There are some open source programs which are more popular than Microsoft offerings, like Apache. If Apache has more flaws than IIS, they seem to be much harder to discover by blackhats who would like to exploit them.
What matters is not that there is a flaw but whether or not it's discovered and someone does damage with it.
Some day, when everyone's using Apache 10, and Apache 2 is a thing of the past, someone discovering a vulnerability in Apache 2 that no one uses anymore is just wasting their time.
This is a practical issue. Show me the bugs. The fact that there might THEORETICALLY be more bugs doesn't affect anyone. What matters are those bugs which are FOUND and EXPLOITED.
What's more, being open source, Apache bugs should be easier for the blackhats to find. So if there are so many, why aren't they being exploited?
Ok, I see your point. It's like instituting a tariff or other sort of tax in order to protect the livelihood of some industry that we cannot live without.
Either way, if the surplus were bought and converted into fuel, it would have the same effect on the food supply, keeping supply not too high and demand up.
Indeed, given our fuel demand, it would increase demand over-all for farm products, increasing total demand, keeping prices up. At present, I suspect that were farms to produce to capacity, they wouldn't be able to keep up with fuel demand.
I work at a company that develops medical imaging display systems. To make displays uniform and produce correct grayscale images for viewing xrays, etc., there are some strict standards for "gamma" calibrating monitors, referred to as DICOM.
I was at the last SID convention, talking to one of the experts on this stuff from IBM, and I ignorantly commented on how I was looking forward to OLED displays because of the contrast ratio. He explained to me that OLED displays suffer from burn-in worse than any CRT.
Until the recent past, the lifetime of OLED displays has been measured in months. Apparently, what happens is that for each pixel, the junction between the electrodes and the organic diode decays over time (relative to the amount of charge that has gone through it), increasing resistance. At first, this just dims the LED, until the resistance gets so high that you can't meet threshold voltage for the diode, and it stops working entirely.
As I'm sure you can imagine, medical displays can't afford to have any non-uniformity. But given that medical images are non-uniform by nature, non-uniform burn-in will occur, making the xray or MRI image look different, depending on its placement on the screen. The point is that I'm sure you won't appreciate having your monitor suffer non-uniform burn-in, even IF what you're displaying can't affect someone's health.
(The advantage with LCD's is that the liquid crystal doesn't decay, and the only things that do break down are the fluorescent back-lights, and that decay is relatively uniform.)
As I'm sure is the case with everyone else, I look forward to the day when OLED decay is practically non-existant. The problem is that the progress is incredibly slow. LCD's been around for a LONG time, yet it's still far from perfect. OLED will require just as much time to get as good, which means it'll be decades before it catches up. Meanwhile, LCD's will continue to get better.
Because all existing systems of socialized healthcare have failed miserably. In every country that has socialized healthcare, while the healthy care you get is less expensive (maybe--consider the taxes), you get measurably less healthcare. Instead of being able to go to the doctor when you need to, under socialized healthcare, people end up on long waiting-lists and end up not getting any healthcare at all.
So, either we have it privatized, where at least SOME people get cared for, or you socialize it where NO ONE gets cared for.
Also, would you want to live in a country where the structure of the healthcare system is such that all of those people who would have become good doctors end up finding their ambitions somewhere else, leaving us only with bad doctors?
The US is a wealthy country that has collected itself a good number of serious enemies for that reason and many others. 9/11 taught us that in a serious way. Many people, including myself, feel that we are not in a position to passively defend ourselves against terrorists. We've done too many things, actively and passively, for us to even consider returning to our isolationist roots before the first and second world wars. Besides, the rest of the world has changed too; people who would harm Americans have become more and more powerful over the decades. Unless we take preemptive action to prevent future terrorism, the terrorists will be back.
Of the major political parties, the Libertarian party is generally my favorite. Libertarianism lacks the "tax me to death and give my money to those who won't work" attitude of the Democrats, and it lacks the bigotry and "morality police" attitudes of the Republicans. Libertarians also don't take action to squelch technological and scientific advancement. But the one place where I have to give the Republicans credit is that they don't wimp out when it comes to defending the country militarily. All political parties have been accused of "selling out to the enemy", but in my opinion, this is least likely to be true for the Republicans. [1]
My question to you is this: Given the Libertarian history of having an isolationist attitude, what is your policy on defending the country? Do you intend to cut back military and hope the problem goes away (which it won't), or do you intend to maintain or increase our strength so that when the enemy comes, and they will, we are able not just to defend ourselves on our own soil, but are ready to go to where the enemy is and neutralize them preemptively?
A corollary to my first question: What is your policy regarding our dependence on outsiders for energy? For far too long, we have been beholden to the middle-east for the bulk of our energy supply. Furthermore, oil cartels have politically interfered with development of alternative fuel sources for a very long time. I don't believe that global warming is caused primarily by burning of fossil fuels, but I do believe it's important that the US get away from fossil fuels so that we can become self-sufficient. While Hydrogen fuel cells for cars are a long way off, we already have things like ethanol, biodiesel, and other means of generating fuels that can be transported by the existing infrastructure and used in existing vehicles. [2] Do you have any plans for averting a future energy crisis by disconnecting us from those that could ruin our economy by cutting off our fuel supply at any moment?
Foot note [1]: Aside: As someone who strongly respects both Islam and Christianity, I would rather be under the tyranny of those who pretend to be Christians here in the US than be under the tyranny of those who pretend to be Muslims in the middle east.
Foot note [2]: The government pays many farmers NOT to grow as much food as they possibly could. This is stupid. If the government is going to interfere AT ALL, the surplus food should be bought and turned into fuel.
Re:Nothing unusual about right/left stance here!
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Heh, and I was expecting someone to flame me for oversimplifying politics.:)
Re:Nothing unusual about right/left stance here!
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As I said in my original post, those low on both are called "Authoritarians".
Nothing unusual about right/left stance here!
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Liberals and Conservatives are diametrically opposed on two axes. If you go to lp.org and find the "world's shortest political quiz", they describe the right an left as something like this:
Liberals want high self-governance for personal matters but low self-governance for fiscal matters.
Conservatives want low self-governance for personal matters but high self-governance for fiscal matters.
That's why people stereotype Liberals as being amoral socialists, while Conservatives are morality police who want you to keep the money you earn.
So.... that's why the comment about the stances of the right and left aren't at all 'unusual'. This is a money issue, so the liberals want to open it up and share intellectual assets, while the conservatives want individuals (and corporations) to have full control over their own assets.
[NOTE: Those who want high self-governance on both personal and fiscal matters are called "Libertarians", while those who are low on both are called "Authoritarians".]
I don't disagree with what you're saying. I believe every vote is important, even those which disagree with mine. It's a vital part of the democratic process and the right of every citizen to have their vote counted properly.
I'm not saying that it should be ALLOWED to be done through hack and slash. I'm saying that it HAPPENED that way, and that this follows the typical trend of most of the rest of the industry. Putting moral judgements aside, I'm just trying to explain/explore why things happened the way they did.
Perhaps through this, people can learn how to do better? [Fat chance.:)]
Personally, I think that in this case, the government should oversee and audit an open source project. Normally, with government projects, I think BSD license is better, but in this case, it's important to force the software to stay open, so GPL would be better.
Well, the thing is, I'm not sure that companies are always aware of when they're doing this. You know how Markering never seems to understand Engineering and always imposes unreasonable deadlines and requirements. This is no different. Marketing says "do X", and Engineering does its best, but used to rediculous schedules, does what it can. They produce a prototype, but never understanding what prototypes are, Marketing says "ship it", and that's what gets shipped.
Yes, it's a lot of stupidity on the part of Marketing and Engineering, but no one individual (when in the middle of the whole things) really understands that (a) there are lots of mistakes, and (b) where those mistakes are leading.
I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that Diebold management is totally baffled by this situation. Mostly because those who are baffled are the incompetent boobs that let it happen in the first place.
The point I'm trying to make here is that there was no INTENTIONAL malice here. It was all incompetence, stupidity, and lack of forethought.
BTW, I thought I'd add something: Perhaps if a pattern emerges where companies get sued for doing a shit job, companies thinking of doing a shit job will think twice before doing it, and better products will be produced.
But even then, there's bound to be some jackass who tries to take the shortcut and ruins things for themselves and everyone else. The only way to deal with THAT is to have stricter testing.
Sometimes, competition and rush to market is so intense that companies simply CANNOT do a proper job. The reason? No one is going to do a proper job. If you wait and do things right, then a competitor will get their half-ass product to market before you, and then you lose. No one is the wiser until way down the road. Now, since everyone is doing the hack-and-slash job, the winner is whoever managed to cover their mistakes better or who had fewer visible mistakes (or marketed better, etc.). By the time people figure out that the chosen product is shite, the companies that might have done a good job are either long gone or on to other things.
Only after this first wave of a new kind of product do companies "learn from the mistakes of the past" (translation: we can do it right this time because customers finally expect to wait on a proper product).
Capitalism is wonderful, but as with anything run by humans, it has its challenges.
Diebold is the sacrificial lamb in this case. There's no way that history could have turned out any other way. If it hadn't been Diebold, it would have been someone else doing the same crap job and then getting sued by CA. They were the lucky ones who got to market first and the unlucky ones who got caught at doing what they and all of their competitors were doing. As usual, some other company will soon come along and produce a slightly better machine, etc.
Any time you have a centralized government which taxes and then uses that money to provide a free service to everyone, that is, abstractly speaking, socialist. (Some people like to call it "Liberal". Feh.) This includes road building and law enforcement, two things I'm STRONGLY IN FAVOR of. So, socialism isn't always wrong.
However, I suspect one of the reasons so many "poorer" countries are getting universal broadband is that the governments want to look good to the rest of the world (and to their people), so they tax their already poor people and then give them useless broadband when really, they need things like better food and shelter. They're like, "Aren't we the best country in the world! Everyone has broadband!". They just don't tell you that the people who have broadband are starving to death or can't get basic education (and have no way of actually USING the broadband).
More interestingly, while their broadband may be more widely available, there are no incentives to make it GOOD.
With capitalistic competition, in the US (and many other countries), while not everyone has broadband, those who have it get better service. When broadband first appeared, companies struggled to find a way to roll out cheap broadband. It was a mess. For years, no sane person would have gone near DSL because telephone companies have such low profit margins that they can't afford to actually provide support and solve problems. Even now, at least in Orlando, cable modem is 3 times as fast as DSL for the same price. I keep telling Sprint to stop calling me until they can compete with Brighthouse. However, it has improved steadily since the beginning, and it will continue to improve and vastly surpass the mediocre offerings of socialized broadband.
If you want to see where broadband will be in the future, consider the state of healthcare right now. In countries with socialized medicine, no one wants to become a doctor, and people who need any kind of health care (basic or emergency) wind up on long waiting lists. It's a horrible mess, and anyone who thinks socialized medicine will improve things in the US is a moron. When you compare socialized countries to the US, we have more medicine, better medicine, and no waiting lists. That's because doctors and individuals and private companies (including insurance companies) control medicine, not the government. (Oh, I know it's far from perfect.) If you want health care, you have to PAY for it (unless you're destitute and need emergency care, and any hospital emergency room will help you for free). Rather than a sense of entitlement on the part of the people, they have an expectation that the money they pay to doctors and insurance will yield results, and it DOES. Furthermore, while many insurance programs set rate limits for doctors, doctors can choose which rate programs they are part of, and this doesn't stop them from feeling that hard work will yield a greater reward (which is vitally important).
The basic reason why medicine in the US is so much better is because it's based on CAPITALISM. Capitalism thrives because it capitalizes, as it were, on human greed (which is pervasive). If working harder gets you more, you'll work harder and do a better job.
(Note that insurance companies are a form of VOLUNTARY socialism which gets rid of the moral issues associated with socialism. You can choose to abstain and still be alright. My primary doctor has 1/3 of his patients without insurance and he has special rates for them which are affordable. It's like private charities and scholarships which are all voluntary. This gives people MORE choice which is a GOOD thing.)
[As a side note, I would love to be a Libertarian, were it not for the fact that none of the candidates would lift a finger, militarily, to defend the country unless a foreign invasion were already underway. I would love to be a Republican were it not for the bigotry and the whole "morality police" thing. I would love to be a Democrat were it not for the fact that they're as wimpy militarily as the Libertarians, and they want to tax away all of my money and give it to people who refuse to work. I don't know anything about the Green party.]
Sorry about the inflamatory title. It's good for karma whoring.:)
Anyhow, I suppose it's true that people and society are still biased against women. Personally, I find gender-based discrimination very difficult to understand. What's ironic about that is that, until it was pointed out to me by a friend, I never realized that the family I grew up with had this kind of slant. It never occurred to me to discriminate based on sex. I mean, I'd heard of it, but I never saw any reason to do it.
There are things that men and women are inherently better at than each other ON AVERAGE. That is, the average man is better at visual/spatial reasoning, and the average woman is better is linguistic/auditory reasoning. But on the other hand, an above-average woman will likely beat the average man at both. Individuals often lie outside of the statistical averages.
This whole concept of pre-judging makes no sense to me. Built-in talent helps, but I've seen time and time again a hard-working average person beat a lazy above-average person. So why can't a woman with determination compete well with men who assume that things should be just handed to them? In fact, she can and often would wipe the floor with them were it not for stupid social-political barriers that say that women, universally, aren't up to the task.
One friend of mine once pointed out that "equal opportunity" does not mean "equal achievement". As I see it, if you're not smart or hard-working enough to achieve something, then tough shit. You shouldn't get special consideration or leniency for being rich, poor, male, female, black, white, gay, or straight.
Here's the "my ass" part: Maybe MIT has been biased. Maybe not. But just maybe there hasn't until now been a woman who was up to the job. Now there is. The fact that she's a woman has nothing to do with her qualifications for the job. Yes, I agree that the obstacles are there. Yes, I agree that she probably had to work much harder than others who would have vied for the position. Should I be sad that I had to work my way through college, rather than get minority scholarships (which, BTW, are fine by me as long as they are from private institutions)?
There is one benefit to me, as a guy, to having this stupid gender bias while it lasts. See, I like intelligent people. If a guy gets into a position of power, it tells me nothing. If a woman gets into a position of power, I can pretty much assume that she's got her shit together and that I can easily have an intelligent conversation with her. This isn't 100% perfect, but it's a strong statistical trend.
Also, I think these women, being intuitive, quickly recognize that I naively lack this gender bias and warm up to me almost instantly. The reason I mention this is because, far too often, I see guys threatened by strong women and find themselves compelled to refer to them as "bitches". Well, I've met a few bitches, but they were just stupid people (both men and women). These strong women, on the other hand, are typically a joy for me to work with.
With all this crap going on about companies, like SCO and others, claiming rights to something that they don't have rights to, it should be a criminal offense to threaten someone over violation of or otherwise claiming to have a copyright or patent that you don't actually have rights to.
The original three movies were great. I would watch them over and over again. Then episodes 1 and 2 came out and it ruined the whole thing for me. The new movies were so bad that they tained the whole Star Wars experience for me, and now I can't stand to watch even the old ones.
So, what's Lucas up to this time? It's hard to ruin it any more than he already has!
Sorry about the yelling in the title, but anyone who suggests relicensing the Linux kernel is forgetting that the kernel is not written by one person. It's written by thousands of people, each of whom would have to relicense their code under BSD. Some of those people are dead. Some of them are unknown. Some of them would refuse to relicense. Some of them release under licenses which are not GPL but which state that they can be relicensed under GPL. The Linux kernel code may be technically a unified whole (to some extent or other), but LEGALLY, it is a collection of numerous pieces which all must be considered separately.
I think the BSD license if just fine. That isn't the issue. The issue is that in order to relicense the kernel under BSD, so much code which could not be relicensed would have to be ripped out that you would not have a kernel left.
So, while I can't say whether or not, generally speaking, the suggestion to switch licenses is an unwise one, I can definately say that it's a totally ignorant suggestion. Saying "relicense linux" is like saying "delete linux".
Unfortunately, thin clients aren't really good for situations where you need to use actual Microsoft Office. Sure, there are some Windows thin clients, but they suck, and they tend to be best for specialized applications. Plus, even though Linux thin clients have a bit more freedom (with X11 being network transparent), they're also really not great for GENERAL PURPOSE use.
One thing you could do is set up a bunch of Linux thin clients for WEB USE ONLY with Mozilla. This way, you have a bunch of simple computers that you don't need to reboot very often but which are special purpose.
As for the computers where people must use Microsoft Office and IE, etc., you're probably best off sticking with a major brand of PC manufacturer where you can get a warranty and efficient support. Call Dell and tell them that you want them to fix their damn computers, and you're not going to put up with any excuses about viruses being out of their control.
Set up a contractual arrangement with a PC supplier that says that if you are not satisfied that you can return all of the computers for a full refund. So, when your Dell computers start flaking out on you, you call Dell to fix them. If they cannot make them reliable, get your refund and switch to another PC supplier, until you find one who will bundle the appropriate combination of security tools, make their hardware reliable, and lock things down so that stupid users and hackers can't break your computers. Part of your contract should be to require a full report on every failure. If the same failures keep happening, return the computers for a refund. If too many failures happen, return for a refund. Don't go soft.
The truth of the matter is that even though Windows sucks, it's VERY possible to keep it stable and secure. You just need an administrator who knows what s/he's doing and some way to prevent users from doing stupid things. Uneducated users are the number one threat to Windows security. People do some really bone-headed things with their PC's, and THAT is why they get infected with viruses (most of the time).
What might be a good idea is to write up a set of requirements (virus protection, minimum uptimes, etc.) and submit them to major PC suppliers.
Buy from whomever will meet your needs. You don't have time to be putting up with any bullshit. You need computers that WORK that you don't have to worry about. Let them know that if they can't come through, they're history. Windows computers are run reliably all over the place, so there's no reason why you can't have that too.
I know it's hard to believe. I'm not sure I still believe it'll happen. But we know that the only way for Microsoft to compete now is to ACTUALLY innovate, something they haven't done in a LONG TIME... since the early 80's in fact. They're very rusty. Looks like some parts of Microsoft are starting to try to scrape off some of the rust.
Microsoft may be evil, but they're the industry leader, and this is good for everyone.
Of course, I'm never going to like two legacy aspects of Windows filesystem: drive letters and backslashes.:)
Look, when it comes to regular stuff like POS terminals and mall kiosks, Windows is just fine. Even medical imaging systems. Any time you can reboot the damn thing when it screws up, no problem. I mean, it's probably less cost-effective than Windows in volume, but whatever.
But when lives are on the line, it's just STUPID to be running Windows. Air Traffic Control, computers that are used during surgery, etc. Anyone using Windows should just be SHOT. How would you like it for Windows to crash while you're in the middle of a LASIK procedure or a tripple bypass or while you're trying to land at an airport?
While Windows has gotten ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more stable since the days of reboot-every-day-win98, Windows XP is still an unstable beast. While Linux web servers have uptimes of months, Windows Server 2003 web servers still have daily automatic reboots! You just can't rely on Windows to be robust over long periods of time. The whole virus situation just makes it 100 times worse. So, really, it's just stupid to be using Windows when someone can be injured or killed.
Sorry for the flamebait, but I don't trust my life in Bill Gates' hands. Sorry.
Let's think about it. Kirk from the time of Enterprise is either not born yet or rather young. Shatner is in his 60's or 70's or something. He's old. So, if Shatner, the old guy, is to appear as Kirk on Enterprise, either Kirk has to travel back in time from the point when he's either admiral the second time or ambassador or something, or Archer's got to travel forward in time, which has been done to death.
The only reason I want to watch is to find out if they can manage some really clever way to make it not suck.
Probably one among many, but at work, we get these IBM notebooks with the Centrino (Banias) processors, and they get 7 to 8 hours, and they're nice and fast too.
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There are some open source programs which are more popular than Microsoft offerings, like Apache. If Apache has more flaws than IIS, they seem to be much harder to discover by blackhats who would like to exploit them.
What matters is not that there is a flaw but whether or not it's discovered and someone does damage with it.
Some day, when everyone's using Apache 10, and Apache 2 is a thing of the past, someone discovering a vulnerability in Apache 2 that no one uses anymore is just wasting their time.
This is a practical issue. Show me the bugs. The fact that there might THEORETICALLY be more bugs doesn't affect anyone. What matters are those bugs which are FOUND and EXPLOITED.
What's more, being open source, Apache bugs should be easier for the blackhats to find. So if there are so many, why aren't they being exploited?
Ok, I see your point. It's like instituting a tariff or other sort of tax in order to protect the livelihood of some industry that we cannot live without.
Either way, if the surplus were bought and converted into fuel, it would have the same effect on the food supply, keeping supply not too high and demand up.
Indeed, given our fuel demand, it would increase demand over-all for farm products, increasing total demand, keeping prices up. At present, I suspect that were farms to produce to capacity, they wouldn't be able to keep up with fuel demand.
I work at a company that develops medical imaging display systems. To make displays uniform and produce correct grayscale images for viewing xrays, etc., there are some strict standards for "gamma" calibrating monitors, referred to as DICOM.
I was at the last SID convention, talking to one of the experts on this stuff from IBM, and I ignorantly commented on how I was looking forward to OLED displays because of the contrast ratio. He explained to me that OLED displays suffer from burn-in worse than any CRT.
Until the recent past, the lifetime of OLED displays has been measured in months. Apparently, what happens is that for each pixel, the junction between the electrodes and the organic diode decays over time (relative to the amount of charge that has gone through it), increasing resistance. At first, this just dims the LED, until the resistance gets so high that you can't meet threshold voltage for the diode, and it stops working entirely.
As I'm sure you can imagine, medical displays can't afford to have any non-uniformity. But given that medical images are non-uniform by nature, non-uniform burn-in will occur, making the xray or MRI image look different, depending on its placement on the screen. The point is that I'm sure you won't appreciate having your monitor suffer non-uniform burn-in, even IF what you're displaying can't affect someone's health.
(The advantage with LCD's is that the liquid crystal doesn't decay, and the only things that do break down are the fluorescent back-lights, and that decay is relatively uniform.)
As I'm sure is the case with everyone else, I look forward to the day when OLED decay is practically non-existant. The problem is that the progress is incredibly slow. LCD's been around for a LONG time, yet it's still far from perfect. OLED will require just as much time to get as good, which means it'll be decades before it catches up. Meanwhile, LCD's will continue to get better.
I wouldn't be surprised if, before too long, this showed up as a map for various games like Age of Empires, Quake, etc. Could be fun.
Because all existing systems of socialized healthcare have failed miserably. In every country that has socialized healthcare, while the healthy care you get is less expensive (maybe--consider the taxes), you get measurably less healthcare. Instead of being able to go to the doctor when you need to, under socialized healthcare, people end up on long waiting-lists and end up not getting any healthcare at all.
So, either we have it privatized, where at least SOME people get cared for, or you socialize it where NO ONE gets cared for.
Also, would you want to live in a country where the structure of the healthcare system is such that all of those people who would have become good doctors end up finding their ambitions somewhere else, leaving us only with bad doctors?
While it is true that completed WMD's were never found in Iraq, all the necessary parts and chemicals were repeatedly found warehoused together.
The US is a wealthy country that has collected itself a good number of serious enemies for that reason and many others. 9/11 taught us that in a serious way. Many people, including myself, feel that we are not in a position to passively defend ourselves against terrorists. We've done too many things, actively and passively, for us to even consider returning to our isolationist roots before the first and second world wars. Besides, the rest of the world has changed too; people who would harm Americans have become more and more powerful over the decades. Unless we take preemptive action to prevent future terrorism, the terrorists will be back.
Of the major political parties, the Libertarian party is generally my favorite. Libertarianism lacks the "tax me to death and give my money to those who won't work" attitude of the Democrats, and it lacks the bigotry and "morality police" attitudes of the Republicans. Libertarians also don't take action to squelch technological and scientific advancement. But the one place where I have to give the Republicans credit is that they don't wimp out when it comes to defending the country militarily. All political parties have been accused of "selling out to the enemy", but in my opinion, this is least likely to be true for the Republicans. [1]
My question to you is this: Given the Libertarian history of having an isolationist attitude, what is your policy on defending the country? Do you intend to cut back military and hope the problem goes away (which it won't), or do you intend to maintain or increase our strength so that when the enemy comes, and they will, we are able not just to defend ourselves on our own soil, but are ready to go to where the enemy is and neutralize them preemptively?
A corollary to my first question: What is your policy regarding our dependence on outsiders for energy? For far too long, we have been beholden to the middle-east for the bulk of our energy supply. Furthermore, oil cartels have politically interfered with development of alternative fuel sources for a very long time. I don't believe that global warming is caused primarily by burning of fossil fuels, but I do believe it's important that the US get away from fossil fuels so that we can become self-sufficient. While Hydrogen fuel cells for cars are a long way off, we already have things like ethanol, biodiesel, and other means of generating fuels that can be transported by the existing infrastructure and used in existing vehicles. [2] Do you have any plans for averting a future energy crisis by disconnecting us from those that could ruin our economy by cutting off our fuel supply at any moment?
Foot note [1]: Aside: As someone who strongly respects both Islam and Christianity, I would rather be under the tyranny of those who pretend to be Christians here in the US than be under the tyranny of those who pretend to be Muslims in the middle east.
Foot note [2]: The government pays many farmers NOT to grow as much food as they possibly could. This is stupid. If the government is going to interfere AT ALL, the surplus food should be bought and turned into fuel.
Heh, and I was expecting someone to flame me for oversimplifying politics. :)
As I said in my original post, those low on both are called "Authoritarians".
Liberals and Conservatives are diametrically opposed on two axes. If you go to lp.org and find the "world's shortest political quiz", they describe the right an left as something like this:
Liberals want high self-governance for personal matters but low self-governance for fiscal matters.
Conservatives want low self-governance for personal matters but high self-governance for fiscal matters.
That's why people stereotype Liberals as being amoral socialists, while Conservatives are morality police who want you to keep the money you earn.
So.... that's why the comment about the stances of the right and left aren't at all 'unusual'. This is a money issue, so the liberals want to open it up and share intellectual assets, while the conservatives want individuals (and corporations) to have full control over their own assets.
[NOTE: Those who want high self-governance on both personal and fiscal matters are called "Libertarians", while those who are low on both are called "Authoritarians".]
This link appears to be broken.
I don't disagree with what you're saying. I believe every vote is important, even those which disagree with mine. It's a vital part of the democratic process and the right of every citizen to have their vote counted properly.
:)]
I'm not saying that it should be ALLOWED to be done through hack and slash. I'm saying that it HAPPENED that way, and that this follows the typical trend of most of the rest of the industry. Putting moral judgements aside, I'm just trying to explain/explore why things happened the way they did.
Perhaps through this, people can learn how to do better? [Fat chance.
Personally, I think that in this case, the government should oversee and audit an open source project. Normally, with government projects, I think BSD license is better, but in this case, it's important to force the software to stay open, so GPL would be better.
Well, the thing is, I'm not sure that companies are always aware of when they're doing this. You know how Markering never seems to understand Engineering and always imposes unreasonable deadlines and requirements. This is no different. Marketing says "do X", and Engineering does its best, but used to rediculous schedules, does what it can. They produce a prototype, but never understanding what prototypes are, Marketing says "ship it", and that's what gets shipped.
Yes, it's a lot of stupidity on the part of Marketing and Engineering, but no one individual (when in the middle of the whole things) really understands that (a) there are lots of mistakes, and (b) where those mistakes are leading.
I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that Diebold management is totally baffled by this situation. Mostly because those who are baffled are the incompetent boobs that let it happen in the first place.
The point I'm trying to make here is that there was no INTENTIONAL malice here. It was all incompetence, stupidity, and lack of forethought.
BTW, I thought I'd add something: Perhaps if a pattern emerges where companies get sued for doing a shit job, companies thinking of doing a shit job will think twice before doing it, and better products will be produced.
But even then, there's bound to be some jackass who tries to take the shortcut and ruins things for themselves and everyone else. The only way to deal with THAT is to have stricter testing.
Sometimes, competition and rush to market is so intense that companies simply CANNOT do a proper job. The reason? No one is going to do a proper job. If you wait and do things right, then a competitor will get their half-ass product to market before you, and then you lose. No one is the wiser until way down the road. Now, since everyone is doing the hack-and-slash job, the winner is whoever managed to cover their mistakes better or who had fewer visible mistakes (or marketed better, etc.). By the time people figure out that the chosen product is shite, the companies that might have done a good job are either long gone or on to other things.
Only after this first wave of a new kind of product do companies "learn from the mistakes of the past" (translation: we can do it right this time because customers finally expect to wait on a proper product).
Capitalism is wonderful, but as with anything run by humans, it has its challenges.
Diebold is the sacrificial lamb in this case. There's no way that history could have turned out any other way. If it hadn't been Diebold, it would have been someone else doing the same crap job and then getting sued by CA. They were the lucky ones who got to market first and the unlucky ones who got caught at doing what they and all of their competitors were doing. As usual, some other company will soon come along and produce a slightly better machine, etc.
Any time you have a centralized government which taxes and then uses that money to provide a free service to everyone, that is, abstractly speaking, socialist. (Some people like to call it "Liberal". Feh.) This includes road building and law enforcement, two things I'm STRONGLY IN FAVOR of. So, socialism isn't always wrong.
However, I suspect one of the reasons so many "poorer" countries are getting universal broadband is that the governments want to look good to the rest of the world (and to their people), so they tax their already poor people and then give them useless broadband when really, they need things like better food and shelter. They're like, "Aren't we the best country in the world! Everyone has broadband!". They just don't tell you that the people who have broadband are starving to death or can't get basic education (and have no way of actually USING the broadband).
More interestingly, while their broadband may be more widely available, there are no incentives to make it GOOD.
With capitalistic competition, in the US (and many other countries), while not everyone has broadband, those who have it get better service. When broadband first appeared, companies struggled to find a way to roll out cheap broadband. It was a mess. For years, no sane person would have gone near DSL because telephone companies have such low profit margins that they can't afford to actually provide support and solve problems. Even now, at least in Orlando, cable modem is 3 times as fast as DSL for the same price. I keep telling Sprint to stop calling me until they can compete with Brighthouse. However, it has improved steadily since the beginning, and it will continue to improve and vastly surpass the mediocre offerings of socialized broadband.
If you want to see where broadband will be in the future, consider the state of healthcare right now. In countries with socialized medicine, no one wants to become a doctor, and people who need any kind of health care (basic or emergency) wind up on long waiting lists. It's a horrible mess, and anyone who thinks socialized medicine will improve things in the US is a moron. When you compare socialized countries to the US, we have more medicine, better medicine, and no waiting lists. That's because doctors and individuals and private companies (including insurance companies) control medicine, not the government. (Oh, I know it's far from perfect.) If you want health care, you have to PAY for it (unless you're destitute and need emergency care, and any hospital emergency room will help you for free). Rather than a sense of entitlement on the part of the people, they have an expectation that the money they pay to doctors and insurance will yield results, and it DOES. Furthermore, while many insurance programs set rate limits for doctors, doctors can choose which rate programs they are part of, and this doesn't stop them from feeling that hard work will yield a greater reward (which is vitally important).
The basic reason why medicine in the US is so much better is because it's based on CAPITALISM. Capitalism thrives because it capitalizes, as it were, on human greed (which is pervasive). If working harder gets you more, you'll work harder and do a better job.
(Note that insurance companies are a form of VOLUNTARY socialism which gets rid of the moral issues associated with socialism. You can choose to abstain and still be alright. My primary doctor has 1/3 of his patients without insurance and he has special rates for them which are affordable. It's like private charities and scholarships which are all voluntary. This gives people MORE choice which is a GOOD thing.)
[As a side note, I would love to be a Libertarian, were it not for the fact that none of the candidates would lift a finger, militarily, to defend the country unless a foreign invasion were already underway. I would love to be a Republican were it not for the bigotry and the whole "morality police" thing. I would love to be a Democrat were it not for the fact that they're as wimpy militarily as the Libertarians, and they want to tax away all of my money and give it to people who refuse to work. I don't know anything about the Green party.]
Sorry about the inflamatory title. It's good for karma whoring. :)
Anyhow, I suppose it's true that people and society are still biased against women. Personally, I find gender-based discrimination very difficult to understand. What's ironic about that is that, until it was pointed out to me by a friend, I never realized that the family I grew up with had this kind of slant. It never occurred to me to discriminate based on sex. I mean, I'd heard of it, but I never saw any reason to do it.
There are things that men and women are inherently better at than each other ON AVERAGE. That is, the average man is better at visual/spatial reasoning, and the average woman is better is linguistic/auditory reasoning. But on the other hand, an above-average woman will likely beat the average man at both. Individuals often lie outside of the statistical averages.
This whole concept of pre-judging makes no sense to me. Built-in talent helps, but I've seen time and time again a hard-working average person beat a lazy above-average person. So why can't a woman with determination compete well with men who assume that things should be just handed to them? In fact, she can and often would wipe the floor with them were it not for stupid social-political barriers that say that women, universally, aren't up to the task.
One friend of mine once pointed out that "equal opportunity" does not mean "equal achievement". As I see it, if you're not smart or hard-working enough to achieve something, then tough shit. You shouldn't get special consideration or leniency for being rich, poor, male, female, black, white, gay, or straight.
Here's the "my ass" part: Maybe MIT has been biased. Maybe not. But just maybe there hasn't until now been a woman who was up to the job. Now there is. The fact that she's a woman has nothing to do with her qualifications for the job. Yes, I agree that the obstacles are there. Yes, I agree that she probably had to work much harder than others who would have vied for the position. Should I be sad that I had to work my way through college, rather than get minority scholarships (which, BTW, are fine by me as long as they are from private institutions)?
There is one benefit to me, as a guy, to having this stupid gender bias while it lasts. See, I like intelligent people. If a guy gets into a position of power, it tells me nothing. If a woman gets into a position of power, I can pretty much assume that she's got her shit together and that I can easily have an intelligent conversation with her. This isn't 100% perfect, but it's a strong statistical trend.
Also, I think these women, being intuitive, quickly recognize that I naively lack this gender bias and warm up to me almost instantly. The reason I mention this is because, far too often, I see guys threatened by strong women and find themselves compelled to refer to them as "bitches". Well, I've met a few bitches, but they were just stupid people (both men and women). These strong women, on the other hand, are typically a joy for me to work with.
With all this crap going on about companies, like SCO and others, claiming rights to something that they don't have rights to, it should be a criminal offense to threaten someone over violation of or otherwise claiming to have a copyright or patent that you don't actually have rights to.
The original three movies were great. I would watch them over and over again. Then episodes 1 and 2 came out and it ruined the whole thing for me. The new movies were so bad that they tained the whole Star Wars experience for me, and now I can't stand to watch even the old ones.
So, what's Lucas up to this time? It's hard to ruin it any more than he already has!
Sorry about the yelling in the title, but anyone who suggests relicensing the Linux kernel is forgetting that the kernel is not written by one person. It's written by thousands of people, each of whom would have to relicense their code under BSD. Some of those people are dead. Some of them are unknown. Some of them would refuse to relicense. Some of them release under licenses which are not GPL but which state that they can be relicensed under GPL. The Linux kernel code may be technically a unified whole (to some extent or other), but LEGALLY, it is a collection of numerous pieces which all must be considered separately.
I think the BSD license if just fine. That isn't the issue. The issue is that in order to relicense the kernel under BSD, so much code which could not be relicensed would have to be ripped out that you would not have a kernel left.
So, while I can't say whether or not, generally speaking, the suggestion to switch licenses is an unwise one, I can definately say that it's a totally ignorant suggestion. Saying "relicense linux" is like saying "delete linux".
Unfortunately, thin clients aren't really good for situations where you need to use actual Microsoft Office. Sure, there are some Windows thin clients, but they suck, and they tend to be best for specialized applications. Plus, even though Linux thin clients have a bit more freedom (with X11 being network transparent), they're also really not great for GENERAL PURPOSE use.
One thing you could do is set up a bunch of Linux thin clients for WEB USE ONLY with Mozilla. This way, you have a bunch of simple computers that you don't need to reboot very often but which are special purpose.
As for the computers where people must use Microsoft Office and IE, etc., you're probably best off sticking with a major brand of PC manufacturer where you can get a warranty and efficient support. Call Dell and tell them that you want them to fix their damn computers, and you're not going to put up with any excuses about viruses being out of their control.
Set up a contractual arrangement with a PC supplier that says that if you are not satisfied that you can return all of the computers for a full refund. So, when your Dell computers start flaking out on you, you call Dell to fix them. If they cannot make them reliable, get your refund and switch to another PC supplier, until you find one who will bundle the appropriate combination of security tools, make their hardware reliable, and lock things down so that stupid users and hackers can't break your computers. Part of your contract should be to require a full report on every failure. If the same failures keep happening, return the computers for a refund. If too many failures happen, return for a refund. Don't go soft.
The truth of the matter is that even though Windows sucks, it's VERY possible to keep it stable and secure. You just need an administrator who knows what s/he's doing and some way to prevent users from doing stupid things. Uneducated users are the number one threat to Windows security. People do some really bone-headed things with their PC's, and THAT is why they get infected with viruses (most of the time).
What might be a good idea is to write up a set of requirements (virus protection, minimum uptimes, etc.) and submit them to major PC suppliers.
Buy from whomever will meet your needs. You don't have time to be putting up with any bullshit. You need computers that WORK that you don't have to worry about. Let them know that if they can't come through, they're history. Windows computers are run reliably all over the place, so there's no reason why you can't have that too.
I know it's hard to believe. I'm not sure I still believe it'll happen. But we know that the only way for Microsoft to compete now is to ACTUALLY innovate, something they haven't done in a LONG TIME... since the early 80's in fact. They're very rusty. Looks like some parts of Microsoft are starting to try to scrape off some of the rust.
:)
Microsoft may be evil, but they're the industry leader, and this is good for everyone.
Of course, I'm never going to like two legacy aspects of Windows filesystem: drive letters and backslashes.
Look, when it comes to regular stuff like POS terminals and mall kiosks, Windows is just fine. Even medical imaging systems. Any time you can reboot the damn thing when it screws up, no problem. I mean, it's probably less cost-effective than Windows in volume, but whatever.
But when lives are on the line, it's just STUPID to be running Windows. Air Traffic Control, computers that are used during surgery, etc. Anyone using Windows should just be SHOT. How would you like it for Windows to crash while you're in the middle of a LASIK procedure or a tripple bypass or while you're trying to land at an airport?
While Windows has gotten ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more stable since the days of reboot-every-day-win98, Windows XP is still an unstable beast. While Linux web servers have uptimes of months, Windows Server 2003 web servers still have daily automatic reboots! You just can't rely on Windows to be robust over long periods of time. The whole virus situation just makes it 100 times worse. So, really, it's just stupid to be using Windows when someone can be injured or killed.
Sorry for the flamebait, but I don't trust my life in Bill Gates' hands. Sorry.
Let's think about it. Kirk from the time of Enterprise is either not born yet or rather young. Shatner is in his 60's or 70's or something. He's old. So, if Shatner, the old guy, is to appear as Kirk on Enterprise, either Kirk has to travel back in time from the point when he's either admiral the second time or ambassador or something, or Archer's got to travel forward in time, which has been done to death.
The only reason I want to watch is to find out if they can manage some really clever way to make it not suck.
Probably one among many, but at work, we get these IBM notebooks with the Centrino (Banias) processors, and they get 7 to 8 hours, and they're nice and fast too.