There are still industrial settings where serial lines are used frequently, if not heavily. Machine shops with less-than-cutting-edge controllers use serial cables on almost every machine for sending CNC programs to machining centers.

I don't bash google, or yahoo on this regard. My opinion is that India has a right to enact laws that coincide with the moral status quo of that country. I would recommend all companies to comply with the laws of the countries they have physical locations at, but I don't know if Google actually has a physical presence in India. If they don't, I can't see why they would care what India's laws are.

If Yahoo! wants to comply with India's laws, then good for them. But they need to be honest with the Indian users of their service and make it publicly known that their results are filtered due to the laws of that country. If enough Indians get fed up, then they can make a go of trying to change the laws.

Censorship, when done in the dark is evil. Censorship done in the light of day is slightly less evil.

Good point. I would have to see the uniforms before passing judgment. Without further information, I would say that in general, uniforms marginalize individuals and make them feel like a smaller cog in the machine.

The ability to demonstrate professionalism with attire is an important part if being a professional. If uniforms are being suggested because IT guys currently are dressing inappropriately(gasp), then that's a failure of management to enforce what are likely already existing business casual attire rules.

Funny you mention that. About a year and a half ago I was sitting in the security line in St. Paul International and someone had left a rather large piece of luggage sitting on the ground. As all things go in MSP, I was sitting in line for probably 20 minutes and hadn't moved very far. The luggage started making me nervous, because nobody was standing next to it.

I saw a security guy walking by and I mentioned to him that there was a piece of abandoned luggage in line and he shrugged, said "okay i guess we'll take it to lost and found." I was nervous until I stepped off the plane at my destination.

Yes. Despite the theatrics, our current security is fairly good at preventing physical metallic objects that could be used as weapons. This is a good thing, but doesn't prevent people from using other dangerous materials like ceramics are high density plastics which are equally dangerous as clubs or knives.

Beyond that, there aren't a lot of other security measures that will have mass appeal.

Lose. Not loose, lose.

LOSE. A hooker is loose. LOSE is when you have lost something.

Does anyone else see the irony that the white paper is in Adobe PDF format and most people will be reading about Adobe Reader vulnerabilities IN Adobe Reader?

If unary logic is good enough for politicians, it should be good enough for anybody!

My first language was BASIC on a Commodore 64. After that was Fortran and then eventually C and C++ on Windows, and then C and then C++ on Linux.

BASIC was a good stepping stone, but I really wish I would have started with Fortran as it was much easier to learn concepts with. I found the peek/poke memory concepts of the commodore 64 very frustrating.

That's an inescapable reality and it's not unique to closed or open source software. You always have to contend with the fact that the developer may have left a bug intentionally that allows remote code execution or privilege escalation.

You can audit code all day long, but the chance of a something getting through is high. You might be able to take a small application and with some assurance say it's bug free, but you'll never ever accomplish such a feat with a large project like the Linux kernel or the entire GNU userland.

As with all things, we have to take security vulnerability discoveries as they come and keep a watchful eye on code quality and readability.

I'm from Portland Oregon son. I'm sure there are good cops, but the bad ones make the news a lot.

They've been talking about ending racial profiling for 20 years. A cursory glance at the county sherrifs inmate list(1267 people) seems to indicate they primarily arrest black and hispanic men. 48% of the time an officer pulls his gun, no arrest is made. Black men are on the receiving side of 29% of all use of force incidents, despite them making up just 6% of the city population.

Then there's the case of Kendra James, shot and killed for trying to flee after being pulled over. The wikipedia entry is wrong on that one by the way. She wasn't trying to run over the policeman standing next to her car-that was his opinion of the matter because he happened to be standing next to the car when she put it in gear. Instead of backing away, he pulled and fired. He left her bleeding in handcuffs and she died on that street. The policeman involved in this incident was never charged.

Then there's the case of James Chasse, a 40something schizophrenic who got the attention of 2 police officers and a deputy sheriff. They approached, he ran, they pursued. They beat him so bad they broke 26 of his bones and punctured a lung. He died on the way from the jail to the hospital. It's a little unclear why they took him to jail first, considering the beating they gave him. No officers admitted to using force capable of breaking bones, despite numerous eyewitness accounts that they kicked, elbowed and punched him repeatedly. No charges were filed and all 3 police were cleared. The city just settled with James' family for $925,000 and the internal affairs investigation results are not being released to the public.

If you're still reading, here's another story. Christopher Humphreys, one of the officers who beat James Chasse to death is back on the street again after another suspension. He shot a bean bag from his shotgun at a 12 year old girl for resisting arrest. Again, no charges filed.

Think it's an isolated incident? The police chief reinstated Humphreys because the police union threatened to release the results of a no-confidence vote in the chief, which could have cost the chief his job. The policemen support each other, no matter how far off base their actions are.

That's not freedom and liberty. It's tyranny. Most people don't care that much because they've never been on the wrong end of a tazer, bean bag, or police fist.

I don't use it because it's extremely verbose and programming it is a lot more work than plain human readable text files. The types of applications I develop have no need for XML, and the types where it might be applicable won't work well with XML.

Just to be different, I think a newspaper could run a follow-up section which only runs reports on events that have already been reported.

Example: Police officer shoots and kills an unarmed citizen. On administrative leave pending review.

In our typical instant gratification society, most people would read that and go "gotcha! whats next?". Well, some of us want more. I want to read about that cop going to trial. Or that cop going to jail. Or, dunno, why the hell the DA chooses not to press charges. Right now there is no accountability for anyone to see things through to the end. Once it makes a headline, some think it's a job well done.

I don't buy it. I want real news. Not this sound byte ticker bullshit.

There is something to be said for being an advocate for your position and arguing for what you think is right. But there comes a point where you have to cede that the final decision is made by those above you(or by your client) and that ultimately you must do as they want.

By accepting this, you can make a professional argument to support your position and still save face when you lose the argument. Pushing too hard will make you look bullish or get you fired.

As for the submitters original question, buying support for business critical programs is the best way. Or if nothing else, if you're using Linux, buy your distribution from a vendor instead of downloading the ISO.

Indeed. It's probably the most widely misused software concept ever.

Except for really large complicated programs, I just don't see any reason to use XML files to describe program configurations. It's retarded.