You're failing to understand that:

1. Social networking isn't about people trying to be a celebrity. It's about some people trying to be a celebrity, while others just want to keep in touch with friends (e.g. for many, social networking sites are just the replacement for Instant Messaging). It's about access to information that is controlled and owned by the user.

2. Even for those that want to be celebrities, even they just want to be visible to other party-goers, students, and friends-of-friends. Nowhere does 3rd-party advertising companies mining their personal data figure into the equation. That is NOT what motivated the person to join the site.

3. The idea that the information is always "voluntarily provided" is bogus. That implies a conscious decision was made by the user. Clicking OK to a Terms Of Service agreement may cover a site legally, but in the real world it has nothing to do with whether or not the user understands the consequences of the legal double-talk a TOS agreement implies. If you misunderstand it's consequences, then it is not informed consent (regarding real-life informed decisions, regardless of any legal definition of "informed consent"). For example, if the TOS says that certain types of content won't be provided to third-parties except in special cases A and B, the user might not expect that this is just Cover-Your-Ass talk and that special cases A and B unwittingly happen most of the time from actions the user didn't expect would cause special cases A and B. Various sites are better or worse at this, of course.

4. All these sites have verbiage saying they "respect your privacy" (of course), but where is the transparency? Laws aren't magic wands. How do I verify whether or not my privacy is truly being respected. When potential profit is involved, it's the corporate norm that it's "better to ask forgiveness than permission". And if they get caught doing something wrong, they get a slap on the wrist because apparently corporations have more rights than citizens do, and then they continue to do what they've always done before.

5. Just because you may be disinterested about something only other people seem to be interested in, doesn't mean this doesn't eventually have implications for everyone.

6. Simply put, the point of the issue is what you're failing to understand.

Bakeries?? ...Really? So... it's the one place where you SHOULDN'T be offended if you find a pube in your sandwich?

...you're not getting it. It's waay better than the AMD stuff because it's xxxxxxtreme! That's like *twice* the xxx!

Uh no, it's to demonstrate that the code "works". The problem here is what it means "to work". Part of the usefulness of TDD is that you might not fully understand what it means "to work" yet, and the tests help you flesh that out.

Let me clarify, so you don't think I'm 100% ditching what you're saying versus stating it a different way. A test suite will tend to have BOTH tests for what the correct behavior *is* and also tests for what the correct behavior *is not*. In other words, what you're doing is defining the BOUNDARIES between correct and incorrect behavior. You're right in the sense that if your *strategy* is to write only *optimistic* tests (i.e. "proving that it works"), you'll miss subtle areas where the behavior isn't fully clarified (i.e. corner cases).

But here's the problem: for absolutely anything in the universe, there is an INFINITE number of things something *is not*, but only a finite amount of things something *is*. I've seen people go too crazy with using tests as a way of type-checking everything where smarter data types would have been a better choice, or performing a hundred "this isn't what I want" tests that could have been handled with a single "this IS what I want" test. My point is that you're supposed to program for the correct case, not design as if you always expect everything to go wrong. Write for the correct case, test for the correct cases FIRST, test for the EXCEPTIONAL cases, and write handling code for the things that are exceptional. Don't write an infinite test suite of what something is not.

CONCLUSION: Write the most EFFECTIVE tests you can that covers the most ground. Don't write *pointless* tests you have to maintain later if there was a better test. If a test covers a lot of logical ground by defining the boundaries of what something *is not*, then write the test for that. If it covers a lot of ground by defining what something *is*, write the test for that.

Exactly. One good example is when you look at how a SQL RDBMS indexes its data at the implementation level. Indexes are local and are concerned with local things such as the ordering of the data on the disk (e.g. clustered indexes). If you want a distributed SQL database, indexes are still typically a local operation and replication is handled at a much higher level. Much of these "NoSQL" implementations are about fast searches (requiring fast indexing) that are inherently distributed. If SQL RDBMS implementations had more sophisticated implementations that assumed the database is inherently distributed, and if the indexes were treated as such from the start, then searches would be much faster and there would be less need for "NoSQL" databases. When you realize that the relational model is based on "relations" (and in turn, set theory) you realize that there is nothing inherent about what is essentially math that prevents it from working efficiently in a distributed manner. If you can make a distributed "key-value store", you can make a distributed UNIQUE index too, etc. If speed is the ultimate concern and that is why they opt for "eventual consistency", then a special-purpose "NoSQL" database may be the way to go, for the *web* anyway. But if you need massive data *and* constant consistency (e.g. such as with financial transaction data), distributed SQL databases would be a better choice (given there is a good implementation available).

Step 1: Launch Chandrayaan-1
Step 2: Blow a hole in the moon and later announce the discovery of a hole in the moon...
Step 3: Profit!

:-)

Even later, scientists learned how to attach the frickin lasers to the flys' heads.

No, it's the other way around. PC's are currently TERRIBLE compared to consoles. How can I say that? It's easy. There is no objective meaning of "terrible": it depends on what your goals are. Apparently you're one of the gamers who prioritizes eye-candy and/or processing power. I don't, and many others don't either.

Here's what I think is important:

1. I can actually play the f***ing game at all. The PC market has intentionally alienated used-games with copy-protection and "activation". If you already activated your old game and try to resell it, good luck if you're the new owner who can't install it on their computer. But let's say this is *my* old game, not a used one. Five years down the road, if I want to use it on my new PC with my new version of Windows (because it's going to *have* to be Windows), can I activate it to play? Is the company's servers even around? How do we deal with all the breakage due to OS updates, malware, driver bugs, etc...

2. I can actually play the f***ing game at all, without having to take out a bank loan. For under $300, I can buy a console off the shelf, pop in the disk for any game I own, and I can play it immediately. As long as I have this hardware, I can continue to have the *freedom* to play these games 10 years from now if I wish to. Let me see you play Crysis with a computer off the shelf for under $300. "Technically feasible" doesn't count. I'm referring to the ability to have a genuinely enjoyable gaming experience.

3. Consoles are dedicated to their jobs, with standardized hardware and software. PC's are for general purposes, but do not excel for special purposes like gaming (or high-end audio or video) unless you spend a lot of money to get *non-standardized* hardware and software. As a result of the predictability of the console platform, quality control is easier when you only have to worry about one hardware platform coupled with one software platform. (Note that I wouldn't condone this for PC's. They really are for general purposes and not specifically just gaming.)

If the fee was stated *plainly* and the customer factored the fee into their decision, then fine. If instead businesses understand that people won't buy a new computer because they don't want Vista, and they entice customers with a FREE upgrade to Windows 7, then it HAD BETTER BE FREE. It doesn't matter if $17 doesn't break the bank. Even $0.01 is too much if I was coerced into a buying decision by a vendor who was withholding information. DISTRIBUTION COST IS IRRELEVANT. It doesn't matter if it costs money for the CD or online downloads. If they knew that it would cost money for distribution they weren't willing to eat, THEN YOU STATE UP FRONT THAT IT WON'T BE FREE. Otherwise, you keep your promise to the consumer. PERIOD. They simply have no excuses here. I don't understand why people don't understand this.

I'm bewildered why "plain old Java objects" is considered a virtue, considering it still makes the middleware language-specific for something that is essentially an integration software. If all you do is Java, fine. But gambling that you'll always be married to one language seems like you're giving up too much for no gain. Perhaps developers should take a closer look at something like Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and implementations like RabbitMQ or Apache ActiveMQ?

1. According to the whistleblower article, the last names of the president and CEO of FairPoint is "Nixon" and "Johnson", where Nixon is the president of the company. Johnson was CEO before Hauser took over in June. Well there's your problem, the company's run by President Nixon!

2. The new CEO, Hauser responded concerning the fraud allegations, "We take these allegations seriously and will do a thorough investigation". To paraphrase: "We know we're busted, and we intend to do a very thorough cover-up considering billions of dollars are on the line."

Clarification: Female breasts.
Saggy man-titties are nowhere near as ergonomic...so I've heard.

I agree. Isn't "duplication of functionality" by a 3rd party just a fancy word for COMPETITION? We can't have that in a free-market economy, now can we?

There are two camps using copyright law as protection:

1. Copyright law keeps source code non-proprietary (e.g. GPL)
2. Copyright law keeps source code proprietary, so you have to pay to use the product (e.g. most commercial software)

Now apply a 5 year expiration of copyright:

Result to 1:
The source code is already visible, and nothing protects the code anymore from someone stealing it and making it proprietary, despite the intention of the authors for it to remain non-proprietary.

Result to 2:
The source code is NOT already visible. Lack of copyright protection makes the product free-as-in-beer, but mere expiration of copyright does not force the authors to release the source code. So the result is that no one else can steal the source code like they could for expired FLOSS copyright.

So yes, there IS an imbalance of power. In no way does this help authors preserve the freedom to keep software non-proprietary.
And no, it's NOT just a simple case of each side has a right to keep their code open or closed as they see fit. It favors proprietary software to remain proprietary, but removes protections for software to remain non-proprietary. Stallman is right: the only way to keep it fair is if both sides must make the source code available.

THINK PEOPLE.

IANAL, but I thought that *one* essential reason laws waive the expectation of privacy in "public places" is because by the *nature* of that place, it is essentially not private. For example, there is too much of a practical burden of enforcing privacy when I go walk outside, because that's actually *me* walking outside. There's only so much identity-hiding I can do.

But for a blog, by its very *nature* it works the other way around. Anonymity happens by the fact that the blog posting doesn't see who is actually sitting at the keyboard, so identity has to be proactively required by settling for something that substitutes, such as using a valid email for login registration. Here, regarding the enforcement burden, it's the other way around: there is more effort required to identify someone than not identify someone (e.g. you could allow anonymous posts, etc.).

The point:
Although I am sharing *data* that becomes public, *I* am not personally in a public place, so I should reasonably assume I can have anonymity.