The programmers who are already working in the field understand what is needed better than programmers from outside, therefore they will write better software. The company these guys have started is likely to take the established guys to the cleaners (unless they fall afoul of the new "Financial Giants Protection Act" that Congress just passed).
The thing is most of the traders who are making big bucks are not as smart as they think they are. Most of the programmers who write the programs have to understand the nature of the market pretty well. I suspect that this start up company will do very well, since the programmers will be able to write the software without the input of people who don't understand what is going on as well as they do.
It depends on what you get for that $30 per Gb/month. If the only thing you get for that is storage and support costs come out of a different pot, then you are paying too much. On the other hand if that $30 represents all of the IT budget for your company, then it might be about right (might not be as well, ther e are too many variables in that case).
What false dichotomy? If you truly believe in catastrophic global warming, I expect you to live like it. If you don't want to live like you believe that Global Warming is a catastrophic problem requiring drastic measures, shut up and go away.
Now, if those True Believers would give up their cars and big homes and truly change the way they live, I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be some measurable impact on the Earth in just a few short years. I’m not talking about recycling Evian bottles, but truly simplifying their lives. Even if you were, say, a former Vice President, you would give up extra homes and jets and limos. I see communes with organic farms and lives freed from polluting technology.
Wow, they aren't even hiding that traffic laws are about revenue generation where you live and the people put up with it. Where I live, every couple of years they will pass some law that pushes that line. Every time (so far) the public outcry has forced them to repeal it within less than a year. Even the roadway safety nazis get up in arms.
The problem with your idea is that the weighting factors would be determined in such a manner that most people would not care about the resulting number and would ignore it. Actually a way that would make the gasoline usage numbers more useful would be to change them to gallons per 100 miles rather than miles per gallon. As for plug-in hybrids, I would suggest using both a gallons per 100 miles (for when the charge is 100% supplied by gasoline) and a second that lists both how many gallons would be used on a 100 mile trip that starts with a full charge and how much electricity required to obtain that full charge). Anybody who cares can make the calculations needed to make comparisons from there.
Room for at least 4 adults, and unlimited range. No car sold in America will succeed on a production level with out those two aspects.
You are basically correct, although a performance vehicle (I am using the term performance to indicate any vehicle that is bought for the experience of driving it rather than just as a means to get from point A to point B) can succeed with only the unlimited range part of that.
The summary is misleading, it says, " The only problem is that the agency may not have the authority to require this, thanks to concerted lobbying efforts by the advertising industry." The structure of this sentence implies that the FTC would naturally have this authority but "concerted lobbying efforts" got Congress to pass a law removing that authority. In fact, what happened was that someone tried to put this into a bill that it didn't belong in (the "financial reform" bill) and lobbyists managed to get it removed. If it is a good idea for the FTC to have this authority (and it may be, that is a different discussion than what this post is about), than it should be a bill on its own (or with other closely related items). There are several reasons for this, the most important being that it would allow voters to know who was for this particular provision and who was against it. Furthermore following the link to the article about the provision (written by what appears to be someone who favors the provision) looks like it would have delegated to the FTC what is very close to law making authority (which correctly belongs in Congress).
I know why the government granted cable and telephone monopolies, that doesn't mean that I am willing to accept that the only way to solve the problems this created is more government regulation.
At best the photograph is proof that my car went through the red light. As far as I know, no state legislature has passed into law a penalty for owning a car that someone else drove through a red light.
So, how old is the oldest piece of software in this download? Now, how old are the pyramids of Egypt? How much other software was created in the same time frame as the stuff in this download? How much of that is still available?
Maybe you don't understand that the games in that download only represent a tiny fraction of all of the things that were produced in that time frame. When I said it is not practical to preserve everything, I meant everything, not just video games.
The problem as I see it is that we, now, don't know what will be valued in the future. Whatever clown decided to make the same rock with Hieroglyphs, demotic, and greek would have no idea that at the time he was creating one of the most important archiological artifacts ever.
In short, preserve it now, let future generations decide what to study and what to ignore.
By the way, I wonder what medium we should use if we want to store data for a really, really long time. It'd be nice if there was an "Ask Slashdot" on this. Ah well. One can only dream...
You do realize that it is not practical to perserve everything? That some things will have to be allowed to be lost to history?
The risk of these devices getting hacked is not "remotely thin". As they become more common the odds of one or more of these devices getting hacked rises steadily. At some point someone will hack one of these just for kicks (if for no other reason). When that happens, if there are no security measures of any kind, it is likely to become either an epidemic of copycats or the first person will be a serial killer.
Please explain what system would work better in your scenario.
I do not agree that the free market would make the famine worse, as a matter of fact, I don't see how it would.
In a free market system, when you have a shortage of resources, the price of those resources rises. This makes it more desirable to extract those resources. This means that more people will exert more effort to extract those resources (or obtain them from outside sources). Additionally, people will have an incentive to develop and perfect alternatives to those resources.
The free market has repeatedly been shown to be the most efficient method of allocating resources.Any economic system other than the free market is guaranteed to lead to an inefficient allocation of resources, which will increase the odds of a famine occurring and will extend a famine if one occurs.
Back to your example, you appear to propose that in the case of famine we implement a system whereby we would say, "oh sorry, you aren't politically important enough to get fed, the government has decided you can't have any food."
BTW, if you can (which I believe that you cannot) please give me an example of when a famine occurred in an area with anything approaching a free market.
You are right that there are other things that are more important than security in the design and development of these devices and those things were rightly solved first. Now that those things have mostly been solved it is time to start thinking about security and to start fixing the security issues that were left open while the more important issues were resolved.
Most of the other ways that someone could kill another person leave significant evidence as to who committed the crime. Right now, there is very little chance of identifying who used wireless access to a medical device to kill someone.
This is not an "OMG the sky is falling, do something NOW" type of problem. This is a "You know, this is going to cause problems sooner or later, we should figure out how to prevent as many of those problems as possible as we get the chance" type of problem.
The thing about this is that this is not really a question about badly written software. I think the current regulatory system provides a high enough level of protection against badly written software that making the software open source would not add a significant amount of increased security. However, a greater concern is the possibility that someone could insert code with specific triggers which could be used for malicious purposes. It is not that I believe that they would, it is that the implications for our society if someone did are so severe that some effort must be made to reduce the chances of that happening.
On a similar note, I often hover my mouse over search results to try and figure out why they showed up in response to my search because as far as I am concerned they are irrelevant to what I searched for. Now Google is going to start presenting things to me based on my curiosity about why something I have no interest in showed up in my search results. That sounds like a win all around to me./s
That same AG recently gave an opinion supporting the cops in this case (and other cases involving on duty police officers). I have no idea how he thinks you can possibly think that a random stranger passing a traffic stop has no reasonable expectation of privacy, yet the police officer actually conducting the traffic stop does.
Slashdot Mirror
The programmers who are already working in the field understand what is needed better than programmers from outside, therefore they will write better software. The company these guys have started is likely to take the established guys to the cleaners (unless they fall afoul of the new "Financial Giants Protection Act" that Congress just passed).
The thing is most of the traders who are making big bucks are not as smart as they think they are. Most of the programmers who write the programs have to understand the nature of the market pretty well. I suspect that this start up company will do very well, since the programmers will be able to write the software without the input of people who don't understand what is going on as well as they do.
It depends on what you get for that $30 per Gb/month. If the only thing you get for that is storage and support costs come out of a different pot, then you are paying too much. On the other hand if that $30 represents all of the IT budget for your company, then it might be about right (might not be as well, ther e are too many variables in that case).
If that is not what you want to see happen stop arguing with people like me and start arguing with people like Al Gore and Jim Hansen.
What false dichotomy? If you truly believe in catastrophic global warming, I expect you to live like it. If you don't want to live like you believe that Global Warming is a catastrophic problem requiring drastic measures, shut up and go away.
For those too lazy to click the link I'll quote the key paragraph:
Now, if those True Believers would give up their cars and big homes and truly change the way they live, I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be some measurable impact on the Earth in just a few short years. I’m not talking about recycling Evian bottles, but truly simplifying their lives. Even if you were, say, a former Vice President, you would give up extra homes and jets and limos. I see communes with organic farms and lives freed from polluting technology.
And you are exactly where GE wants you to be, pony up that cash for their bottom line.
Wow, they aren't even hiding that traffic laws are about revenue generation where you live and the people put up with it. Where I live, every couple of years they will pass some law that pushes that line. Every time (so far) the public outcry has forced them to repeal it within less than a year. Even the roadway safety nazis get up in arms.
The problem with your idea is that the weighting factors would be determined in such a manner that most people would not care about the resulting number and would ignore it. Actually a way that would make the gasoline usage numbers more useful would be to change them to gallons per 100 miles rather than miles per gallon. As for plug-in hybrids, I would suggest using both a gallons per 100 miles (for when the charge is 100% supplied by gasoline) and a second that lists both how many gallons would be used on a 100 mile trip that starts with a full charge and how much electricity required to obtain that full charge). Anybody who cares can make the calculations needed to make comparisons from there.
Room for at least 4 adults, and unlimited range. No car sold in America will succeed on a production level with out those two aspects.
You are basically correct, although a performance vehicle (I am using the term performance to indicate any vehicle that is bought for the experience of driving it rather than just as a means to get from point A to point B) can succeed with only the unlimited range part of that.
The summary is misleading, it says, " The only problem is that the agency may not have the authority to require this, thanks to concerted lobbying efforts by the advertising industry." The structure of this sentence implies that the FTC would naturally have this authority but "concerted lobbying efforts" got Congress to pass a law removing that authority. In fact, what happened was that someone tried to put this into a bill that it didn't belong in (the "financial reform" bill) and lobbyists managed to get it removed. If it is a good idea for the FTC to have this authority (and it may be, that is a different discussion than what this post is about), than it should be a bill on its own (or with other closely related items). There are several reasons for this, the most important being that it would allow voters to know who was for this particular provision and who was against it. Furthermore following the link to the article about the provision (written by what appears to be someone who favors the provision) looks like it would have delegated to the FTC what is very close to law making authority (which correctly belongs in Congress).
I know why the government granted cable and telephone monopolies, that doesn't mean that I am willing to accept that the only way to solve the problems this created is more government regulation.
You'd have a point if 99% of people used knives to murder and 1% used them to cook.
UM, you do know that he is not making some sarcastic comparison to the ruling in the article, but a comment on actual UK law enforcement.?
It is not practical to have a roundabout at every junction, therefore traffic lights are used.
Ahh, I see. How about those studies?
The photograph IS the proof.
At best the photograph is proof that my car went through the red light. As far as I know, no state legislature has passed into law a penalty for owning a car that someone else drove through a red light.
Yaah, they're called roundabouts. Problem is, they're too confusing for yanks apparently. No skin off my nose, but you did ask.
Got any studies to show that roundabouts are better? Also, if roundabouts are so wonderful, why does the UK have so many traffic lights?
So, how old is the oldest piece of software in this download? Now, how old are the pyramids of Egypt? How much other software was created in the same time frame as the stuff in this download? How much of that is still available?
Maybe you don't understand that the games in that download only represent a tiny fraction of all of the things that were produced in that time frame. When I said it is not practical to preserve everything, I meant everything, not just video games.
The problem as I see it is that we, now, don't know what will be valued in the future. Whatever clown decided to make the same rock with Hieroglyphs, demotic, and greek would have no idea that at the time he was creating one of the most important archiological artifacts ever. In short, preserve it now, let future generations decide what to study and what to ignore. By the way, I wonder what medium we should use if we want to store data for a really, really long time. It'd be nice if there was an "Ask Slashdot" on this. Ah well. One can only dream...
You do realize that it is not practical to perserve everything? That some things will have to be allowed to be lost to history?
The risk of these devices getting hacked is not "remotely thin". As they become more common the odds of one or more of these devices getting hacked rises steadily. At some point someone will hack one of these just for kicks (if for no other reason). When that happens, if there are no security measures of any kind, it is likely to become either an epidemic of copycats or the first person will be a serial killer.
Please explain what system would work better in your scenario.
I do not agree that the free market would make the famine worse, as a matter of fact, I don't see how it would.
In a free market system, when you have a shortage of resources, the price of those resources rises. This makes it more desirable to extract those resources. This means that more people will exert more effort to extract those resources (or obtain them from outside sources). Additionally, people will have an incentive to develop and perfect alternatives to those resources.
The free market has repeatedly been shown to be the most efficient method of allocating resources.Any economic system other than the free market is guaranteed to lead to an inefficient allocation of resources, which will increase the odds of a famine occurring and will extend a famine if one occurs.
Back to your example, you appear to propose that in the case of famine we implement a system whereby we would say, "oh sorry, you aren't politically important enough to get fed, the government has decided you can't have any food."
BTW, if you can (which I believe that you cannot) please give me an example of when a famine occurred in an area with anything approaching a free market.
You are right that there are other things that are more important than security in the design and development of these devices and those things were rightly solved first. Now that those things have mostly been solved it is time to start thinking about security and to start fixing the security issues that were left open while the more important issues were resolved.
Most of the other ways that someone could kill another person leave significant evidence as to who committed the crime. Right now, there is very little chance of identifying who used wireless access to a medical device to kill someone.
This is not an "OMG the sky is falling, do something NOW" type of problem. This is a "You know, this is going to cause problems sooner or later, we should figure out how to prevent as many of those problems as possible as we get the chance" type of problem.
And in what way would any of the various regulatory agencies catch an intentional backdoor left in one of these devices? Or a kill switch?
The thing about this is that this is not really a question about badly written software. I think the current regulatory system provides a high enough level of protection against badly written software that making the software open source would not add a significant amount of increased security. However, a greater concern is the possibility that someone could insert code with specific triggers which could be used for malicious purposes. It is not that I believe that they would, it is that the implications for our society if someone did are so severe that some effort must be made to reduce the chances of that happening.
On a similar note, I often hover my mouse over search results to try and figure out why they showed up in response to my search because as far as I am concerned they are irrelevant to what I searched for. Now Google is going to start presenting things to me based on my curiosity about why something I have no interest in showed up in my search results. That sounds like a win all around to me. /s
That same AG recently gave an opinion supporting the cops in this case (and other cases involving on duty police officers). I have no idea how he thinks you can possibly think that a random stranger passing a traffic stop has no reasonable expectation of privacy, yet the police officer actually conducting the traffic stop does.