly call the rest of the music "filler" -- this term has been used on here countless times, for example).
I saw a quote on a board recently that went something like "Where you stand depends on where you sit". Sadly, this is entirely true, and it undermines the ultimate goal of democracy. Instead of people standing for and promoting what is right, they stand for and promote whatever short term self-serving bullshit and rhetoric fits their personal situation. I'm talking about both the music industry as well as the self-serving nonsense constantly spewed out from the pro-P2Per just trying to ensure that nothing upsets their free ride.
The guy's advice to see your doctor was lame, karma whore advice. Seriously unless your doctor is a neurologist with a specialty in chemical addiction, he likely is similarly informed as any single Slashdot drone -- the idea that doctors are all knowing bastions of information is absurd.
Having said that, I personally had exactly the same issue -- I literally drank probably 24-32 "metric" (250ml) cups of coffee a day (in real coffee mug sized cups this was like 10-15). I drank so much coffee that I went through a KG bag of sugar about every 4 days (I'm not exaggerating).
Anyways my personal vow to cutback came not only because I was tired of, well, being tired all the time (which excessive caffeine does), but because my wife (fiance at the time) were preparing for a trip to Italy, and being a Canadian I wasn't looking forward to Italy style coffee (which is much stronger than we normally have it here -- to the degree that many here consider a laxative), and I knew that coffee wouldn't have the availability there that it has here (with a Tim Hortons on every block).
My solution was the addition of decaf coffee into my daily grind -- I would either get 1/2 decaf/1/2 caf mixes at coffee retailers, or would alternate getting a cup of decaf and a cup of regular. I never planned on fully "kicking the habit" (I like coffee), but currently I'm at maybe 5 "metric" cups of coffee a day, with about 70% of it being decaf. If I go a day without coffee now there is no symptoms of caffeine withdrawl.
The notion that India is somehow special is laughable.
Yes, that's why India is the destination of almost all outsourcing. Thanks for clearing that up.
Places like India are getting more expensive because they are getting way better at doing the jobs well.
They've been very good at what they're doing for several years now. Instead they're getting more expensive because they've gone from being a "secret" for a couple of companies to leverage the first-world education (for some) with third-world wages, to being a well known fact that every organization and their brother is racing to join the trend. Obviously there are a finite amount of highly trained, intelligent software engineers in India, so there is now competition for their services. Hence you have salary inflation. I've heard that the ascent of salaries has been absolutely dramatic. Capitalism at work.
Much of the really low grade work now goes elsewhere.
Some time ago there was an idiotic outer-worldly statement by one of the execs of one of the big outsourcers that if Indian developers got too expensive, they'd just switch to Vietnam, etc. This is so ridiculously imaginary that it boggles the mind. India, as you know, is a hot spot because of three things:
-They have a fabulous education system for some
-They are a reasonably stable, generally low corruption country
-Because of being a British controlled area, they have a large number of English speakers
Without all three of these factors, it's a no-go except in exceptional circumstances. It's for this reason that even in the high-education countries of Russia and China they are only a drop in the bucket compared to India. The idea of other areas like Vietnam is just absurd.
Are you replying to the wrong story, or are you just dense? The point is that many of the offshore markets are becoming much more expensive. I just read another editorial by a fervent advocate of offshoring (6 months ago) proclaiming that it now makes more sense to cost-effectively develop domestically (cost-effective meaning that maybe you shouldn't rent a floor in an expensive office tower in downtown manhattan).
I think the idea is that the Clik! appeared around the dying days of the Zip drive, so it followed the Zip as it headed to oblivion.
Around the time I got a Syquest SparQ drive: While it never caught on, it was useful as it stored a GB (this was before CD-Rs were even remotely close to affordable, if even available) on each disk, and as the disk was in essence a hard drive platter it also offered hard drive speeds. Great little device.
...You cannot fire me... ...but you can just outsource the whole thing to a country that doesn't run such a protection racket and let the whole free economy run its course...
I have seen banking software, to be used by the national banks of brittle developing economies being worked on by high school students with no engineering techniques being used at all.
This tells me a lot about the software development firm, and little about the software developers. I've worked with many levels of software developers -- from self-taught high school dropouts to professional certified engineers -- and I have noticed that there is incredibly little correlation between those "classic" indicators of skill and actual dedication to good quality code. (Indeed, the worst programmer I've ever worked with was a professional engineer).
I have worked in software development for over 20 years now and, while most people advocate the careful processes you describe, nowhere I have worked actually does it
And that is the core of the problem with software quality. It has nothing to do with blessing certain developers, but actually getting real quality processes in place (and audited) at software firms.
If a license was required, then programmers who cannot meet a minimum level of demonstrable competency wouldn't be allowed to get started writing critical code.
What organization is this developer working for that they threw an incompetent programmer onto critical code? Do they do appropriate code audits given that it's critical code? Do they have external code audits if it's for a critical medical or government system?
A programmer who manages to get certified but who then writes sloppy code could have his license revoked (like disbarment for a lawyer) thereby preventing that programmer from writing any more critical code.
Do you know how rare a disbarment actually is? It generally only occurs when a lawyer does something publicly that draws public interest. Otherwise those sorts of boards are generally protective huddles.
A person coding a fly-by-wire system might need a higher rating than someone writing a video game.
Here's the thing that makes this, and all similar examples, absolutely ridiculous -- Boeing doesn't call up Joe Programmer and say "Hey, could you throw together a fly-by-wire system for me?" and Joe whips up something in vi, compiles it and sends in the lib. Instead they have a _huge_ interest in ensuring that the code is as perfect as they can possibly get it, because as an organization they have huge fiscal and possibly criminal liabilities if the process that created the code was insatisfactory. Because of this Boeing, and organizations like it, go to great lengths to ensure that the coders on this team are the best of the best. They further build a heavily regimented and strictly enforced process of code audits, analysis, walk-throughs, reviews, etc.
Do they really believe that licensing software developers will lead to more secure software?
Most licensing advocates propose licensing as some sort of magical solution that will do everything from improving security, speeding development, improving estimates, lowering bug counts, etc. The trouble is that they never provide any metrics or actual examples to back this up. It'll just happen, apparently.
I say this with interest as I'm currently reading the book "Professional Software Development", a book by an author that I otherwise think is fabulous -- Steve C McConnell (of "Rapid Development" fame). This book basically goes on and on about the disasters in software development, and continually pushes the idea of licensing as a magical fix-all. Never, at least from what I've seen, does it show an example of where a licensing simile improved software development in any way, but simply holds up failures in the cutting edge world of software development and implies that with licensing it would all go away. To say that this is weak and unreasoned wouldn't be an overstatement.
Code audits, and code certification by external auditors of any system critical software is reasonable to me. Software team and organizational standards to improve productivity and estimates seem reasonable to me. Holding organizations responsible for software that they release, for factors stipulated as important (i.e. security for certain pieces of software) seems reasonable to me. Getting large internet peers to have proactive measures to deal with trojans and worms seems reasonable (i.e. shutting down DDOS zombie connections).
Licensing software developers as some sort of illusion of improving software is not reasonable. Enforcing a universally high level of security for all software and eliminating the markets choice to weight security with all other purchasing factors (the market knows that Microsoft software has a long history of security exploits, but strangely they still buy and install it) is not reasonable.
Licensing is protectionism and "barrier to entry" under another name. How hilarious that this would be proposed under the auspices of the "Anything goes free for all" that is Homeland Security.
Not that it really matters since the industry will be going to a new standard in 2k5 that supports 720p. The current DVD format doesn't take advantage of what HDTV has to offer. The good thing is that the new players will reportedly be backwards compatible with the old format.
The + and - standards are, in a sense, "physical" standards dictating how data is laid on the tracks -- whether you're laying MPEG2, Divx, or MPEG4+++ is irrelevant. In other words if you're talking about a new data format that encodes HDTV (which I've heard about them attempting through better codecs on the current DVDs), that's just a burning software upgrade. If, on the other hand, you're talking about a greatly increased data density that's a whole different story.
Note that they're "90% done" several parts of it. An old saying that I remember frequently when seeing the "90%" claim is "90% of software is 90% done 90% of the time". So very, very true...
Totally offtopic, but as a note of interest: When I was a young lad, around 14, I had several nasty warts on my hand. You see I'd previously gotten the nitrogen treatment on them, but one survived and my fear of the nitrogen (even though it didn't "hurt", per se, there still is a survival instinct to avoid having your flesh frozen) kept me away from further treatment.
Anyways, and to get to the point of the story, I then had a summer job "priming tobacco" (I lived in an agricultural area) -- within a week of priming tobacco my hands were completely clear. The conclusion is that either it was an amazing coincidence, physical work with your hands eliminates warts, or the most likely is that tobacco plant juices eliminate warts.
This is the first I've told anyone publicly about this amazing discovery, so I urge you to rush to isolate the tobacco constituents responsible for the anti-wart behaviour.
As a sidenote - the most memorable part of priming was when I reached into a plant and gripped around the plant to feel the goo of a huge tobacco caterpillar bursting in your grip.
While I'll agree that it would be interesting to see the itemized "wish list" (because it's being operated like a charity), quoting unfinished auctions isn't really valid -- most auctions see the majority of action in the last hour, often in the last minutes, and the value a day or more out is entirely irrelevant.
Microsoft fanboy? Thanks for revealing your idiocity and zealotry.
Being a fan or a foe of Microsoft shouldn't affect the reading and understanding of 10Q statements and obvious market factors. Do you really think SQL Server (a tremendous success) is losing money? Do you think Exchange is losing money? Do you think Biztalk, or SMS, or Application Center are losing money? If you answered yes to any of the prior points, then you should question how coloured your perception of reality by your zealotry and anti-Microsoft rage. Whether they're a success because Windows is a success (or vice-versa) is immaterial to the fact that Microsoft has a tremendous number of successful products.
As a sidenote, four divisions (including MSN) are currently profitable (maybe they split the Windows and Office revenue among four of them?). I suppose this basic understanding of financial facts colours me a MS "fanboy".
"The people I know who complain the most about the Inquirer are the types who rely on quoting others to support their arguments, instead of thinking for themselves."
How in the world can this statement possibly make any logical sense? So if someone thinks for themself and questions the legitimacy of an article, they "rely on others..instead of thinking for themselves"? Could you explain how exactly that is even remotely a credible statement.
I can't stand people that immediately refer to "group mentality" without providing proof that the mentality is wrong
Please feel free to read the Register article, and then the Slashdot summary of it (which claims that two products make money, and all the rest are money losers). This isn't overly complex.
but do not just make comments that slam a parent just to get more karma...
Would you mind pointing out where I slammed the parent post? The parent post was talking with suspicion of the conclusions of the article, and I replied with another concern with the article. The only one I'm slamming is an Inquirer author who posts unsubstantiated bullshit just because it's been repeated countless times on extremist sites.
and sadly people like you repeat the same response without any proof either
That's a pretty flawed method of debating. If he is going to proclaim that only two Microsoft products make money, then let HIM provide the proof. Strangely it is missing. Of course by your proclamation that it needs to be third party proof, it's pretty clear that you're just an extremist nutbar looking to slam Microsoft.
However in this case I know exactly where he got his "proof" -- Some time ago there was a Register article, discussed on Slashdot. This eventually got paraphrased into the statement "Microsoft only makes money on two products!", and I've seen this piece of nonsense repeated perpetually on here and other extremist sites.
For the record, in its current filing Microsoft is making money (at a tremendous pace) on four segments : Client, Server and Tools, Information Worker, and MSN. These four segments comprise the overwhelming majority of Microsoft products, such as SQL Server, Exchange, SMS Server, etc. Saying that Microsoft only makes money on Windows and Office is not only ignorant FUD, but it reeks of fantastical delusion.
Even among the money losing divisions, a few deadweights can make a whole line of products seem unprofitable. Flight Simulator, a perennial best seller for about two decades now, is in the money losing home and entertainment segment, but the whole segment is dragged down by the Xbox. There are numerous other Microsoft winners like the gaming hardware, Age of Empires, etc, that clearly are not money losers.