You're missing the main issue. Normal people don't care about fringe issues like the DMCA. They care very much about abortion, taxes, and the war in Iraq. Thus they vote for the politicians who represent their views on these hot topics. Whether the politicians vote for or against the DMCA makes no difference to the voters, therefore on such issues the politicians react to money rather than votes.
So, it's true that slashdotters are silly to blame the president for digital policy. But it's not true that the opposition between left and right is some smokescreen designed to confuse you while they pass the DMCA. Left and right really are fighting, over issues that Americans consider way more important than our pet digital issues.
It probably is bullshit, but you are awfully cocksure in your assumptions. The history of adversarial technologies frequently contains one adversary doing the "impossible". Once you learn how the trick is done, you realize that your initial idealized description of the problem was too simple.
Great example: terrestrial microwave links were thought to be interception-proof in the '70s. How could any outsider intercept this incredibly narrow beam of RF energy?
Well, now we know that the NSA was intercepting Russia's terrestrial microwave links by positioning a boxcar-sized satellite in geosynchronous orbit colinear with the beam. Energy from the beam continues to travel past the receiving antenna into space.
I would never glibly assume that a collection of atoms carries no traces at all of the experiences it's been through.
Thanks. I kind of guessed there was variation in how the systems worked. The snopes articles shows the hotel chains issuing blanket denials, which makes me think they (executives) have no idea what mix of systems they have.
To make the DMCA apply, you'd have to encode a copyrightable work on it. Functional speech, such as names and addresses, doesn't count. Maybe a haiku?
Then you could go after anyone selling hardware or software to read the literal values from the card. However, you couldn't go after most magstripe hardware/software, like payment terminals, because they aren't adapted to display the literal values from the card.
Snopes points out that a bunch of hotel chains have denied that guest info was ever encoded on room cards. The problem is that they asked the wrong entity. The manufacturers of the key-card systems might know the answer, but might not share it. I'm pretty sure the hotel chains have absolutely no idea what's on that card. They also probably don't even know which key-card systems are in use across their diverse range of properties built or acquired at different times.
Alan Feldman of MGM Mirage said the key contains a room number and "the equivalent of a yes or no command" to identify whether the guest can charge food to the room.
Clearly, that can't be all the card contains. What differentiates a valid card from an expired card? What stops any idiot from generating a valid card? I don't think Alan Feldman has ever looked at the contents of the card's mag stripe. I think his answer is simply an extrapolation from the behavior he's seen from the card - it opens doors, and it lets you charge food if a flag is set.
Now I'll grant that most systems, most of the time, probably don't record any personal info on the card. But I believe the detective who says that a few cards did have personal info over the hospitality executives issuing vague blanket denials.
Open source software is not going to eliminate closed source. I write closed source for a living. I rely heavily on open source components, such as MySQL. If open source did not exist, I would have to spend more time fixing, wrapping, choosing and working around the equivalent closed source components.
In a nutshell, open source excels at creating building blocks. Closed source excels at assembling the blocks into an application.
That depends. Do you consider a VIC20 "unusable"? Barring component failure, you can run your VIC20 forever; you just can't interoperate with the modern world. Can't play the music or movies or view the Word documents.
Why are you able to modify an instance class (by adding member values) so that it is not the same as declared?
More broadly, why can you violate the encapsulation of an object? Because Perl is not a paranoid language. It assumes that programmers are basically sensible. It is, of course, possible to violate encapsulation in C++ (though perhaps not in Java, which lacks pointers). In several years of professional Perl programming, I have never seen a Perl programmer do this in production code.
Might as well ask why C++ lets you cast an object pointer to one of a different class.
Can you explain why there are so many different ways to quote a string?
In essence, there are three ways to quote a string.
The q operator, usually expressed as '. Used when interpolation is not wanted - that is, a $ is just a $.
The qq operator, usually expressed as ". Used when interpolation is wanted - that is, "Name: $name" evaluates as 'Name: Billy Bob'
The << operator, or "here document" - used when the string could contain any characters and you don't want to have to escape any characters. Let's you use an arbitrary terminating string.
The first two allow the programmer to use an arbitrary character as delimiter. This avoids having to excessively escape the delimiter character when it occurs in the string. For example, when quoting an XML string in C, one often has many occurrences of \". These escapes both reduce clarity and prevent you from directly pasting the string to or from a testing context.
Since domain specific languages like Postscript, SQL, HTML and XML are often embedded in Perl code, it's useful to have these quoting operators that remove the burden of meticulously escaping special characters.
The qx (backticks) and m (//) operators follow the same logic. Without the ability to pick an arbitrary delimiter, regexes often fall victim to "leaning toothpick syndrome".
I understand your sentiment, but I think that on balance Perl 6 will be an improvement. The changes are not the product of Larry's imagination, but have been hashed out thoroughly and publicly as RFCs. As time goes by, other languages are catching up to or passing Perl in its core strengths, while offering other strengths Perl doesn't have. Perl must adapt or die.
Unfortunately, its conduct is not out of the ordinary, either for it or for other American media firms operating in China. They all eagerly kowtow to a despicable police state
I hope you are boycotting Google, Microsoft and Cisco as well. I want you to come out and say explicitly what standard you are holding Yahoo to, and what companies currently meet that standard, and what evidence you have that those companies meet that standard.
You want Yahoo in China to violate Chinese law in order to shield dissidents?
Actually, to say that X is an order of magnitude greater than Y is to say X=KY, that is X is a constant factor times Y. Or more precisely, Y < X < K*K*Y.
So if algorithm X is always an order of magnitude slower than algorithm Y, we can assume they share the same complexity.
Neither a filesystem nor a RDBMs will solve the real problems in building a scalable mail system. However, let me point out a weakness in the filesystem approach. It is a tree-shaped structure, aka a network database. That makes it easy to divide between read and unread. What if I want all messages from billybob@aol.com? Will the fs-based system be reduced to a linear search? Remember, the RDBMs can index on multiple columns.
Of course, with enough cleverness, you can simulate this in the filesystem with directories full of symlinks. For each sender, create directory "from_$SENDER" with symlinks to messages from that sender. How about showing the index page? Would we open every message to read in the headers, or maintain a separate index file?
Of course, until recently, with ReiserFS, systems that create many small files were frowned upon.
And yet, MySQL without proper binding is usually faster than other databases with variable binding and statement cache.
Or do you want the interface of binding, regardless of the implementation? I do. Perl DBI gives it to you, quoting and interpolating under the covers, and I've written the same functionality in other languages.
I seem to have trod on your sensitive spot. Please be assured that I'm not looking to ban any kind of creative tools. If you enjoy making house music with a 303 emulator, I'm happy that you're happy.
It doesn't seem very logical to call an 80s music fan an "elitist" with "exquisitely developed taste". It might be more accurate to say a nostalgist with an ossified musical taste.
Is it too much to ask that closed source, Windows-only software be labelled as such in the story? Not to sound like an ungrateful curmudgeon, but is slashdot going to put every piece of Windows-only closed source freeware on the front page?
I have mixed feelings about the boom in analog synths/emulators. When the technology was rare and expensive, it was used to create awesome catchy, melodic, intelligent pop (80's). Now that it's cheap and ubiquitous, it's used to make depressingly boring, repetitive, deeply lazy music.
In theory, this kind of software could enable a hundred Vince Clarkes - in practice I don't see any. Any suggestions?
Re:Google groups was a purchase also.
on
Has Google Peaked?
·
· Score: 1
Dejanews. But their web interface was poor. Google groups is a major new product - I think Deja only provided the archive.
Still relevant, fading slightly
on
Has Google Peaked?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better.
Followed by some defensive fudging to link the "hardcore search" mantra with the current portalization of google. Interesting note at the page bottom:
* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these "10 things" four years ago, we included the phrase "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat."...
What the recent NCSA study showed, contrary to the slashdot interpretation, is that Google remains very vulnerable to keyword spammers, while Yahoo is quite good at muting them.
Google is no longer a clear-cut leader in search, and they are branching out to the full spectrum of portal services. And it's not clear that they will succeed in these new areas.
I'm very grateful to Google for increasing the demand for engineers, pressuring other companies to ramp up engineering and prioritize innovation, and teaching the world that giant flashing gifs and paid placement listings were not the way to go. And Google Maps shows that Google is still capable of giant leaps forward.
I'm puzzled, however, by the level of Google fanboyism on slashdot. I guess a lot of you were "imprinted" by Google back in the Dark Ages of search when nothing else worked right, and cannot see them objectively.
Very nice, but above a certain tier, employees are becoming more like "external suppliers". It's the same logic as outsourcing. Hire proven, experienced, self-trained, self-starting contributors at high salaries, or a larger group of trainees at low salaries. You will get more bang for your buck by hiring the expensive professionals.
Again, you stress the difference between employees and outside vendors, but to the person writing the checks they are both solution providers. When you buy a half-baked solution (e.g., a trainee) you assume some of the risk in exchange for a discount. That's not smart unless you're an expert in estimating and minimizing that risk.
Are you a professional? If so, why do you expect your employer to train you? If you hire a lawyer, do you train him? I train myself. And no, I don't work cheaply.
Does anyone know what the security model is? Doesn't DRM rely on the player having embedded keys to decrypt the content? If the DRM is open, won't it be trivial to extract those keys?
I don't know much about Python, but I doubt that emerge's slowness comes from Python. It's probably doing a linear scan of something that should be indexed more intelligently. Or maybe it's opening a huge number of files.
A similar thing applies to web apps - a slow web app is usually due to high-level design errors, not a slow scripting language. A lot of web apps spend most of their time in database calls. When an app is blocked on I/O, it's just as fast in Python as in C, much like a Porsche stuck next to a Yugo in traffic.
Perl is not exactly a speed champ compared to C, but many snappy web pages run on Perl because the amount of computation involved in sending the web page is relatively small. Is Python substantially slower than other scripting languages?
I can't tell if you're kidding. At the risk of not getting the joke: install the CPAN module. Type "perl -MCPAN -eshell". Then type "install Foo::Bar". It will handle all the dependencies.
That comment applies pretty well to the Camel book - which others are you thinking of?
I think of the Camel as entertainment/digression/philosophy. If you want to sort out technical details, look in the man pages, with which Perl is plentifully provided. I haven't felt a need for Perl books in a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the main issue. Normal people don't care about fringe issues like the DMCA. They care very much about abortion, taxes, and the war in Iraq. Thus they vote for the politicians who represent their views on these hot topics. Whether the politicians vote for or against the DMCA makes no difference to the voters, therefore on such issues the politicians react to money rather than votes.
So, it's true that slashdotters are silly to blame the president for digital policy. But it's not true that the opposition between left and right is some smokescreen designed to confuse you while they pass the DMCA. Left and right really are fighting, over issues that Americans consider way more important than our pet digital issues.
It probably is bullshit, but you are awfully cocksure in your assumptions. The history of adversarial technologies frequently contains one adversary doing the "impossible". Once you learn how the trick is done, you realize that your initial idealized description of the problem was too simple.
Great example: terrestrial microwave links were thought to be interception-proof in the '70s. How could any outsider intercept this incredibly narrow beam of RF energy?
Well, now we know that the NSA was intercepting Russia's terrestrial microwave links by positioning a boxcar-sized satellite in geosynchronous orbit colinear with the beam. Energy from the beam continues to travel past the receiving antenna into space.
I would never glibly assume that a collection of atoms carries no traces at all of the experiences it's been through.
Thanks. I kind of guessed there was variation in how the systems worked. The snopes articles shows the hotel chains issuing blanket denials, which makes me think they (executives) have no idea what mix of systems they have.
To make the DMCA apply, you'd have to encode a copyrightable work on it. Functional speech, such as names and addresses, doesn't count. Maybe a haiku?
Then you could go after anyone selling hardware or software to read the literal values from the card. However, you couldn't go after most magstripe hardware/software, like payment terminals, because they aren't adapted to display the literal values from the card.
Clearly, that can't be all the card contains. What differentiates a valid card from an expired card? What stops any idiot from generating a valid card? I don't think Alan Feldman has ever looked at the contents of the card's mag stripe. I think his answer is simply an extrapolation from the behavior he's seen from the card - it opens doors, and it lets you charge food if a flag is set.
Now I'll grant that most systems, most of the time, probably don't record any personal info on the card. But I believe the detective who says that a few cards did have personal info over the hospitality executives issuing vague blanket denials.
Open source software is not going to eliminate closed source. I write closed source for a living. I rely heavily on open source components, such as MySQL. If open source did not exist, I would have to spend more time fixing, wrapping, choosing and working around the equivalent closed source components.
In a nutshell, open source excels at creating building blocks. Closed source excels at assembling the blocks into an application.
That depends. Do you consider a VIC20 "unusable"? Barring component failure, you can run your VIC20 forever; you just can't interoperate with the modern world. Can't play the music or movies or view the Word documents.
More broadly, why can you violate the encapsulation of an object? Because Perl is not a paranoid language. It assumes that programmers are basically sensible. It is, of course, possible to violate encapsulation in C++ (though perhaps not in Java, which lacks pointers). In several years of professional Perl programming, I have never seen a Perl programmer do this in production code.
Might as well ask why C++ lets you cast an object pointer to one of a different class.
The first two allow the programmer to use an arbitrary character as delimiter. This avoids having to excessively escape the delimiter character when it occurs in the string. For example, when quoting an XML string in C, one often has many occurrences of \". These escapes both reduce clarity and prevent you from directly pasting the string to or from a testing context.
Since domain specific languages like Postscript, SQL, HTML and XML are often embedded in Perl code, it's useful to have these quoting operators that remove the burden of meticulously escaping special characters.
The qx (backticks) and m (//) operators follow the same logic. Without the ability to pick an arbitrary delimiter, regexes often fall victim to "leaning toothpick syndrome".
- Use an integer index and the [] operator.
- Integer index and cache the size().
- Integer index; start at size(), count down.
- Use an iterator.
- Use an iterator and cache end().
- Use std::for_each.
All of these were seriously advocated on comp.lang.c++.moderated.I understand your sentiment, but I think that on balance Perl 6 will be an improvement. The changes are not the product of Larry's imagination, but have been hashed out thoroughly and publicly as RFCs. As time goes by, other languages are catching up to or passing Perl in its core strengths, while offering other strengths Perl doesn't have. Perl must adapt or die.
I hope you are boycotting Google, Microsoft and Cisco as well. I want you to come out and say explicitly what standard you are holding Yahoo to, and what companies currently meet that standard, and what evidence you have that those companies meet that standard.
You want Yahoo in China to violate Chinese law in order to shield dissidents?
Actually, to say that X is an order of magnitude greater than Y is to say X=KY, that is X is a constant factor times Y. Or more precisely, Y < X < K*K*Y.
So if algorithm X is always an order of magnitude slower than algorithm Y, we can assume they share the same complexity.
Neither a filesystem nor a RDBMs will solve the real problems in building a scalable mail system. However, let me point out a weakness in the filesystem approach. It is a tree-shaped structure, aka a network database. That makes it easy to divide between read and unread. What if I want all messages from billybob@aol.com? Will the fs-based system be reduced to a linear search? Remember, the RDBMs can index on multiple columns.
Of course, with enough cleverness, you can simulate this in the filesystem with directories full of symlinks. For each sender, create directory "from_$SENDER" with symlinks to messages from that sender. How about showing the index page? Would we open every message to read in the headers, or maintain a separate index file?
Of course, until recently, with ReiserFS, systems that create many small files were frowned upon.
And yet, MySQL without proper binding is usually faster than other databases with variable binding and statement cache.
Or do you want the interface of binding, regardless of the implementation? I do. Perl DBI gives it to you, quoting and interpolating under the covers, and I've written the same functionality in other languages.
I seem to have trod on your sensitive spot. Please be assured that I'm not looking to ban any kind of creative tools. If you enjoy making house music with a 303 emulator, I'm happy that you're happy.
It doesn't seem very logical to call an 80s music fan an "elitist" with "exquisitely developed taste". It might be more accurate to say a nostalgist with an ossified musical taste.
Is it too much to ask that closed source, Windows-only software be labelled as such in the story? Not to sound like an ungrateful curmudgeon, but is slashdot going to put every piece of Windows-only closed source freeware on the front page?
I have mixed feelings about the boom in analog synths/emulators. When the technology was rare and expensive, it was used to create awesome catchy, melodic, intelligent pop (80's). Now that it's cheap and ubiquitous, it's used to make depressingly boring, repetitive, deeply lazy music.
In theory, this kind of software could enable a hundred Vince Clarkes - in practice I don't see any. Any suggestions?
Dejanews. But their web interface was poor. Google groups is a major new product - I think Deja only provided the archive.
Followed by some defensive fudging to link the "hardcore search" mantra with the current portalization of google. Interesting note at the page bottom:
What the recent NCSA study showed, contrary to the slashdot interpretation, is that Google remains very vulnerable to keyword spammers, while Yahoo is quite good at muting them.
Google is no longer a clear-cut leader in search, and they are branching out to the full spectrum of portal services. And it's not clear that they will succeed in these new areas.
I'm very grateful to Google for increasing the demand for engineers, pressuring other companies to ramp up engineering and prioritize innovation, and teaching the world that giant flashing gifs and paid placement listings were not the way to go. And Google Maps shows that Google is still capable of giant leaps forward.
I'm puzzled, however, by the level of Google fanboyism on slashdot. I guess a lot of you were "imprinted" by Google back in the Dark Ages of search when nothing else worked right, and cannot see them objectively.
Very nice, but above a certain tier, employees are becoming more like "external suppliers". It's the same logic as outsourcing. Hire proven, experienced, self-trained, self-starting contributors at high salaries, or a larger group of trainees at low salaries. You will get more bang for your buck by hiring the expensive professionals.
Again, you stress the difference between employees and outside vendors, but to the person writing the checks they are both solution providers. When you buy a half-baked solution (e.g., a trainee) you assume some of the risk in exchange for a discount. That's not smart unless you're an expert in estimating and minimizing that risk.
Are you a professional? If so, why do you expect your employer to train you? If you hire a lawyer, do you train him? I train myself. And no, I don't work cheaply.
Does anyone know what the security model is? Doesn't DRM rely on the player having embedded keys to decrypt the content? If the DRM is open, won't it be trivial to extract those keys?
I don't know much about Python, but I doubt that emerge's slowness comes from Python. It's probably doing a linear scan of something that should be indexed more intelligently. Or maybe it's opening a huge number of files.
A similar thing applies to web apps - a slow web app is usually due to high-level design errors, not a slow scripting language. A lot of web apps spend most of their time in database calls. When an app is blocked on I/O, it's just as fast in Python as in C, much like a Porsche stuck next to a Yugo in traffic.
Perl is not exactly a speed champ compared to C, but many snappy web pages run on Perl because the amount of computation involved in sending the web page is relatively small. Is Python substantially slower than other scripting languages?
I can't tell if you're kidding. At the risk of not getting the joke: install the CPAN module. Type "perl -MCPAN -eshell". Then type "install Foo::Bar". It will handle all the dependencies.
That comment applies pretty well to the Camel book - which others are you thinking of?
I think of the Camel as entertainment/digression/philosophy. If you want to sort out technical details, look in the man pages, with which Perl is plentifully provided. I haven't felt a need for Perl books in a long time.