She is apparently stalking some woman. Whether that woman is the PJ of Groklaw or not is irellevant. It's unprofessional, and smacks of the worst of the paparattzi. It's also probably illegal, it borders on illegal for public figures, and PJ (both of Groklaw and not) is not a public figure.
The underlying design of Subversion is centralized. It's probably easier to write something from scratch than to change core design elements of Subversion.
But, I wonder why he didn't just help improve (or fork) Arch so it would suit his needs better instead of starting from scratch. Arch is much closer to Bitkeeper in design and operation. It's decentralized, uses change sets, and it's GPLed.
Half a kilo of butter, or a pound of butter is a reasonable purchase. Grams just don't cut it. What am I getting if I ask for 80 grams of salami? Well I guess I can visualize it and some Europeans buy it that way, but the average everyday user of a measuring system is nearly innumerate. They want to buy one or two or maybe a half of something.
When I was visiting Italy, salami (actually most bulk food items) was ordered by the cento, which is 100g (roughly a quarter pound). If you wanted 80g, the man behind the counter would look at you funny, just like the man behind the counter in the US would look at you funny for ordering 3 ounces of salami. It's a meaningful request, but just nobody does it.
It's easy for the most innumerate person to become used to using 100g as a useful measure of food items.
And once I'm inside Disney World, I'll be able to visit: New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Washington, Little Rock, McDonalds, The Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls
And all of those other wonderful places I've seen on TV.
Don't you know, you can't visit all those places in Disney World, you have to go to Vegas to get to all those places.
I've heard too much about Extreme Programming stifling and frustrating good developers to want to use it with a "kick ass team", and I have yet to see a client able to field a Customer Representative that can do what XP demands of them. I would consider it if I had a large inexperienced team, or a team already used to XP. I'd especially consider it if I had a client who couldn't be nailed down on a project scope, and who could be thus tricked into not nailing me down on what gets delivered by the deadline.
Most of the time in my experience (both in and out of software) a project manager is handed the scope, manpower, budget and deadline, already decided by pointy haired people, and told "make it so". I really can't see how this can be done with any confidence with XP.
I'm less familiar with "Rational Unified Process", but a quick glance looks more makes it look more like expensive and flexible project management software than methodology for managing anything. Software can be a useful tool, but it cannot be the management itself.
He envisioned a self-replicating robot-like device with its own power supply, communications, and computational ability. Haven't read Drexler, but that sounds like a Cell to me;-)
if you put a UPS to a rack of servers, it won't do you a damn bit of good if the whole power grid goes kaflooey because... well, your servers may be running, but the logs will be filled with "cannot reach network" errors.
When power gets restored to the switch however, you can come right back up. Without the extra UPS for the server, you have to worry about whether hardware got damaged, the database was properly committed to the hard drive, etc. Extra UPS for the server would mean they would have been back online at 7:35pm last night rather than still down this morning.
On the other hand, this looks like a case of "always solving the last crisis".
Sure, if they want the pilots to be unable to see. Lasers can be in any wavelength of the EM spectrum. There's no way to block out all lasers without blocking out all light.
Personally, I prefer the extra safety of having pilots able to look at their surroundings.
No, that's how it used to be. As far as I know that's how they still are: days and years are astronomically defined. But I am no expert, I don't know what the official answer is. According to this site, the 86,400 SI seconds per day is literally true for January 1, 1900, but not necessarily true for any other day.
If a day was defined as a true astronomical measurement we would have no need for leap years. The astronomical definition of a day and year is precisly why we have a need for leap years. The rotation of the earth doesn't precisely match the revolution of the earth, so we need leap years to make sure that the year doesn't drift around the seasons slowly and steadily.
One of the most annoying things about OSS advocates is when they ask "Why would you ever want to do that?" about something no OSS package does well and yet hundreds of thousands of people really do want to "do that" as is evidenced by the continual high sales of Dreamweaver.
It is a critical question before you develop something, you need good answers to that question or else the development is going to flop. If someone asks that question regarding a feature that's important to you, answer them, don't gripe about the question.
Did you even read the freaking article? The author didn't say "Don't use firefox, they encourage bad behavior." He had legitimate points.
A few of his points were legitimate, most of his points were FUD and manipulation (eg. the "Ten Immutable Laws of Security").
If firefox wants to sell security, they need to appear secure. Not having the installed signed isn't a good marketing tactic.
One thing he ignores entirely, the installation download is signed. It's just not signed by Verisign's X.509 Certificate Monopoly in a format that is designed to play nice with Internet Explorer's dialog boxes.
It annoys the crap out of me that most (if not all) plugins aren't signed by their authors. Yes, this needs to be addressed.
This article points out that the perception of firefox's security is less than IE under SP2. It points it out incorrectly. IE under SP2 is still a security nightmare, and furthermore SP2 is a deployment nightmare.
Note that much of the article is trying to convince the reader that IE isn't as bad as the reader thinks. Furthermore, most of the article is trying to convice the reader that Firefox isn't as much better in security as they might have heard. I think IE has the perception problem here.
This, of course, doesn't mean Mozilla/Firefox should rest on its laurels, but letting a Microsoft Apologist frame the security debate is a recipe for disaster.
Firefox needs to make sure it doesn't poke holes in users security needs. It has to give users the tools they need to maintain good security. It has to give users the information they need to learn about good security practices. It does a very good job at this already, far better than IE. It can do a better job, and people are working on improving this.
I think it's less a choice to go to a mac because they have an iPod, but more the whole iPod thing gets them going into the Apple Store, or the Apple Website.
While they're there, they notice the other nifty things (like computers), and get pleasantly surprised by the price and/or cool factor and/or features. And then they think about switching.
Personally I'm happy running my Linux on my frankenstein's monsters, but having been in an Apple Store I can see the appeal.
I don't like the "Happy Hacking" keyboard. No cursor pad, no numeric keypad, no function keys. Nothing to safely map META or SUPER to. No angle at all to the keys (much less an adjustable angle) for ergonomics.
It's everything I hate about laptop keyboards, but for a desktop.
In New York, you don't get the names of the electors on the ballot either, it just says "Electors for" in tiny print above the candidate's name.
I don't know exactly how to find out this information. My first guess would be to call or write your state's Board of Elections. My second guess would be to call or write each statewide party headquarters in your state.
To boycott Monsanto, avoid buying NutriSweet (particularly Equal), Roundup (the son of Agent Orange and granson of DDT), any Ortho lawncare products. Also, avoid any food made with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's); many of them are Monsanto GMO's, and the other GMO's aren't any better.
Monsanto has consistently been in my list of BigEvil for a while now. Historically, they are the company that brought us DDT, PCB's and Agent Orange. Currently, they're the ones seeding farmer's crops with pollen containing genes that they have patented, and then suing the farmers for patent violations. Also, getting the World Bank to pressure third world countries to abandon traditional crops in favor of licensing Monsanto GMO seed, a license which requires annual renewal of course.
But at the same time, having a migration path, for businesses who can dump all proprietary software except applications X and Y, is a good thing. Hence the eventual certification program that Bruce Perens was mentioning.
That's the key: "They took from her." They didn't steal from the bank. There wasn't negligence on the part of the bank. The bank didn't leak her account number, login name, or password. She did. She fell for a scam through no apparent fault of the bank. And now we all pay for it in the form of higher fees, lower savings account interest, etc.
Banks are legally responsible for securing the funds in your account, and for only giving those funds to authorized people. To do this, banks have a wide number of security choices available to them.
Banks have deliberately chosen a pretty flimsy set of security procedures, even though they are held financially liable. This is because the amount they lose due to fraud with existing systems (more often, due to insurance premiums to make someone else pay for fraud) is less than it would cost them to beef up security more (both in direct cost, and in lost customers who want an "easy" bank).
When a particular kind of fraud increases, the banks try to pick the cheapest and easiest way to curtail that specific kind of fraud. And then they stop, because they have no financial incentive to secure things any more than they already are.
Suppose she was duped into giving her house key to some burglar posing as someone from a carpet cleaning service. Should the mortgage company have to pay when the burglar steals her stuff? Should the home builder? Should the maker of her door lock?
No, because none of these people have contracted to secure her home. The closest is the maker of her door lock, and all they are contracted to do is make a door lock that can be used to assist in securing her home.
When you put money in a bank, you have a contract for them to secure your money, that's the difference.
Problem is, a person with the account number and PIN *is* an authorized person; that's the whole point of PINs in the first place. That's why you don't give them out to ANYONE who asks, and that's why yes, it was it was the person's fault for giving out info that should NEVER be given out.
Morally, you're right, the person who gave out their PIN shares ethical responsibility with the person fraudulently removing cash. Practically speaking, you're right, there is little to no benefit to making your account more vulnerable than it already is.
Legally, you're completely wrong. Even if you were to write your pin number on your ATM card and leave it on a bench in the bus station (and report it lost within the appropriate time period), the bank is supposed to reimburse any money fradulently removed from your account by whoever picked up the card. At least that's the law in New York State as I understand it.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above is certainly not legal advice. Don't be foolish enough to try this.
I agree. Debian is wonderful, I use it at home, I use it at work. If your work is expecting to get Enterprise level support, you can get Enterprise level support for Debian with HP.
However, it sounds like your Enterprise has already standardized around IBM. As good as Debian is, I can't see how it's good enough to lose an enterprise support agreement, even if it's just a few machines.
Maybe you can threaten the sales people to go to HP if they don't amend the support contract to include Debian. They probably will know you're bluffing, but it might help.
Nothing terribly fishy [about 98% of eligible voters being registered in Philadelphia] if there's a motor-voter law in effect. Anyone with a driver's license would be registered to vote.
This is Philadelphia we're talking about. A huge (certainly larger than 2%) portion of the adult population of Philadelphia has no car, no driver's license, and counts on public transportation to get around.
Even LA and Detroit (both famous for their high car usage) have substantial licenseless populations.
Re:What about quicksort?
on
Ballmer on Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
rsilvergun asks: What about quicksort? Imagine if that was patented. Quicksort was (first?) published in the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery in July, 1961. It's safe to assume it was invented before then. Any patent on it would have long expired.
It's been shown to be the fastest sort possible, if I remember right On some sets of data, perhaps. There are many sorts that are comparibly fast (faster for some data, slower than others). If you restrict the kind of data you're sorting, there are much faster algorithms.
One of my favorites is the Radix Sort, which was half invented by IBM, and half organically developed by their punch card tabulators towards the beginning of the 20th century (generating statistics for the US Census). If you're sorting on a numeric key field with a fixed number of digits, you do a fast stable sort on the least significant digit of the key, and then sort on the next most significant, and so on. You can sort large amounts of data in O(nk) time rather than O(nlogn) for Quicksort, plus, you can use the sort by hand on physical objects, Quicksort is hard to do without a computer.
I don't know any professors that like the new edition scam.
I do. Most of these textbooks are written by professors. Most of these professors profit highly from the new edition scam.
As for the kickbacks - is there any evidence of this?
I don't know of any, but if there are kickbacks, I assume they are quietly given to the Department or the University Administration, professors tend to be noisy about such things, and textbook changes can easily be mandated from above.
I have had a few professors who rebelled, and made sure to "require" the new edition, but give the homework assignment numbers from both the new edition and the previous ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Tadpole, and they weren't technically made by Sun, but by a "Sun Partner".
Actually, these laptops are probably also made by Tadpole, and just rebranded by Sun.
Tadpole Computer
She is apparently stalking some woman. Whether that woman is the PJ of Groklaw or not is irellevant. It's unprofessional, and smacks of the worst of the paparattzi. It's also probably illegal, it borders on illegal for public figures, and PJ (both of Groklaw and not) is not a public figure.
Umm, people?? How do we know *any* of that article is true??
Whether or not the story is actually about the PJ of Groklaw, MOG is stalking and trashing some private woman's life. It disgusts me.
The underlying design of Subversion is centralized. It's probably easier to write something from scratch than to change core design elements of Subversion.
But, I wonder why he didn't just help improve (or fork) Arch so it would suit his needs better instead of starting from scratch. Arch is much closer to Bitkeeper in design and operation. It's decentralized, uses change sets, and it's GPLed.
Half a kilo of butter, or a pound of butter is a reasonable purchase. Grams just don't cut it. What am I getting if I ask for 80 grams of salami? Well I guess I can visualize it and some Europeans buy it that way, but the average everyday user of a measuring system is nearly innumerate. They want to buy one or two or maybe a half of something.
When I was visiting Italy, salami (actually most bulk food items) was ordered by the cento, which is 100g (roughly a quarter pound). If you wanted 80g, the man behind the counter would look at you funny, just like the man behind the counter in the US would look at you funny for ordering 3 ounces of salami. It's a meaningful request, but just nobody does it.
It's easy for the most innumerate person to become used to using 100g as a useful measure of food items.
And once I'm inside Disney World, I'll be able to visit: New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Washington, Little Rock, McDonalds, The Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls
And all of those other wonderful places I've seen on TV.
Don't you know, you can't visit all those places in Disney World, you have to go to Vegas to get to all those places.
I've heard too much about Extreme Programming stifling and frustrating good developers to want to use it with a "kick ass team", and I have yet to see a client able to field a Customer Representative that can do what XP demands of them. I would consider it if I had a large inexperienced team, or a team already used to XP. I'd especially consider it if I had a client who couldn't be nailed down on a project scope, and who could be thus tricked into not nailing me down on what gets delivered by the deadline.
Most of the time in my experience (both in and out of software) a project manager is handed the scope, manpower, budget and deadline, already decided by pointy haired people, and told "make it so". I really can't see how this can be done with any confidence with XP.
I'm less familiar with "Rational Unified Process", but a quick glance looks more makes it look more like expensive and flexible project management software than methodology for managing anything. Software can be a useful tool, but it cannot be the management itself.
He envisioned a self-replicating robot-like device with its own power supply, communications, and computational ability. ;-)
Haven't read Drexler, but that sounds like a Cell to me
if you put a UPS to a rack of servers, it won't do you a damn bit of good if the whole power grid goes kaflooey because... well, your servers may be running, but the logs will be filled with "cannot reach network" errors.
When power gets restored to the switch however, you can come right back up. Without the extra UPS for the server, you have to worry about whether hardware got damaged, the database was properly committed to the hard drive, etc. Extra UPS for the server would mean they would have been back online at 7:35pm last night rather than still down this morning.
On the other hand, this looks like a case of "always solving the last crisis".
Sure, if they want the pilots to be unable to see. Lasers can be in any wavelength of the EM spectrum. There's no way to block out all lasers without blocking out all light.
Personally, I prefer the extra safety of having pilots able to look at their surroundings.
No, that's how it used to be.
As far as I know that's how they still are: days and years are astronomically defined. But I am no expert, I don't know what the official answer is. According to this site, the 86,400 SI seconds per day is literally true for January 1, 1900, but not necessarily true for any other day.
If a day was defined as a true astronomical measurement we would have no need for leap years.
The astronomical definition of a day and year is precisly why we have a need for leap years. The rotation of the earth doesn't precisely match the revolution of the earth, so we need leap years to make sure that the year doesn't drift around the seasons slowly and steadily.
One of the most annoying things about OSS advocates is when they ask "Why would you ever want to do that?" about something no OSS package does well and yet hundreds of thousands of people really do want to "do that" as is evidenced by the continual high sales of Dreamweaver.
It is a critical question before you develop something, you need good answers to that question or else the development is going to flop. If someone asks that question regarding a feature that's important to you, answer them, don't gripe about the question.
Did you even read the freaking article? The author didn't say "Don't use firefox, they encourage bad behavior." He had legitimate points.
A few of his points were legitimate, most of his points were FUD and manipulation (eg. the "Ten Immutable Laws of Security").
If firefox wants to sell security, they need to appear secure. Not having the installed signed isn't a good marketing tactic.
One thing he ignores entirely, the installation download is signed. It's just not signed by Verisign's X.509 Certificate Monopoly in a format that is designed to play nice with Internet Explorer's dialog boxes.
It annoys the crap out of me that most (if not all) plugins aren't signed by their authors.
Yes, this needs to be addressed.
This article points out that the perception of firefox's security is less than IE under SP2.
It points it out incorrectly. IE under SP2 is still a security nightmare, and furthermore SP2 is a deployment nightmare.
Note that much of the article is trying to convince the reader that IE isn't as bad as the reader thinks. Furthermore, most of the article is trying to convice the reader that Firefox isn't as much better in security as they might have heard. I think IE has the perception problem here.
This, of course, doesn't mean Mozilla/Firefox should rest on its laurels, but letting a Microsoft Apologist frame the security debate is a recipe for disaster.
Firefox needs to make sure it doesn't poke holes in users security needs. It has to give users the tools they need to maintain good security. It has to give users the information they need to learn about good security practices. It does a very good job at this already, far better than IE. It can do a better job, and people are working on improving this.
I think it's less a choice to go to a mac because they have an iPod, but more the whole iPod thing gets them going into the Apple Store, or the Apple Website.
While they're there, they notice the other nifty things (like computers), and get pleasantly surprised by the price and/or cool factor and/or features. And then they think about switching.
Personally I'm happy running my Linux on my frankenstein's monsters, but having been in an Apple Store I can see the appeal.
I don't like the "Happy Hacking" keyboard. No cursor pad, no numeric keypad, no function keys. Nothing to safely map META or SUPER to. No angle at all to the keys (much less an adjustable angle) for ergonomics.
It's everything I hate about laptop keyboards, but for a desktop.
In New York, you don't get the names of the electors on the ballot either, it just says "Electors for" in tiny print above the candidate's name.
I don't know exactly how to find out this information. My first guess would be to call or write your state's Board of Elections. My second guess would be to call or write each statewide party headquarters in your state.
Wheee, I forgot an entire paragraph.
To boycott Monsanto, avoid buying NutriSweet (particularly Equal), Roundup (the son of Agent Orange and granson of DDT), any Ortho lawncare products. Also, avoid any food made with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's); many of them are Monsanto GMO's, and the other GMO's aren't any better.
Monsanto has consistently been in my list of BigEvil for a while now. Historically, they are the company that brought us DDT, PCB's and Agent Orange. Currently, they're the ones seeding farmer's crops with pollen containing genes that they have patented, and then suing the farmers for patent violations. Also, getting the World Bank to pressure third world countries to abandon traditional crops in favor of licensing Monsanto GMO seed, a license which requires annual renewal of course.
But at the same time, having a migration path, for businesses who can dump all proprietary software except applications X and Y, is a good thing. Hence the eventual certification program that Bruce Perens was mentioning.
That's the key: "They took from her." They didn't steal from the bank. There wasn't negligence on the part of the bank. The bank didn't leak her account number, login name, or password. She did. She fell for a scam through no apparent fault of the bank. And now we all pay for it in the form of higher fees, lower savings account interest, etc.
Banks are legally responsible for securing the funds in your account, and for only giving those funds to authorized people. To do this, banks have a wide number of security choices available to them.
Banks have deliberately chosen a pretty flimsy set of security procedures, even though they are held financially liable. This is because the amount they lose due to fraud with existing systems (more often, due to insurance premiums to make someone else pay for fraud) is less than it would cost them to beef up security more (both in direct cost, and in lost customers who want an "easy" bank).
When a particular kind of fraud increases, the banks try to pick the cheapest and easiest way to curtail that specific kind of fraud. And then they stop, because they have no financial incentive to secure things any more than they already are.
Suppose she was duped into giving her house key to some burglar posing as someone from a carpet cleaning service. Should the mortgage company have to pay when the burglar steals her stuff? Should the home builder? Should the maker of her door lock?
No, because none of these people have contracted to secure her home. The closest is the maker of her door lock, and all they are contracted to do is make a door lock that can be used to assist in securing her home.
When you put money in a bank, you have a contract for them to secure your money, that's the difference.
Problem is, a person with the account number and PIN *is* an authorized person; that's the whole point of PINs in the first place. That's why you don't give them out to ANYONE who asks, and that's why yes, it was it was the person's fault for giving out info that should NEVER be given out.
Morally, you're right, the person who gave out their PIN shares ethical responsibility with the person fraudulently removing cash. Practically speaking, you're right, there is little to no benefit to making your account more vulnerable than it already is.
Legally, you're completely wrong. Even if you were to write your pin number on your ATM card and leave it on a bench in the bus station (and report it lost within the appropriate time period), the bank is supposed to reimburse any money fradulently removed from your account by whoever picked up the card. At least that's the law in New York State as I understand it.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above is certainly not legal advice. Don't be foolish enough to try this.
I agree. Debian is wonderful, I use it at home, I use it at work. If your work is expecting to get Enterprise level support, you can get Enterprise level support for Debian with HP.
However, it sounds like your Enterprise has already standardized around IBM. As good as Debian is, I can't see how it's good enough to lose an enterprise support agreement, even if it's just a few machines.
Maybe you can threaten the sales people to go to HP if they don't amend the support contract to include Debian. They probably will know you're bluffing, but it might help.
Nothing terribly fishy [about 98% of eligible voters being registered in Philadelphia] if there's a motor-voter law in effect. Anyone with a driver's license would be registered to vote.
This is Philadelphia we're talking about. A huge (certainly larger than 2%) portion of the adult population of Philadelphia has no car, no driver's license, and counts on public transportation to get around.
Even LA and Detroit (both famous for their high car usage) have substantial licenseless populations.
rsilvergun asks:
What about quicksort? Imagine if that was patented.
Quicksort was (first?) published in the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery in July, 1961. It's safe to assume it was invented before then. Any patent on it would have long expired.
It's been shown to be the fastest sort possible, if I remember right
On some sets of data, perhaps. There are many sorts that are comparibly fast (faster for some data, slower than others). If you restrict the kind of data you're sorting, there are much faster algorithms.
One of my favorites is the Radix Sort, which was half invented by IBM, and half organically developed by their punch card tabulators towards the beginning of the 20th century (generating statistics for the US Census). If you're sorting on a numeric key field with a fixed number of digits, you do a fast stable sort on the least significant digit of the key, and then sort on the next most significant, and so on. You can sort large amounts of data in O(nk) time rather than O(nlogn) for Quicksort, plus, you can use the sort by hand on physical objects, Quicksort is hard to do without a computer.
I don't know any professors that like the new edition scam.
I do. Most of these textbooks are written by professors. Most of these professors profit highly from the new edition scam.
As for the kickbacks - is there any evidence of this?
I don't know of any, but if there are kickbacks, I assume they are quietly given to the Department or the University Administration, professors tend to be noisy about such things, and textbook changes can easily be mandated from above.
I have had a few professors who rebelled, and made sure to "require" the new edition, but give the homework assignment numbers from both the new edition and the previous ones.