Pretty much...Copyright violations have replaced all other deadly sins...

Agreed. The funny part is that it's a little frustrating to see all of our past classmates who couldn't tell pointers or variables from the teacher's red pen to save their lives, but got pushed through school (probably so the school doesn't look bad) getting all the comfortable jobs where they can drone on every day, doing the same things they did in school while we're stuck just trying to get by on our crap compensation, slaving away on our projects...why? Oh, cuz we care a little bit about what we do. /rant Sometimes, these things do make me wonder...

Slashdot is also full of adults who have never created anything of value in their lives and see nothing wrong with taking compensation for sitting on their arses. The kids are just tired of feeling like they are paying for something that they never get. I feel for them.

Funny how much has to be assumed for the argument to be valid...

Perhaps those in the gunship don't know telephoto lenses when they see them...especially if they see RPGs day after day and are expecting more of them because their lives are potentially in danger all of the time. As far as the pilot crying out that they are under RPG fire, he was calling that out right as you watched the guy with the "rpg" crouch right behind the corner of the building. Not only is that a perfectly reasonable assumption in a war-zone, but he was acting preemptively when lives might potentially be in danger. Moreover, the video made reference to a previous enemy engagement nearby, putting the entire episode in that context for any viewers that are paying attention

While the actions concerning the van are a little more difficult to justify (I can honestly say I'm a little torn as I saw the actions as being a little more drastic; however, if I was to assume that I had just shot some terrorists, then maybe it could have been somewhat logical that those who came to collect the wounded were sympathizers and could, potentially be hostile as well), they also do not strike me as being out of control either. War is Hell - mistakes will be made and innocent lives will be lost. To expect otherwise from someone is idealism blinding someone to rational thinking.

This, in NO way, excuses the actions of our government or the conclusions of that opinion piece which are quite extreme, but the actions of those there in the situation at the time seem to be at least reasonable given the fact that most of them probably aren't reporters of any kind. I would suggest you re-watch the video again, trying to see the video from the eyes of someone making decisions based off of the fact that people are potentially in real-life danger, not sitting cozy in the United States reading slash-dot all day. Get a grip man. While we deal with the oppressiveness of our home government, they act, aware or not, as the face of our government, and some people want to rip them a new one over there. Those reporters were not wearing anything easily identifiable to make themselves known and they or the people they were with were carrying what appeared (to the soldiers) to potentially be weapons. These were soldiers who were probably looking for remnants of a recent engagement and saw what they were expecting when it wasn't there. Fault needs to be dealt with on both sides - it's a pity that we, as a culture can't seem to realize that blame doesn't have to all fall on one entity's shoulders all the time...

I certainly don't find reporters reporting on crimes perpetrated by the American military to be Anti-American, but I think it is dishonest if they don't take the time to consider more than just their own personal viewpoint on an issue of this caliber. There are certainly more than enough plausible explanations to the actions of those involved that your outrage is a little quick to the punch. Nonetheless, IMHO, I think we do deserve an explanation for the actions of the government in covering this up.

There are multiple kinds of development shops - i assume that you are referring to the kind of shop where you are given ample time (or at least sufficient time) to complete projects and where quality and few bugs are valued over having it done in a short period of time. There are other kinds of shops (like the one I've worked in for quite a while), where the management is less organized and goals include - get it done yesterday! Code tends to become a little less maintainable anyway in these types of situations...to the developers working on these types of projects, sometimes, well-documented macros and other such meta-programming aids become the only means of keeping the code-base they maintain organized for themselves under their time constraints. Unfortunately for management, the skilled programmers who are capable of succeeding in these types of environments tend to want to leave as they feel abused, overworked, and underpaid. Sadly, I think these kinds of shops are actually becoming more and more common. so, these techniques may, one day, even become almost the norm...

And that's the whole crux of the argument against the huge fines imposed - they aren't losing money because they are not even providing a product in the market that the pirates are serving. Hence, the damage supposedly caused is actually non-existent.

Agreed...because I work for a small company that tries to do more than it really is capable of, I find myself with another project dropped into my lap that needs to be done yesterday that I can only conceivably complete by temporarily adding another state or condition to the code that I already have (in small companies, scalability is NEVER a concern - only accomplishing the task...it sucks...but it is reality). Finite State Machines are my friends. I probably have an entire stack of papers floating around my desk full of my state machine drawings that I used to organize various problems that I've had to solve over the course of my time here.

As for the original post, being a half university taught and half self-taught programmer, I would say that it definitely depends on the person. I don't know how it works exactly, but the BEST and brightest programmers (i.e. problem solvers) I've met have all worked for small companies or doing contract work. However, the best code-writers all seem to work for the big corporations (obviously this is based only on anecdotal evidence...). I guess it makes sense though - the corporations need the good code writers to maintain their scalability and the small companies definitely need the good problem solvers to deal with the daily emergencies that just evolve from the natural overconfidence of a small company with growing pains. Maybe people just kinda gravitate where their skills are most useful.

It's nice to see a couple people who paid attention in either their college virtual memory course or got some real life experience. Memory usage is, quite often, a useless statistic without other qualifying statistics to help interpret it. The first thing that I do when checking out a computer with problems is add page faults to the visible columns in the task manager. I don't think the article demonstrates that the TSA either has the knowledge or use of the proper statistics for making the conclusions they made. While possible that they may not have released all the data they have or something similar, it definitely sounds like an instance of someone spouting off their mouth before acquiring the data they need to draw reasonable conclusions and/or incompetence at some level. The fact that their data could not determine whether the memory usage was due to OS or application usage is also another sign that they may be jumping to conclusions.

Sadly, my experience has been that the liberal arts people are far more "My view is RIGHT" than the engineers that I have come across...instead of mathematical or scientific certainties, however, their views tend to center around values or philosophies - and woe to the person who is obviously a bigot/racist or is intolerant.

All of these examples really are anecdotal. I can only shake my head at those who think that some social group or another contains more of these hard-headed, "Always Right" people. I think that some people are just stuck up, set in their ways, and unwilling to accept any wrongdoing or error on their part. I find these people in all walks of life. It just takes a LOT of patience, time, and effort to deal with these people.

I'm not convinced that engineers make good terrorists because of their personalities, but I COULD see engineers making good terrorists because of their skillsets. Heck, anyone with a good skillset would make a good terrorist. Maybe we should jail all of them just in case!!?!?!?!?

Most people that are applying for those jobs aren't actually qualified...they just know they can get away with lying because it's hard to background check everyone who applies for a job. It's really hard to weed out actually skilled technical people from non-skilled technical people. Even more importantly, it's hard to separate out those who actually know a little bit about a few things related to the computer world and can wow the non-technical around them, but have no freaking clue what to do with themselves in a situation where stress of any kinda (great or small) is placed upon them.

That actually has nothing to do with the graphics hardware of either console. Graphics differences are due to the Dev's choice of primary console. Interestingly enough, the graphics chipset of the 360 is more capable than the graphics chipset of the PS3; however, the cell processor of the PS3 is much more efficient for running games than the 360's processor, thus, it actually more than makes up for the difference in certain situations (optimization is really the only way to take advantage of either console's architectural benefits)

The issue with graphics differences between the two platforms comes from the way games are made. Devs try to make as much of the code base as they possibly can generic, including graphics engines, but through the various steps of the process, some code will always be platform specific and some code will not work efficiently on one platform or another. In fact, a huge portion of the development process is devoting time to determining whether to run some code through the GPU or the CPU. Such decisions cause small differences between multi-platform games, especially on the graphics side.

One of the hardest things for Devs to do is make the game look the same between two different platforms, especially since the Development kits for the various platforms are so outrageously expensive - so not every studio can afford more than one. Thus many games are created on one console development kit and ported to other platforms (including PC platforms).

I found a decent article really quick that explains some of the problems and issues with development for those that are inclined to read more: Bit-Tech Article

Also (in reference to the GP), the graphics chipset of the XBox 360 is an R500 series Radeon, so closer to ATI X1800 or GeForce 7900 series graphics. NVIDIA's RSX was roughly of the same caliber, though, unlike the ATI, it did not have the Unified Shader Architecture which wouldn't be implemented in NVIDIA's cards until the 8800 series.

True...I was also born poor too...and there is a little truth to both sides...there are a whole bunch of people who get ahead in life on the back of others' efforts. However, the ones who cry "I'm a victim!" and don't even make the effort to help themselves. Both sides are at fault here. I'm where I'm at because I worked my ass off and kept pushing even when it was exceptionally hard. Many people I grew up with did not. Many just gave up and are stuck in their own little vicious cycle in and out of jail. At the same time, it has ALWAYS bothered me how easy it was for some of the people that I met who just threw money at every problem to get by. Bitterness doesn't really help you much in life though. Just get up off your butt and try again. Stop enabling the self-proclaimed victims. I wish I could ask people to stop accepting bribes, but that's never gonna happen.

The irony of your opinion is that it is misinformed in the firstplace (or ignorant - but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt). They have stated multiple times that their intentions are not to support piracy, but to support the free exchange and sharing of information. Piracy is the name given them by those foreign corporate interests.

7-zip works great...my company has used it for quite a while...and its stable.