C and C++ for rockets? You've gotta be kidding me!
They are both horrible languages--among the very worst in existence, without exaggerating in the slightest--in one of the most crucial areas for a project like space travel: resilience.
This isn't just hyperbole or theory; it's a historical fact. Most well-designed programming languages have features available to catch and deal with certain types of errors gracefully, or even to ensure that they're not possible in the first place. Depending on the language, these features may be turned off at times, and having one of these important safety features disabled was directly responsible for the Cluster explosion.
But here's the thing: C and C++ don't have these safety features at all. Writing anything mission-critical in either language, therefore, really should constitute an act of criminal negligence. It's extremely disappointing to see the folks at SpaceX making such flat-out stupid design decision!
Even though Title II only really hinders ISPs engaged in bad behavior, AT&T again and again insists that these kinds of government regulations and consumer protections can only hinder broadband deployment.
I see no contradiction: all of the broadband players with non-trivial market share are engaged in bad behavior. :P
First off... seriously? The CCC is still around? I haven't heard anything about them or their activities since the 90s!
So I'll grand that my information is a bit dated, but even so, since when are they not composed of criminals? It's right there in the name: Chaos. They at least used to be a bunch of vandals who hacked into systems and caused trouble "for the lulz," to use the modern parlance.
As bad as class-action lawsuits may be sometimes, what's the alternative? Make every individual person who was wronged by a giant country with a legal budget a few orders of magnitude larger than the victim's entire salary take them on alone?
Agreed. Having it happen the first time was bad enough, but when it happens again, that goes beyond simple stupidity; it's hard to regard this level of incompetence as anything other than an act of malicious, willful negligence.
With this, Sony has proven themselves to be a menace to the community. If I were a regulator, I'd be looking real hard right about now at the possibility of revoking their corporate charter.
And if you were banned, that's still in violation.
If this were the physical world, would it make any difference how you got to someplace you were legally not permitted to be? Of course not; what matters is that you went there. It's still trespassing no matter how "easy" it was to get there.
So again, like with the Wii U shenanigans earlier this year, like with Sony removing OtherOS from the PlayStation, I must ask: where is the class action lawsuit for maliciously tampering with other people's property?
This will keep happening until we make it perfectly clear that our property is our property and we DO own it now!
They succeeded in their primary goal: to get air their issue to the public and start a national discussion. On this count, they were wildly successful. A whole lot of the conversations and debates that have taken place (and continue) since then would not have occurred if Occupy didn't do it's thing.
Again, [citation needed] here. All that work has been done by well-organized activist groups that existed long before Occupy.
Also, they continue their work to this day in an arguably more effective manner: by providing support and outreach to disadvantaged people, so their accomplishments continue to accumulate.
...such as?
The one thing I saw out of them that was actually getting some truly useful, effective results was the Rolling Jubilee project... and for some inexplicable reason they shuttered it at the end of last year!
Given the extreme reaction that the Powers That Be had to them, and given the high amount of effort that the government put into trying to destroy them, being "disorganized" was pretty much the only thing that allowed them to accomplish anything at all.
You accuse me of spouting nonsense and then go and say a thing like this?
Try telling Martin Luther King that bit of political philosophy! That's not how it works, not in the least. An organization with a competent leader can respond to political persecution and turn it into an asset, use it to strengthen their cause. That was the great secret of the Civil Rights movement: the thing that caused them to be so successful was all the opposition, and the movement's leaders' skillful use of it to bring people together and portray their opposition in the media as the inhuman monsters they were being.
But that's only possible when you've got an established system to coordinate things. Otherwise, when the pressure's on, everyone goes their own way and it dissolves into anarchy and uselessness, which is precisely what we saw with the Occupy movement.
The Occupy movement accomplished (and is still accomplishing) a great deal.
[citation needed]
They had a great deal of potential to accomplish great things, but from what I've seen they never got beyond the "potential" stage, primarily because of their deliberate lack of organization. The fact that they failed to recognize this and touted it as a "feature not a bug" makes me doubt they'll ever accomplish anything noteworthy at all, which is really sad.
It's not that simple at all. Simply accessing a system that you are not authorized to access is not "hacking," it's "unauthorized use of a computer system" -- essentially, trespassing.
I fail to see how the distinction you're apparently trying to draw exists in any objective fashion, if any form of technical control to revoke/obstruct your access has been put in place.
The problem is not a technology gap, but rather an organization gap, a hierarchical command system is slow compared to the loosely coupled structures of the protesters.
And this is why Occupy has been so fantastically successful in making change in America over the last several years, and the highly hierarchical corporate structures that they oppose are now crumbling.
Wait, what's that you say? Corporations are stronger than ever and Occupy, for all their numbers, passion, and resources, never accomplished a thing?
Wow, you're right! Now, think about that for a second...
That definition was dropped from the lexicon decades ago. What it means today is "computer crime."
Fresh out of high school, my first job, as it is for many people that age, was working in fast food. We had this one repeat customer who would frequently come in and act in disruptive ways. Finally the store manager got fed up and told her in no uncertain terms to leave the store and not come back, and if she did he would call the police.
The restaurant was open to the public, but it was still within our rights to revoke access to specific people for specific reasons. She never did come back, but you'd better believe that if she had come back, and the manager had called the police, they'd have arrested her and charged her with trespassing!
When Aaron Swartz's access was revoked, it doesn't matter what would have been legal for anyone else to do. He was given a lawful order by the owner of the system to leave and not come back, and therefore, any further access on his part constituted hacking--computer crime. It really is that simple.
It's kind of like the horse, you know, the horse was good until we had the car," he said. "The age of broadcast TV will probably last until 2030."
I'm not so sure. By similar logic, you could easily say that the radio was good up until we had the television. And hey, when was the last time you listened to such an antiquated device as the radio?
Oh, right. Just this morning, for me at least, even though television has been around (without destroying radio broadcasting) for far longer than streaming has.
As nice as that would be, considering all of the death and misery that alcohol has caused throughout human history and continues to inflict today, that is not actually the meaning of the word "sobering" in a context like this.
On the post: AT&T Still Pouting About Title II, Continues Bogus Fiber 'Investment Slowdown'
Re: Remember!
On the post: DailyDirt: Made In The USA Rockets
They are both horrible languages--among the very worst in existence, without exaggerating in the slightest--in one of the most crucial areas for a project like space travel: resilience.
This isn't just hyperbole or theory; it's a historical fact. Most well-designed programming languages have features available to catch and deal with certain types of errors gracefully, or even to ensure that they're not possible in the first place. Depending on the language, these features may be turned off at times, and having one of these important safety features disabled was directly responsible for the Cluster explosion.
But here's the thing: C and C++ don't have these safety features at all. Writing anything mission-critical in either language, therefore, really should constitute an act of criminal negligence. It's extremely disappointing to see the folks at SpaceX making such flat-out stupid design decision!
On the post: AT&T Still Pouting About Title II, Continues Bogus Fiber 'Investment Slowdown'
I see no contradiction: all of the broadband players with non-trivial market share are engaged in bad behavior. :P
On the post: UK Web Filtering Blocks Access To Website Of Europe's Largest And Oldest Hacking Community
Not composed of criminals?
So I'll grand that my information is a bit dated, but even so, since when are they not composed of criminals? It's right there in the name: Chaos. They at least used to be a bunch of vandals who hacked into systems and caused trouble "for the lulz," to use the modern parlance.
What changed?
On the post: Negotiating Away Innovation: Dish Agrees To Kill Autohop To End TV Blackouts
Re:
On the post: Class Action Lawsuit Over Apple DRM Stumbles Because Plaintiffs Aren't Actually In The Class
Re: The lesser of two evils
Once more, why oh why do we not have an Edit function for comments?
On the post: Class Action Lawsuit Over Apple DRM Stumbles Because Plaintiffs Aren't Actually In The Class
The lesser of two evils
On the post: Shocking: Sony Learned No Password Lessons After The 2011 PSN Hack
Re: Put the Company on the line
With this, Sony has proven themselves to be a menace to the community. If I were a regulator, I'd be looking real hard right about now at the possibility of revoking their corporate charter.
On the post: Authors Guild Argues That Google Books Should Be Infringing Because Aaron Swartz
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If this were the physical world, would it make any difference how you got to someplace you were legally not permitted to be? Of course not; what matters is that you went there. It's still trespassing no matter how "easy" it was to get there.
On the post: Amazon Fire TV Firmware Update Bricks Rooted Devices, Prevents Rollback To Previous Firmware Versions
This will keep happening until we make it perfectly clear that our property is our property and we DO own it now!
On the post: NYPD Baffled By Tech Advances Like Laptops And WiFi
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Again, [citation needed] here. All that work has been done by well-organized activist groups that existed long before Occupy.
...such as?
The one thing I saw out of them that was actually getting some truly useful, effective results was the Rolling Jubilee project... and for some inexplicable reason they shuttered it at the end of last year!
You accuse me of spouting nonsense and then go and say a thing like this?
Try telling Martin Luther King that bit of political philosophy! That's not how it works, not in the least. An organization with a competent leader can respond to political persecution and turn it into an asset, use it to strengthen their cause. That was the great secret of the Civil Rights movement: the thing that caused them to be so successful was all the opposition, and the movement's leaders' skillful use of it to bring people together and portray their opposition in the media as the inhuman monsters they were being.
But that's only possible when you've got an established system to coordinate things. Otherwise, when the pressure's on, everyone goes their own way and it dissolves into anarchy and uselessness, which is precisely what we saw with the Occupy movement.
On the post: NYPD Baffled By Tech Advances Like Laptops And WiFi
Re: Re: Re:
[citation needed]
They had a great deal of potential to accomplish great things, but from what I've seen they never got beyond the "potential" stage, primarily because of their deliberate lack of organization. The fact that they failed to recognize this and touted it as a "feature not a bug" makes me doubt they'll ever accomplish anything noteworthy at all, which is really sad.
On the post: Authors Guild Argues That Google Books Should Be Infringing Because Aaron Swartz
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I fail to see how the distinction you're apparently trying to draw exists in any objective fashion, if any form of technical control to revoke/obstruct your access has been put in place.
On the post: NYPD Baffled By Tech Advances Like Laptops And WiFi
Re:
And this is why Occupy has been so fantastically successful in making change in America over the last several years, and the highly hierarchical corporate structures that they oppose are now crumbling.
Wait, what's that you say? Corporations are stronger than ever and Occupy, for all their numbers, passion, and resources, never accomplished a thing?
Wow, you're right! Now, think about that for a second...
On the post: Authors Guild Argues That Google Books Should Be Infringing Because Aaron Swartz
Re: Re:
Fresh out of high school, my first job, as it is for many people that age, was working in fast food. We had this one repeat customer who would frequently come in and act in disruptive ways. Finally the store manager got fed up and told her in no uncertain terms to leave the store and not come back, and if she did he would call the police.
The restaurant was open to the public, but it was still within our rights to revoke access to specific people for specific reasons. She never did come back, but you'd better believe that if she had come back, and the manager had called the police, they'd have arrested her and charged her with trespassing!
When Aaron Swartz's access was revoked, it doesn't matter what would have been legal for anyone else to do. He was given a lawful order by the owner of the system to leave and not come back, and therefore, any further access on his part constituted hacking--computer crime. It really is that simple.
On the post: Netflix CEO Puts An Expiration Date On Traditional Broadcast Television: 2030
I'm not so sure. By similar logic, you could easily say that the radio was good up until we had the television. And hey, when was the last time you listened to such an antiquated device as the radio?
Oh, right. Just this morning, for me at least, even though television has been around (without destroying radio broadcasting) for far longer than streaming has.
On the post: DailyDirt: We Should Have Written Down ET's Phone Number...
Re: Re:
On the post: DailyDirt: We Should Have Written Down ET's Phone Number...
On the post: That Huge Sony Hack May Have Been North Korea Retaliating Against James Franco And Seth Rogen
This is Sony; what did you expect?
On the post: Supreme Court Quotes Eminem As It Explores The Difference Between Free Speech And 'True Threats'
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