Now we clone Dr. Watson, place his infant clone in a fake city set at the time of his birth, and see if he will grow up to make the same discoveries.
Or did that already happen? Are we part of the simulation, doomed to ever repeat our part in the story of Watson's life? It's like that Groundhog's Day movie on/.! All posts are reposts!
This "tech is sorely needed" so that we can more easily fine people for graffiti and unpaid parking meters? I don't know where you live, but I currently feel pretty safe walking in my town, and I don't see much graffiti. Sure, it's worse in the big cities, but overall we're still doing pretty well.
Do you really want to sacrifice privacy and risk giving more power to the authorities in exchange for expensive technology designed to meet a need that doesn't exist? That is utterly foolish.
Since there has been an increasing number of purchases made online, state and local governments and losing out on that sales tax money, which means they need to raise other taxes (e.g. property, fuel) in order to compensate. This hurts everyone...
Actually, this hurts people who shop locally, and helps people who shop more online. The sales tax that the online shoppers would have paid is instead spread across and paid statewide in the form of other taxes. In the long run this helps states such as California which have many online retailers by giving them an unfair sales advantage.
To make things fair, we'd need to eliminate sales tax, or convert sales tax to a single federal tax. I don't see either of those things happening.
If Microsoft truly copied an idea from already released open source code, it would be easy to disprove the patent using prior art. My point is that even the absence of prior art doesn't prove Microsoft was the sole originator of an idea. Furthermore, the patent system gives them an unfair edge, because a hobbyist isn't going to run out and patent an idea that they were planning to give away for free anyway.
Just because this information CAN be tracked and recorded doesn't mean that it SHOULD be recorded.
I like to compare internet activities to real life. An email conversation is similar to a face-to-face conversation. Visiting a web site is like visiting a grocery store. Posting in a forum is like going to a public meeting. People have been doing these things for years without any requirement that all of their activities be tracked and recorded. So why should this requirement exist just because these activities are now being done electronically?
I imagine that many of these ideas were developed independently, but that doesn't mean there will always be prior art. For example:
Linux Timeline for developing "Feature X" Spring 2001: Think of Feature X Summer 2001: Release initial code for Feature X Fall 2001: Test and debug Winter 2001: Release Feature X
Windows Timeline for developing "Feature X" Spring 2001: Think of Feature X Spring 2001: Patent Feature X 2003-2004: Hack away at Feature X 2005: Release Feature X
In this case, Microsoft holds the patent, but only due to their speedy legal department. Thus showing, once again, how stupid software patents are.
I've used PHP 5 on both 1&1 and on Dreamhost. I don't know how you can get much cheaper than that.
I can understand that it's not practical to upgrade existing code just for the sake of upgrading. But for new projects, I think maybe you're holding yourself back.
PHP is getting better. They are cleaning up security issues, and providing more and more of a solid core of capabilities. I just wish that the users were more excited about these developments. I can't understand why so many continue to develop in PHP4. Every change and step forward gets a mixed response.
Personally, I'm all for breaking conventions if it will result in making PHP a better language. I wish that they would bite the bullet and rename all the functions to follow a consistent style in PHP6. Those who can't handle it can stick with 4 or 5, but let's look to the future and make PHP the best it can be.
This is where we need to draw a line when talking about how good PHP's security is. For the case of a PHP developer running his own trusted code on a server, PHP can be very secure if the code is well written. That's the developer perspective. The other case is the PHP hosting company or system admin, running other people's untrusted code. In that case, the situation is much trickier. It may be possible to host that code securely, but it will take a lot of work and paying attention to security notices.
So how worried you should be about PHP security comes down to whether you'll be running your own code you trust, or hosting someone else's code you don't trust.
Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago
on
Want To Work At Google?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
1. I'm too valuable to spend time dropping marbles from buildings. Give an intern one of the marbles, and tell him to start on floor number one and work his way up. Keep the second marble as a toy on my desk.
2. Email the file to my Gmail (TM) account. Open the file as a spreadsheet in Google Docs & Speadsheets (TM). Choose "Sort" from the application menu.
3. Chew out the idiot who removed the hard drive, get it back, and reinstall it in the machine. Save TCP stream to a text file. Repeat answer #2.
The interviewer had read personal emails out of your gmail account? I haven't reviewed gmail's privacy policy, but in any case that sounds evil. If I were an applicant, I would feel much less inclined to take a job with a company that showed me such little respect.
The problem is not the existence of too many choices. The choices should be out there for those who need them, but they should also be transparent for those who don't need them. This is one reason Ubuntu has proven to be so user-friendly. It makes many choices for you by default, which are good choices for most users. It doesn't force users to think about choices that they don't really care about anyway.
On the other hand, I think that open source development often wastes much of its potential by creating too many varieties of products. I have a dozen video players installed on my system, and I'm still searching for a good one. There might be a good one available if the development work hadn't been repeated across so many similar products.
Well, this should make it easy to get anyone's home legally searched. Say you're a prosecutor who can't get a warrant approved through the usual channels, or you're just a guy who suspects your neighbor is growing pot. All you need to do is connect to the target's WAP late at night, search for some illegal images, post them where the FBI will see, and then sit back and wait. Your neighbor might not get convicted on the child porn, but they're open to get convicted on anything else found.
DRM doesn't work in the sense that it doesn't lock down content. However, it does limit people. I know several non-technically oriented people who wouldn't have a clue how to back up a DVD. If not for DRM, this would be easy on a PC without downloading software of questionable legality (and maybe spending a couple hours reading doom9 forums.)
I still have to deal with DRM when I rent a DVD. For legal reasons my player enforces "restricted operations" so I am forced to watch ads before the movie. Other people are having big headaches trying to get HDMI connections working properly due to buggy DRM technology.
Companies will keep trying DRM for a long time so long as it is allowed. It will never succeed in preventing all copying, but it will manage to annoy people, waste their time, and sometimes prevent them from doing basic things like viewing and copying information. Society would certainly benefit from a DRM ban.
This gives me an idea. Rather than a traditional ad blocker, someone should create an AdFaker. While you're away from the computer, it will periodically search and surf on various topics to throw GooClick off your track. You could choose from different profiles to convince them you're planning a bank heist, traveling to Madagascar, or whatever you like.
There wouldn't be much practical benefit, but it would be fun to see what ads you could get to appear!
The Rhesus monkey is close enough to our genetic makeup to help us research many diseases. But of course, the closer its DNA, the more helpful it would be. I wonder how much temptation there is to start modifying Rhesus monkey DNA to be closer to our own. How much human DNA can you splice in there before you have something that is in effect human? What do you have if it's only half human?
Slashdot Mirror
Now we clone Dr. Watson, place his infant clone in a fake city set at the time of his birth, and see if he will grow up to make the same discoveries.
/.! All posts are reposts!
:)
Or did that already happen? Are we part of the simulation, doomed to ever repeat our part in the story of Watson's life? It's like that Groundhog's Day movie on
Sorry, I'm very tired...
This "tech is sorely needed" so that we can more easily fine people for graffiti and unpaid parking meters? I don't know where you live, but I currently feel pretty safe walking in my town, and I don't see much graffiti. Sure, it's worse in the big cities, but overall we're still doing pretty well.
Do you really want to sacrifice privacy and risk giving more power to the authorities in exchange for expensive technology designed to meet a need that doesn't exist? That is utterly foolish.
Actually, this hurts people who shop locally, and helps people who shop more online. The sales tax that the online shoppers would have paid is instead spread across and paid statewide in the form of other taxes. In the long run this helps states such as California which have many online retailers by giving them an unfair sales advantage.
To make things fair, we'd need to eliminate sales tax, or convert sales tax to a single federal tax. I don't see either of those things happening.
I'll have what He's having!
So with BIDMAS, addition happens before subtraction?
I've never seen a system that would calculate "7 - 5 + 2" and give back zero. It's 4.
If Microsoft truly copied an idea from already released open source code, it would be easy to disprove the patent using prior art. My point is that even the absence of prior art doesn't prove Microsoft was the sole originator of an idea. Furthermore, the patent system gives them an unfair edge, because a hobbyist isn't going to run out and patent an idea that they were planning to give away for free anyway.
Just because this information CAN be tracked and recorded doesn't mean that it SHOULD be recorded.
I like to compare internet activities to real life. An email conversation is similar to a face-to-face conversation. Visiting a web site is like visiting a grocery store. Posting in a forum is like going to a public meeting. People have been doing these things for years without any requirement that all of their activities be tracked and recorded. So why should this requirement exist just because these activities are now being done electronically?
Even better, he says he gets "under 30" spam messages a day. So he can tolerate 25 spam messages just fine, but 35 would be soul-crushing.
I imagine that many of these ideas were developed independently, but that doesn't mean there will always be prior art. For example:
Linux Timeline for developing "Feature X"
Spring 2001: Think of Feature X
Summer 2001: Release initial code for Feature X
Fall 2001: Test and debug
Winter 2001: Release Feature X
Windows Timeline for developing "Feature X"
Spring 2001: Think of Feature X
Spring 2001: Patent Feature X
2003-2004: Hack away at Feature X
2005: Release Feature X
In this case, Microsoft holds the patent, but only due to their speedy legal department. Thus showing, once again, how stupid software patents are.
I've used PHP 5 on both 1&1 and on Dreamhost. I don't know how you can get much cheaper than that.
I can understand that it's not practical to upgrade existing code just for the sake of upgrading. But for new projects, I think maybe you're holding yourself back.
PHP is getting better. They are cleaning up security issues, and providing more and more of a solid core of capabilities. I just wish that the users were more excited about these developments. I can't understand why so many continue to develop in PHP4. Every change and step forward gets a mixed response.
Personally, I'm all for breaking conventions if it will result in making PHP a better language. I wish that they would bite the bullet and rename all the functions to follow a consistent style in PHP6. Those who can't handle it can stick with 4 or 5, but let's look to the future and make PHP the best it can be.
This is where we need to draw a line when talking about how good PHP's security is. For the case of a PHP developer running his own trusted code on a server, PHP can be very secure if the code is well written. That's the developer perspective. The other case is the PHP hosting company or system admin, running other people's untrusted code. In that case, the situation is much trickier. It may be possible to host that code securely, but it will take a lot of work and paying attention to security notices.
So how worried you should be about PHP security comes down to whether you'll be running your own code you trust, or hosting someone else's code you don't trust.
1. I'm too valuable to spend time dropping marbles from buildings. Give an intern one of the marbles, and tell him to start on floor number one and work his way up. Keep the second marble as a toy on my desk.
2. Email the file to my Gmail (TM) account. Open the file as a spreadsheet in Google Docs & Speadsheets (TM). Choose "Sort" from the application menu.
3. Chew out the idiot who removed the hard drive, get it back, and reinstall it in the machine. Save TCP stream to a text file. Repeat answer #2.
The interviewer had read personal emails out of your gmail account? I haven't reviewed gmail's privacy policy, but in any case that sounds evil. If I were an applicant, I would feel much less inclined to take a job with a company that showed me such little respect.
And "eat me!"
The problem is not the existence of too many choices. The choices should be out there for those who need them, but they should also be transparent for those who don't need them. This is one reason Ubuntu has proven to be so user-friendly. It makes many choices for you by default, which are good choices for most users. It doesn't force users to think about choices that they don't really care about anyway.
On the other hand, I think that open source development often wastes much of its potential by creating too many varieties of products. I have a dozen video players installed on my system, and I'm still searching for a good one. There might be a good one available if the development work hadn't been repeated across so many similar products.
Because the ghost of Sam Walton would rampage and feast on the souls of the minimum wage grunts?
That's not true. This post doesn't mention... oh, nevermind...
Well, this should make it easy to get anyone's home legally searched. Say you're a prosecutor who can't get a warrant approved through the usual channels, or you're just a guy who suspects your neighbor is growing pot. All you need to do is connect to the target's WAP late at night, search for some illegal images, post them where the FBI will see, and then sit back and wait. Your neighbor might not get convicted on the child porn, but they're open to get convicted on anything else found.
DRM doesn't work in the sense that it doesn't lock down content. However, it does limit people. I know several non-technically oriented people who wouldn't have a clue how to back up a DVD. If not for DRM, this would be easy on a PC without downloading software of questionable legality (and maybe spending a couple hours reading doom9 forums.)
I still have to deal with DRM when I rent a DVD. For legal reasons my player enforces "restricted operations" so I am forced to watch ads before the movie. Other people are having big headaches trying to get HDMI connections working properly due to buggy DRM technology.
Companies will keep trying DRM for a long time so long as it is allowed. It will never succeed in preventing all copying, but it will manage to annoy people, waste their time, and sometimes prevent them from doing basic things like viewing and copying information. Society would certainly benefit from a DRM ban.
This gives me an idea. Rather than a traditional ad blocker, someone should create an AdFaker. While you're away from the computer, it will periodically search and surf on various topics to throw GooClick off your track. You could choose from different profiles to convince them you're planning a bank heist, traveling to Madagascar, or whatever you like.
There wouldn't be much practical benefit, but it would be fun to see what ads you could get to appear!
The Rhesus monkey is close enough to our genetic makeup to help us research many diseases. But of course, the closer its DNA, the more helpful it would be. I wonder how much temptation there is to start modifying Rhesus monkey DNA to be closer to our own. How much human DNA can you splice in there before you have something that is in effect human? What do you have if it's only half human?
This could become rather weird.
To all the Apple users who can't wait to spend $150 for a 0.1 level upgrade to your operating system: I feel your pain. Really, I do.
If it will make you feel better, send the money to me instead. I promise to spend it as wastefully as possible - because I care.
Hey now, I was hospitalized with the shits and giggles once. It puts incredible strain on the abdominal muscles. It is no laughing matter.
Ah, so functional programming is the silver bullet! I knew we'd find it sooner or later.