"The Soviet Union didn't "give up" on anything. They were one of the world's leading powers with all the benefits of such."
Hardly. They were only "one of the world's leading powers" because they were willing to starve their own citizens in order to be one. (Unless, of course, they were ranking members of the Party.)
Their economy started sucking immediately after the "peoples' revolution" and never recovered. They managed for quite a while but economically, things were NEVER good under "Communist" Russia. Communist in quotes because in practice they -- and everybody else for that matter -- never came anywhere near an actual Communist political / economic system. They only made it as far as very bad Socialists.
And the main reason they managed to be a world power for as long as they did, was because of massive access to natural resources. If the U.S. had ever had anything like the resources the Soviets controlled, the world would be 100% American now.
"Even if half the country armed themselves and started taking things back (I don't know what the fuck that even means -- exactly who the fuck do they go after..?!), the military has the might to stamp it quickly back down."
I am SOOoooo tired of hearing this bullshit. Because that's all it is. Half-thought-through bullshit.
Listen, guy, your numbers don't add up.
There are about 1.5 million U.S. troops.
There are 300 million people in the U.S. -- that's 214 for EACH soldier -- and guess what else? There is at least one civilian-owned gun for EACH of those 300 million.
With all their tanks and helicopters, the U.S. military would not stand a snowball's chance in hell against its own citizens. And guess what else? That's not even accounting for the fact that there is no way in hell most of them would even fight. Even if 1 in 10 of them decided to fight their own people (and I don't think it would be anywhere near that many)... that comes out to more than 2,000 people against each soldier. Each one with his/her own gun. An M16 is a nice weapon... but it won't protect you against 2,000 other people.
Nuking is no good... what is there to run afterward? That would be stupid. And "conventional" are not as awesomely effective as you seem to think. Plus, somebody has to make the bullets and grenades. The military's stockpiles would not last very long after the factories either shut down or start providing ammo to the citizens instead.
So do us all a favor and knock off the bullshit about a military takeover of the U.S. Not only will it not happen, it could not happen. For more than a few days, anyway.
"Sacrificing your principals to protect your principals is fucking asinine."
This reminds me very much of the old argument against flag burning. Hey, guys, no, you did NOT fight to defend that flag. You fought to defend what it stands for. And the freedom of speech it stands for includes allowing people to burn it if they want. As ironic as that may seem.
"A nice layer of petroleum jelly or a good rub with some coarse sandpaper come to mind."
I find it both very amusing and very aggravating that government at all levels has been wasting so much of the public's time and money on things like this, considering how INEFFECTIVE they have proven to be.
In most cities where they have been tried, traffic cameras have increased traffic accidents. There are some lawsuits going on in my area, which will probably result in them getting banned statewide. Not just because they are ineffective, but because enforcing anything via camera violates long-standing state law. (I know that sounds weird but it's true. The officer who catches you violating the law has to be the one issuing the citation. In the case of traffic cameras, the one doing the "catching" is an employee of the company that owns and operates the cameras. And the public won't tolerate them hiring more officers to do it. PLUS the issue that it is the car being "caught", not the driver.)
In London, with over 1,000,000 surveillance cameras in the city, after years of this it has been found that on average, the cameras have "helped" solve 1 crime per 1000 cameras. Not annually, total. And not serious crimes, just crimes. Like stealing candy bars, for example.
I could go on. They continue to waste their time, still thinking these things will work, in the face of years of solid evidence that they won't. It's just hilarious that they would spend $150,000 + each on traffic cameras, or probably upward of $2000 apiece on iris scanners, when both can be utterly defeated with a $2 can of spray paint or $0.10 worth of vaseline,
I would not even be a student there. I would immediately cancel my registration and take my money elsewhere. Period.
This has 3 possible outcomes. The first one could be combined with either of the other 2.
(A) University enrollment will suffer.
(B) Some clever students will find a way to bypass this, just as they have always found ways to bypass everything else.
(C) The scanners will somehow, mysteriously, get "accidentally" broken.
Seriously, I have a hard time understanding how they could even consider something like this, given the current backlash against data-gathering and surveillance!
The truth is, the universities have been trying shit like this for the sole reason that it gets them more Federal money. Which I am sure many students feel is an excellent reason to hack it.
"Asking these people not to show up under these circumstances is absurd. It only makes them more interesting in attending. Racking up arrests and filing charges is how these people show their bosses that they are doing their jobs. That can be done by finding criminals and it can also be done by making criminals."
Yeah, but at the same time, their "suggestions" carry some weight. Certain DefCon folks have pwned the Feds more than once... when they had far less reason to do it.
They claimed that they did not have access to users' files, but in fact they were doing de-duplication which requires that very thing.
Whether their exact claim was technically feasible is somewhat beside the point... that's what they were telling people and lots of people believed it.
"Surprisingly it often doesn't work that way. Read up on disruptive innovation, particularly the work of Clayton Christiansen. Many new technologies are worse (at first) in many ways than the things they ultimately replace."
You misunderstood me. I didn't mean that it had to START that way. But if it doesn't give ME something better than the perceived value of something else, I won't buy.
Maybe it serves the purposes of others, though. And improves from there. As you say, this has happened before.
Yes. As you say, to the best of my knowledge. IANAL.
The case, as I recall (I remember the ruling better than the details), was over precisely this issue. Somebody had created something... I think it was a "comic" or something like that, in any case "created", not real... that depicted children in a sexual context, but did not of course contain any real children.
I think we can pretty much all agree that this is in very poor taste to say the least. But according to the courts, it's legal.
"Unless you want to page everything (rather than saving the important parts on sleep and assuming whatever is left in RAM might not be there again at wake but probably will), then there's no reason to turf anything out of RAM until you need that space for something else."
You have a good point, too, but I don't agree 100%. Especially given the actual reason Google did it that way. I think the balance should be somewhere between the two extremes. I just don't think Android effectively finds that middle.
"Irrelevant, you have no idea what the GP's source tree and processes look like. Also you appear to be talking about delivering a build to the testers rather than the end customer. If not then how do you handle a change that you know will take at least a month to test after it is added to the build?"
Good point. I wouldn't say irrelevant, but you are correct that I do not know his particular situation and my comment might not apply.
As with any technology, it should have something better to offer than what is existing, at a comparable cost. Or much better at higher cost. Dropbox is neither, plus they have been dishonest to their customers in the pat.
(I am referring to their promise of end-to-end encryption, when in fact they were de-duping uploads, which requires access to the UN-encrypted content. When they were caught, it was "oops, guys, I guess we goofed" when in fact it is not even remotely possible that it was anything but 100% deliberate.)
So what you actually have is greater cost, plus security concerns... for a rather minor amount of convenience.
I have a great way to sync all my files with no need for an external server. It's called Git.
And there are about 50 other ways that aren't a lot of trouble.
"... and it's incredibly pretentious of you to toss off a one liner like it's (puts on sunglasses) just a simple matter of programming"
Agree. But the memory management thing really is an issue, too.
Take Android, for example. Android was designed to allow apps to remain in memory until you manually kill them, or the OS gets around to doing it, if ever. And the OS is notoriously lax at doing so. And yes, it was designed that way on purpose. Google doesn't want people killing apps... it cuts off their data stream and ads. Yes, really. So they built the whole OS that way. According to some people I spoke to who worked on Android.
Fortunately workarounds have been developed by the community, but for stock Android it's still a real issue, and it really is built into the OS.
Which still means I agree with you. You aren't going to just put on your programmer sunglasses and on a daily basis sidestep things that were designed into the OS. Ain't gonna happen.
"The claim that the documentation "vanished" seems bogus. Far more likely in my opinion that it never existed in the first place, or that at some point they fired everyone, and thus broke the chain of custody."
I agree with the latter, but that still means the documentation did "vanish". It just doesn't address why.
I think the money would have been better spent simply replacing the Pentagon and all its staff. The new one can be 5-sided, too. But they should build it in Montana and staff it with locals. It's cheaper. They'd probably win more wars for us too.
"Any additions must arrive 3 days before weekly build otherwise they come out the following week. That is a perfectly reasonable approach to keep things moving on time."
I disagree. ANY additions that come in during the week are scheduled for the release after the current one. If they are really, really, desperately urgent then they replace the current release, with the current release delayed by a week.
This makes it painfully obvious to management that unscheduled changes come at a cost. They have to pay that cost, sooner or later and one way or another. Period. Best if those costs are shown up-front and in their face, rather than hidden at the expense of team morale and product quality.
"Umm.. isn't it impossible to have land that isn't deeper than sea level?"
Haha. I like this one even better:
"The article extrapolates that 'If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 meters."
Well, hell. And if Mt. Kilimanjaro were to fall into San Francisco Bay, it would cause one hell of a local tsunami.
I don't think there is much danger of either one happening soon.
"If the picture is intended to arouse desire, then it's pornography."
With all due respect; no, it isn't. It can be, but that's not the whole definition.
In order for it to be pornography, it has to [A] be intended to appeal to prurient interest, AND (the most important part) [B] have no other socially redeemable value (such as art).
In other words, in order to be pornography legally, it has to be just pornography. It cannot have any other conceivable purpose.
"Consistently nudes are not held to be child pornography, this is now part of the law."
It goes further than that. I don't have the actual citation at hand, but a few years ago a case of "simulated child pornography" got as far as the Supreme Court. In its ruling, the Court said that in order for something to be "child pornography", it must meet two criteria:
(1) It must be an actual child, not a drawing or simulation, and
(2) it must be actual pornography, as defined elsewhere in the law.
"If the law says it can happen, then it is reasonably to worry that it will happen eventually. If it is undesirable for it to happen, then the law should not specify it. "
I would go further and say that it is almost inevitable. And badly formed laws -- as we have learned throughout history -- have a tendency to be worse than no law at all.
---
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Slashdot Mirror
"The Soviet Union didn't "give up" on anything. They were one of the world's leading powers with all the benefits of such."
Hardly. They were only "one of the world's leading powers" because they were willing to starve their own citizens in order to be one. (Unless, of course, they were ranking members of the Party.)
Their economy started sucking immediately after the "peoples' revolution" and never recovered. They managed for quite a while but economically, things were NEVER good under "Communist" Russia. Communist in quotes because in practice they -- and everybody else for that matter -- never came anywhere near an actual Communist political / economic system. They only made it as far as very bad Socialists.
And the main reason they managed to be a world power for as long as they did, was because of massive access to natural resources. If the U.S. had ever had anything like the resources the Soviets controlled, the world would be 100% American now.
"Really it's pretty simple. The people who have the power to make the rules, also have the power to ignore that parts they don't like."
Sure... until somebody gets mad enough to shoot them through the head. Which someone inevitably does, and always has done.
Tyranny is self-limiting.
"Even if half the country armed themselves and started taking things back (I don't know what the fuck that even means -- exactly who the fuck do they go after..?!), the military has the might to stamp it quickly back down."
I am SOOoooo tired of hearing this bullshit. Because that's all it is. Half-thought-through bullshit.
Listen, guy, your numbers don't add up.
There are about 1.5 million U.S. troops.
There are 300 million people in the U.S. -- that's 214 for EACH soldier -- and guess what else? There is at least one civilian-owned gun for EACH of those 300 million.
With all their tanks and helicopters, the U.S. military would not stand a snowball's chance in hell against its own citizens. And guess what else? That's not even accounting for the fact that there is no way in hell most of them would even fight. Even if 1 in 10 of them decided to fight their own people (and I don't think it would be anywhere near that many)... that comes out to more than 2,000 people against each soldier. Each one with his/her own gun. An M16 is a nice weapon... but it won't protect you against 2,000 other people.
Nuking is no good... what is there to run afterward? That would be stupid. And "conventional" are not as awesomely effective as you seem to think. Plus, somebody has to make the bullets and grenades. The military's stockpiles would not last very long after the factories either shut down or start providing ammo to the citizens instead.
So do us all a favor and knock off the bullshit about a military takeover of the U.S. Not only will it not happen, it could not happen. For more than a few days, anyway.
"Sacrificing your principals to protect your principals is fucking asinine."
This reminds me very much of the old argument against flag burning. Hey, guys, no, you did NOT fight to defend that flag. You fought to defend what it stands for. And the freedom of speech it stands for includes allowing people to burn it if they want. As ironic as that may seem.
If I had mod points I'd give you 10.
"A nice layer of petroleum jelly or a good rub with some coarse sandpaper come to mind."
I find it both very amusing and very aggravating that government at all levels has been wasting so much of the public's time and money on things like this, considering how INEFFECTIVE they have proven to be.
In most cities where they have been tried, traffic cameras have increased traffic accidents. There are some lawsuits going on in my area, which will probably result in them getting banned statewide. Not just because they are ineffective, but because enforcing anything via camera violates long-standing state law. (I know that sounds weird but it's true. The officer who catches you violating the law has to be the one issuing the citation. In the case of traffic cameras, the one doing the "catching" is an employee of the company that owns and operates the cameras. And the public won't tolerate them hiring more officers to do it. PLUS the issue that it is the car being "caught", not the driver.)
In London, with over 1,000,000 surveillance cameras in the city, after years of this it has been found that on average, the cameras have "helped" solve 1 crime per 1000 cameras. Not annually, total. And not serious crimes, just crimes. Like stealing candy bars, for example.
I could go on. They continue to waste their time, still thinking these things will work, in the face of years of solid evidence that they won't. It's just hilarious that they would spend $150,000 + each on traffic cameras, or probably upward of $2000 apiece on iris scanners, when both can be utterly defeated with a $2 can of spray paint or $0.10 worth of vaseline,
I would not even be a student there. I would immediately cancel my registration and take my money elsewhere. Period.
This has 3 possible outcomes. The first one could be combined with either of the other 2.
(A) University enrollment will suffer.
(B) Some clever students will find a way to bypass this, just as they have always found ways to bypass everything else.
(C) The scanners will somehow, mysteriously, get "accidentally" broken.
Seriously, I have a hard time understanding how they could even consider something like this, given the current backlash against data-gathering and surveillance!
The truth is, the universities have been trying shit like this for the sole reason that it gets them more Federal money. Which I am sure many students feel is an excellent reason to hack it.
"Dropbox offers very convenient synchronization and off-site backup."
Of course it does. I didn't claim otherwise. But you ought to be asking yourself what the real cost of that convenience is.
"Asking these people not to show up under these circumstances is absurd. It only makes them more interesting in attending. Racking up arrests and filing charges is how these people show their bosses that they are doing their jobs. That can be done by finding criminals and it can also be done by making criminals."
Yeah, but at the same time, their "suggestions" carry some weight. Certain DefCon folks have pwned the Feds more than once... when they had far less reason to do it.
They didn't "exclude" the Feds. They simply warned them that given the current atmosphere, it might not be wise for them to attend.
There's a pretty damned big difference.
As I recall, this was the case.
They claimed that they did not have access to users' files, but in fact they were doing de-duplication which requires that very thing.
Whether their exact claim was technically feasible is somewhat beside the point... that's what they were telling people and lots of people believed it.
"Surprisingly it often doesn't work that way. Read up on disruptive innovation, particularly the work of Clayton Christiansen. Many new technologies are worse (at first) in many ways than the things they ultimately replace."
You misunderstood me. I didn't mean that it had to START that way. But if it doesn't give ME something better than the perceived value of something else, I won't buy.
Maybe it serves the purposes of others, though. And improves from there. As you say, this has happened before.
Yes. As you say, to the best of my knowledge. IANAL.
The case, as I recall (I remember the ruling better than the details), was over precisely this issue. Somebody had created something... I think it was a "comic" or something like that, in any case "created", not real... that depicted children in a sexual context, but did not of course contain any real children.
I think we can pretty much all agree that this is in very poor taste to say the least. But according to the courts, it's legal.
"That has always been a bullshit argument because all film is art, whether it's great art or not."
Whether it's bullshit or not, that *IS* the law. All the way up to the Supreme Court.
"Unless you want to page everything (rather than saving the important parts on sleep and assuming whatever is left in RAM might not be there again at wake but probably will), then there's no reason to turf anything out of RAM until you need that space for something else."
You have a good point, too, but I don't agree 100%. Especially given the actual reason Google did it that way. I think the balance should be somewhere between the two extremes. I just don't think Android effectively finds that middle.
"Irrelevant, you have no idea what the GP's source tree and processes look like. Also you appear to be talking about delivering a build to the testers rather than the end customer. If not then how do you handle a change that you know will take at least a month to test after it is added to the build?"
Good point. I wouldn't say irrelevant, but you are correct that I do not know his particular situation and my comment might not apply.
s/in the pat/in the past
"Not all things 'cloud' are bad."
No, BUT...
As with any technology, it should have something better to offer than what is existing, at a comparable cost. Or much better at higher cost. Dropbox is neither, plus they have been dishonest to their customers in the pat.
(I am referring to their promise of end-to-end encryption, when in fact they were de-duping uploads, which requires access to the UN-encrypted content. When they were caught, it was "oops, guys, I guess we goofed" when in fact it is not even remotely possible that it was anything but 100% deliberate.)
So what you actually have is greater cost, plus security concerns... for a rather minor amount of convenience.
I have a great way to sync all my files with no need for an external server. It's called Git. And there are about 50 other ways that aren't a lot of trouble.
"... and it's incredibly pretentious of you to toss off a one liner like it's (puts on sunglasses) just a simple matter of programming"
Agree. But the memory management thing really is an issue, too.
Take Android, for example. Android was designed to allow apps to remain in memory until you manually kill them, or the OS gets around to doing it, if ever. And the OS is notoriously lax at doing so. And yes, it was designed that way on purpose. Google doesn't want people killing apps... it cuts off their data stream and ads. Yes, really. So they built the whole OS that way. According to some people I spoke to who worked on Android.
Fortunately workarounds have been developed by the community, but for stock Android it's still a real issue, and it really is built into the OS.
Which still means I agree with you. You aren't going to just put on your programmer sunglasses and on a daily basis sidestep things that were designed into the OS. Ain't gonna happen.
"The claim that the documentation "vanished" seems bogus. Far more likely in my opinion that it never existed in the first place, or that at some point they fired everyone, and thus broke the chain of custody."
I agree with the latter, but that still means the documentation did "vanish". It just doesn't address why.
I think the money would have been better spent simply replacing the Pentagon and all its staff. The new one can be 5-sided, too. But they should build it in Montana and staff it with locals. It's cheaper. They'd probably win more wars for us too.
"Any additions must arrive 3 days before weekly build otherwise they come out the following week. That is a perfectly reasonable approach to keep things moving on time."
I disagree. ANY additions that come in during the week are scheduled for the release after the current one. If they are really, really, desperately urgent then they replace the current release, with the current release delayed by a week.
This makes it painfully obvious to management that unscheduled changes come at a cost. They have to pay that cost, sooner or later and one way or another. Period. Best if those costs are shown up-front and in their face, rather than hidden at the expense of team morale and product quality.
"Umm.. isn't it impossible to have land that isn't deeper than sea level?"
Haha. I like this one even better:
"The article extrapolates that 'If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 meters."
Well, hell. And if Mt. Kilimanjaro were to fall into San Francisco Bay, it would cause one hell of a local tsunami.
I don't think there is much danger of either one happening soon.
"If the picture is intended to arouse desire, then it's pornography."
With all due respect; no, it isn't. It can be, but that's not the whole definition.
In order for it to be pornography, it has to [A] be intended to appeal to prurient interest, AND (the most important part) [B] have no other socially redeemable value (such as art).
In other words, in order to be pornography legally, it has to be just pornography. It cannot have any other conceivable purpose.
"Consistently nudes are not held to be child pornography, this is now part of the law."
It goes further than that. I don't have the actual citation at hand, but a few years ago a case of "simulated child pornography" got as far as the Supreme Court. In its ruling, the Court said that in order for something to be "child pornography", it must meet two criteria:
(1) It must be an actual child, not a drawing or simulation, and
(2) it must be actual pornography, as defined elsewhere in the law.
"If the law says it can happen, then it is reasonably to worry that it will happen eventually. If it is undesirable for it to happen, then the law should not specify it. "
I would go further and say that it is almost inevitable. And badly formed laws -- as we have learned throughout history -- have a tendency to be worse than no law at all.
---
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- Lyndon B. Johnson
"The majority of Google's Gmail users just hit "archive" and the mail "goes away". Google did that on purpose. Out of sight, out of mind."
That doesn't negate my point at all. That's still YOU doing it. It's not a separate copy made by Google. Google isn't "keeping archives", YOU are.
"You're thinking about Google keeping a separate set of archive systems for something like this."
No, I wasn't "thinking" about anything of the sort. It's what GP wrote.