What I believe most people overlook, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that military expenditure is inherently destructive economically.
Lets remove "money" from the equation, because its just a unit of measurement for "resource." We spend resources on weapons. Then we put those weapons in foreign nations, and we leave them there.
Those are just the lead balls, primers, explosives, and body parts we leave there. Primary economic goods that came straight from the ground. The men that turned the lead and copper and phosphates into *weapons* need to eat, so we feed them. And house them. And clothe them.
Lets put that in to perspective. We have a highly specialized society that produces its own food, houses, copper, lead, etc. Iraq and other geographically small and demographically few nations do *not.* This is a conversation about comparative economics.
The amount of resources that we dedicate to each soldier reflects the overall ability of our nation to take a little bit of killing power from each of our resources and put them in the hands of one citizen.
In any tactical situation, one has a limited effective range. Packing a number of friendly soldiers into this range is always a bad idea. Greece proved this by studying the proper distance between two infantrymen, and filing ranks of men in battle instead of simply mobbing. They created the phalanx, a military innovation that we make movies about today.
Persia had more men than Greece. Millions more. But they got their sandy little asses handed to them because they were unable to put as much concentrated killing resources into one place as the Greeks.
Then came Rome. They fought in similar formation, but with even greater resources available to them. (Stone throwers, primitive archers, and pilium.) They... pwnt the Greeks.
The point is that we know the art of war, so all we have is to invest economically in our fighting men to maintain our advantages. That's a good idea.
But every penny we spend on the military is still a resource we'll never see again. So no, we never recoup any of our losses. Our best bet is to maintain as few men as necessary to occupy our chosen theater, and equip them with only as much as is necessary to best our current enemies to reduce military bloat as much as possible.
"Imagine leveraging the power of the INTERNET to expand your playerbase!" says the AOL spokesman to the Wizards of the Coast board of directors one day...
Start by establishing who the defendant is, and where evidence is coming from. If it is Mrs. Lindor, with evidence from her son, use the following analogy to set precedence:
A man is driving his mother's mini-van. He robs a store. The store can prove it was THAT minivan, but a credible witness testifies that it was the son who robbed the store. Who does the store sue? In this case, they're suing the mother. This is questionable at best.
Here's the trick: If the RIAA says that "yes, we ARE suing the mother!" Then you get to say something fun! "Then you should also be suing their ISP, who owns the servers on which the data was transfered." Alternatively, you could just hide that fact, turn around, and SUE THE ISP YOURSELF. The case would never survive, but it WOULD establish precedence that would be quoted for eons.
Here's the technical basis of my assertion:
An IP can be traced only so far. At each "hop" between servers, the packets from your computer find themselves on a completely new network. In IP standard 5, the network structure is invisible to the packet. That means that the IP the ISP gave, Mrs. Lindor's home address, could have an arbitrary number of computers attached to it, and the ISP could never know. Someone in the street with a laptop and wireless connection could have used the connection for file-stealing purposes. (This is a common tactic, we geeks even have a word for it. War-driving.) The point is that because the RIAA can't know which computer they caught stealing, they're just going for the one thing about the case that they do know: Mrs. Lindor.
This is very insubstantial any way you cut it, but lets play with it anyway, because that's the game they've called.
If they win this case they will set a legal precedent for culpability in the case of inherent anonymity. This is a pretty wide ruling, and the judge should be made aware of its impact. If Mrs. Lindor is culpable for everything that happens on her IP address, then she is also culpable for:
1. Someone committing a crime using her vehicle. 2. Someone bringing another person to her property and killing them. 3. An employee committing crimes on-shift in a business she runs. 4. Someone being robbed or otherwise victimized in that business by an unrelated third party.
See how they chew on that one. Looks to me like from that angle, they loose no matter WHAT the jury decides.
Here's where it gets fun (again). I'm sure you already see where I'm going with this. If Mrs. Lindor is accountable for the things that her son does on her IP, the ISP is responsible for the things that she does on its IP. That's how networks work. Everyone is on someone else's network. Mrs. Lindor is connected to a Point of Presence, not a backbone. The POP is connected to a central server that is connected to a backbone. Just follow that fiendish dire chain of culpability until you get to the top.
A manager should be informed, and stay that way. Sure its nice to blow smoke up someone's skirt, as you say, and possibly more. Putting that closed-door office to good use is always a fun afternoon. But that's not what we're paid for, is it? If we just want to get by with standard pay and an HMO, a boss without expertise will suffice, but if we want to be a part of a successful, thriving business, we need all the expertise we can get.
People skills are only gravy on top of the real issue at hand for a manager: knowing what needs to be done, and who can do it. Being technicaly proficient helps you to stay on top of your projects, and ensures that you know exactly what your employees need to get done, and in what order. It reduces inefficiencies due to miscommunication, and it increases the amount that your employees trust you. Your technical abilities are nothing but a benifit for you and your company.
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Lets remove "money" from the equation, because its just a unit of measurement for "resource." We spend resources on weapons. Then we put those weapons in foreign nations, and we leave them there.
Those are just the lead balls, primers, explosives, and body parts we leave there. Primary economic goods that came straight from the ground. The men that turned the lead and copper and phosphates into *weapons* need to eat, so we feed them. And house them. And clothe them.
Lets put that in to perspective. We have a highly specialized society that produces its own food, houses, copper, lead, etc. Iraq and other geographically small and demographically few nations do *not.* This is a conversation about comparative economics.
The amount of resources that we dedicate to each soldier reflects the overall ability of our nation to take a little bit of killing power from each of our resources and put them in the hands of one citizen.
In any tactical situation, one has a limited effective range. Packing a number of friendly soldiers into this range is always a bad idea. Greece proved this by studying the proper distance between two infantrymen, and filing ranks of men in battle instead of simply mobbing. They created the phalanx, a military innovation that we make movies about today.
Persia had more men than Greece. Millions more. But they got their sandy little asses handed to them because they were unable to put as much concentrated killing resources into one place as the Greeks.
Then came Rome. They fought in similar formation, but with even greater resources available to them. (Stone throwers, primitive archers, and pilium.) They... pwnt the Greeks.
The point is that we know the art of war, so all we have is to invest economically in our fighting men to maintain our advantages. That's a good idea.
But every penny we spend on the military is still a resource we'll never see again. So no, we never recoup any of our losses. Our best bet is to maintain as few men as necessary to occupy our chosen theater, and equip them with only as much as is necessary to best our current enemies to reduce military bloat as much as possible.
"Imagine leveraging the power of the INTERNET to expand your playerbase!" says the AOL spokesman to the Wizards of the Coast board of directors one day...
Start by establishing who the defendant is, and where evidence is coming from. If it is Mrs. Lindor, with evidence from her son, use the following analogy to set precedence:
A man is driving his mother's mini-van. He robs a store. The store can prove it was THAT minivan, but a credible witness testifies that it was the son who robbed the store. Who does the store sue? In this case, they're suing the mother. This is questionable at best.
Here's the trick: If the RIAA says that "yes, we ARE suing the mother!" Then you get to say something fun! "Then you should also be suing their ISP, who owns the servers on which the data was transfered." Alternatively, you could just hide that fact, turn around, and SUE THE ISP YOURSELF. The case would never survive, but it WOULD establish precedence that would be quoted for eons.
Here's the technical basis of my assertion:
An IP can be traced only so far. At each "hop" between servers, the packets from your computer find themselves on a completely new network. In IP standard 5, the network structure is invisible to the packet. That means that the IP the ISP gave, Mrs. Lindor's home address, could have an arbitrary number of computers attached to it, and the ISP could never know. Someone in the street with a laptop and wireless connection could have used the connection for file-stealing purposes. (This is a common tactic, we geeks even have a word for it. War-driving.) The point is that because the RIAA can't know which computer they caught stealing, they're just going for the one thing about the case that they do know: Mrs. Lindor.
This is very insubstantial any way you cut it, but lets play with it anyway, because that's the game they've called.
If they win this case they will set a legal precedent for culpability in the case of inherent anonymity. This is a pretty wide ruling, and the judge should be made aware of its impact. If Mrs. Lindor is culpable for everything that happens on her IP address, then she is also culpable for:
1. Someone committing a crime using her vehicle.
2. Someone bringing another person to her property and killing them.
3. An employee committing crimes on-shift in a business she runs.
4. Someone being robbed or otherwise victimized in that business by an unrelated third party.
See how they chew on that one. Looks to me like from that angle, they loose no matter WHAT the jury decides.
Here's where it gets fun (again). I'm sure you already see where I'm going with this. If Mrs. Lindor is accountable for the things that her son does on her IP, the ISP is responsible for the things that she does on its IP. That's how networks work. Everyone is on someone else's network. Mrs. Lindor is connected to a Point of Presence, not a backbone. The POP is connected to a central server that is connected to a backbone. Just follow that fiendish dire chain of culpability until you get to the top.
A manager should be informed, and stay that way. Sure its nice to blow smoke up someone's skirt, as you say, and possibly more. Putting that closed-door office to good use is always a fun afternoon. But that's not what we're paid for, is it? If we just want to get by with standard pay and an HMO, a boss without expertise will suffice, but if we want to be a part of a successful, thriving business, we need all the expertise we can get. People skills are only gravy on top of the real issue at hand for a manager: knowing what needs to be done, and who can do it. Being technicaly proficient helps you to stay on top of your projects, and ensures that you know exactly what your employees need to get done, and in what order. It reduces inefficiencies due to miscommunication, and it increases the amount that your employees trust you. Your technical abilities are nothing but a benifit for you and your company.