I think it reasonable to assume that a torpedo striking a sub from outside would sink it; that's what they are designed to do. An outside explosion has lots to interfere with its mission: water pressure slowing down the explosion, gases dispersing in the ocean, cylindrical hull shape tending to resist the explosion.
In theory, a 100kg warhead might be enough to generally sink a Soviet sub. In reality, it has been long-recognized that the 100kg warhead on the US Mark 46 LightWeight Torpedo is completely insufficient to sink a Soviet sub like the Oscar, unless you get lucking and get a stern hit which happens to pop the drive shaft seals. The multiple hull and equipment arrangement provides for quite a bit of "armor" protection. The standard US Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo used on US subs has a 150kg warhead which uses a shaped-charge director much like a HEAT round (in effect, producing a much larger explosive force) to get much better 1-shot-1-kill potential, but even then, the general feeling is that the first torp hit slows the sub down and makes it a sitting duck, then you pump an additional 1 or 2 into it to sink it.
Now imagine that same explosion inside the ship. Nice closed container (for a while:-), inside of a cylinder not resisting as well as the outside, no water to slow down the gases.
Assuming the explosion was in the torpedo tube after it had been loaded and armed (which is much more likely than while loading), the loaded torpedo tube is not really "inside" the sub. It's more like in a flooded airlock adjacent to the ship's hull. Yes, more destructive than hitting the outside of the double-hull, but nothing like an interior explosion.
Even inside, a lone (assuming no subsequent explosions) 100kg explosion in the forward torpedo room shouldn't sink the sub. It's not a big enough explosion to cause more than the first 2 (at most) compartments to flood, which comprise of about 25% of the total inside space. Oscars have a least 9, plus significant bouyancy tanks. Cripple the sub, yes. Cause it to loose the ability to surface, most likely not. Even wrecking the forward bow planes wouldn't be sufficient. The problem here would be time: the 2:15 between 1st and 2nd explosion really wouldn't be enough to regain control of the sub to start to surface.
First off, the Kursk was a flight II Oscar (NATO-designation) SSGN. Check Jane's for more info. In other words, it was the same type of submarine as later-mode US Los Angeles and UK Trafalgar submarines. It was an ANTI-SHIP submarine. The Oscars Don't Carry Nuclear Missiles. Although technically possible, both SALT I and SALT II forbid nuclear weapons on attack submarine cruise missiles, and generally frowed on nuclear ASW weapons such as SUBROC (this was an area of contention, but both sides generally didn't carry anti-submarine nukes).
Secondly, how reliable is the Sunday Times for stuff like this? They might be better than the Times-Mirror, but then again, I don't exactly trust people like CNN and CBS to get it right either. Smells like a reporter is making this a sensationalist story from nothing.
Another technical detail here: there were two explosions: one of about 100kg TNT force, and one about 15 times stronger 2:15 later. The first is in line with an explosion of a torpedo propeller propulsion system or a compressed-air torpedo launch system (or collision, or whatever). The second is in line with either a rocket motor or warhead cook off. A couple of things to think about:
If the entire damage is due to the cavitation torp, why the 2 minute gap between explositions? The Cav Torp is shot out like a normal torp (ie via compressed air). Any explosition in the torpedo lauch tube would almost certainly set off the rocket motor in the Cav Torp immediately. This goes for torp-launched missiles, too (like the SS-N-15/16 that the Oscar has).
Typical compressed-air torpedo launch systems have more than enough high-pressure air in them to look like a 100kg TNT explosion if something goes wrong.
Torpedoes have 100-150kg warheads. Only the SS-N-19 cruise missiles have the size warhead for the 2nd explosion.
Similarly, the rocket motor in a Cav Torp or one of the SS-N-15/16s is not big enough for a 1.5T explosion. The SS-N-19's rocket is definately big enough, though.
The 100kg initial blast would almost certainly not be enough to sink the Kursk. It wouldn't even fill the torpedo compartment with water instantly (probably take a couple of minute, minimum).
By far the most likely scenario to date is a malfunctioned torpedo launch (regardless of what type of torpedo) which blew out the torp tube and either started a fire in the forward torpedo room or short-circuited a bunch of stuff that led to either a warhead cookoff or rocket fuel explosion in one of the SS-N-19s.
While testing a new cavitation torpedo might be the immediate cause, I wouldn't point to them as being the general problem until a lot more info comes to light (which is unlikely until they raise the Kursk, and probably not even then). Indeed, if what Jane's and others are saying, it could easily have been a bad launch system itself, and whether shooting a Cav Torp, SS-N-16, or torpedo wouldn't make a difference.
I'm going to leave the Open Source slurs aside, since they're not really relevant (though, as one previous poster pointed out, they hurt the MPAA since it's a direct loss of credibility).
They're misquoting (or should I say, misusing) the case law precedent. The case laws covers only:
the "victim" resides strictly within California, and has no presence elsewhere.
the accused must specificly target the victim in the action, or it must be reasonably to assume that the victim knows the action will cause direct harm to the victim. Damage caused through third parties is not sufficient. Thus, you can sue a chemical plant in Nevada for polluting the drinking water of a CA town downriver in a CA court. However, I can't sue you for unfair pricing (e.g. "dumping") in CA if your store is in Nevada, even if my store in CA is right across the border from you.
The vast majority of the case law precident covers criminal law. There is very little precident (if any) for civil law. This is a civil case.
The case law doesn't cover inter-state commerce, which this most certainly is.
Also, I'd like to point out one further thing that I find unusual of this whole thing:
This is a civil case about trade secrets. In order to prove a trade secret case, you have to show proof that the accused gained information about the secret through unlawful means. As of right now, reverse engineering is not an illegal means, no matter what the shrink-wrap says on a product. Right now, shrink-wrap licenses are unenforcable and invalid, period.
Also, the DCMA doesn't apply to this case. Now, depending on the rulings about the DCMA, making LiViD might be illegal, but the methods of discovering how to make LiViD (that is, discovering how CSS worked) are not illegal, even under a strict DCMA ruling.
This case is strictly about reverse-engineering a trade secret, and the MPAA has absolutely no leg to stand on, other than perhaps having more money to blow on lawyers.
Fundamentally, I'd counter-sue for malicious prosecution (that's the criminal law term, there's a civil law equivalent, but I can't remember the phrase), since the suit is prima facia invalid.
...it probably should be passed in front of a tech-savvy legal expert.
There are two possible interpretations of Section 6(b)(vii):
(restrictive version): you are forbidden from running a VPN between your @home computer and a business (actually, between any computers) for any reason whatsoever. Period.
(more open version): you cannot run a VPN between your @home computer and a business IF you intend to operate business-related services on the @home side of the VPN. Using a VPN if you are only doing client-side stuff on the @Home side is fine.
Comcast needs to clarify this quickly. If they are banning VPNs of any kind, well, that kills their telecommuter business immediately, which I can't see them doing (telecommuters are good for the service - they use the network at an otherwise low-use period and are not any more of a strain on the network than an ordinary user). I suspect that the intent was to prevent businesses from using @home as a channel to set up remote office VPNs and/or to prevent people from setting up clandestine Internet servers (i.e. ones that don't serve out from the @home IP, but do on another IP, and are undetectible by @home).
I'd call Comcast and make this point. I suspect that they aren't going after the telecommuter, but instead have a badly-worded AUP addition, and should change that.
... is that you have to have some idea what to ask for. This is by far the greatest stumbling block in my opinion, especially for new authors.
Virtually no one can estimate the "value" of an initial piece of work (or even the first few pieces) from an unknown author. Using the SPP, the first couple of works from an author usually end up horribly under-compensated. While this is useful for gauging the future asking price for prolific authors (such as Mr. King, or long-term performers such as The Rolling Stones), what about the people doing one-offs? Or who only want to write 2-3 works? Inevitably, they get screwed, since the amount they receive via the SPP is considerably less than that which their popularity should dictate.
In order to use the SPP a bit more fairly, I suggest a modification which helps bring the compensation model more in line with a particular work's popularity:
Continue to use the model where if a particular "payment plateau" isn't reached, all contributor's money is refunded.
As normal, provide a short "intro" to the piece for free, to allow consumers the ability to gauge it's worth to them. For books, maybe the first 3-4 chapters. For songs, maybe a 30-second demo. For movies, the introductory scene (maybe 10 minutes or so).
For those works for which it makes sense (e.g. books, longer movies, etc.) have several plateaus. For example, in a book, have one after a couple of chapters, then one well into the meat of things, and perhaps one before the finale.
Have the author set compensation levels FOR EACH PLATEAU. If I have 2 plateaus for my book, then maybe I set $10,000 as the first, and $20,000 as the next.
At the release of the demo/intro piece, indicate a fixed timeframe for the release of the next section.
Keep the plateau levels confidential! This is the big mod to the SPP. DON'T tell the public how much they need to contribute to get the next portion. People should contribute based on their evaluation of it's worth.
If the plateau level is reached, release the next segment. If it is not, the author can weigh either extending the timeframe, or halting the work entirely. There should be a limit on how long the timeframe could be extended (perhaps in the initial agreement), since contributors should have the right to a full refund if the work is not to come out (that is, the author shouldn't be allowed to place an indefinate extension on the work unless it was initially stated that such was to be the case).
If all plateaus are reached, and the work is fully released, the author should be required to reveal the total amount collected, but not the initial target goal. This will allow consumers to gauge the perceieved value for that work, and modify their contributions accordingly for the future.
The author may or may not release the target goals, whether they were met or not. It should be the author's choice. Personally, I wouldn't, but it might be something some would do.
I think this would more fairly compensate the unknown or low-output author. We still need to come up with a better micropayments method than we currently have. PayPal is OK, but by no means problem-free.
-Erik
PS - and the publishers do have a point: they do provide large value-add to the author (PR, printing, tours, editing, equipment, et al). The current question is if the cost they charge is greater than the value-add.
...honestly, I could give a damn about Intel and AMD ramping their core speeds up (which is really what is driving the move to a smaller die size).
In a modern PC, the processor isn't the bottleneck for 99% of the work you're doing. Unless what you're doing can fit in the L2 cache, the processor is going to sit and wait for it. Now, modern L2 cache architectures are getting pretty good, and the hit rate is now approaching 90-95% for most stuff, but think of it this way: a L1 cache miss (which is quite common) incurs a 4-6 cycle wait, while a L2 cache miss can incur a 50-70 (to as much as 100-200) cycle wait. Ouch!
Realistically, virtually all "CPU-bound" applications these days are also memory-bound, too. Quake, Photoshop, file-compression, and others typically thought of as relying on the CPU exclusively actually suffer greatly from the constricted pipe into the CPU core. Only stuff like crypto-cracking and maybe batch rendering are truly CPU-only-bound.
Also, especially with graphics (which is one of the most CPU-intensive operations left, and for which higher-speed CPUs are generally targeted first), the trend is to specialized co-processors (the GPU), since the I/O and memory limitations of the current PC architecture make improvements in the CPU of limited help to the graphics subsystem. Take a good look today: it's a far better thing for your Quake performance to replace that 2-year-old video card than it is to replace the 2-year-old CPU. And, given which is cheaper, which do you think people will do?
I'd love to see Intel and AMD quit spending all their money (or the vast majority of it) on speed improvements, and dump a huge amount of it into redesigning the PC architecture. Honesly, I think there is a huge amount of $$ to be made in the chipset integration market. Intel has done this to a certain extent, and now owns probably 60% of the primary MB chipset market. However, nobody is doing anything interesting.
AMD has made a step in the right direction with the adoption of the EV6 bus, but Intel is still running the GTL+ bus, which sucks. I'm talking about as a bus architecture, not comparing MHZ of the bus.
I'd love it if I could buy a 600Mhz PC with an advanced memory and I/O subsystem (maybe like that on the SGI O2 or VisualWorkstion series). The key here is that the push has to come from Intel or AMD. They're the only ones who can design the CPUs to take advantage of such a design. SGI's problems (besides internal ones to the company (like no clue about how to sell into the NT market)) were that the CPU was still a "typical" CPU, and the custom chipset had to work around its limitations.
If AMD or Intel really wants a leg up on the other (and I'm not talking about "My latest CPU is 3% faster than yours, for the 1 month until you introduces your next one" crap), they should:
Make sure that they can sustain 10 GByte/s throughput from main memory to the caches to the CPU.
Get the latency down. Having a multi-pipelined CPU stalled as it waits for data hurts everything.
Look at methods for allowing non-core devices to tap directly into the memory system. AGP is sorta-kinda there, but not even close to some of the state-of-the-art stuff I've seen out of SGI, HP, and Sun (particularly the first two).
If AMD and Intel ever want to do something besides make desktops and small servers, they have to change the PC architecture. Maybe Merced and Sledgehammer will do that, but I'm not optimistic.
Hell, even the high-end UNIX vendors could take a page from the Mainframes. Ever wonder why the 'frames haven't died? Batch-processing my good chap - I can get a 'frame with equivalent CPU power to a vanilla Pentium that will go through 100,000 jobs/hour, where a 8-way Sun E3000 might do 10,000/hour, and a quad Xeon maybe 4,000/hour. It's all about the I/O throughput.
I'm looking forward to the day when my PC isn't of an identical design to the one I bought in 1990.
...from my perspective, I only consider two "Certifications" worth anything:
CNEs more than 2 years old
Cisco stuff
Both have achieved the goals of a good certification system:
Wide-scale recognition with those responsible for hiring (and these days, that's the technical people doing the hiring interviews)
Clear understanding of what the certification actually means. That is, what skills sets does that certification test for?
Respect for the level of competence required to obtain the certification. E.g. How hard are the tests? Are they hands-on, or mostly book-learning? Is is possible to "study-for-the-test" and not really know the concepts, just the answers to the questions?
For obvious reasons, things such as an official Professional Engineer cert carry heavy weight.
However, I can't see how any certification is worth anything without some pre-existing experience to give it meaning.
My best advice to you is this: You're obviously looking for an entry-level position. You can list them on the resume, which won't hurt, and might actually help get you the interview (since HR still does some pre-screening of applications). However, it won't matter one little bit in the interview; what matters here is your ability to communicate what you do know, what the limits of your knowledge are (and BE HONEST), and your fit into their environment (fast learning ability? Steady work ethic? Dependable schedule? Coding Genius? Team player?)
In short, having those Certs might might add slightly to your chances of getting your foot in the door, but it's up to you to perform in the interview, which is what really determines whether you get an offer or not.
Fundamentally, I have no problem with restricting access to certain materials for children. However, I'd love to see our imperfect system replaced with one which truly reflects the philosophies of the child's parent.
The current US system has two major flaws:
The gov't-imposed distinctions are extremely vague, and only divide material into two categories: adult, and everyone.
"Industry" rating systems are closed, and we (the public) have no insight or control over the criteria they use for ratings. Worse, there generally is only one rating system per industry.
In order to allow parents to exert some degree of control over their children's intake of material, yet at the same time allow them to customize the access based on their personal views and reading of the child's maturing, I propose the following system for all media (TV, print, videogames, video, movies, etc.):
Require that any organization passing a minimal set of regulations (such as independence from media producers) be officially sanctioned (e.g. as a legal authority) to be a Reviewer.
Require that the Reviewer post a simple ratings identifier. Something such as the letter codes from the MPAA, or possibly a little more complex, like a 4-digit number (with each digit a different color, on a scale of 1-4). Whatever scale is used, it must be clearly comprehensible to a 4th-grader (or thereabouts).
Require that each reviewer publicly state the methodology it uses for ratings.
Require that all media carry a rating stamp from at least one Reviewer.
Have each child issued a ID card upon which the Parents of the child have indicated what the maximum allowable rating the child can use.
I know this is simplistic, but I do think there are some reasonable ideas that we could use to replace the current botched up system.
As a counter, how much of the janitors' union's willingness to strike had to do with the knowledge that many of their clients were backing them? This was a complex situation, and one that doesn't boil down nicely.
Also, why do you think I used "magically cleaned" as a quoted concept. Of course they don't clean it by magic, and no one I know thinks that there isn't someone cleaning out their cubes at night. It's just that we don't think about it much, since it isn't immediately important. If I had to think about everything that everyone does all the time, I'd go insane. The key here is to value what people do for you when reminded of the function that they perform. The janitors' threatened strike was a good thing, since it reminded all of us exactly what goes on, which occassionally needs to happen (a gentle reminder is good for any occupation's visibility).
I know you were talking about the working class. However, your original comment is phrased such that it's easy to assume you group all asians, black, and mexicans as being the working class. That's false. Even if we're talking about the working class itself (and not the other chunks of society), don't forget the public sector servants (or don't you consider that working class?), which are a large chunk of whites, and also don't forget the indians, who are heavily present in the service industry. The point here is that the working class isn't filled with repressed minorities who can't do anything else, which is what you strongly imply. Hell, there isn't a majority out here. I'm going to guess that no single race has more than 1/3 of the population.
If you're original intention was to point out that we shouldn't look down our noses at people working hard at more menial tasks, you're right. They are human beings, and do both a valuable job and work at it. However, you also can't say what I do for a living isn't more valuable. It is, based on simple economics. And most people in my social class have worked just as hard as those in the working class to get where they are. Or have you missed the fact that the average working week for technology people is in the mid-60s?
What you do for a living does not necessarily determine your worth as a human being. But one can strive to be more economically successful, and being such is something to be proud of (assuming you didn't get there by immoral means). And I hardly think that most techies in SV can be accused of getting where they are via immoral methods.
I've heard others say this, but everyone seems to leave out exactly what they are doing over X.
X is a nasty remote protocol - it's very verbose, and generates lots of traffic for any X-related function. Using one of the X-protocol compressor setups helps this quite a bit (it reduces GUI-related X overhead traffic by about 60%).
Indeed, you can run many X-terminals over standard unswitched 10BaseT. But only if you're doing non-GUI-intensive apps. xterm, emacs, et al. Give the original post, I'm assuming that they are going to be running Netscape, Applix, WordPerfect, StarOffice, and stuff like Matlab. All generate lots and lots of GUI calls, which have to traverse the network. I think you'll find that 5 users writing a document in WorkPerfect generate more traffic than 20 users using Emacs to write the same document.
X is just not scalable to allow everyone to run GUI-intensive apps remotely.
Everyone seems to be taking a different view from what I had in mind when I said:
First off, you don't want any data locally. That's right. I don't care who has the workstation, the only thing sitting on the local disk should be the OS. All user files, and major applications should be sitting on a remote filesystem.
Obviously, this means I wasn't clear in my wording, since everyone seems to miss what my intention was.
I'm not in favor of remote execution of applications. For reasons I stated later, running X over a LAN isn't a scalable choice.
Rather, what I was trying to suggest was this: only the OS should be stored on the workstations' local disks, while all applications should be stored on a remotely-mounted network file system. Such apps directories would be mounted on the workstation, then the apps in them run locally.
I don't care how slick apt-get or rsync or rdist setups you can make. It's still far more complicated than having all commonly-used applications stored on a central file server. It's then much easier to do upgrades, and also much simpler to make multiple versions of the same app available (this is extraordinarily difficult (and/or clunky) to do locally).
... I'm a Sys/Net Architect, so guess where my biases are?:-)
Anyway, what you have on the desktop matters (esp the mechanism you use for clone workstations (you are planning to clone workstations, right?)), but I'll concentrate on something else equally important, and which will affect how you set up the desktops: Network and Backend System Design
First off, you don't want any data locally. That's right. I don't care who has the workstation, the only thing sitting on the local disk should be the OS. All user files, and major applications should be sitting on a remote filesystem. Otherwise, you end up with a completely intractible backup and upgrade problem. Trust me on this.
As a correllary to the last statement, you don't want to use NFS as your file sharing method. Hell, even SMB would be better. You want to look at either AFS or Coda. I would recommend the latter, as it's nowhere near as nasty to set up.
As part of Coda/AFS, you are going to have to think about how you design your file server setup. A central bank of servers is tempting, but this tends to be really harsh on the campus backbone, as it puts the workstation relatively "far" from the server, and all traffic has to traverse the backbone. Consider local file servers which may cache user data for replication back to the master server(s) later.
Printing is also a bit of a problem. I heartily recommend the CUPS system talked about here a couple of days ago. Have all your workstations spool to dedicated print servers. They don't have to be powerful, but make them dedicated. You won't regret it.
As far as security and other mishmash goes, do the usual/etc/inetd.conf edit, and comment EVERYTHING out. Don't run ANY daemons on the clients (other than what is absolutely necessary for Coda). Have all mail blindly forwarded to a central mail server. As a correllary, use IMAP (preferably IMAP-over-SSL) as your mail server. Stay away from local UNIX mail, and POP. And look at running postfix or exim instead of sendmail.
You can think about using application servers (i.e. run X apps remotely) if you want, but realize that this will up the bandwidth requirement, and honestly, you probably can't run more than two dozen major X apps over a LAN before it bogs down completely. That is, you need a local app server with 100Mbit connections to about 25 machines so each can run 1 or 2 X apps remotely.
If you can afford it, and have the time, use LDAP as your user info directory - avoid NIS and NIS+ (the first is horribly insecure, and the second is nasty).
This is a first approximation of what you might do. If you want a serious proposal, I'm available nights and weekends (for a modest fee, of course... heehee)
I'm going to address your rant about Janitors first.
Yes, I've seen the recent spat between the Janitor's Union and the various local janitorial companies. It wasn't pretty. Guess what, though: several big high-tech companies came out on the side of the janitors. 3Com sticks in my mind as one. These companies were in favor of the janitors, even though this would probably hurt their bottom line. Gasp!
I hate to say this, but nowhere but academia do custodial staff work day shift. You need to get out a bit more. Janitors in all companies work the late shift.
Actually, since I tended to work 80-hour weeks the past years, I've gotten to know the people who clean my buildings. I'm not fluent in Spanish, and they aren't great in English (but not half-bad, either). They're nice, efficient, and decent people. I see nothing wrong with the arrangement where I expect them to do their job, and I do mine. My building should be "magically cleaned" in the morning, because that's what we're paying them for. I don't have lunch with them (but then again, I don't with the Marketing people, either), and I wouldn't expect them to invite me to one, either.
We live in a Meritocracy, folks. Or at least something that aspires to be. I shouldn't (and don't) look down at the janitors, as they do an essential job, and are good at it. But that doesn't mean I have to either (A) aspire to become a janitor or (B) feel guilty about what I do for a living. I'm sorry, but you don't get to make me feel guilty about being a white-collar worker, instead of a blue-collar one. I don't get to devalue his worth as a human being, but I do get to value my profession more.
One other thing I find highly offensive:
Just a bunch of money grubbing yuppies that like to boast about their success, and a bunch of poor mexicans, asians and blacks that keep it all together.
I guess I get to be a yuppie here. Yup, I'm money grubbing. So are my janitors - they're up here for the better pay and chance to get a better life than they might in other places (alot of the people that clean my building are illegals). Please don't pretend that they're here for the "atmosphere".
As for the racial remark, talk about being a bigot. Asians make up at least 30% of the yuppies, with foreigners another 20% or so. And which segment makes up the vast majority of public servants? (Postal workers, teachers, firemen, policemen)? Oops, that would be, ah, whites? Actually, I can't tell what half the population is out here, so trying to categories by look is foolhardy. Yes, many of the lower rungs of jobs are dominated by certain minorities. We don't live in a utopia. However, there are alot of people out here (of all races) that have gotten ahead through a combination of drive, hard work, and luck.
I guess I shouldn't be so hard on you. It was, after all, a rant, and rants tend not to be either coherent or well-reasoned.
OK, disclaimer: I live in Mountain View, right next to Palo Alto. I used to live in Boston, but I grew up in Amish country in PA.
One of my close friend's (hi Dana!) parents live 2 miles from me in Los Altos. She grew up in Palo Alto before it hit big, and she has most of the same complaints that the guy in the article did. Many are observant.
Unfortunately, they're irrellevant. What they're complaining about is the change of a 30,000 person "small college town" into a real city. The old residential towns of the Peninsula (Sunnyvale to Burlingame) had about 200,000 people in them in 1980. They now run a million or more total. No matter what type of people the influx was, it would have seriously changed the character of the area, and it has. Essentially what's happened is that suburbia has turned into "urbia".
The real crime here is that the old and the monied refuse to recognize that the Peninsula is now a city. They want to try to keep it some sort of low-density suburb. That makes as much sense as restricting Manhattan to 3-story buildings. They can't understand (or won't) that the only way to improve things around here is to start putting up high-density housing.
ohhh, but that would hurt property values. Yeah, like that makes any sense. A 2000sq ft 1-story ranch house in poor shape runs $500,000 in Palo Alto. And Prop 13 sucks. Talk about lining the pockets of the old with the sweat of the new.
The story author has at least one thing right: I'm outta here after I save my nestegg. I'll buy a $500,000 condo on Beacon Street in Boston and get something for my money, thank you.
The unfortunate thing still is this: like Manhattan for the financial market, SV is the place to cut your teeth in tech, and really means you can write your ticket after surviving here for 5-10 years. Kinda like Darwin for the geek set.
-Erik (who hopes that Dana doesn't kill me for this...)
You can pick up 10baseFL PCI ethernet cards for around $150 each, and 100BaseFX cards run $250 or so. The biggest expense will be the fiber itself, which could be $200-300 or so for a 100m run. Get the PVC covering since you're going to be running it outside.
You can get up to 1km or more over single-mode fiber.
If you're going hub-to-hub, use an AUI->10BaseFL tranceiver on each end (making sure each hub has an AUI connector). Don't use Media Converters - they suck and drop packets all over the place.
Realistically, fiber is probably too expensive for you. But it's so neat.:-)
And, of course, fiber doesn't have those nasty problems with weather interfering with microwave/infrared transmissions. Though you do have to worry about the birds sitting on the cable...
The vast majority of what is termed "white-collar crime" is fraud, perpetuated by business people against consumers. This includes heads of companies defrauding their stockholders by fixing the books/making false statements/etc.
After that, the next largest category is embezzlement, which is an employee stealing from a company (the majority of these companies tend to be financial institutions of one sort of another).
In the first case, it obviously directly affects people. The second case, it certainly hurts people, as the company that was stolen from loses profit, their stock may take a big hit, or in many cases, the business folds (which hurts the companies/people depending on the business, not to mention the stockholders).
In the abstract, white collar crime also hurts society-at-large by causing them to lose faith in the economic "laws" that allows our country to run. If I have no confidence that a company won't steal or rip me off, why would I buy from them? Or invest in any company? If this attitude becomes widespread, how will we continue to run an economy?
Here's a good example of bad improper punishment of white-collar crime: in the late 1980s, there was a huge wave of failures of Savings and Loan companies in the U.S. It turns out that a large percentage of these failures were due to fraudulent and/or illegal transactions being made by senior management of the S&Ls. It cost the U.S. gov't on the order of 500 BILLION to cover the costs of the bailout of these S&Ls - much of which had to come from tax money, since the insurance fund that the S&Ls were supposed to contribute to to cover this sort of thing was woefully underfunded.
After this was all over, very few of those Sr. Execs were convicted of anything, and I think the worst thing I saw was a 5 year sentence.
Your example was extreme, but do I think there are situations where someone guilty of a white-collar crime should get a sterner sentance than a murderer? Yup! I'd probably sentence the $500,000 thief to something at least as stern as someone guilty of involuntary manslaughter (say a fatal hit-and-run): about 5-10 years. They both are a Class B felony in the U.S., but I'm pretty sure that the latter crime would get at least twice as harsh a sentence right now.
Tell me, who has hurt people more, one of those S&L Execs who's fraud cost the US $200 million to bailout his bank, or someone who stabs his wife to death in a drunken rage? Both are hideous crimes, but logically, the first hurts society far more than the second.
Under the new (and I would say, more enlightened) interpretation of Kevin's parole, your analogy with the DUI person is excellent, though not in the manner you intended. Once convicted of a DUI, I lose the ability to operate the device that I abused. Oops. That sounds exactly like what Kevin's parole is: he can't use computers. The harsher restrictions regarding computers for Kevin reflects the reality that it's very hard to control someone once they have access to a computer. While the DUI person could reasonably be expected to abide by his parole and still work as a mechanic, is it really realistic to allow Kevin to work as a PC tech at CompUSA and not actually use a computer? He would easily be able to violate his parole, and it would be very difficult to detect that violation. Therefore, he is banned from being in situations that provide this temptation.
Now, in both cases, after a period of time, the offender may be able to get back the privilege (and, yes, operating a computer is privilege - you can certainly survive without using a PC) that was lost.
I don't consider his (new) parole conditions onerous, or outlandish, given the crime he was convicted of (pleading guilty is a conviction).
As far as your last statement reguarding "white collar" crime vs. violent crime, I'm of the opinion we seriously underpunish white-collar crime. Look at it from a societal standpoint (which is what the punishment is supposed to take into account):
A violent crime causes almost unlimited damage to a single (or at most, a tiny number) of individuals. The biggest damage to society is that it undermines the faith we have in your society to protect us from bodily harm.
White-collar crime (extortion, embezzelment, fraud, cracking, et al.) tends to adversely affect a huge number of people. And while the individual impact might be less (though try to explain that to an 80-year-old grandma whose life savings were just fleeced), it does far, far, far greater societal harm. For white collar crime gnaws at the fundamental societal illusions that keep our country from reducing to total anarchy: you're screwing with the trust in the financial system, and in the trust of the consumer->producer relationship.
Honestly, I have no problem with a cracker who steals 100,000 credit card numbers getting a harsher sentance than a DUI-induced involuntary vehicular homocide. Not that the DUI person should get off lightly, but I can't stomache the people who cry "But nobody got hurt!" at the white-collar criminal's trial. That's just bullshit.
It's good to see that the probation office took a more reasonable stance on his lecturing and consulting. Though I suspect that he'll be carefully watched at the consulting gigs.
However, the comment about not allowing Kevin to use any computers is grossly misleading. The limitations are against any Programmable electronic device, and even then, it's up to the probation officer about what is or is not allowable. Kevin can use an HP calculator, a microwave, an even (i'm pretty sure) an ATM machine. Anything that he can reprogram for dastardly ends (or use to reprogram an otherwise "legal" device) is out. Given the crime he's on probation for, this is logical, reasonable, and appropriate.
Also, a note to those crying about restriction of his Inalienable Rights: as a convicted felon, he has lost the right to many of his "Rights". He may get them back over time (e.g. when his parole is up), but right now, as part of his punishment (and ALL FELONS are subject to this), he loses many of the rights normal citizens enjoy:
No Right of Free Association.
Restrictions on his Free Speech.
Loss of Voting privileges.
Less immunity to Unreasonable Search.
Loss of the right to bear Arms.
I've missed a few, but you get the point.
Believe me, you don't want to be convicted of a Felony in the U.S. - it's a serious cramp on your future.
-Erik
Good idea, but if fails the legal test...
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Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 5
OK, let's say we take your proposal, and create the World's Best Registrar(tm). We have lots of nice, end-user friendly policies, responsive customer service, and we don't screw people over. In short, the polar opposite of NSI. So, everyone hears about you, decides you're cool, and we all switch over to you.
Heck, you're so nice and cool, and we all trust you so much that you go and create a whole bunch of new TLDs. We like 'em, and use them wonderfully.
Everything is hunky dory up until the point where you decide to let someone other than Mr. Gates' company register microsoft.com. Or even microsoft.xxx. Suddenly, a whole passel of MS lawyers show up at your doorstep, and demand that they get back the microsoft.xxx domain, because, damnit, they own the trademark.
Guess what? You're going to have to give the name back to MS. The reason is the current interpretation of law. You, as the service provider, are responsible for following the law, and the law states that MS has the right to the microsoft.xxx domains. You have to comply. Sorry, no way out. This isn't just in the US, anymore, since WIPO decided to essentially impliment the US trademark-on-domains philosophy into internation trade law. So you can't move elsewhere.
Fundamentally, right now the boundaries are set up for what we can and cannot do on our own - certainly, there is a whole lot of room to improve over NSI (and I'm certainly moving my business from them to someone else), but the current legal atmosphere limits what policies you can put in place for domain registration.
-Erik
This is bound to fail...
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Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 5
While a noble idea, there are several major reasons why you would never be able to get it accepted:
Court systems (in whichever country you are in) still exert juristiction. Moving to Sealand isn't going to help. While you (the new DNS people) may not have problems, people using your service still have to face liability in their country of origin. As long as the court systems seems to think that Domain Names are trademarkable, well, we're screwed.
You'd have to get the big players (most of the major ISPs) to go along. For legal reasons (see #1), this will never happen. So, if the people that provide 90% of the internet users capacity don't use you, what's the point?
As to this, there is currently AlterNIC. They don't have many of the problems we associate with the current system, but guess how successful they've been?
DNS requires a controlling entity. Distributed control isn't really a good idea. (Distributed operations are, though). The controlling entity needs to have some method for enforcing it's decisions, and whoops, that means it needs to derive authority from some legal method. Right now, I'm voting for a U.N.-sponsored organization that then delegates to national orgs. Honestly, I think international treaty is about the only way to go here.
In the end, however, you fall into the same trap virtually everyone does when attempting to "Reform" the DNS system. They make the assumption that names have connotation. That is, that there is some meaning to the name www.microsoft.com other than it's easier to remember than 207.46.130.149. The DNS system was designed, and SHOULD REMAIN simply a pneumonic (sp?) that makes life easier for machine identification. What we've loaded onto the DNS system is content location, something it's completely unsuitable for.
Fundamentally, I should NOT be typing in "www.microsoft.com" in IE if I want to look for Windows 98 crap. I should type in "Microsoft Windows 98". There should be no end-user mapping between content and DNS name. Content should be divorced from DNS completely, in the manner that DNS is divorced from IPs. Meta-searching and content discovery/cataloging need to be avanced to the point where honestly, the end-user should NEVER KNOW ABOUT URLs. Does then end-user know about IP addresses nowdays? No. Neither should they need to know about DNS names.
We need to fix cataloging and searching first, then the DNS problem will go away.
Now, I don't have the full facts, since your question leaves out quite a bit, but I'm going to assume (given the low-power interest) that you're a SOHO user - someone with a small network to defend, but no real need for VPN support at the firewall, and something limited to DSL/cable modem speeds. According to your question, you're obviously looking for a firewall only, and not something that will do other stuff (like mail, etc).
Simply put, you can't beat one of the turnkey solutions. The Netgear and LinkSys solutions mentioned in the previous Ask Slashdot draw miniscue amounts of power - far less than even the most miserly PC. They're tiny, completely silent (no fan needed!), and cheap (sub $200).
I don't have direct experience with the Netgear, but I do with the LinkSys. It has a web-based interface, and also allows you to customize a text config file for complex setup. I like it over the Netgear because it includes a 4-port 10/100 SWITCH. NAT and DHCP support.
If these are truely not for you, look into a Netwinder or a used Cobalt Cube. They're a bit more, but they have all the functionality you could wish for, and they draw very little power (and are pretty damn small). If you must have a x86 PC, look for an old Compaq Deskpro (there are some nice little LPX-form-factor ones) off of eBAY.
Don't approach the problem bass-ackwards. Draw up your requirements from a functionality standpoint, then look for solutions that fit your criteria. Don't decide on a solution until you've considered all the alternatives.
...whatever the hell you decide to define it to be.
:-)
That said, I think the key things that seperates GNOME, KDE, and CDE (and to a certain extent, OpenWindows and HP VUE) from the rest of the window managers is the concept of underlying services that facilitate communication between apps. In Windows, it's OLE (or COM or whatever they call it nowdays). In CDE, it's ToolTalk; in GNOME, it's CORBA (I don't know what it is in KDE).
You see this underlying communication in various ways: the most obvious is Drag-and-Drop between apps (or the desktop and apps). It also shows up in inter-app communication with documents (think Excel spreadsheet embeded in a Word Doc).
I'd almost consider WindowMaker an environment. It has most of the hooks that Enlightenment and Kwm have for their underlying services, and can work nicely in a GNOMEish or KDEish setup.
I think when people say "environment", they're referring to the whole shebang: backend libraries and daemons that provide Inter-app communication, a Window manager that uses those backend facilities, and apps that also are aware of the available functionality. Integration is the key here: all the parts need to be aware (and use) eachother, and not just be able to function next to eachother.
"Are there some licenses that I should worry less about? Client access licenses? Fonts? What are my risks?"
No, you should worry about all licenses. This is a matter of professional ethics. All licenses are equal. It may be easier to forget about certain ones (especially if those licenses don't require keys to unlock their use), but the ethics are the same.
Risks are a complicated problem. In reality, the actual chances of getting caught are probably very, very small. However, the penalties can be big. Not only can the company face huge fines, but if a reasonable case can be made that you were professionally negligent (or complicit) in the lack of proper licensing, you can personally be held responsible, and face a hefty fine (or even possible criminal charges).
If you're in a startup, at each new round of funding, V.C.s will usually do a full audit (it's part of due dilligence). You will probably get tripped up there. The auditors will require you to get all licensing up-to-date before signing off. Or they might not, and just give the company a thumbs down to the V.C. (and, hey, there goes that funding...) It's a useful lever to get management to come around.
As it's been said, if management won't come around, then leave. You don't want to work for a bunch of crooks. Sooner or later, it will catch up with you in some form or other. So get out.
Since software is intangible, it seems that people don't always realize that they can't copy willy-nilly everything. We're all susceptible to it, and I don't think anyone here can claim to be pure.
That said, widespread, systematic piracy is Not The Right Thing(tm). If you're getting pressure to deliver something that contains unlicensed software, I usually proceed as follows:
If the requestor can produce a P.O. or some other internal document showing that the license has been put into the purchasing process (not just requested, but approved), I'll generally install it, with the admonishment to the person that they really need to think a bit ahead of time, and not do things at the last minute. I will then require that the person give me the software when it comes in. (Actually, I generally demand that the requestor send an email to Receiving (cc:'d to my boss and his boss) that the software is to be delivered directly to me, and NOT to the requestor - that way, I know it came in.)
If the previous becomes a habit, I generally start refusing to install stuff, period.
For people who start to make noise about me not getting stuff to them (due to their lack of proper licensing), I make sure that they've made a formal request for the item. I can then point to the request, and truthfully say: "It hasn't arrived yet." This works really well with higher-ups, if the person complains to their boss that I'm not being responsive, I have a perfectly valid (and documented) response.
If you work in a start up, don't forget you can call the funding V.C.s (if the company has any) for help as a last resort. They most certainly will back you.
If these steps fail, and you're still getting pressure to install stuff illegally, I'd try to have the requestor walk over with you to Company Counsel (ie. the lawyer), or, if that's not practical, to the Comptroller, Internal Audit, or a very Sr. Executive. Calmly explain in the presence of both of them what you see as the problem. Remain calm, and don't use inflamatory language. But be firm.
Should all this fail, you don't want to stay there. Period. Your management is not trustworthy, and they fail to show you any professional respect. Look for another job.
If they threaten you or otherwise become really hostile - REMAIN CALM. Don't blow your top. Get out of the situation as gracefully as you can, and do the following immediately:
Dump a full copy of all your email to someplace safe that you can protect - removable media, or better yet, a remote (ie, non-company) machine. At worst, create a Hotmail account and forward all your email there.
If you can, make copies of all ordering documentation you have. Take the documentation with you that night.
If you have it, make a copy of the current licensing level of the company. This will often be in a spreadsheet or database (like Excel or Access). Take it with you.
The next day, find a lawyer. Do it.
Give the company a couple of days to come to their senses. 2 or 3 is reasonable. If they don't, come to work with your lawyer. Talk to your boss with your lawyer present, and explain that you are quitting, effective immediately, and the reason why. Demand that they both pay the required software licensesANDpay you a severance package. Be reasonable for the severance, but be firm.
If they refuse, leave. Period. Talk with your lawyer, and decide if you should report them to the local police. Or you can report them to the SPA anti-piracy hotline. Remember, that you will be covered under the Federal Wistleblower Act. If the company is found guilty, you are entitled to a significant portion of the assessed fine.
Hopefully, you should never get that far. But talking to a good lawyer (particularly one in labor/employment law) is always an excellent idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it reasonable to assume that a torpedo striking a sub from outside would sink it; that's what they are designed to do. An outside explosion has lots to interfere with its mission: water pressure slowing down the explosion, gases dispersing in the ocean, cylindrical hull shape tending to resist the explosion.
In theory, a 100kg warhead might be enough to generally sink a Soviet sub. In reality, it has been long-recognized that the 100kg warhead on the US Mark 46 LightWeight Torpedo is completely insufficient to sink a Soviet sub like the Oscar, unless you get lucking and get a stern hit which happens to pop the drive shaft seals. The multiple hull and equipment arrangement provides for quite a bit of "armor" protection. The standard US Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo used on US subs has a 150kg warhead which uses a shaped-charge director much like a HEAT round (in effect, producing a much larger explosive force) to get much better 1-shot-1-kill potential, but even then, the general feeling is that the first torp hit slows the sub down and makes it a sitting duck, then you pump an additional 1 or 2 into it to sink it.
Now imagine that same explosion inside the ship. Nice closed container (for a while :-), inside of a cylinder not resisting as well as the outside, no water to slow down the gases.
Assuming the explosion was in the torpedo tube after it had been loaded and armed (which is much more likely than while loading), the loaded torpedo tube is not really "inside" the sub. It's more like in a flooded airlock adjacent to the ship's hull. Yes, more destructive than hitting the outside of the double-hull, but nothing like an interior explosion.
Even inside, a lone (assuming no subsequent explosions) 100kg explosion in the forward torpedo room shouldn't sink the sub. It's not a big enough explosion to cause more than the first 2 (at most) compartments to flood, which comprise of about 25% of the total inside space. Oscars have a least 9, plus significant bouyancy tanks. Cripple the sub, yes. Cause it to loose the ability to surface, most likely not. Even wrecking the forward bow planes wouldn't be sufficient. The problem here would be time: the 2:15 between 1st and 2nd explosion really wouldn't be enough to regain control of the sub to start to surface.
-Erik
First off, the Kursk was a flight II Oscar (NATO-designation) SSGN. Check Jane's for more info. In other words, it was the same type of submarine as later-mode US Los Angeles and UK Trafalgar submarines. It was an ANTI-SHIP submarine. The Oscars Don't Carry Nuclear Missiles. Although technically possible, both SALT I and SALT II forbid nuclear weapons on attack submarine cruise missiles, and generally frowed on nuclear ASW weapons such as SUBROC (this was an area of contention, but both sides generally didn't carry anti-submarine nukes).
Secondly, how reliable is the Sunday Times for stuff like this? They might be better than the Times-Mirror, but then again, I don't exactly trust people like CNN and CBS to get it right either. Smells like a reporter is making this a sensationalist story from nothing.
Another technical detail here: there were two explosions: one of about 100kg TNT force, and one about 15 times stronger 2:15 later. The first is in line with an explosion of a torpedo propeller propulsion system or a compressed-air torpedo launch system (or collision, or whatever). The second is in line with either a rocket motor or warhead cook off. A couple of things to think about:
By far the most likely scenario to date is a malfunctioned torpedo launch (regardless of what type of torpedo) which blew out the torp tube and either started a fire in the forward torpedo room or short-circuited a bunch of stuff that led to either a warhead cookoff or rocket fuel explosion in one of the SS-N-19s.
While testing a new cavitation torpedo might be the immediate cause, I wouldn't point to them as being the general problem until a lot more info comes to light (which is unlikely until they raise the Kursk, and probably not even then). Indeed, if what Jane's and others are saying, it could easily have been a bad launch system itself, and whether shooting a Cav Torp, SS-N-16, or torpedo wouldn't make a difference.
-Erik
... I've got a good target to whack.
I'm going to leave the Open Source slurs aside, since they're not really relevant (though, as one previous poster pointed out, they hurt the MPAA since it's a direct loss of credibility).
They're misquoting (or should I say, misusing) the case law precedent. The case laws covers only:
Also, I'd like to point out one further thing that I find unusual of this whole thing:
This is a civil case about trade secrets. In order to prove a trade secret case, you have to show proof that the accused gained information about the secret through unlawful means. As of right now, reverse engineering is not an illegal means, no matter what the shrink-wrap says on a product. Right now, shrink-wrap licenses are unenforcable and invalid, period.
Also, the DCMA doesn't apply to this case. Now, depending on the rulings about the DCMA, making LiViD might be illegal, but the methods of discovering how to make LiViD (that is, discovering how CSS worked) are not illegal, even under a strict DCMA ruling.
This case is strictly about reverse-engineering a trade secret, and the MPAA has absolutely no leg to stand on, other than perhaps having more money to blow on lawyers.
Fundamentally, I'd counter-sue for malicious prosecution (that's the criminal law term, there's a civil law equivalent, but I can't remember the phrase), since the suit is prima facia invalid.
Fuck them with a red hot poker.
-Erik
...it probably should be passed in front of a tech-savvy legal expert.
There are two possible interpretations of Section 6(b)(vii):
Comcast needs to clarify this quickly. If they are banning VPNs of any kind, well, that kills their telecommuter business immediately, which I can't see them doing (telecommuters are good for the service - they use the network at an otherwise low-use period and are not any more of a strain on the network than an ordinary user). I suspect that the intent was to prevent businesses from using @home as a channel to set up remote office VPNs and/or to prevent people from setting up clandestine Internet servers (i.e. ones that don't serve out from the @home IP, but do on another IP, and are undetectible by @home).
I'd call Comcast and make this point. I suspect that they aren't going after the telecommuter, but instead have a badly-worded AUP addition, and should change that.
-Erik
... is that you have to have some idea what to ask for. This is by far the greatest stumbling block in my opinion, especially for new authors.
Virtually no one can estimate the "value" of an initial piece of work (or even the first few pieces) from an unknown author. Using the SPP, the first couple of works from an author usually end up horribly under-compensated. While this is useful for gauging the future asking price for prolific authors (such as Mr. King, or long-term performers such as The Rolling Stones), what about the people doing one-offs? Or who only want to write 2-3 works? Inevitably, they get screwed, since the amount they receive via the SPP is considerably less than that which their popularity should dictate.
In order to use the SPP a bit more fairly, I suggest a modification which helps bring the compensation model more in line with a particular work's popularity:
I think this would more fairly compensate the unknown or low-output author. We still need to come up with a better micropayments method than we currently have. PayPal is OK, but by no means problem-free.
-Erik
PS - and the publishers do have a point: they do provide large value-add to the author (PR, printing, tours, editing, equipment, et al). The current question is if the cost they charge is greater than the value-add.
...honestly, I could give a damn about Intel and AMD ramping their core speeds up (which is really what is driving the move to a smaller die size).
In a modern PC, the processor isn't the bottleneck for 99% of the work you're doing. Unless what you're doing can fit in the L2 cache, the processor is going to sit and wait for it. Now, modern L2 cache architectures are getting pretty good, and the hit rate is now approaching 90-95% for most stuff, but think of it this way: a L1 cache miss (which is quite common) incurs a 4-6 cycle wait, while a L2 cache miss can incur a 50-70 (to as much as 100-200) cycle wait. Ouch!
Realistically, virtually all "CPU-bound" applications these days are also memory-bound, too. Quake, Photoshop, file-compression, and others typically thought of as relying on the CPU exclusively actually suffer greatly from the constricted pipe into the CPU core. Only stuff like crypto-cracking and maybe batch rendering are truly CPU-only-bound.
Also, especially with graphics (which is one of the most CPU-intensive operations left, and for which higher-speed CPUs are generally targeted first), the trend is to specialized co-processors (the GPU), since the I/O and memory limitations of the current PC architecture make improvements in the CPU of limited help to the graphics subsystem. Take a good look today: it's a far better thing for your Quake performance to replace that 2-year-old video card than it is to replace the 2-year-old CPU. And, given which is cheaper, which do you think people will do?
I'd love to see Intel and AMD quit spending all their money (or the vast majority of it) on speed improvements, and dump a huge amount of it into redesigning the PC architecture. Honesly, I think there is a huge amount of $$ to be made in the chipset integration market. Intel has done this to a certain extent, and now owns probably 60% of the primary MB chipset market. However, nobody is doing anything interesting.
AMD has made a step in the right direction with the adoption of the EV6 bus, but Intel is still running the GTL+ bus, which sucks. I'm talking about as a bus architecture, not comparing MHZ of the bus.
I'd love it if I could buy a 600Mhz PC with an advanced memory and I/O subsystem (maybe like that on the SGI O2 or VisualWorkstion series). The key here is that the push has to come from Intel or AMD. They're the only ones who can design the CPUs to take advantage of such a design. SGI's problems (besides internal ones to the company (like no clue about how to sell into the NT market)) were that the CPU was still a "typical" CPU, and the custom chipset had to work around its limitations.
If AMD or Intel really wants a leg up on the other (and I'm not talking about "My latest CPU is 3% faster than yours, for the 1 month until you introduces your next one" crap), they should:
If AMD and Intel ever want to do something besides make desktops and small servers, they have to change the PC architecture. Maybe Merced and Sledgehammer will do that, but I'm not optimistic.
Hell, even the high-end UNIX vendors could take a page from the Mainframes. Ever wonder why the 'frames haven't died? Batch-processing my good chap - I can get a 'frame with equivalent CPU power to a vanilla Pentium that will go through 100,000 jobs/hour, where a 8-way Sun E3000 might do 10,000/hour, and a quad Xeon maybe 4,000/hour. It's all about the I/O throughput.
I'm looking forward to the day when my PC isn't of an identical design to the one I bought in 1990.
-Erik
...from my perspective, I only consider two "Certifications" worth anything:
Both have achieved the goals of a good certification system:
For obvious reasons, things such as an official Professional Engineer cert carry heavy weight.
However, I can't see how any certification is worth anything without some pre-existing experience to give it meaning.
My best advice to you is this: You're obviously looking for an entry-level position. You can list them on the resume, which won't hurt, and might actually help get you the interview (since HR still does some pre-screening of applications). However, it won't matter one little bit in the interview; what matters here is your ability to communicate what you do know, what the limits of your knowledge are (and BE HONEST), and your fit into their environment (fast learning ability? Steady work ethic? Dependable schedule? Coding Genius? Team player?)
In short, having those Certs might might add slightly to your chances of getting your foot in the door, but it's up to you to perform in the interview, which is what really determines whether you get an offer or not.
-Erik
Fundamentally, I have no problem with restricting access to certain materials for children. However, I'd love to see our imperfect system replaced with one which truly reflects the philosophies of the child's parent.
The current US system has two major flaws:
In order to allow parents to exert some degree of control over their children's intake of material, yet at the same time allow them to customize the access based on their personal views and reading of the child's maturing, I propose the following system for all media (TV, print, videogames, video, movies, etc.):
I know this is simplistic, but I do think there are some reasonable ideas that we could use to replace the current botched up system.
-Erik
As a counter, how much of the janitors' union's willingness to strike had to do with the knowledge that many of their clients were backing them? This was a complex situation, and one that doesn't boil down nicely.
Also, why do you think I used "magically cleaned" as a quoted concept. Of course they don't clean it by magic, and no one I know thinks that there isn't someone cleaning out their cubes at night. It's just that we don't think about it much, since it isn't immediately important. If I had to think about everything that everyone does all the time, I'd go insane. The key here is to value what people do for you when reminded of the function that they perform. The janitors' threatened strike was a good thing, since it reminded all of us exactly what goes on, which occassionally needs to happen (a gentle reminder is good for any occupation's visibility).
I know you were talking about the working class. However, your original comment is phrased such that it's easy to assume you group all asians, black, and mexicans as being the working class. That's false. Even if we're talking about the working class itself (and not the other chunks of society), don't forget the public sector servants (or don't you consider that working class?), which are a large chunk of whites, and also don't forget the indians, who are heavily present in the service industry. The point here is that the working class isn't filled with repressed minorities who can't do anything else, which is what you strongly imply. Hell, there isn't a majority out here. I'm going to guess that no single race has more than 1/3 of the population.
If you're original intention was to point out that we shouldn't look down our noses at people working hard at more menial tasks, you're right. They are human beings, and do both a valuable job and work at it. However, you also can't say what I do for a living isn't more valuable. It is, based on simple economics. And most people in my social class have worked just as hard as those in the working class to get where they are. Or have you missed the fact that the average working week for technology people is in the mid-60s?
What you do for a living does not necessarily determine your worth as a human being. But one can strive to be more economically successful, and being such is something to be proud of (assuming you didn't get there by immoral means). And I hardly think that most techies in SV can be accused of getting where they are via immoral methods.
-Erik
I've heard others say this, but everyone seems to leave out exactly what they are doing over X.
X is a nasty remote protocol - it's very verbose, and generates lots of traffic for any X-related function. Using one of the X-protocol compressor setups helps this quite a bit (it reduces GUI-related X overhead traffic by about 60%).
Indeed, you can run many X-terminals over standard unswitched 10BaseT. But only if you're doing non-GUI-intensive apps. xterm, emacs, et al. Give the original post, I'm assuming that they are going to be running Netscape, Applix, WordPerfect, StarOffice, and stuff like Matlab. All generate lots and lots of GUI calls, which have to traverse the network. I think you'll find that 5 users writing a document in WorkPerfect generate more traffic than 20 users using Emacs to write the same document.
X is just not scalable to allow everyone to run GUI-intensive apps remotely.
-Erik
Everyone seems to be taking a different view from what I had in mind when I said:
First off, you don't want any data locally. That's right. I don't care who has the workstation, the only thing sitting on the local disk should be the OS. All user files, and major applications should be sitting on a remote filesystem.
Obviously, this means I wasn't clear in my wording, since everyone seems to miss what my intention was.
I'm not in favor of remote execution of applications. For reasons I stated later, running X over a LAN isn't a scalable choice.
Rather, what I was trying to suggest was this: only the OS should be stored on the workstations' local disks, while all applications should be stored on a remotely-mounted network file system. Such apps directories would be mounted on the workstation, then the apps in them run locally.
I don't care how slick apt-get or rsync or rdist setups you can make. It's still far more complicated than having all commonly-used applications stored on a central file server. It's then much easier to do upgrades, and also much simpler to make multiple versions of the same app available (this is extraordinarily difficult (and/or clunky) to do locally).
I hope I'm a bit clearer this time.
Thanks for the feedback, folks!
-Erik
... I'm a Sys/Net Architect, so guess where my biases are? :-)
Anyway, what you have on the desktop matters (esp the mechanism you use for clone workstations (you are planning to clone workstations, right?)), but I'll concentrate on something else equally important, and which will affect how you set up the desktops: Network and Backend System Design
First off, you don't want any data locally. That's right. I don't care who has the workstation, the only thing sitting on the local disk should be the OS. All user files, and major applications should be sitting on a remote filesystem. Otherwise, you end up with a completely intractible backup and upgrade problem. Trust me on this.
As a correllary to the last statement, you don't want to use NFS as your file sharing method. Hell, even SMB would be better. You want to look at either AFS or Coda. I would recommend the latter, as it's nowhere near as nasty to set up.
As part of Coda/AFS, you are going to have to think about how you design your file server setup. A central bank of servers is tempting, but this tends to be really harsh on the campus backbone, as it puts the workstation relatively "far" from the server, and all traffic has to traverse the backbone. Consider local file servers which may cache user data for replication back to the master server(s) later.
Printing is also a bit of a problem. I heartily recommend the CUPS system talked about here a couple of days ago. Have all your workstations spool to dedicated print servers. They don't have to be powerful, but make them dedicated. You won't regret it.
As far as security and other mishmash goes, do the usual /etc/inetd.conf edit, and comment EVERYTHING out. Don't run ANY daemons on the clients (other than what is absolutely necessary for Coda). Have all mail blindly forwarded to a central mail server. As a correllary, use IMAP (preferably IMAP-over-SSL) as your mail server. Stay away from local UNIX mail, and POP. And look at running postfix or exim instead of sendmail.
You can think about using application servers (i.e. run X apps remotely) if you want, but realize that this will up the bandwidth requirement, and honestly, you probably can't run more than two dozen major X apps over a LAN before it bogs down completely. That is, you need a local app server with 100Mbit connections to about 25 machines so each can run 1 or 2 X apps remotely.
If you can afford it, and have the time, use LDAP as your user info directory - avoid NIS and NIS+ (the first is horribly insecure, and the second is nasty).
This is a first approximation of what you might do. If you want a serious proposal, I'm available nights and weekends (for a modest fee, of course... heehee)
Good luck!
-Erik
I'm going to address your rant about Janitors first.
Yes, I've seen the recent spat between the Janitor's Union and the various local janitorial companies. It wasn't pretty. Guess what, though: several big high-tech companies came out on the side of the janitors. 3Com sticks in my mind as one. These companies were in favor of the janitors, even though this would probably hurt their bottom line. Gasp!
I hate to say this, but nowhere but academia do custodial staff work day shift. You need to get out a bit more. Janitors in all companies work the late shift.
Actually, since I tended to work 80-hour weeks the past years, I've gotten to know the people who clean my buildings. I'm not fluent in Spanish, and they aren't great in English (but not half-bad, either). They're nice, efficient, and decent people. I see nothing wrong with the arrangement where I expect them to do their job, and I do mine. My building should be "magically cleaned" in the morning, because that's what we're paying them for. I don't have lunch with them (but then again, I don't with the Marketing people, either), and I wouldn't expect them to invite me to one, either.
We live in a Meritocracy, folks. Or at least something that aspires to be. I shouldn't (and don't) look down at the janitors, as they do an essential job, and are good at it. But that doesn't mean I have to either (A) aspire to become a janitor or (B) feel guilty about what I do for a living. I'm sorry, but you don't get to make me feel guilty about being a white-collar worker, instead of a blue-collar one. I don't get to devalue his worth as a human being, but I do get to value my profession more.
One other thing I find highly offensive:
Just a bunch of money grubbing yuppies that like to boast about their success, and a bunch of poor mexicans, asians and blacks that keep it all together.
I guess I get to be a yuppie here. Yup, I'm money grubbing. So are my janitors - they're up here for the better pay and chance to get a better life than they might in other places (alot of the people that clean my building are illegals). Please don't pretend that they're here for the "atmosphere".
As for the racial remark, talk about being a bigot. Asians make up at least 30% of the yuppies, with foreigners another 20% or so. And which segment makes up the vast majority of public servants? (Postal workers, teachers, firemen, policemen)? Oops, that would be, ah, whites? Actually, I can't tell what half the population is out here, so trying to categories by look is foolhardy. Yes, many of the lower rungs of jobs are dominated by certain minorities. We don't live in a utopia. However, there are alot of people out here (of all races) that have gotten ahead through a combination of drive, hard work, and luck.
I guess I shouldn't be so hard on you. It was, after all, a rant, and rants tend not to be either coherent or well-reasoned.
Sorry for spending everyone's time.
-Erik
OK, disclaimer: I live in Mountain View, right next to Palo Alto. I used to live in Boston, but I grew up in Amish country in PA.
One of my close friend's (hi Dana!) parents live 2 miles from me in Los Altos. She grew up in Palo Alto before it hit big, and she has most of the same complaints that the guy in the article did. Many are observant.
Unfortunately, they're irrellevant. What they're complaining about is the change of a 30,000 person "small college town" into a real city. The old residential towns of the Peninsula (Sunnyvale to Burlingame) had about 200,000 people in them in 1980. They now run a million or more total. No matter what type of people the influx was, it would have seriously changed the character of the area, and it has. Essentially what's happened is that suburbia has turned into "urbia".
The real crime here is that the old and the monied refuse to recognize that the Peninsula is now a city. They want to try to keep it some sort of low-density suburb. That makes as much sense as restricting Manhattan to 3-story buildings. They can't understand (or won't) that the only way to improve things around here is to start putting up high-density housing.
ohhh, but that would hurt property values. Yeah, like that makes any sense. A 2000sq ft 1-story ranch house in poor shape runs $500,000 in Palo Alto. And Prop 13 sucks. Talk about lining the pockets of the old with the sweat of the new.
The story author has at least one thing right: I'm outta here after I save my nestegg. I'll buy a $500,000 condo on Beacon Street in Boston and get something for my money, thank you.
The unfortunate thing still is this: like Manhattan for the financial market, SV is the place to cut your teeth in tech, and really means you can write your ticket after surviving here for 5-10 years. Kinda like Darwin for the geek set.
-Erik (who hopes that Dana doesn't kill me for this...)
Ethernet over Fiber.
That is, either 10baseFL or 100BaseFX.
You can pick up 10baseFL PCI ethernet cards for around $150 each, and 100BaseFX cards run $250 or so. The biggest expense will be the fiber itself, which could be $200-300 or so for a 100m run. Get the PVC covering since you're going to be running it outside.
You can get up to 1km or more over single-mode fiber.
If you're going hub-to-hub, use an AUI->10BaseFL tranceiver on each end (making sure each hub has an AUI connector). Don't use Media Converters - they suck and drop packets all over the place.
Realistically, fiber is probably too expensive for you. But it's so neat. :-)
And, of course, fiber doesn't have those nasty problems with weather interfering with microwave/infrared transmissions. Though you do have to worry about the birds sitting on the cable...
-Erik
The vast majority of what is termed "white-collar crime" is fraud, perpetuated by business people against consumers. This includes heads of companies defrauding their stockholders by fixing the books/making false statements/etc.
After that, the next largest category is embezzlement, which is an employee stealing from a company (the majority of these companies tend to be financial institutions of one sort of another).
In the first case, it obviously directly affects people. The second case, it certainly hurts people, as the company that was stolen from loses profit, their stock may take a big hit, or in many cases, the business folds (which hurts the companies/people depending on the business, not to mention the stockholders).
In the abstract, white collar crime also hurts society-at-large by causing them to lose faith in the economic "laws" that allows our country to run. If I have no confidence that a company won't steal or rip me off, why would I buy from them? Or invest in any company? If this attitude becomes widespread, how will we continue to run an economy?
Here's a good example of bad improper punishment of white-collar crime: in the late 1980s, there was a huge wave of failures of Savings and Loan companies in the U.S. It turns out that a large percentage of these failures were due to fraudulent and/or illegal transactions being made by senior management of the S&Ls. It cost the U.S. gov't on the order of 500 BILLION to cover the costs of the bailout of these S&Ls - much of which had to come from tax money, since the insurance fund that the S&Ls were supposed to contribute to to cover this sort of thing was woefully underfunded.
After this was all over, very few of those Sr. Execs were convicted of anything, and I think the worst thing I saw was a 5 year sentence.
Your example was extreme, but do I think there are situations where someone guilty of a white-collar crime should get a sterner sentance than a murderer? Yup! I'd probably sentence the $500,000 thief to something at least as stern as someone guilty of involuntary manslaughter (say a fatal hit-and-run): about 5-10 years. They both are a Class B felony in the U.S., but I'm pretty sure that the latter crime would get at least twice as harsh a sentence right now.
Tell me, who has hurt people more, one of those S&L Execs who's fraud cost the US $200 million to bailout his bank, or someone who stabs his wife to death in a drunken rage? Both are hideous crimes, but logically, the first hurts society far more than the second.
-Erik
Under the new (and I would say, more enlightened) interpretation of Kevin's parole, your analogy with the DUI person is excellent, though not in the manner you intended. Once convicted of a DUI, I lose the ability to operate the device that I abused. Oops. That sounds exactly like what Kevin's parole is: he can't use computers. The harsher restrictions regarding computers for Kevin reflects the reality that it's very hard to control someone once they have access to a computer. While the DUI person could reasonably be expected to abide by his parole and still work as a mechanic, is it really realistic to allow Kevin to work as a PC tech at CompUSA and not actually use a computer? He would easily be able to violate his parole, and it would be very difficult to detect that violation. Therefore, he is banned from being in situations that provide this temptation.
Now, in both cases, after a period of time, the offender may be able to get back the privilege (and, yes, operating a computer is privilege - you can certainly survive without using a PC) that was lost.
I don't consider his (new) parole conditions onerous, or outlandish, given the crime he was convicted of (pleading guilty is a conviction).
As far as your last statement reguarding "white collar" crime vs. violent crime, I'm of the opinion we seriously underpunish white-collar crime. Look at it from a societal standpoint (which is what the punishment is supposed to take into account):
A violent crime causes almost unlimited damage to a single (or at most, a tiny number) of individuals. The biggest damage to society is that it undermines the faith we have in your society to protect us from bodily harm.
White-collar crime (extortion, embezzelment, fraud, cracking, et al.) tends to adversely affect a huge number of people. And while the individual impact might be less (though try to explain that to an 80-year-old grandma whose life savings were just fleeced), it does far, far, far greater societal harm. For white collar crime gnaws at the fundamental societal illusions that keep our country from reducing to total anarchy: you're screwing with the trust in the financial system, and in the trust of the consumer->producer relationship.
Honestly, I have no problem with a cracker who steals 100,000 credit card numbers getting a harsher sentance than a DUI-induced involuntary vehicular homocide. Not that the DUI person should get off lightly, but I can't stomache the people who cry "But nobody got hurt!" at the white-collar criminal's trial. That's just bullshit.
-Erik
It's good to see that the probation office took a more reasonable stance on his lecturing and consulting. Though I suspect that he'll be carefully watched at the consulting gigs.
However, the comment about not allowing Kevin to use any computers is grossly misleading. The limitations are against any Programmable electronic device, and even then, it's up to the probation officer about what is or is not allowable. Kevin can use an HP calculator, a microwave, an even (i'm pretty sure) an ATM machine. Anything that he can reprogram for dastardly ends (or use to reprogram an otherwise "legal" device) is out. Given the crime he's on probation for, this is logical, reasonable, and appropriate.
Also, a note to those crying about restriction of his Inalienable Rights: as a convicted felon, he has lost the right to many of his "Rights". He may get them back over time (e.g. when his parole is up), but right now, as part of his punishment (and ALL FELONS are subject to this), he loses many of the rights normal citizens enjoy:
I've missed a few, but you get the point.
Believe me, you don't want to be convicted of a Felony in the U.S. - it's a serious cramp on your future.
-Erik
OK, let's say we take your proposal, and create the World's Best Registrar(tm). We have lots of nice, end-user friendly policies, responsive customer service, and we don't screw people over. In short, the polar opposite of NSI. So, everyone hears about you, decides you're cool, and we all switch over to you.
Heck, you're so nice and cool, and we all trust you so much that you go and create a whole bunch of new TLDs. We like 'em, and use them wonderfully.
Everything is hunky dory up until the point where you decide to let someone other than Mr. Gates' company register microsoft.com. Or even microsoft.xxx. Suddenly, a whole passel of MS lawyers show up at your doorstep, and demand that they get back the microsoft.xxx domain, because, damnit, they own the trademark.
Guess what? You're going to have to give the name back to MS. The reason is the current interpretation of law. You, as the service provider, are responsible for following the law, and the law states that MS has the right to the microsoft.xxx domains. You have to comply. Sorry, no way out. This isn't just in the US, anymore, since WIPO decided to essentially impliment the US trademark-on-domains philosophy into internation trade law. So you can't move elsewhere.
Fundamentally, right now the boundaries are set up for what we can and cannot do on our own - certainly, there is a whole lot of room to improve over NSI (and I'm certainly moving my business from them to someone else), but the current legal atmosphere limits what policies you can put in place for domain registration.
-Erik
While a noble idea, there are several major reasons why you would never be able to get it accepted:
In the end, however, you fall into the same trap virtually everyone does when attempting to "Reform" the DNS system. They make the assumption that names have connotation. That is, that there is some meaning to the name www.microsoft.com other than it's easier to remember than 207.46.130.149. The DNS system was designed, and SHOULD REMAIN simply a pneumonic (sp?) that makes life easier for machine identification. What we've loaded onto the DNS system is content location, something it's completely unsuitable for.
Fundamentally, I should NOT be typing in "www.microsoft.com" in IE if I want to look for Windows 98 crap. I should type in "Microsoft Windows 98". There should be no end-user mapping between content and DNS name. Content should be divorced from DNS completely, in the manner that DNS is divorced from IPs. Meta-searching and content discovery/cataloging need to be avanced to the point where honestly, the end-user should NEVER KNOW ABOUT URLs. Does then end-user know about IP addresses nowdays? No. Neither should they need to know about DNS names.
We need to fix cataloging and searching first, then the DNS problem will go away.
-Erik
... everything starts to look like a nail.
The point here is:
Use the right tool for the job
Now, I don't have the full facts, since your question leaves out quite a bit, but I'm going to assume (given the low-power interest) that you're a SOHO user - someone with a small network to defend, but no real need for VPN support at the firewall, and something limited to DSL/cable modem speeds. According to your question, you're obviously looking for a firewall only, and not something that will do other stuff (like mail, etc).
Simply put, you can't beat one of the turnkey solutions. The Netgear and LinkSys solutions mentioned in the previous Ask Slashdot draw miniscue amounts of power - far less than even the most miserly PC. They're tiny, completely silent (no fan needed!), and cheap (sub $200).
I don't have direct experience with the Netgear, but I do with the LinkSys. It has a web-based interface, and also allows you to customize a text config file for complex setup. I like it over the Netgear because it includes a 4-port 10/100 SWITCH. NAT and DHCP support.
If these are truely not for you, look into a Netwinder or a used Cobalt Cube. They're a bit more, but they have all the functionality you could wish for, and they draw very little power (and are pretty damn small). If you must have a x86 PC, look for an old Compaq Deskpro (there are some nice little LPX-form-factor ones) off of eBAY.
Don't approach the problem bass-ackwards. Draw up your requirements from a functionality standpoint, then look for solutions that fit your criteria. Don't decide on a solution until you've considered all the alternatives.
-Erik
...whatever the hell you decide to define it to be.
:-)
That said, I think the key things that seperates GNOME, KDE, and CDE (and to a certain extent, OpenWindows and HP VUE) from the rest of the window managers is the concept of underlying services that facilitate communication between apps. In Windows, it's OLE (or COM or whatever they call it nowdays). In CDE, it's ToolTalk; in GNOME, it's CORBA (I don't know what it is in KDE).
You see this underlying communication in various ways: the most obvious is Drag-and-Drop between apps (or the desktop and apps). It also shows up in inter-app communication with documents (think Excel spreadsheet embeded in a Word Doc).
I'd almost consider WindowMaker an environment. It has most of the hooks that Enlightenment and Kwm have for their underlying services, and can work nicely in a GNOMEish or KDEish setup.
I think when people say "environment", they're referring to the whole shebang: backend libraries and daemons that provide Inter-app communication, a Window manager that uses those backend facilities, and apps that also are aware of the available functionality. Integration is the key here: all the parts need to be aware (and use) eachother, and not just be able to function next to eachother.
-Erik
To answer your last questions:
"Are there some licenses that I should worry less about? Client access licenses? Fonts? What are my risks?"
No, you should worry about all licenses. This is a matter of professional ethics. All licenses are equal. It may be easier to forget about certain ones (especially if those licenses don't require keys to unlock their use), but the ethics are the same.
Risks are a complicated problem. In reality, the actual chances of getting caught are probably very, very small. However, the penalties can be big. Not only can the company face huge fines, but if a reasonable case can be made that you were professionally negligent (or complicit) in the lack of proper licensing, you can personally be held responsible, and face a hefty fine (or even possible criminal charges).
If you're in a startup, at each new round of funding, V.C.s will usually do a full audit (it's part of due dilligence). You will probably get tripped up there. The auditors will require you to get all licensing up-to-date before signing off. Or they might not, and just give the company a thumbs down to the V.C. (and, hey, there goes that funding...) It's a useful lever to get management to come around.
As it's been said, if management won't come around, then leave. You don't want to work for a bunch of crooks. Sooner or later, it will catch up with you in some form or other. So get out.
-Erik
Since software is intangible, it seems that people don't always realize that they can't copy willy-nilly everything. We're all susceptible to it, and I don't think anyone here can claim to be pure.
That said, widespread, systematic piracy is Not The Right Thing(tm). If you're getting pressure to deliver something that contains unlicensed software, I usually proceed as follows:
If these steps fail, and you're still getting pressure to install stuff illegally, I'd try to have the requestor walk over with you to Company Counsel (ie. the lawyer), or, if that's not practical, to the Comptroller, Internal Audit, or a very Sr. Executive. Calmly explain in the presence of both of them what you see as the problem. Remain calm, and don't use inflamatory language. But be firm.
Should all this fail, you don't want to stay there. Period. Your management is not trustworthy, and they fail to show you any professional respect. Look for another job.
If they threaten you or otherwise become really hostile - REMAIN CALM. Don't blow your top. Get out of the situation as gracefully as you can, and do the following immediately:
Hopefully, you should never get that far. But talking to a good lawyer (particularly one in labor/employment law) is always an excellent idea.
-Erik
Generally, we are better than everyone else because we can hold a coherent thought for more than a nanosecond.
Heehee.
Oops, looks like I just went over your comprehension limit again. Sorry.
-Erik (with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek)
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent - Unknown