'head of marketing AND finance '

They're so screwed.

The religion of free speech

I wonder if the people who 'believe' in free speech are prepared to defend their belief with their lives, the lives of their loved ones and that they are also prepared to kill to defend it and their way of life.

Muslims are quite prepared to do so. They would quite gladly use nuclear weapons; an act of martyrdom, the will of Allah. After all , one will go to 'heaven'.

If believers in free speech are not so prepared, then there will be no free speech.

Will belief save us from extinction?

There seems to be a lot of 'believing' in the comments.

I now know that the human race is fucked. It will not survive the mass extinction event now going on.

Or may be this 'belief' will comfort you all!

http://www.olivet-discourse-revelation.com/sequential_order_of_events_in_the_book_of_revelation.html

Just wondering if they propose ..

Celibicy as part of the solution.

Totally confused!!!! Am I doing wrong?

I am a C/C++ programmer.

Assume APIs are copyrightable.

I am writing an application in C/C++ and I use a 3rd party's binary and C/C++ header file which has some function and class definitions that do not include function bodies. This header file is copyrighted, it says so at the top. If I copy this file am I infringing the copyright? Is the API copyright a separate copyright? Does the copyright include class definitions? Can I create another header file for my own function body code that has the same function signatures as the 3rd party's one? Can I use them in private unseen code files?

In C/C++ the signature of a function does not include the return type, so what then?

So what is meant by a function signature?

Is

long foo( long val)

the same as

Public Function foo( Long val) As Long

for if API's are copyrightable? Admittedly you will not see the latter in a C/C header file - I hope.

What about all the language libraries all ready out there? Are the copyrighted?

The C++ standard specifies APIs - are they copyrighted? The implementations are under the current system - look at the includes for Microsoft's VS C/C++.

A coder sits down to write code to fullfil someone's requirement, how the hell does the poor soul know they're infringing a copyrighted API?

I give up!

Hypocrisy?

Yes, but all we get from people at the top like Thompson is the same 'don't lie on your CV' - it is all in the HR policies! And ethical policies too! I remember doing an inhouse ethical test for a company I worked for. Your not supposed to lie!

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/trust-me-im-lying.html

Greed is good, lying is good. If you get away with it. It's the art of being a politician.

Yes, but ...

how well would they do against a gang of marauding zombie mannequins?

I think I'd fill me underpants if so confronted - thinking about head shots would be immediately replaced with the flee instinct.

No magical herbs etc in real life - I think. No NHS in Resident Evil 4 - well if there was it obviously failed the zombies.

Real life is a DiD scenario - http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=311650.

Don't why blokes just use ...

a milking machine.

The fight against evil

‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing’

It may be necessary for good people to kill to halt the triumph of evil.

Maybe the saying should be:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people lack the courage or will to act against evil."

What is a ...

a pop-up? in computer patent terms?

Jeez, programmers may find they can't legally innovate anything.

Compare ITNow to C Vu / Overload

Being a member of the BCS and the ACCU I must say that the ACCU's journals are more 'code-centric' than IT Now hence more enjoyable, useful and appropriate for my professional day-to-day requirements as a software engineer.

I definitely agree that IT Now has way too many pictures of the flavour that you find on IT recruitment websites and their ilk.

Have you noticed that many articles in the Computing and Computer Weekly and similar have a predominantly sales and managerial emphasis - all about IT leadership, CIO's, management and sales issues, enterprise level integration issues, outsourcing issues, and wait for it, skill shortages, etc, etc, etc. Ooha and don't forget about staff retention, morale and training!

Just who are thee people in these photos that are splashed around IT Now? Coders? Agile nuts?

@Stef 4

"Woman burnt their bras for equality, and yet so few choose careers in garbage collection and sewer maintenance."

Good point!

Yet there seems to be no shortage of women from the affluent west choosing to enter the pornography industry. It's a funny old world!

I'm fed up with maintaining rotting code mixed with the overpowering stench of management incompetence. Why would anyone want to become a software engineer / programmer these days?

Well done Russinovich

I love these comments! Great entertaining stuff: thank you all.

Understanding 'dependencies':

I've been doing 'professional' software development since 1997 and I don't think I fully understand the dependencies of a C/C++ 'Hello World' program. Most coders I have worked with do not even consider coupling never mind dependencies for each and every context of the problem / solution domain that they are dealing with.

I feel that MS has been afflicted with the same disease as almost every other company that develops software. There is a saying in industry and especially software that goes like this 'on time, within budget, good quality; choose any two'. Well, I think the disease is that sales and marketing are just choosing on time, their time. It is their time objectives that has priority. They must have their bonuses.

I like honesty, don't you? Russinovich has done good. I'll listen to him but I won't listen to Balmer.

@AC: If he didn't lose it he never had it. #

I seem to have read a different article.

"He told delegates that fraud management systems with appropriate knowledge-based rules are the only way to expose the cavalier risk taking he carried out during three years at Barings."

“You can't rely on the human element which is why IT systems have a vital role to play. The people who questioned me had no understanding of the market and that left them unable to put everything together.”

"IT systems still offer the best way to flag up anomalies that demanded explanation."

Nowhere does he mention replacing people with machines.

You wrote: "humans were successfully kept out of the loop, kept in the dark, and anyway were incompetent because they didn't know what the data really meant". You contradict yourself in one sentence. Good going that.

You also wrote: "I think I'll strongly disagree". You think!?

He got caught out by 'people' not by machines.

Man boobs

So all those fat American males will be baring their boobs! And their enormous overhanging bellies!

How Homerian.

C Specs

Does the C language have a formally defined specification using mathematical notation?

C has a syntax dependent on context.

Perhaps we should look at our code as a conjecture that requires other people, erm customers, to prove correct or not. But, if there is no spec then the code is not a conjecture but just a programmer's doodling.

Now let's shoot the colonel with void pointers and see what type of wounds we inflict.

Computer Gaming is a disease

US Centres for Disease Control (CDC)?

Hence should be controlled.

UK and USA have much in common

Overpaid doctors in the most powerful unions ever.

An electorate that's too fucking lazy to think and vote coupled with an apathetic attitude to democracy and a propensity to borrow money with an expectation not to have to pay it back.

If ever there are two nations on this Earth that demonstrate that democracies don't work then the US and the UK are them.

Let's face it, the bible and the koran don't mention the word 'democracy' or the illustrate the concept; God doesn't bless the US or any other democracy.

However, the bible does mention that Christ tells the good Samaritan story. Ah, socialism begins with an action of one person, ends up with the NHS. Good.

Sex?

What API is that? Is it anything to do with coupling and cohesion? Or is it just an abstract concept?

USA has no smart people

Bill Gates has no loyalty to the population of the USA only to the extra-national organisations called euphemistically 'big business'.

Cannot a nation, previously applauded for its innovation but now derided only for its fraudulent debt, with a population of 300 million nurture smart people from its own ranks? Gates seems to be saying no. Why?

There is no shortage of smart people in the USA. There is no shortage of IT skills in the USA; just a shortage of people with IT skills who are not smart enough to work out that the pay offered by companies requiring those skills makes the trade not worthwhile.

Career progression?

Let's accept the fact that career progression is really status and prestige progression. Money is a factor in this as a bigger pay packet values this status and prestige. It's never about earning that pay. Just look at the top bankers; it's their egos, vanity and insecurity that drives them to 'award' themselves increasingly large amounts of money; in essence they are saying that their desired status and prestige can only be confirmed with these amounts of money and it is concrete evidence to show others, especially other top bankers.

If only the job of programming paid well and had significant status and prestige!

@ Ian 11

'Are staff at BT really this incompetent?' You are not discriminating correctly. The question should be 'Are the management at BT really this incompetent?'

@Kevin Johnston: yes, Michelle Knight did. I would like to know. The government should have a publicly available database of firms doing intra-company transfers. Any political party outlawing this practice would have my support. British jobs for British workers?