Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Would stop a lot of development (Score 1) 550

I think this would lead to investors actually encouraging, even DEMANDING, that their developers leave a digital paper trail of false claims to stability and features in certain types of software and web development projects. Most likely it would happen to new programmers fresh out of college who haven't learned the ropes out in the real world yet and wouldn't see it coming. They'd be under pressure to send emails making all kinds of claims that they know are false, but, being new to the job market, they're more likely to bend and give in.

Comment SteamOS ? (Score 2) 194

If they come out with an operating system to compete with Windows and other windowed environments, it had better be 3d and run on the steam engine. The whole desktop ought to be a virtual 3D desktop, and all office productivity can now be done via gaming joystick. That might be awesome.

Comment Big Brother will Take FactCheck.org Offline (Score 2, Interesting) 143

They're already all over Wikileaks and doing whatever they can to kill that off. I'm sure FactCheck.org is next on the chopping block in the years to come. We can't have the truth out there. Thats not in the govt's best interest! They'll think of some kinda excuse. Maybe it'll be copyright infringement, or perhaps they'll claim its a bunch of propaganda. Whatever the reason, I'm sure in time they'll find one.

Comment Joyce Ehrlinger is Stupid (Score 3, Funny) 263

Joyce Ehrlinger from Florida State University is stupid! She has absolutely no idea what she's talking about! Pure rubbish! She should just drop out of the American Psychological Association right now and save us all a bunch of pain and headache! She has no idea what she's talking about! None! Pure bullox!

Comment Probably won't hurt anything......for now (Score 5, Interesting) 378

Boy was that leaked fast. I've been using thunderbird for years and never have had much trouble with the mail client. Its pretty stable. Probably won't hurt anything to temporarily take resources off of it. But I hope they don't discontinue it entirely. I feel its way better than Outlook.

Comment Google is covering its own arse for later disputes (Score 4, Insightful) 141

Google's people aren't retarded; they know that people are going to find ways to record audio from YouTube one way or another. They're just sending the cease-and-desist order so later on, when copyright holders try to take Google to court, they can claim that they didn't just sit by idly and let it happen. They'll be able to say that they at least they took at least some course of action. The person who sent the cease and desist letter was probably just as disgusted about having to send it as the rest of the world is because they knew its really all stupid and pointless.

Comment All Code will eventually be "Awful". Stop Whining! (Score 1) 622

I'm primarily a Classic ASP specialist, and for years I've been hearing in blogs and tweets about how awful Classic ASP is. And now I've started doing a serious amount of PHP work professionally, here we go again with the moaning and groaning of how awful PHP is. I refuse to call the _language_itself_ awful just because I encountered frustrations when working on someone's website. Instead I place the blame on the original developer because they did things such as:

- keeping their code really sloppy and unreadable
- not leaving comments explaining what the code does
- using ambiguous variable names that don't have any relevance at all to their purpose
- poorly named functions and classes
- jamming 7000+ lines of code into a single database stored procedure (with similar problems as described above)
- hardcoding things that should have been database driven with an administrative control panel
- OVERKILL on object oriented coding, thus sending you all over the damn place to fix something that could have been much shorter and simpler
- too many layers of technologies working together to accomplish something simple, so to fix, you have to read an page which uses a DLL, which calls a stored procedure, which queries a view, which queries another view, which queries another view, which queries a table, which triggers a......

This kinda stuff can happen in any language, and in time, you'll find another language to complain about. 5 or 10 years from now you'll be touting that Java sucks! Don't hate the code. Hate the coder who fled the scene of the incident and left you with a mess to deal with.

Comment democracy may already be dead (Score 1) 388

Well, we're already using hard drives to store digital vote data instead of ballots. The drives go into a suitcase which is then carried off in a secured government vehicle as it is transported to another location where all digital votes are tallied up. There's no way of guaranteeing the whole operation isn't being run by biased & corrupt party members or bribed government workers, and we have no way of knowing the suitcases aren't switched for phonies with different votes while those vehicles are on their way to their destinations. Its a private ride and the windows are tinted.

And even if none of that happens, the voting software itself could already be buggy and casts votes for the wrong candidates. Maybe the tallying software doesn't even doesn't count accurately. Heck, most govt technology I've seen anywhere is usually cheap old buggy crap, so why should I expect the voting system to be any better?

So, for all we know, elections are already a big charade and democracy is already dead. Once something is dead, it cant get any more dead, so I guess I can''t see how taking it online could make things any worse. Might as well go on and do it and save everyone gas money. We could all sure use it I'm sure.

Comment If its not there, it can't be abused or explited (Score 1) 103

I really don't care about any one organization or entity such as Facebook committing not to abuse the system. What I worry about is humanity as a whole. The unfortunate truth is that we live in a world that eventually the powers that be _will_ get around to abusing it. Who knows who it will be, but nevertheless, it will happen eventually. Loopholes will be found, laws will be broken, the interpretation of words will come into question, and so on and so forth. Its an age old game thats been going on with all legislation ever since the United States became a country, and this will be no exception. Now on the other hand, if a bill like CISPA is killed and never passed, there will be no spy-data there to be exploited. You can't abuse a system that simply isn't there. That leaves me feeling comfortable and at-ease. Remember that scene from the movie "The Dark Knight" where he turns every cell phone in the city into a sonar? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cv0KsTTfY) I get that same kind of feeling from CISPA that Morgan Freeman had. Its unethical, dangerous, and wrong. Too much power in the hands of a clearly self-interest-oriented system run by people who have proven themselves corruptable and easily bought-out by private interests time and time again.

Comment Working from Home (Score 1) 480

You may begin to realize at some point that if you should decide to work from home for the long-term, your going to watch your life go by sitting in the very same place on the face of the earth, day after day, sitting in a chair, staring into a light-box, with only occasional human contact, and hitting buttons. Not only does the notion itself sound depressing, but its also bad for your health because you're not getting much regular daily movement. My advice: find reasons to _leave_the_house_, and _exercise_. Sometimes I like to eat lunch while working, and that way I can go to the gym during the hour I take off during lunch. Or else maybe I'll take the dogs out for a walk around the block. Whatever it is you should decide to do, I encourage some form of exercise.

Submission + - DeveloperIn.com - Be the 1st Found for Free (developerin.com)

ClassicASP writes: Most developers would probably like to be found at natural search hit #1 for their town and expertise.

John Smith, a Lasso developer in Jacksonville, would naturally want to be first if someone Google'd "Lasso Developer in Jacksonville, FL"

Or Jane Smith, an iPad developer in San Francisco, would naturally want to be the first found if someone were looking for an iPad developer in her home town.

DeveloperIn.com provides free optimized pages for as many technologies and cities as possible, and shares the link authority that everyone can contribute to.

Ergo, in the spirit of open-source, the more it is contributed to, the more all participants stand to gain.

Developers are _not_ required to spend all day entering their entire history of resume data, and are given near full control over their page content.

This service is done near free of charge. All that is required in exchange is a link back to DeveloperIn.com from the developer's homepage, blog, or other such website location built for the purpose of marketing their skills.

So please, use, share, and enjoy!

Slashdot Top Deals

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Working...