"A quick Google search didn't come up with anything relevant. How would IBNIG be non-PC compared to IBNIZ?"
Technically, it probably wouldn't. But living as we do in a society in which a celebrity can catch all kinds of hell for using the word "niggardly" (which has absolutely nothing to do with race or racism), I think they were playing it safe.
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." -- U.S. Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis
There is one "penalty" other than impeachment -- or rather, remedy. State nullification.
Now, before anybody starts going all mainstream-media on me and telling me what a ridiculous and dangerous idea State nullification is, let me tell you that I have done my homework and am very familiar with the history of the concept.
You should know that state nullification is not a "racist" idea. One Southern governor -- once -- threatened to use it against the Civil Rights act, but never carried through on his threat. It is true that the South used it against extortionate tariffs imposed by the Northern-controlled Congress at the time, but that actually had little or nothing to do with slavery.
However, nullification WAS used -- successfully -- by Northern states against the Fugitive Slave Laws. If you want to read a moving story that is most definitely non-racist, look up the story of Joshua Glover.
But the fact is that states, even today, make use of nullification all the time. Every year. How do you think the States get away with Medical Marijuana laws, in direct defiance of the Feds? The Federal government has announced that it will not try to enforce Federal laws as long as the state laws are complied with. Why? Not because it has any good intentions or because it is willing to relinquish control, but because they know they have no choice. There is no way the Federal government can fight the states. It simply isn't possible.
There is also a very sound legal and Constitutional basis for state nullification. Read the history of the ratifying convention in Virginia. And also the later Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and Madison's Report of 1800 to the Virginia legislature. The fact is that nullification is an inherent right of States, in cases of unconstitutional laws. The States do not have a "right" to nullify anything they feel like... it has to be a law that has been deemed -- by the State -- to be unconstitutional.
A number of states now have formally nullified Obama's "personal mandate" and other aspects of the Federal health laws.
At least 2 states -- maybe 3 by now -- have passed laws stating that if a firearm is manufactured within that state, and stays within that state, that Federal laws do not and cannot apply. In one state they even made it a Felony for an agent of the Federal government to try to enforce such laws. Punishable by 2 years in state prison.
There are remedies for an over-reaching Federal government. And never forget that the Supreme Court is a branch of the Federal government, and is as susceptible to power-grabbing and over-reach as any other branch. As such, some of the decisions regarding a "supreme" Federal government over the States were actually never within its authority to make. The Supreme Court was never intended to be the "supreme" authority when it came to deciding what powers the Federal government should have. Those questions were decided by the States themselves when they formed the Constitution, and the States have never waived that power, SCOTUS bedamned.
"The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself." -- Thomas Jefferson, re: the U.S. Constitution, Kentucky Resolution of 1798
Madison's words, from the Report of 1800:
"... it is objected, that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort; and it may be asked for what reason the declaration by the General Assembly [of Virginia], supposing it to be theoretically true, could be required at the present day, and in so solemn a manner.
"On this objection it might he observed, first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department; secondly, that, if the decision of the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, th
"Hey Feds, just fuck all y'all. I won't even give you the time to stop and piss on your graves after the revolution you seem so intent on forcing us into."
There was a time when I would have called this treasonous. But today, I understand its essential basis in truth. May it never come to that day, but if it does, I now recognize much better who the real Patriots are.
Retroactive laws are unconstitutional. Period. No exceptions, no wavering, not "if". That is one of the plainest statements in the whole of the Constitution.
Article I, section 9: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Apparently, to the modern Supreme Court, the words "no" and "shall" are ambiguous.
"⦠it is objected, that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort; and it may be asked for what reason the declaration by the General Assembly [of Virginia], supposing it to be theoretically true, could be required at the present day, and in so solemn a manner.
On this objection it might he observed, first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department; secondly, that, if the decision of the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, the decisions of the other departments, not carried by the forms of the Constitution before the judiciary, must be equally authoritative and final with the decisions of that department. But the proper answer to the objection is, that the resolution of the General Assembly [the Virginia Resolutions of 1798] relates to those great and extraordinary cases, in which all the forms of the Constitution may prove ineffectual against infractions dangerous to the essential rights of the parties to it. The resolution supposes that dangerous powers, not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department, also, may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and, consequently, that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority as well as by another - -by the judiciary as well as by the executive, or the legislature.
However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve."
"Limit maximum POST size: Limiting the maximum POST request size can reduce the number of possible predictable collisions, thus reducing the impact of an attack."
This is disingenuous at best. It reduces the number of possible collisions, but increases the number of likely collisions, by reducing the size of the input set.
This is easy to see by reducing the problem (reductio ad absurdum): imagine the likelihood of collisions given 1000 posts, limited to 1000 characters each. Now imagine the likelihood of a collision given 1000 posts, limited to 3 characters each. The number of collisions due to cryptographic weakness might become ridiculously small, but the number of collisions due to similar input increases to more than compensate for the difference.
More than one were built. 4 or 5 universities have now built portions of the Difference Engine, using different starting points. I do not have the reference at hand, but I know that at least one of them used techniques that were carefully researched and found to be available in Babbage's time. Probably not cheaply, though.
On the contrary: mechanical "adding machines", while far simpler than Babbage's more general device, could be and were built, using principles similar to Babbage's. They were in commercial use clear up until 1985.
So even if a few of Babbage's full-scale machine were only used by rich institutions (like government), smaller and simpler versions would surely have found plenty of good use.
Even a custom-built device, designed to do nothing but calculate cosines, could have had a major impact on war.
"The point is that Babbage did succeed, except it was through his inspiration, which took his ideas and better manufacturing processes and newer knowledge of materials and a refined computing model."
This is a common misconception based on earlier analyses. In fact, portions of his engines have been built from the original plans, using techniques available in his day, and it has been determined that it would indeed have worked if only it had been built.
Contrary to popular belief, the two biggest problems that Babbage faced were: (1) his inability to convince investors in the worth of his invention, and (2) his insistence on constant refinement rather than freezing the plans at some viable point, in order to make a working device.
As IT manager, part of my job is to ensure the safety of company data. If you are using a non-approved web service for business purposes, you could be endangering that data, and your job, and mine, and everybody else's at the company.
Yes, I would revoke your network privileges. And not let you back on until you demonstrated that you understood WHY that practice is a bad idea.
I don't believe in useless rules for reasons of "control". But I damned well do believe in reasonable rules that exist for excellent reasons.
You said it wasn't a major factor. Close enough in my book.
"But here's the catch: I'll pick a list of 10 cars randomly among all the cars in America, and you get to look at each car for 30 seconds only."
Look, man. All you're doing is reinforcing my point. If you haven't done your homework well, and don't know what to look for, then that's your problem. In the case of cars, I'd damned well do some catalogue shopping before I ever went shopping for the real thing, so I'd already know what I was looking at when you showed it to me!!!
"My question: how much are you willing to bid for the car sight unseen? A car could be a brand new luxury vehicle, or a 20 year old rust bucket.
This is how hiring decisions are made."
No, that's how shitty hiring decisions are made. Just as I stated before.
"You're overstating the importance of those variables. When a hire doesn't work out, neither productivity nor length of stay are major issues. The major issue is that they must be let go quickly and replaced."
And I repeat: if you don't think productivity is important, you are falling straight into that mindset that everybody here is saying is fallacious. Go ahead... read all the other comments, not just mine.
"In programming, the probability of competence is rather low when you consider the pool of all programmers or self styled 'software engineers'. Thus the risk of hiring a dud is high, and that's the main source of risk."
The only thing that indicates is that you are terrible at hiring. If you don't know what you are looking for, you aren't very likely to find it.
"You can minimize that risk by hiring cheaper employees, and that also reduces the cost of firing them. The cost of finding a replacement is fixed."
And again: that's exactly the kind of thinking everybody is talking about here. You're just repeating the same old-school BS that has CAUSED the market to be what it is today. No wonder you can't find decent people.
No, because you are only considering some of the variables.
It appears there is less risk with a newbie, but you are not accounting for several things:
First, while they may be cheaper, their productivity per dollar is probably lower. So what if they're cheap, if they don't get the job done? That's counterproductive.
Second, according to statistics, they are more likely to leave after a short period of time. So again... cheaper to outward appearance, in the short term, but you just blew all your training dollars and have nothing to show for it.
In short, your reasoning is a perfect example of just exactly what everybody here has been saying is nothing but BS.
"To the extent you can increase labor's bargaining power you will be able to extract higher wages - the result of the guild system worth replicating."
I agree, in the context of equalizing negotiating power with powerful companies. But the problem -- both in guilds and in trade unions -- has been abuse by the higher-ups of the organizations.
Even pretty recently there have been problems with organized crime running the leadership of trade unions. And even when there wasn't, there was still abuse by the leaders of unions... who managed to keep costs high and salaries lower than they would otherwise be.
If you could get the bargaining power without the abuse of the system, then I would probably be in favor of it. Unfortunately, I have seen very few real-world examples.
True, if you're a high-roller on Walls Street then you need an office on or near Wall Street. But other than that, you're just being pretentious. The businesspeople you really want to do business with will see through that in a heartbeat.
"But the problem with mobile devices, cloud services, etc, isn't IT's lack of control. It's not the stability of the network. It's the security of the data itself."
Exactly. These days, if I were IT mgr. and I found an employee using "cloud services" that were not pre-approved, I would revoke their access to the network. Not to hurt their productivity, but to save everybody else's.
U.S. MENSA is entirely supported by membership fees. But the membership fees were pretty high, and the only benefit the National organization really gave the members -- other than registration itself -- was a monthly newsletter.
Turned out that the National board and their office were located in NYC, and that's where the vast amount of expenses were. When asked why, the only answer was that it was "a prestigious address".
The membership basically forced them to find a different address, "less prestigious" or not. They wound up setting up a new central office in Texas or someplace... I don't remember where. But TOTAL overhead was cut by half or more.
Let's say you want to hire a programmer, and you can pay someone in the US $20 per hour, or someone in Hypothistan $5 per hour to perform (we will assume) the same job.
There are two things to consider here:
(1) The Hypothistani's other "job opportunities" are likely something like working the fields for $0.10 an hour. So in comparison, that $5 is very far from representing "slavery".
(2) In the U.S., that $20 would buy something like 10 pounds of rice, while in Hypothistan $5 buys a 40 kg bag. And if one can assume that exchange rate holds in general (as one often can), you are actually paying the Hypothistani -- in terms of HIS country's economy -- the equivalent of over $40 per hour.
Slashdot Mirror
"A quick Google search didn't come up with anything relevant. How would IBNIG be non-PC compared to IBNIZ?"
Technically, it probably wouldn't. But living as we do in a society in which a celebrity can catch all kinds of hell for using the word "niggardly" (which has absolutely nothing to do with race or racism), I think they were playing it safe.
I did not mean to imply that I thought it was the same thing according to the law. But I certainly do count it as betraying one's country.
"Passing unconstitutional laws is not the same thing as 'The crime of betraying one's country...'"
Yes, it is.
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." -- U.S. Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis
There is one "penalty" other than impeachment -- or rather, remedy. State nullification.
Now, before anybody starts going all mainstream-media on me and telling me what a ridiculous and dangerous idea State nullification is, let me tell you that I have done my homework and am very familiar with the history of the concept.
You should know that state nullification is not a "racist" idea. One Southern governor -- once -- threatened to use it against the Civil Rights act, but never carried through on his threat. It is true that the South used it against extortionate tariffs imposed by the Northern-controlled Congress at the time, but that actually had little or nothing to do with slavery.
However, nullification WAS used -- successfully -- by Northern states against the Fugitive Slave Laws. If you want to read a moving story that is most definitely non-racist, look up the story of Joshua Glover.
But the fact is that states, even today, make use of nullification all the time. Every year. How do you think the States get away with Medical Marijuana laws, in direct defiance of the Feds? The Federal government has announced that it will not try to enforce Federal laws as long as the state laws are complied with. Why? Not because it has any good intentions or because it is willing to relinquish control, but because they know they have no choice. There is no way the Federal government can fight the states. It simply isn't possible.
There is also a very sound legal and Constitutional basis for state nullification. Read the history of the ratifying convention in Virginia. And also the later Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and Madison's Report of 1800 to the Virginia legislature. The fact is that nullification is an inherent right of States, in cases of unconstitutional laws. The States do not have a "right" to nullify anything they feel like... it has to be a law that has been deemed -- by the State -- to be unconstitutional.
A number of states now have formally nullified Obama's "personal mandate" and other aspects of the Federal health laws.
At least 2 states -- maybe 3 by now -- have passed laws stating that if a firearm is manufactured within that state, and stays within that state, that Federal laws do not and cannot apply. In one state they even made it a Felony for an agent of the Federal government to try to enforce such laws. Punishable by 2 years in state prison.
There are remedies for an over-reaching Federal government. And never forget that the Supreme Court is a branch of the Federal government, and is as susceptible to power-grabbing and over-reach as any other branch. As such, some of the decisions regarding a "supreme" Federal government over the States were actually never within its authority to make. The Supreme Court was never intended to be the "supreme" authority when it came to deciding what powers the Federal government should have. Those questions were decided by the States themselves when they formed the Constitution, and the States have never waived that power, SCOTUS bedamned.
"The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself." -- Thomas Jefferson, re: the U.S. Constitution, Kentucky Resolution of 1798
Madison's words, from the Report of 1800:
"... it is objected, that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort; and it may be asked for what reason the declaration by the General Assembly [of Virginia], supposing it to be theoretically true, could be required at the present day, and in so solemn a manner.
"On this objection it might he observed, first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department; secondly, that, if the decision of the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, th
It's a pretty bad name. But I guess they decided they would catch too much flak if they called it IBNIG.
"Hey Feds, just fuck all y'all. I won't even give you the time to stop and piss on your graves after the revolution you seem so intent on forcing us into."
There was a time when I would have called this treasonous. But today, I understand its essential basis in truth. May it never come to that day, but if it does, I now recognize much better who the real Patriots are.
Retroactive laws are unconstitutional. Period. No exceptions, no wavering, not "if". That is one of the plainest statements in the whole of the Constitution.
Article I, section 9: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
What part of "no" do you not understand?
"⦠it is objected, that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort; and it may be asked for what reason the declaration by the General Assembly [of Virginia], supposing it to be theoretically true, could be required at the present day, and in so solemn a manner.
On this objection it might he observed, first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department; secondly, that, if the decision of the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, the decisions of the other departments, not carried by the forms of the Constitution before the judiciary, must be equally authoritative and final with the decisions of that department. But the proper answer to the objection is, that the resolution of the General Assembly [the Virginia Resolutions of 1798] relates to those great and extraordinary cases, in which all the forms of the Constitution may prove ineffectual against infractions dangerous to the essential rights of the parties to it. The resolution supposes that dangerous powers, not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department, also, may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and, consequently, that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority as well as by another - -by the judiciary as well as by the executive, or the legislature.
However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve."
-- James Madison, Report of 1800
Does that make him a PUTz?
"Limit maximum POST size: Limiting the maximum POST request size can reduce the number of possible predictable collisions, thus reducing the impact of an attack."
This is disingenuous at best. It reduces the number of possible collisions, but increases the number of likely collisions, by reducing the size of the input set.
This is easy to see by reducing the problem (reductio ad absurdum): imagine the likelihood of collisions given 1000 posts, limited to 1000 characters each. Now imagine the likelihood of a collision given 1000 posts, limited to 3 characters each. The number of collisions due to cryptographic weakness might become ridiculously small, but the number of collisions due to similar input increases to more than compensate for the difference.
More than one were built. 4 or 5 universities have now built portions of the Difference Engine, using different starting points. I do not have the reference at hand, but I know that at least one of them used techniques that were carefully researched and found to be available in Babbage's time. Probably not cheaply, though.
On the contrary: mechanical "adding machines", while far simpler than Babbage's more general device, could be and were built, using principles similar to Babbage's. They were in commercial use clear up until 1985.
So even if a few of Babbage's full-scale machine were only used by rich institutions (like government), smaller and simpler versions would surely have found plenty of good use.
Even a custom-built device, designed to do nothing but calculate cosines, could have had a major impact on war.
Once a good use was found for it, the technology would have improved. It always has.
"The point is that Babbage did succeed, except it was through his inspiration, which took his ideas and better manufacturing processes and newer knowledge of materials and a refined computing model."
This is a common misconception based on earlier analyses. In fact, portions of his engines have been built from the original plans, using techniques available in his day, and it has been determined that it would indeed have worked if only it had been built.
Contrary to popular belief, the two biggest problems that Babbage faced were: (1) his inability to convince investors in the worth of his invention, and (2) his insistence on constant refinement rather than freezing the plans at some viable point, in order to make a working device.
As IT manager, part of my job is to ensure the safety of company data. If you are using a non-approved web service for business purposes, you could be endangering that data, and your job, and mine, and everybody else's at the company.
Yes, I would revoke your network privileges. And not let you back on until you demonstrated that you understood WHY that practice is a bad idea.
I don't believe in useless rules for reasons of "control". But I damned well do believe in reasonable rules that exist for excellent reasons.
"I'm not saying productivity isn't important."
You said it wasn't a major factor. Close enough in my book.
"But here's the catch: I'll pick a list of 10 cars randomly among all the cars in America, and you get to look at each car for 30 seconds only."
Look, man. All you're doing is reinforcing my point. If you haven't done your homework well, and don't know what to look for, then that's your problem. In the case of cars, I'd damned well do some catalogue shopping before I ever went shopping for the real thing, so I'd already know what I was looking at when you showed it to me!!!
"My question: how much are you willing to bid for the car sight unseen? A car could be a brand new luxury vehicle, or a 20 year old rust bucket.
This is how hiring decisions are made."
No, that's how shitty hiring decisions are made. Just as I stated before.
Nothing new here. Time for me to move along.
"You're overstating the importance of those variables. When a hire doesn't work out, neither productivity nor length of stay are major issues. The major issue is that they must be let go quickly and replaced."
And I repeat: if you don't think productivity is important, you are falling straight into that mindset that everybody here is saying is fallacious. Go ahead... read all the other comments, not just mine.
"In programming, the probability of competence is rather low when you consider the pool of all programmers or self styled 'software engineers'. Thus the risk of hiring a dud is high, and that's the main source of risk."
The only thing that indicates is that you are terrible at hiring. If you don't know what you are looking for, you aren't very likely to find it.
"You can minimize that risk by hiring cheaper employees, and that also reduces the cost of firing them. The cost of finding a replacement is fixed."
And again: that's exactly the kind of thinking everybody is talking about here. You're just repeating the same old-school BS that has CAUSED the market to be what it is today. No wonder you can't find decent people.
No, because you are only considering some of the variables.
It appears there is less risk with a newbie, but you are not accounting for several things:
First, while they may be cheaper, their productivity per dollar is probably lower. So what if they're cheap, if they don't get the job done? That's counterproductive.
Second, according to statistics, they are more likely to leave after a short period of time. So again... cheaper to outward appearance, in the short term, but you just blew all your training dollars and have nothing to show for it.
In short, your reasoning is a perfect example of just exactly what everybody here has been saying is nothing but BS.
"To the extent you can increase labor's bargaining power you will be able to extract higher wages - the result of the guild system worth replicating."
I agree, in the context of equalizing negotiating power with powerful companies. But the problem -- both in guilds and in trade unions -- has been abuse by the higher-ups of the organizations.
Even pretty recently there have been problems with organized crime running the leadership of trade unions. And even when there wasn't, there was still abuse by the leaders of unions... who managed to keep costs high and salaries lower than they would otherwise be.
If you could get the bargaining power without the abuse of the system, then I would probably be in favor of it. Unfortunately, I have seen very few real-world examples.
He was wrong. In fact they do.
True, if you're a high-roller on Walls Street then you need an office on or near Wall Street. But other than that, you're just being pretentious. The businesspeople you really want to do business with will see through that in a heartbeat.
"But the problem with mobile devices, cloud services, etc, isn't IT's lack of control. It's not the stability of the network. It's the security of the data itself."
Exactly. These days, if I were IT mgr. and I found an employee using "cloud services" that were not pre-approved, I would revoke their access to the network. Not to hurt their productivity, but to save everybody else's.
I can give you one good example: MENSA.
U.S. MENSA is entirely supported by membership fees. But the membership fees were pretty high, and the only benefit the National organization really gave the members -- other than registration itself -- was a monthly newsletter.
Turned out that the National board and their office were located in NYC, and that's where the vast amount of expenses were. When asked why, the only answer was that it was "a prestigious address".
The membership basically forced them to find a different address, "less prestigious" or not. They wound up setting up a new central office in Texas or someplace... I don't remember where. But TOTAL overhead was cut by half or more.
I meant to write 20 kg bag rather than 40... keeping it real.
But the point is that you have to consider the pay in terms of THEIR economy, not ours. That is the fundamental error in your thinking.
You are strong on emotion but weak on economics.
Let's say you want to hire a programmer, and you can pay someone in the US $20 per hour, or someone in Hypothistan $5 per hour to perform (we will assume) the same job.
There are two things to consider here:
(1) The Hypothistani's other "job opportunities" are likely something like working the fields for $0.10 an hour. So in comparison, that $5 is very far from representing "slavery".
(2) In the U.S., that $20 would buy something like 10 pounds of rice, while in Hypothistan $5 buys a 40 kg bag. And if one can assume that exchange rate holds in general (as one often can), you are actually paying the Hypothistani -- in terms of HIS country's economy -- the equivalent of over $40 per hour.
"Slavery" indeed. Get a clue.