"Should NEVER have been allowed to bid?" Everybody gets to bid in America. You can't keep people from bidding--that would be called corruption (and would invite an all expense paid stay in la casa grande).
Your insight into the qualifications of the application database developer are based on 20/20 hindsight. From the government's perspective, at the front end of the deal, how would you suggest the equal and economic evaluation of every single contractor that bids for the job? Good luck.
There is not enough information provided in the article to support your last point. I can easily see how indexing problems could be a problem that arose somewhere between the government and the contractor. If the relationships between the tables are not effectively expressed to the contractor, how is the contractor going to know how to relate those tables by index number?
Your point about unindexed tables is trivial. Anybody can put an index on a table after the fact. I think that the article was relating to a failure to provide adequate secondary, tertiary indexing, etc.
Your comment is one of the most insightful comments I have read on this website lately.
Slashdot is, generally, a place for crude reflexive expression. However, it has done a good job of causing me to think constructively about open source software. Other than that . . . you really have to work to find posts worth reading.
(1) Contractors bid to get the contract. The lowest bidder able to perform gets the contract. They'll provide to exact spec, and not a bit more. They make their REAL money with change orders. Change orders are not bid out. Contemplate this.
(2) Government specs can suck. This is quite understandable, because the people who want to use the software may not know how the software works. This invites the change orders described above. (When a consultant is hired to write the specs, you magnify the problems outlined in (3) and (4).)
(3) At the outset, contractors usually know nothing about the nuts and bolts of the government business that they are writing software for. The BUSY government people have to teach them. Power and control issues also play a role here. Details can easily get lost.
(4) Interactions between the government and the contractor become really intertwined. How would the government ever prove to a jury that any defect is the contractor's fault when the final product is an inseverably intermixed product of both the contractor and the government?
In many of these nigerian scams, the scamster persuades the mark to commit an illegal act. Although punishment for the victims is morally justifiable in these circumstances, I think that the loss of significant money is probably sufficient chastisement.
Feds can change this easily by making the name compliation process part of the Transportation Security Administration or some other entity described in 29 U.S.C. section 46110. This would mean that review of the action would take place in the federal courts of appeal, not the district courts. The Ninth Circuit tells the feds that if they do that, they will really be screwing things up because the appeals judges don't take evidence or decide disputed facts (like the rightfulness/wrongfulness of an individual person's placement on the no-fly list). This is like a big hint that if the feds set this up to lock out the district courts, that bad things will happen.
Reading between the lines, I think that the Ninth Circuit is suggesting that the TSA ask Congress to set up an admin. review process of no-fly list name placement. This should have been done in the first place.
The feds want to keep the reasons for putting someone on the no-fly list secret because they believe that it is important that they keep those secrets. This invites an unfair cheap shot: (a) The feds want to keep the reasons behind the no fly list SECRET; (b) The feds are the STATE; and (c)federal POLICE maintain the list.
I think that Mr. Bush does not care about people mistakenly placed on the no-fly list. I think that he views them as necessary casualties of war. The only problem with Bush's concept of war is that it is a perpetual war that will never end.
The United States is all about balancing individual freedom against collective values. In this situtation, the Administration values the collective to the complete exclusion of the individual's freedom. The balance ought to be recalibrated.
Draft a legally binding waiver and require all participants to sign it without modification. Plus insurance (as the other poster said). Plus take reasonable security measures.
Constitutional limitations protect High Times and head shops--and I know from personal experience that headshops are often right on the ragged edge of legality.
It is not about 'how close you can be' (whatever that means).
It is about INTENT. If you intend to help somebody else do a crime, and actually encourage or help the other person to commit the crime, and the other person actually does it, then the crime has been committed.
Note that I am not discussing Constitutional limitations on criminal liability.
It ALL depends on the context. If I tell somebody how to grow marijuana (even with the silly disclaimer), and I have the intent to help them grow marijuana, then I have committed the crime of growing marijuana under an accomplice theory (assuming that it is a crime).
Another example: If I'm standing in a crowd telling one person how to kill another person, and I intend for the killing to happen, and if the killing does in fact happen, then I committed murder under an accomplice theory. Mob bosses have considerable trouble with this kind of theory all the time. Saying "I told him HOW to kill the victim" instead of "I told him to kill the victim." will NOT shield the speaker if the speaker had the intent to cause the victim to be killed. The speaker is still an accomplice.
So, if I'm standing outside the MBTA and I'm handing out "Here's How to Cheat the MBTA and Get A Free Ride" information and I have the intent to help people cheat the MBTA, then I will be committing the crime of theft (or larceny, and who knows what else) if somebody does actually use my information to steal a free ride.
You ask "how can intent be proven?" The answer is simple: A jury of your peers gets to decide, based on the evidence presented. Intent + Assistance + Commission of the Crime by Another is enough to prove a crime under the law of most states.
The Constitution is the final level of defense for the three students, but that's too much to write about here. Think about the "Hitman" book and the court battles it spawned.
The question of constitutionality was NOT ADDRESSED. The judge held that pleaded statute did not support the injunction.
You can't just walk into court and enjoin somebody from doing something. To get an injunction, you have to establish two things: (1) The law authorizes the injunction based on the facts you have; and (2) The constitution does not bar you from getting that injunction.
The MBTA lost because they could not prove the first thing.
Now we'll see if MBTA wants to torture these three students with a full-blown lawsuit.
I wish you were right, but you are plainly wrong. American males with money will cheat to win completely amateur triathlon and bike competitions. I wish it were not true, but it is.
Every parent of a child also wants a fair, healthy playing environment for their children. It is from this environment that all our athletes spring. Of those who compete into adulthood, the overwhelming majority want to compete naturally. They want neither the expense, nor the risk of physical harm, associated with doping. They still want a fair playing field. It is grossly unfair to subject those competitor-athletes to a doped playing field. So, I vote for the clean playing field to protect the athletes who do not want to dope. It may be imprecise and it may be difficult, but it is the only hope of giving natural athletes a fair chance.
The idea of a doper league is stupid. You could NEVER have a doper league without heavy regulation. You'd be having Team Merck vs. Team Amgen vs. Team Roche vs. Team Genetix. The pressures on the doper athletes to push the envelope would be intense: Take pharma-X or go back to working at McDonalds . ... Teams would become drug laboratories and athletes would become guinea pigs. The doper athlete cheaters of today would not like that--they want to cheat against a field that is generally natural--they certainly don't want to cheat against a field that is pushing dope right to the ragged edge of death or glory.
Perhaps women started cooking when they realized that good cooking could attract really smart hunter-gatherer men. The smart hunter-gatherers would give the cooking-women (a) plenty of food and (b) smart babies.
The Transit Authority's position seems to boil down to this quote from their expert:
"In these circumstances, without solid assurance that the MIT Undergrads' activities do not pose an immediate threat to the Fare Media System's integrity and security, the required course in my opinion is to conclude that the activities do pose an immediate threat, and to act, as the MBTA is, to mitigate that threat through direct Court intervention."
The Transit Authority's position seems to be this: We think that we're secure, but we are not absolutely sure that we're secure. These people say that we are not secure. We asked them to tell us how we're not secure. They wouldn't tell us. We don't know if they're for real or not, so we need a judge to make them stop because they might be for real.
If I've got it right, this is pretty far out. The transit authority cannot even establish a factual predicate sufficient to show that the presenters have knowledge that would or could damage the transit authority. This would seem to present a really big causal gap in their case.
The trial judge must have had a brain-lapse. This case is about hard-core censorship. The presenters can only defend themselves if they come out with their information before the censor (i.e., the tribunal). This shouldn't have to be their burden. The plaintiffs should have to prove that the presenters have something really bad and dangerous.
The temporary injunction in this case is offensive in this case because it appears to be based only on this set of facts: Four dudes are going to talk in some unknown way about Transit Authority security.
If I develop a method sufficient to allow me unilateral control of the entire US nuclear missile arsenal (or the Transit Authority's bank accounts), I would surely hope that some federal judge would slap a prior restraint on me to keep me from blabbing it to the world.
I could not disagree with you more. My fat rich country sends its boys out to fight and perhaps die in support of its foreign policy (be it good or bad). When those boys are done with war, I want our country to do everything it can to minimize their postwar discomfort and maximize their reintegration to society. If they can get through the war less "uncomfortably," then I'm all for it.
You talk about the 'way things should be,' but you're really just talking about the things that you want. You want the groundpounder at the point of the spear to suffer? Is that really what you want?
The people you need to sensitize are the decisionmakers and the people who pick them. Don't pick on the soldiers. Leave them alone.
Advertising is all about manipulating public opinion. It's about getting the 'buzz' going. It's about generating that favorable 'word of mouth' that you talk about. It's about getting reviewers to look at, then write about your project. Advertising is the total package--it's the 'synergy.'
'Technical necessity' (if there is such a thing) is so manipulable. Is a dual core 'technically necessary' for a particular project? How do you decide? You do research? What do you read in the course of your research? Studies funded by the manufacturer, maybe . . ..?
I used to like Sony. I remember when the Trinitron was the gold standard of monitors and when the Walkman first came out. Unfortunately, you always had to put up with their attempts at gouging the consumer.
Now they still try to gouge, but they don't back it up with quality products. The heck with them!
Slashdot Mirror
After I wrote this, I saw DECS other posts. They made me suspect that he owns a substantial amount of Apple stock. I still like that one post, though.
"Should NEVER have been allowed to bid?" Everybody gets to bid in America. You can't keep people from bidding--that would be called corruption (and would invite an all expense paid stay in la casa grande).
Your insight into the qualifications of the application database developer are based on 20/20 hindsight. From the government's perspective, at the front end of the deal, how would you suggest the equal and economic evaluation of every single contractor that bids for the job? Good luck.
There is not enough information provided in the article to support your last point. I can easily see how indexing problems could be a problem that arose somewhere between the government and the contractor. If the relationships between the tables are not effectively expressed to the contractor, how is the contractor going to know how to relate those tables by index number?
Your point about unindexed tables is trivial. Anybody can put an index on a table after the fact. I think that the article was relating to a failure to provide adequate secondary, tertiary indexing, etc.
Your comment is one of the most insightful comments I have read on this website lately.
Slashdot is, generally, a place for crude reflexive expression. However, it has done a good job of causing me to think constructively about open source software. Other than that . . . you really have to work to find posts worth reading.
Hope these thoughts are useful:
(1) Contractors bid to get the contract. The lowest bidder able to perform gets the contract. They'll provide to exact spec, and not a bit more. They make their REAL money with change orders. Change orders are not bid out. Contemplate this.
(2) Government specs can suck. This is quite understandable, because the people who want to use the software may not know how the software works. This invites the change orders described above. (When a consultant is hired to write the specs, you magnify the problems outlined in (3) and (4).)
(3) At the outset, contractors usually know nothing about the nuts and bolts of the government business that they are writing software for. The BUSY government people have to teach them. Power and control issues also play a role here. Details can easily get lost.
(4) Interactions between the government and the contractor become really intertwined. How would the government ever prove to a jury that any defect is the contractor's fault when the final product is an inseverably intermixed product of both the contractor and the government?
The review was hilarious and well-written. Thanks.
What's the harm in a little knowledge? Would soviet conservatives keep us ignorant of cancer risks so we can't make an intelligent decision?
In many of these nigerian scams, the scamster persuades the mark to commit an illegal act. Although punishment for the victims is morally justifiable in these circumstances, I think that the loss of significant money is probably sufficient chastisement.
The posted article is flamebait!
All the following posts are inflammations!
This is not news for nerds! It is not slashdot worthy in the least. Who cares about what Jerry Seinfeld advertises? How is that newsworthy?
Feds can change this easily by making the name compliation process part of the Transportation Security Administration or some other entity described in 29 U.S.C. section 46110. This would mean that review of the action would take place in the federal courts of appeal, not the district courts. The Ninth Circuit tells the feds that if they do that, they will really be screwing things up because the appeals judges don't take evidence or decide disputed facts (like the rightfulness/wrongfulness of an individual person's placement on the no-fly list). This is like a big hint that if the feds set this up to lock out the district courts, that bad things will happen.
Reading between the lines, I think that the Ninth Circuit is suggesting that the TSA ask Congress to set up an admin. review process of no-fly list name placement. This should have been done in the first place.
The feds want to keep the reasons for putting someone on the no-fly list secret because they believe that it is important that they keep those secrets. This invites an unfair cheap shot: (a) The feds want to keep the reasons behind the no fly list SECRET; (b) The feds are the STATE; and (c)federal POLICE maintain the list.
I think that Mr. Bush does not care about people mistakenly placed on the no-fly list. I think that he views them as necessary casualties of war. The only problem with Bush's concept of war is that it is a perpetual war that will never end.
The United States is all about balancing individual freedom against collective values. In this situtation, the Administration values the collective to the complete exclusion of the individual's freedom. The balance ought to be recalibrated.
Draft a legally binding waiver and require all participants to sign it without modification. Plus insurance (as the other poster said). Plus take reasonable security measures.
You were responding to either a troll or somebody so dense that any amount of persuasive reasoning could ever penetrate.
But I surely agree with your point!
Constitutional limitations protect High Times and head shops--and I know from personal experience that headshops are often right on the ragged edge of legality.
It is not about 'how close you can be' (whatever that means).
It is about INTENT. If you intend to help somebody else do a crime, and actually encourage or help the other person to commit the crime, and the other person actually does it, then the crime has been committed.
Note that I am not discussing Constitutional limitations on criminal liability.
It ALL depends on the context. If I tell somebody how to grow marijuana (even with the silly disclaimer), and I have the intent to help them grow marijuana, then I have committed the crime of growing marijuana under an accomplice theory (assuming that it is a crime).
Another example: If I'm standing in a crowd telling one person how to kill another person, and I intend for the killing to happen, and if the killing does in fact happen, then I committed murder under an accomplice theory. Mob bosses have considerable trouble with this kind of theory all the time. Saying "I told him HOW to kill the victim" instead of "I told him to kill the victim." will NOT shield the speaker if the speaker had the intent to cause the victim to be killed. The speaker is still an accomplice.
So, if I'm standing outside the MBTA and I'm handing out "Here's How to Cheat the MBTA and Get A Free Ride" information and I have the intent to help people cheat the MBTA, then I will be committing the crime of theft (or larceny, and who knows what else) if somebody does actually use my information to steal a free ride.
You ask "how can intent be proven?" The answer is simple: A jury of your peers gets to decide, based on the evidence presented. Intent + Assistance + Commission of the Crime by Another is enough to prove a crime under the law of most states.
The Constitution is the final level of defense for the three students, but that's too much to write about here. Think about the "Hitman" book and the court battles it spawned.
The question of constitutionality was NOT ADDRESSED.
The judge held that pleaded statute did not support the injunction.
You can't just walk into court and enjoin somebody from doing something. To get an injunction, you have to establish two things:
(1) The law authorizes the injunction based on the facts you have; and
(2) The constitution does not bar you from getting that injunction.
The MBTA lost because they could not prove the first thing.
Now we'll see if MBTA wants to torture these three students with a full-blown lawsuit.
I wish you were right, but you are plainly wrong. American males with money will cheat to win completely amateur triathlon and bike competitions. I wish it were not true, but it is.
Every parent of a child also wants a fair, healthy playing environment for their children. It is from this environment that all our athletes spring. Of those who compete into adulthood, the overwhelming majority want to compete naturally. They want neither the expense, nor the risk of physical harm, associated with doping. They still want a fair playing field. It is grossly unfair to subject those competitor-athletes to a doped playing field. So, I vote for the clean playing field to protect the athletes who do not want to dope. It may be imprecise and it may be difficult, but it is the only hope of giving natural athletes a fair chance.
The idea of a doper league is stupid. You could NEVER have a doper league without heavy regulation. You'd be having Team Merck vs. Team Amgen vs. Team Roche vs. Team Genetix. The pressures on the doper athletes to push the envelope would be intense: Take pharma-X or go back to working at McDonalds . . .. Teams would become drug laboratories and athletes would become guinea pigs. The doper athlete cheaters of today would not like that--they want to cheat against a field that is generally natural--they certainly don't want to cheat against a field that is pushing dope right to the ragged edge of death or glory.
It depends upon how much of the company Mr. Miyamoto owns!
I thought it meant
Really
Intrusive
And
Aggressive
Perhaps women started cooking when they realized that good cooking could attract really smart hunter-gatherer men. The smart hunter-gatherers would give the cooking-women (a) plenty of food and (b) smart babies.
The Transit Authority's position seems to boil down to this quote from their expert:
"In these circumstances, without solid assurance that the MIT Undergrads' activities do not pose an immediate threat to the Fare Media System's integrity and security, the required course in my opinion is to conclude that the activities do pose an immediate threat, and to act, as the MBTA is, to mitigate that threat through direct Court intervention."
The Transit Authority's position seems to be this: We think that we're secure, but we are not absolutely sure that we're secure. These people say that we are not secure. We asked them to tell us how we're not secure. They wouldn't tell us. We don't know if they're for real or not, so we need a judge to make them stop because they might be for real.
If I've got it right, this is pretty far out. The transit authority cannot even establish a factual predicate sufficient to show that the presenters have knowledge that would or could damage the transit authority. This would seem to present a really big causal gap in their case.
The trial judge must have had a brain-lapse. This case is about hard-core censorship. The presenters can only defend themselves if they come out with their information before the censor (i.e., the tribunal). This shouldn't have to be their burden. The plaintiffs should have to prove that the presenters have something really bad and dangerous.
The temporary injunction in this case is offensive in this case because it appears to be based only on this set of facts: Four dudes are going to talk in some unknown way about Transit Authority security.
If I develop a method sufficient to allow me unilateral control of the entire US nuclear missile arsenal (or the Transit Authority's bank accounts), I would surely hope that some federal judge would slap a prior restraint on me to keep me from blabbing it to the world.
I could not disagree with you more. My fat rich country sends its boys out to fight and perhaps die in support of its foreign policy (be it good or bad). When those boys are done with war, I want our country to do everything it can to minimize their postwar discomfort and maximize their reintegration to society. If they can get through the war less "uncomfortably," then I'm all for it.
You talk about the 'way things should be,' but you're really just talking about the things that you want. You want the groundpounder at the point of the spear to suffer? Is that really what you want?
The people you need to sensitize are the decisionmakers and the people who pick them. Don't pick on the soldiers. Leave them alone.
"Just look at ANY rap star?" I can think of several who are quite astute businessmen. Jay-Z, Combs, Snoop, Ice-T, just to name a few.
A better example would be small men in small jobs who drive big pickup trucks.
Your naivete is awesome.
Advertising is all about manipulating public opinion. It's about getting the 'buzz' going. It's about generating that favorable 'word of mouth' that you talk about. It's about getting reviewers to look at, then write about your project. Advertising is the total package--it's the 'synergy.'
'Technical necessity' (if there is such a thing) is so manipulable. Is a dual core 'technically necessary' for a particular project? How do you decide? You do research? What do you read in the course of your research? Studies funded by the manufacturer, maybe . . . .?
Advertising works. Oh yeah.
P.S. Wanna buy a pet rock?
I feel the same way, only different. If I could get the Adobe CS suite running on Linux, I'd be gone from Windows in a heartbeat.
As far as games goes, I'd be willing to suffer a little. DirectX was very smart of Microsoft. Does LINUX afford something equally good?
I used to like Sony. I remember when the Trinitron was the gold standard of monitors and when the Walkman first came out. Unfortunately, you always had to put up with their attempts at gouging the consumer.
Now they still try to gouge, but they don't back it up with quality products. The heck with them!