I love blindly copying memes..

In this case, however, things actually did get worse on many points. Look up talks by Alan C. Kay, and Frances E. Allen at the ACM to get you started. For example, C, which UNIX and Linux is based on, is a giant step back regarding concurrency and code generation, already realized the day the language was released in 1973.

There was a similar study on this surrounding laser printers.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/printer-health.htm

I know what you mean, and this is only about context.

What you may want to try is to use context tests.

Example: You start the program, then go; I want to do this (think of some action); then you do that action. The key point being not to be allowed to think too much about what you do. It's not an "academic approach," but it's quite efficient, especially in games. However, the psychological factor is to avoid things that hurt the ego; this is especially true when developers are not able to distance themselves from their work; it's just a tool.

Programmers are so binary. ;) Well, it depends on the program. The less the program does, the simpler it is, because it's closer to being mechanical (not dealing with complex state).

Programmers have to know the domain for which they are developing.
You have to make using the software part of your time, just as code review shuffles through roles.

For your example, if your software has so many unknown states when shipped, it's fair to say it's based on luck if it works right.

You would actually need an environment where you could map out states, and simulate input devices.
Software development is still young, and I don't think we know how to do it right yet.

There are many bugs that would easily be detected by actually using the application on a daily basis.

Users do not work for you. When they do post bug reports, it is most likely in frustration.

In most countries you have to work 5-15 years, full time, to save up enough capital to get a house loan from any bank. You can rent, of course, but that's a waste of money, and you most often have to keep moving. Usually when contracts expire, the price goes up.

Just out of school? Good luck getting any job! Student loan? Even better luck having to pay down that loan, and your bank loan, and other costs connected with your apartment.

The system keeps a tight leash on its citizens. People who do make it on their own cling to their paychecks to make it one month at a time. What a fucked up world to live in.

Also, to counter all the stereotype comments mentioning porn, games, everything is paid for, mom does the cooking; you can still live at home and pay rent for your 10m^2 room, do your own laundry, buy or make your own food. Who would have thought?

Putting a system in/out of stand-by/hibernation is probably another risk factor with SSD drives.

Some points of failure:

SATA SSD Drive - SATA Cable - SATA Controller - Resource Manager - "Operating System" - SATA Driver

In my personal experience, the manufacturer wanted to blame the SATA controller without providing me with any proof.

In summary, SSDs are fast, but they may die fast too. SSDs are most likely not any more or less reliable than mechanical drives, except for purely demonstrational purposes, such as dropping a computer on the floor (unless that caused a drop in power to the drive from other components).

I suggest the author has a talk with Alan C. Kay.

Fingerprinting, it seems. I guess even relaying a MAC (the unique identifier attached to network interface cards) address would infringe on this patent.

It's basically what programmers did back in the day to check whether the processor was supported by their program, or to conditionally execute floating point instructions, if the platform had a floating point unit. The *only* difference here is that the same information is used to form an identifier to check whether the system platform has changed since the last time the program started, and it stores this information somewhere to run a comparison against.

It's kind of reminiscent of the public key system.

Is this a rerun of The Tower of Babel?

Give me address there.

So, if I make a copy of a database with user names and passwords, then set the bits of the database to all zeroes on the server; it's theft? Because I now moved a "painting" from one area of space to another?

The thing is, the original state was reconstructed somewhere else without the permission of the property owner (the one/ones who arranged the original state), and that's what theft is. It's the same as moving a painting (a collection of state) to another region of space, but it's not easy to replicate a painting, so it gets exclusivity as well, but it's still the same concept; one thing appearing somewhere else in space.

The less obvious part is that you always HAVE to destroy (change) some other region of space in order to replicate the state you want a copy of, but you don't have to destroy the state in the source space. Due to the ease at which one can copy state within the realm of digital computers, the default behavior is to leave the state in tact, or you may not even have access to modify the source space.

As with the painting; less energy is required to move the state from one location in space to another, compared to replicating the state. This naturally adds exclusivity to the state, but still, you did not have permission to move the state, and that's what you are doing when you copy; you move state (not in a cut/paste manner) from one region of space to another.

Everything is a collection of state in space.
The property concept comes from the "shell" we perceive to surround a collection of state so that we can tell things apart; an egg is a property, but is it really no different from a file?

When you download a file, an exclusive region of space must be reserved on your end to hold it, which is then synched to match the state of the source space.

It's free, if you disregard the energy required to synch the state or keep it, but someone arranged the state to begin with.