Not for information's sake. The lines are very blurry and, for example, I hope that for-profit slashdot is correctly using a.com.
Frankly, I can't tell why we're still using TLD's. I mean, I can understand the existence of country codes, and sure you could reserve one- or two-character domains, but why go to politics.slashdot.org when you could just go to "http://politics.slashdot"? Alot of the confusion seems to be designed to push selling more redundant domain names-- it isn't like I'll be buying pepsi.net anytime soon, and I don't think pepsi is offering network access. (NOTE I didn't actually check this.)
Maybe that's the next step in the bill - "in order to enforce this bill, we must require that all communications be unencrypted." Kind of a scary thought, no?
I think that's very unlikely - it would mean the death of internet banking, shopping, etc. There's no way the banks would accept liability for confidential data being sent unencrypted.
There's another possibility. You could limit the use of public networks to a manageable number of allowed applications, then set up tiered pricing and QoS rules for each. Any unauthorized traffic would be against the TOS of the network and would be blocked, perhaps even prosecuted as unauthorized access.
If a new application is written, it could go through a QA process with the carriers, who would then certify the application as being permitted on the network and set up appropriate pricing / QoS rules (which would be negotiated). Unregulated protocols would still be permissible-- they just wouldn't be able to communicate upstream on the main Internet.
Sound scary? That was basically the de-facto situation in wireless wide area networks. I worked a few years ago with some BREW developers, who found that every bug fix required a whole new QA review (which took months) before being deployable. The gatekeepers had every reason to hold something up, and no incentive to move something forward. And if the product was going to be rolled out to fewer than ten thousand handsets, they didn't want to hear from you. The other carriers weren't as bad (and true IP coverage has made things infinitely easier since then) but not by much. Mobitex, for example, was a nightmare to get something approved on. Don't think it couldn't happen on the internet-- it certainly can.
In a free market, of course, this wouldn't be allowed to come about (note that the highly competitive carriers in wireless didn't go with this model in the long term). But with high barriers to entry on wired backbones, it isn't like some new provider will pop up out of nowhere if AT&T decides that that's how their network will run. It's in the carriers' interest to become the OPEC of network access.
Look at my previous posts. I'm normally a fan of our Congress's pro-market policies. But it appears that they dropped the ball here because they either don't realize where this is going or are trusting the Phone Company far more than someone who has actually worked with them would.
Also, you sneak a few Combat Controllers in covertly to set up an ad-hoc airstrip. You can use that airstrip to stage an attack in the area. Or even to land a humanitarian relief force in the middle of an unstable region.
Another idea is that of force multiplication. That's a fancy word for sending in elite troops trained in diplomacy, languages, culture and organization. You drop a small team of such troops in, they make contact with the locals who might be friendly to us (either an oppressed popular movement or a disgruntled/oppressed minority) and organize, train and equip them into an effective partisan movement. The Green Berets are specifically trained for exactly this mission.
Or you can drop a pair of guys and some communications gear as spies and scouts.
In a tough air war, a couple guys trained in rescue operations can help extract defectors, friendly agents, downed airmen, etc. Even in hostile territory, even with hostile air cover.
Basically, there are all kinds of good reasons to be able to get a dozen or less people into an area without anyone knowing. Until recently, your choice was basically helicopters or parachutes. Either way, you have to get the vehicle right on top of the drop zone (more or less) to make this work. If this thing works out, you can drop the troops a couple hundred miles away (outside their air defense range, or at least further out than they'd prefer) and they'll glide stealthily to where they need to be. Even if the transport is spotted, the fact that the troops could have glided in any direction greatly increases the search area.
The other thing is indeed if bloggers are journalists/press. Along with it come privileges and responsibility. I for one doubt the responsibility if you refer to the 'blogosphere'. The privilege of not disclosing sources is therefore fairly questionable and I think it is good if a court rules on that. However this turns out: I think the court should definitely explain this and how to put the responsibility onto bloggers to have them use press privileges - and what makes them fail the criteria and make them fall back on being just "free speech", for which you can not claim everything beyond personal views (and they should appear as such).
I agree with your first point about NDA's and confidentiality. There's no "right to leak".
On your second point, though, I can't really agree. First, what "responsibilities" do journalists have that other citizens don't? In a theoretical sense, my understanding is that the long list of rules that make up journalistic ethics are derived from case law that applies to everyone-- not just journalists.
On a practical level, things are also pretty clear. I've had occassion to deal with the press on an on-and-off basis, and my experience with reporters is not terribly good. They're eager to trot out social responsibility and journalistic ethics when they feel like they're on the defensive, but in practice it often just isn't there.
Many simply don't bother to research the issues they write about. It's much easier to reprint something out of a press release than it is to research and compose something of their own (which of course is why companies and lobbyists go to the trouble of writing press releases in the first place). Some will find independent analyst interviews and turn them into the entire article as if it had multiple sources. I've dealt with some who spend a whole interview fishing for the one quote they need to finish their pre-written article. Very commonly, they learned everything they know about an issue (especially a technical one) from another article written by someone equally uninformed who got there first. And don't think they need to know more.
The kind of journalist I'm used to is arrogant, lazy and ill-informed. There are people who are quite the opposite, and I've seen those types, too. But they always stand out because they're the exception, and because you can see the pressure to not do the right thing that they have to resist. I deeply respect people who work under those constraints-- one woman in particular comes to mind, who works at a small local daily. I can't say I always enjoy the results, but I deeply respect the integrity that she puts into it.
The first amendment wasn't written to protect a narrow class of journalistic brahmins while leaving the rest of us in the cold. It's designed to defend the rights of pampleteers, rabble-rousers, ordinary citizens, *and* journalists. How do you define "journalist"? By which corporation (if any) they work for? By whether or not they have a journalism degree (many of the best don't have one)? By the content of what they say? By membership in an exclusive professional club?
I can't think of any good reason to grant special priviledges to the press, and can think of several reasons why it's a terrible idea.
Everyone appears to be using this to vent their outrage at the wiretapping issue. Getting back to the point of the original article, however, I'm not sure why people are against the investigation.
I guess that it isn't as widely known as I thought, but US companies (and individuals acting alone within those companies) have cooperated with US intelligence in the past. Investigating to see if Chinese citizens have behaved similarly with their government in similar situations seems perfectly logical to me.
I mean, seriously, what's the argument against it? That so many components are already made in china and a review is long overdue? That the US intelligence agencies have tapped international calls made by Americans? None of the counterarguments seem to have anything to do with the question.
If doubling solar would only narrowly reduce emissions... fossil fuels are such a tremendous part of most nations' energy budgets that doubling anything else will not make a major difference. Ultimately, the power has to come from somewhere. As you point out, electric cars don't actually fix anything, they just redirect the problem to a centralized power plant. Those plants can be very efficient, but they're still burning fossil fuels, and so you might save in some emissions, but not CO2.
Nuclear is the best shot right now, because competing technologies are either site-specific, limited in their applications, or have their own environmental issues. Even "clean" technologies like geothermal and hydroelectric have strong environmental reprecussions. Fundamentally, you're re-channeling large amounts of energy, so you're bound to have unintented consequences.
The main obstacles in the US to nuclear expansion is political and legal. I can't speak for Europe, but the green movement here is more against technology and economic growth than pro- anything, a legacy of its history and the personalities that shaped the movement. Attempts to create a more positive environmentalism like Bruce Sterling's Viridian movement are still in their infancy. For now, build a nuclear reactor and expect a long and expensive legal struggle, followed by a political effort to kill the project by claiming that the court costs are making it "prohibitively expensive".
Look at the SDC's claims about nuclear power and I'm seeing a whiff of the same attitude-- deciding that they're against it, then trying to backfill reasons for the opposition.
Waste storage is a legitimate concern, but in the US the technical problem is largely solved. The political issue is, of course, still up in the air.
In the US, at least, the economics are fine if you don't count the costs of political and legal obstruction.
I'd have to read the report to see what their concern is with regard to distribution. Honestly, it isn't really something important enough to be worth sticking with oil/coal/natural gas, is it?
I'm not sure how it follows that energy efficiency will be discouraged by nuclear. Even if nuclear plants are more expensive, as they claim, then energy prices will rise and encourage efficiency. If they aren't, then don't we have bigger worries?
Finally, their point that it becomes difficult to deny nuclear power to other countries if it is a viable energy solution is a viable and very important. I don't really have a good answer to it.
So basically, the only overriding concerns in the way of nuclear power as I see it are what to do with the waste and how to control the proliferation of nuclear technology. Definitely something to think about, but I don't see alternatives on the table. Because as much as they talk about "renewables" as an alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power, they're conflating a number of conflicting technologies. The really viable ones that stand a chance of becoming pervasive all involve burning something (ethanol, bio-diesel, etc). And that reduces CO2 emissions how?
There are really three lines of attack on global warming. Either reduce CO2 generation by reducing overall energy use through efficiency, or use regulation to force a reduction in overall energy demand, or replace combustion as the mechanism by which we produce the energy. The first is important but will produce only limited gains. The second will lead to economic decline and mass poverty-- in other words, the kind of society that has bigger worries than global warming. The third appears to be the best solution for the long haul.
LOL, the military isn't holding guns to reporters heads at CNN to republish this stuff. Reporters, in my experience, are usually lazy and prefer to repackage and reprint others' work to meet a deadline rather than do original research. That's why companies use BusinessWire and publish press releases-- they know that their stuff will get reprinted or paraphrased.
The military has a mission to achieve, and psyops (otherwise known as "winning hearts and minds") is a part of that. Journalists need to grow up and take responsiblity for their jobs. The military isn't unique in doing it, they're not even uncommon.
This isn't a government, organization, union or corporation in the world that doesn't conduct some kind of psyop. Or does the word "psyop" offend you? We could switch to "spin" or "marketing" or "media event" if people prefer.
As I've once or twice mentioned here, I used to be a staffer in a Congressional office. About seven years ago, I made a concerted effort to get my Member to do a Slashdot interview. It didn't pan out, but I can assure you of two things: first, that yes it probably would have been written by a staffer. And two, that the Member in question would have read it, deeply annotated and editted it, and then sent it back to be written, re-written and written once more before sending it back. That's just how it works: they have to respond in writing to thousands of requests from constituents, the media, government agencies, etc. Not to mention their colleages.
So you get your staffers to write stuff, which you then revise and approve. How much oversight goes into one of these letters? Well, mine reviewed a few thousand documents every evening, then gave them back in the morning. Each was heavily marked up with his Red Pen of Death, so I'm pretty sure that he read them all. Others, I know, don't. Some look at only the "important" correspondence, or spot-check, or more heavily use form letters (though we used those too). Ultimately, even a great representative has thousands of letters to write every day. You have to be realistic about what they can do.
As for a blog, you have to be realistic about what makes a good blog. Lots of good links (which means copious web browsing), and lots of good new content. No politician has time to generate all that and still attend to their duties. So of course they'd kick it over to their press secretaries-- that's what they're for.
If you don't believe me, check out Andrew Sullivan or Roger L. Simon or Winds of Change or any of our friends on the Advisory Board over at Pajamas Media. Their blogs are (or are nearly) full time occupations. A politician isn't purely a media figure. In fact, many of the best are guys you haven't heard of. Expecting them to drop everything to become full time bloggers is unreasonable, but most have known the influence of the blogs for some time now.
That's the point. I agree that direct-to-DVD wouldn't be bad at all. But Fox has to sell the rights first. That might be profitable for them, but I doubt if they'd want to do it. If it succeeds then they have to tell their superiors 1) why they snubbed the show in the first place and 2) why they sold the property so cheaply.
Joss has already gone on record saying that he won't work with Fox again. So I'm not sure what's left to say on the subject. But why are we surprised? I mean, the original Browncoats lost.
EU Galileo may be a strategic threat to your GPS, but it doesn't stop yours being a strategic threat to the EU.
Absolutely. That's exactly my point. This isn't a case of a marriage gone bad, it's responsible nations covering their vulnerabilities and advancing their capabilities.
We don't have to increase our power either, we're already larger than the USA and Russia combined. Have a look at http://www.gallup-europe.be/release/GE040607releas e.pdf and Wikipedia for the rest. 450million vs 300million population, and a 12.8trillion economy compared to 12.3. As much as I disagree with a lot of the things the EU stands for, I do think it helps keep the USA at bay.
Here I'd disagree. Power is multidimensional and tough to measure directly. But there are a couple broad categories you could use:
Economic: Two numbers pretty much rule this equation: GDP and per-capita GDP. In GDP, the US is behind by a bit (Wikipedia puts the EU's number a bit below your estimate, but either way it's close). Per-capita, however, the roles reverse, and the US is less than double the EU's. In both cases, EU enlargement is a major factor.
Demographic: Raw population. The EU beats the US hands-down. However, India and China in turn beat both of us. As NATO commanders used to say about Russia, quantity has a quality all its own.
Military: Here the US triumphs. Other world militaries can put up a fierce fight, and might even win in a regional conflict. However, no military comes even close to the US in term of raw power, and projectable power. Of course, the existence of nuclear weapons limit the stakes in such a contest, but in this area, too, the US has a massive nuclear deterrent. In comparison, the EU has very little military capability. France's nuclear aircraft carrier has barely left port due to reliability problems. Many European forces are still saddled by conscription, lowering their overall quality. Finally, the EU lacks the political will to use force. The US still has large numbers of troops stationed in Europe. The EU does not occupy the US, unless you count Quebec as a French occupation of rightful US territory.:)
Political: The EU has significant political power, perhaps less than the United State's, but is a formidable competitor. Mostly, the limiting factor on the EU's influence is still their own internal structure more than outside competition. The Franco-German axis tends to dominate EU affairs, while the British lead a dissenting group, backed by new-entrants from eastern Europe. This internal conflict (over the common agriculture policy, the EU budget, and of course foreign policy) saps the EU's power. This didn't stop them from successfully opposing explicit UN sanction of the war in Iraq.
Culture: Culturally, the EU is very powerful. I'm not up on the specifics, so I'll leave it at that. Movies, music, literature, academic leadership-- all these are very strong.
Technology: This is a mixed bag. The US is ahead in aerospace (though the EU member countries are spending like mad to remedy that). We're also ahead in software (though here again the EU is making a strong showing). In hardware, I'd say that they're ahead, but we're both behind the Asian tigers. In biotech, I have no idea-- certainly the EU free-rides on many US biotech advances, but I don't know if that's a procedural, economic or technical imbalance. I know very little about materials science.
Resources: The US is the all-time agriculture champion. Much of the EU's trade policy is dedicated to defending their farmers from cheaper, higher quality US imports. The EU has stronger environmental protections, but many former Soviet bloc countries provide it with greater environmental disasters to clean up, as well. Both countries are
OK let me start by saying that the two parents are being a bit absolutist and silly. YES, an EU-controlled GPS rival is a strategic threat to the US. This doesn't mean that we need to jam it or destroy it. French nuclear weapons are a strategic threat as well, but we don't propose to destroy them, either. We're the strongest power, but not the only power, and the EU (quite rightly) is working to increase their power relative to ours.
Similarly, this isn't some ham-handed reaction to the current administration. European attempts to counter and triangulate against American power date back to, well, the beginnings of American power. Even during the Cold War, European interests occassionally clashed with American interests. France's withdrawal from the NATO command structure in 1966, the Suez crisis, German attempts at appeasement vs the USSR, the "European Approach" to terrorism pre-9/11, conflicts over flyover rights during the Libyan attack, approaches to mid-east peace.... any of these sound familiar? In the 80's, American and Italian soldiers had an armed standoff on a NATO base. We stuck together and papered over our differences because of a larger enemy, but things haven't always been roses.
Post-Cold War, things have changed a bit. In the past, a larger common enemy (the USSR) kept the US and EU mostly at common purposes. Lacking that, ties began to fray. The Clinton Administration didn't initiate any major new foreign policy changes other than good relations for their own sake (for which the EU nations extracted diplomatic and trade concessions). Even then, however, a long-term goal of the franco-german alliance was to assemble a counterbalance to the US.
What's developing isn't emnity; it's just the kind of wary maneuvering that friendly nations normally practice. So of course the EU is rolling their own GPS system. And of course we'll invent countermeasures. This isn't because we hate them, or they hate us, or either of us expects to ever fight. This is the normal hedging of bets and accretion of power that nations practice. The structural issues of power are far more important than disputes of the moment.
Substitute "powerful tourists" for rich ones and you have our program as it stands. The current incarnation of NASA is a large, bureaucratic publicity stunt.
I say this as a NASA enthusiast who has watched the agency grind away my hopes and dreams. I used the be a free-marketer in every area but this one. Really, my concern was that there was too much capital investment required to achieve risky profits after a very long runway. I felt that coerced funding from the government was the only way to build the necessary infrastructure. Sure, they're the same people who brought us the Department of Motor Vehicles, but surely their engineers are talented enough to make it work anyway, right?
After watching NASA's long meandering path in the past thirty years, I understand now that it just isn't going to happen. Organizationally, management has an enormous power to screw things up (real Feinman's essay after the Challenger disaster). NASA's real missions are threefold:
produce lots of publicity
produce sources of income for aerospace engineers.
produce some science
Yes, that's in order of importance. The idea is that we want space-capable organizational infrastructure and people, but we don't want to actually invest in the high orbit infrastructure we need to get a real foothold out there.
Accomplishing that goal will require money, lots of low-profile industrial missions, and blood. The American public could shell out the money, conceivably, but they can't spend it efficiently; you'll lose 90% of the investment to bureacracy and inefficiency. Low profile missions going on forever would tempt the snooze factor; the public (and the political leadership) can't stick to one policy for the years required, especially when there's no built-in constituency hounding them for it. As elsewhere, there's always a strong urge to simply quit and run home, no matter the consequences. Finally, and most importantly, the public can't stand lost life, something that is simply unavoidable in a risky new field like space. Could such a program survive being placed on hold for 2 years every time someone dies? In a really big project, lots of accidents will happen, and lots of people will probably die.
I've worked in both industry and in government. So I think I'm on pretty solid ground saying that private investment may not work, and I'm fairly certain that space tourism is a bubble that will pop and leave us all disillusioned about the private sector for a few years. But the future is with them, and the X-Prize contestants. If you sit around waiting for the government to accomplish this, you'll never see it in your lifetime. The private sector might not succeed, but the government certainly will not.
Freud isn't the last word in psychology any more than Newton was the last word in physics. His work was pioneering and insightful but the world has moved on since then, and some of his original research was flawed.
As far as I'm concerned, this advance isn't anything near what the news entry makes it out to be. Just because it can recognize itself in a mirror doesn't mean it's self-aware. We can't even define consciousness, let alone measure it. Well, unless you use an arbitrary numerical value from 3-18, with 10 as normal human average.
Agreed, you can't let every half-wit thesauruspants get 60 pages on his gerbil collection just because he thinks that they're historically notable.
I've been skeptical of wikis in general and wikipedia in particular since wikis first appeared. A previous company I worked at had a wiki; the QA manager argued that anyone smart enough to edit one wouldn't be malicious (at the time, wikis were new enough that only IT geeks had heard of them). I argued that it was an awful idea, that intellect and morality are orthogonal to one another, and that No Good Could Come of This. Three months and one particularly vicious employee later, I was proved correct.
After many years, I've mellowed a bit. With good user controls and tracking (ie no anonymous edits, everything public and in the open), and if it's kept within a community (like a business, major school or community group) then normal social norms will make a wiki highly productive and useful. We're even implementing one at my new job.
But the OP, for all his linguistic florishes, is correct about another thing: this is why we use a representative democracy. The founding fathers avoided ballot initiatives, built swathes of government that were proudly NOT directly elected, and otherwise tried to put a brake on the perils of mob rule.
Of course, the advent of TV pretty much killed all that. As CS Lewis points out, people aren't clear when they talk about democratic behavior whether they mean the kind of behavior that democracies encourage, or the kind of behavior that keeps a democracy going. The two aren't the same.
In both ancient Greece (whose democracy didn't last as long as ours has) things became disorganized and they fell to conquest. In Rome, they were subjected to endless slave revolts, until finally a popular military coup put a series of dictators in power. It turned out that the people wanted their vote, but not as much as they wanted generous social services and lots of bloody entertainment.
I like Wikipedia. I'm an occassional contributor. If you accept its limitations, then it's a great resource. But if it also teaches you a little about the perils of democracy, then so much the better.
Apple's holding back the music industry by resisting song-specific pricing, keeping prices low, and promoting small independent labels at the expense of marketing driven hit machines.
In other words, if by "holding back the music business" you mean improving customer satisfaction, increasing efficency and reshaping the industry, then yeah that's exactly what they're doing. In the process, they're making crazy profits, opening new markets for themselves, and marginalizing the former market champions.
A big part of the issue is that documentation and user interfaces largely reflect how the software was made, rather than how it is intended to be used.
You know, I really had my hopes up there for a second.
But then I read your post, and of course you're absolutely right. I remember how the shuttle people in NASA did everything they could to kill Delta Clipper. No doubt this will end up the same.
I second the notion. If your company chose to honor your resignation early, then that's their business.
We live in a litigous society. Some companies have different policies than others, but as someone who has laid people off and been laid off myself, I can say that there are reasons (sometimes even good ones) that people get treated like this. At a company with sensitive enough data or with enough legal exposure, offending people who are leaving anyway is worth it against a.5% risk of something happening. Sometimes a previous employee did do something, and your HR or CIO person learned a hard lesson. Sometimes, the way you phrase your resignation letter leads people to think that you're vengeful or disgruntled (even if you didn't mean it that way).
Usually, this is a silly over-reaction, of course. In your position, I'd just shrug, let the CIO know that if he needs anything during the transition period you'd be happy to help in the knowledge transfer, and politely leave.
A good resignation usually comes from verbal notice to your supervisor, followed by a nice resignation letter. Any complaints about the company or its policies or managers don't belong in such a letter (you are leaving anyway, after all). You can mention them verbally later (preferrably during your last week informally to your manager, or during an exit interview). During those two weeks, you ought to be a consummate professional, helping with the transition and doing other things to ensure that you can go back to these people for a recommendation later on some future job.
Then you leave. If the place sucked, then this is the best part.
The problem is that some people stick around in a bad situation out of some sense of misguided loyalty. Loyalty is a good trait, and I value it in the people I work with. When there's a crisis (I mean a real one, not the daily "crises" that aren't really make-or-break), someone who does way more than they're paid for really impresses me.
But when loyalty means staying in a job you hate, or working with people who are taking advantage of you, then the right answer is a polite, professional and prompt resignation. Sticking through tough times is one thing, letting yourself get walked all over is another. A fast exit in the latter situation is the best way to avoid bitterness.
And yet... these people that nobody else "gives a shit" about are apparently getting front-row treatment. Interesting way to be ignored.
Obviously someone cares... look at Rathergate and the Dan Rather fiasco. Or Matt Drudge. Or James Lileks.
Or.... to get back into the tech field, the way outlets like Slashdot and Ars Technica influence the market (that is, us). People read them, they think about what is written there. You may not agree, but they've bought the most valuable commodity in advertising: a little piece of your attention span.
They're writing this to a Governor. You don't write letters like that the same way you'd write to your Aunt Charlotte.
First, the letter is public. So no "hey how are ya" language. Instead, you're basically writing a persuasive essay masquerading as a letter.
Second, when the letter is received, it will be by a staffer who specializes in IT issues and IT policy. This staffer has probably spoken to the Government Relations (read: lobbyist) guy that at IBM that actually authored the letter. The two guys probably have spoken a great deal on the subject and already know all the arguments. They're just putting it in writing to garner support and document the reasons why OpenDocument is the correct approach. Also, a letter forces a response-- something that can help IBM move things forward.
By the way, MS certainly has a similar Govt Relations guy in there as well. He's writing letters for Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer's signature as well.
Third, this is a IT decision last, a political decision second-to-last, and a public policy decision first. There are lots of implications that have nothing to do with the relative merits of MS Office and OpenOffice.org. Open standards are the obvious ones. But also the likelihood that MS would support OpenDocument if it really came to it. MS investment in Mass would be another one (IBM, too). The real news in this letter is that IBM is willing to take a public stand on this. The fact of the letter is more important than its content.
Anyway, you write these letters in a way to advance a public conversation. It's like a press release or a "major public address" at a graduation or something. It's intended to take a dispute public and make a declaration about your organization's thoughts.
The mechanics of lobbying is a bit of a mystery to most people. This certainly is one part of it. It's worth understanding some of the basics of how it happens.
Uh, no. You haven't actually described any strategic benefits whatsoever, just illustrated the pass-the-buck structure of marketing; it's all about image. Did your company know what the actual strategic benefit of advertising was?
Actually, I thought I explained rather well what the advantages proved to be for us. You dismiss "image" but the fact is that prior to our ad campaign customers expressed skepticism about our position in the market and financial viability. After the ads, we were recognized and it wasn't an issue anymore. The ads gave people a sense that we were more than an office, a demo, and some guys in suits. In other products' cases (not this particular one though) it had the other effect I described-- shortening the sales cycle and faster qualification (and self-qualification) of sales leads. That reduces cost of sale, which is a budget line item.
YMMV, of course, and I specifically did say that the benefit is fuzzy, difficult to measure and not applicable in all cases. But what I'm getting at is that it had a measureable effect in our case, so you can't simply dismiss it just because it's hard to measure.
Excellent (as opposed to adequate) customer service is also expensive, and its effects are also hard to measure. Going from 99% to 99.9% customer satisfaction usually costs more than the profit you would have gotten from that.9% you would have disappointed. But your reputation (intangible image) for quality wins more sales than that. Yes, it's hard to measure, yes it's hard to monetize, but there's a reason so many companies strive to have it.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do we have TLD's at all?
.com.
Not for information's sake. The lines are very blurry and, for example, I hope that for-profit slashdot is correctly using a
Frankly, I can't tell why we're still using TLD's. I mean, I can understand the existence of country codes, and sure you could reserve one- or two-character domains, but why go to politics.slashdot.org when you could just go to "http://politics.slashdot"? Alot of the confusion seems to be designed to push selling more redundant domain names-- it isn't like I'll be buying pepsi.net anytime soon, and I don't think pepsi is offering network access. (NOTE I didn't actually check this.)
There's another possibility. You could limit the use of public networks to a manageable number of allowed applications, then set up tiered pricing and QoS rules for each. Any unauthorized traffic would be against the TOS of the network and would be blocked, perhaps even prosecuted as unauthorized access.
If a new application is written, it could go through a QA process with the carriers, who would then certify the application as being permitted on the network and set up appropriate pricing / QoS rules (which would be negotiated). Unregulated protocols would still be permissible-- they just wouldn't be able to communicate upstream on the main Internet.
Sound scary? That was basically the de-facto situation in wireless wide area networks. I worked a few years ago with some BREW developers, who found that every bug fix required a whole new QA review (which took months) before being deployable. The gatekeepers had every reason to hold something up, and no incentive to move something forward. And if the product was going to be rolled out to fewer than ten thousand handsets, they didn't want to hear from you. The other carriers weren't as bad (and true IP coverage has made things infinitely easier since then) but not by much. Mobitex, for example, was a nightmare to get something approved on. Don't think it couldn't happen on the internet-- it certainly can.
In a free market, of course, this wouldn't be allowed to come about (note that the highly competitive carriers in wireless didn't go with this model in the long term). But with high barriers to entry on wired backbones, it isn't like some new provider will pop up out of nowhere if AT&T decides that that's how their network will run. It's in the carriers' interest to become the OPEC of network access.
Look at my previous posts. I'm normally a fan of our Congress's pro-market policies. But it appears that they dropped the ball here because they either don't realize where this is going or are trusting the Phone Company far more than someone who has actually worked with them would.
Also, you sneak a few Combat Controllers in covertly to set up an ad-hoc airstrip. You can use that airstrip to stage an attack in the area. Or even to land a humanitarian relief force in the middle of an unstable region.
Another idea is that of force multiplication. That's a fancy word for sending in elite troops trained in diplomacy, languages, culture and organization. You drop a small team of such troops in, they make contact with the locals who might be friendly to us (either an oppressed popular movement or a disgruntled/oppressed minority) and organize, train and equip them into an effective partisan movement. The Green Berets are specifically trained for exactly this mission.
Or you can drop a pair of guys and some communications gear as spies and scouts.
In a tough air war, a couple guys trained in rescue operations can help extract defectors, friendly agents, downed airmen, etc. Even in hostile territory, even with hostile air cover.
Basically, there are all kinds of good reasons to be able to get a dozen or less people into an area without anyone knowing. Until recently, your choice was basically helicopters or parachutes. Either way, you have to get the vehicle right on top of the drop zone (more or less) to make this work. If this thing works out, you can drop the troops a couple hundred miles away (outside their air defense range, or at least further out than they'd prefer) and they'll glide stealthily to where they need to be. Even if the transport is spotted, the fact that the troops could have glided in any direction greatly increases the search area.
The other thing is indeed if bloggers are journalists/press. Along with it come privileges and responsibility. I for one doubt the responsibility if you refer to the 'blogosphere'. The privilege of not disclosing sources is therefore fairly questionable and I think it is good if a court rules on that. However this turns out: I think the court should definitely explain this and how to put the responsibility onto bloggers to have them use press privileges - and what makes them fail the criteria and make them fall back on being just "free speech", for which you can not claim everything beyond personal views (and they should appear as such).
I agree with your first point about NDA's and confidentiality. There's no "right to leak".
On your second point, though, I can't really agree. First, what "responsibilities" do journalists have that other citizens don't? In a theoretical sense, my understanding is that the long list of rules that make up journalistic ethics are derived from case law that applies to everyone-- not just journalists.
On a practical level, things are also pretty clear. I've had occassion to deal with the press on an on-and-off basis, and my experience with reporters is not terribly good. They're eager to trot out social responsibility and journalistic ethics when they feel like they're on the defensive, but in practice it often just isn't there.
Many simply don't bother to research the issues they write about. It's much easier to reprint something out of a press release than it is to research and compose something of their own (which of course is why companies and lobbyists go to the trouble of writing press releases in the first place). Some will find independent analyst interviews and turn them into the entire article as if it had multiple sources. I've dealt with some who spend a whole interview fishing for the one quote they need to finish their pre-written article. Very commonly, they learned everything they know about an issue (especially a technical one) from another article written by someone equally uninformed who got there first. And don't think they need to know more.
The kind of journalist I'm used to is arrogant, lazy and ill-informed. There are people who are quite the opposite, and I've seen those types, too. But they always stand out because they're the exception, and because you can see the pressure to not do the right thing that they have to resist. I deeply respect people who work under those constraints-- one woman in particular comes to mind, who works at a small local daily. I can't say I always enjoy the results, but I deeply respect the integrity that she puts into it.
The first amendment wasn't written to protect a narrow class of journalistic brahmins while leaving the rest of us in the cold. It's designed to defend the rights of pampleteers, rabble-rousers, ordinary citizens, *and* journalists. How do you define "journalist"? By which corporation (if any) they work for? By whether or not they have a journalism degree (many of the best don't have one)? By the content of what they say? By membership in an exclusive professional club?
I can't think of any good reason to grant special priviledges to the press, and can think of several reasons why it's a terrible idea.
Everyone appears to be using this to vent their outrage at the wiretapping issue. Getting back to the point of the original article, however, I'm not sure why people are against the investigation.
I guess that it isn't as widely known as I thought, but US companies (and individuals acting alone within those companies) have cooperated with US intelligence in the past. Investigating to see if Chinese citizens have behaved similarly with their government in similar situations seems perfectly logical to me.
I mean, seriously, what's the argument against it? That so many components are already made in china and a review is long overdue? That the US intelligence agencies have tapped international calls made by Americans? None of the counterarguments seem to have anything to do with the question.
Turn it bright enough and watch it long enough and you soon won't need it at all-- your fish will soon start glowing of their own accord.
Nuclear is the best shot right now, because competing technologies are either site-specific, limited in their applications, or have their own environmental issues. Even "clean" technologies like geothermal and hydroelectric have strong environmental reprecussions. Fundamentally, you're re-channeling large amounts of energy, so you're bound to have unintented consequences.
The main obstacles in the US to nuclear expansion is political and legal. I can't speak for Europe, but the green movement here is more against technology and economic growth than pro- anything, a legacy of its history and the personalities that shaped the movement. Attempts to create a more positive environmentalism like Bruce Sterling's Viridian movement are still in their infancy. For now, build a nuclear reactor and expect a long and expensive legal struggle, followed by a political effort to kill the project by claiming that the court costs are making it "prohibitively expensive".
Look at the SDC's claims about nuclear power and I'm seeing a whiff of the same attitude-- deciding that they're against it, then trying to backfill reasons for the opposition.
So basically, the only overriding concerns in the way of nuclear power as I see it are what to do with the waste and how to control the proliferation of nuclear technology. Definitely something to think about, but I don't see alternatives on the table. Because as much as they talk about "renewables" as an alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power, they're conflating a number of conflicting technologies. The really viable ones that stand a chance of becoming pervasive all involve burning something (ethanol, bio-diesel, etc). And that reduces CO2 emissions how?
There are really three lines of attack on global warming. Either reduce CO2 generation by reducing overall energy use through efficiency, or use regulation to force a reduction in overall energy demand, or replace combustion as the mechanism by which we produce the energy. The first is important but will produce only limited gains. The second will lead to economic decline and mass poverty-- in other words, the kind of society that has bigger worries than global warming. The third appears to be the best solution for the long haul.
LOL, the military isn't holding guns to reporters heads at CNN to republish this stuff. Reporters, in my experience, are usually lazy and prefer to repackage and reprint others' work to meet a deadline rather than do original research. That's why companies use BusinessWire and publish press releases-- they know that their stuff will get reprinted or paraphrased.
The military has a mission to achieve, and psyops (otherwise known as "winning hearts and minds") is a part of that. Journalists need to grow up and take responsiblity for their jobs. The military isn't unique in doing it, they're not even uncommon.
This isn't a government, organization, union or corporation in the world that doesn't conduct some kind of psyop. Or does the word "psyop" offend you? We could switch to "spin" or "marketing" or "media event" if people prefer.
As I've once or twice mentioned here, I used to be a staffer in a Congressional office. About seven years ago, I made a concerted effort to get my Member to do a Slashdot interview. It didn't pan out, but I can assure you of two things: first, that yes it probably would have been written by a staffer. And two, that the Member in question would have read it, deeply annotated and editted it, and then sent it back to be written, re-written and written once more before sending it back. That's just how it works: they have to respond in writing to thousands of requests from constituents, the media, government agencies, etc. Not to mention their colleages.
So you get your staffers to write stuff, which you then revise and approve. How much oversight goes into one of these letters? Well, mine reviewed a few thousand documents every evening, then gave them back in the morning. Each was heavily marked up with his Red Pen of Death, so I'm pretty sure that he read them all. Others, I know, don't. Some look at only the "important" correspondence, or spot-check, or more heavily use form letters (though we used those too). Ultimately, even a great representative has thousands of letters to write every day. You have to be realistic about what they can do.
As for a blog, you have to be realistic about what makes a good blog. Lots of good links (which means copious web browsing), and lots of good new content. No politician has time to generate all that and still attend to their duties. So of course they'd kick it over to their press secretaries-- that's what they're for.
If you don't believe me, check out Andrew Sullivan or Roger L. Simon or Winds of Change or any of our friends on the Advisory Board over at Pajamas Media. Their blogs are (or are nearly) full time occupations. A politician isn't purely a media figure. In fact, many of the best are guys you haven't heard of. Expecting them to drop everything to become full time bloggers is unreasonable, but most have known the influence of the blogs for some time now.
That's the point. I agree that direct-to-DVD wouldn't be bad at all. But Fox has to sell the rights first. That might be profitable for them, but I doubt if they'd want to do it. If it succeeds then they have to tell their superiors 1) why they snubbed the show in the first place and 2) why they sold the property so cheaply.
Joss has already gone on record saying that he won't work with Fox again. So I'm not sure what's left to say on the subject. But why are we surprised? I mean, the original Browncoats lost.
Absolutely. That's exactly my point. This isn't a case of a marriage gone bad, it's responsible nations covering their vulnerabilities and advancing their capabilities.
Here I'd disagree. Power is multidimensional and tough to measure directly. But there are a couple broad categories you could use:
In comparison, the EU has very little military capability. France's nuclear aircraft carrier has barely left port due to reliability problems. Many European forces are still saddled by conscription, lowering their overall quality. Finally, the EU lacks the political will to use force. The US still has large numbers of troops stationed in Europe. The EU does not occupy the US, unless you count Quebec as a French occupation of rightful US territory.
OK let me start by saying that the two parents are being a bit absolutist and silly. YES, an EU-controlled GPS rival is a strategic threat to the US. This doesn't mean that we need to jam it or destroy it. French nuclear weapons are a strategic threat as well, but we don't propose to destroy them, either. We're the strongest power, but not the only power, and the EU (quite rightly) is working to increase their power relative to ours.
Similarly, this isn't some ham-handed reaction to the current administration. European attempts to counter and triangulate against American power date back to, well, the beginnings of American power. Even during the Cold War, European interests occassionally clashed with American interests. France's withdrawal from the NATO command structure in 1966, the Suez crisis, German attempts at appeasement vs the USSR, the "European Approach" to terrorism pre-9/11, conflicts over flyover rights during the Libyan attack, approaches to mid-east peace.... any of these sound familiar? In the 80's, American and Italian soldiers had an armed standoff on a NATO base. We stuck together and papered over our differences because of a larger enemy, but things haven't always been roses.
Post-Cold War, things have changed a bit. In the past, a larger common enemy (the USSR) kept the US and EU mostly at common purposes. Lacking that, ties began to fray. The Clinton Administration didn't initiate any major new foreign policy changes other than good relations for their own sake (for which the EU nations extracted diplomatic and trade concessions). Even then, however, a long-term goal of the franco-german alliance was to assemble a counterbalance to the US.
What's developing isn't emnity; it's just the kind of wary maneuvering that friendly nations normally practice. So of course the EU is rolling their own GPS system. And of course we'll invent countermeasures. This isn't because we hate them, or they hate us, or either of us expects to ever fight. This is the normal hedging of bets and accretion of power that nations practice. The structural issues of power are far more important than disputes of the moment.
Substitute "powerful tourists" for rich ones and you have our program as it stands. The current incarnation of NASA is a large, bureaucratic publicity stunt.
I say this as a NASA enthusiast who has watched the agency grind away my hopes and dreams. I used the be a free-marketer in every area but this one. Really, my concern was that there was too much capital investment required to achieve risky profits after a very long runway. I felt that coerced funding from the government was the only way to build the necessary infrastructure. Sure, they're the same people who brought us the Department of Motor Vehicles, but surely their engineers are talented enough to make it work anyway, right?
After watching NASA's long meandering path in the past thirty years, I understand now that it just isn't going to happen. Organizationally, management has an enormous power to screw things up (real Feinman's essay after the Challenger disaster). NASA's real missions are threefold:
Yes, that's in order of importance. The idea is that we want space-capable organizational infrastructure and people, but we don't want to actually invest in the high orbit infrastructure we need to get a real foothold out there.
Accomplishing that goal will require money, lots of low-profile industrial missions, and blood. The American public could shell out the money, conceivably, but they can't spend it efficiently; you'll lose 90% of the investment to bureacracy and inefficiency. Low profile missions going on forever would tempt the snooze factor; the public (and the political leadership) can't stick to one policy for the years required, especially when there's no built-in constituency hounding them for it. As elsewhere, there's always a strong urge to simply quit and run home, no matter the consequences. Finally, and most importantly, the public can't stand lost life, something that is simply unavoidable in a risky new field like space. Could such a program survive being placed on hold for 2 years every time someone dies? In a really big project, lots of accidents will happen, and lots of people will probably die.
I've worked in both industry and in government. So I think I'm on pretty solid ground saying that private investment may not work, and I'm fairly certain that space tourism is a bubble that will pop and leave us all disillusioned about the private sector for a few years. But the future is with them, and the X-Prize contestants. If you sit around waiting for the government to accomplish this, you'll never see it in your lifetime. The private sector might not succeed, but the government certainly will not.
Mod +1 (funny because it's true...)
Freud isn't the last word in psychology any more than Newton was the last word in physics. His work was pioneering and insightful but the world has moved on since then, and some of his original research was flawed.
As far as I'm concerned, this advance isn't anything near what the news entry makes it out to be. Just because it can recognize itself in a mirror doesn't mean it's self-aware. We can't even define consciousness, let alone measure it. Well, unless you use an arbitrary numerical value from 3-18, with 10 as normal human average.
Agreed, you can't let every half-wit thesauruspants get 60 pages on his gerbil collection just because he thinks that they're historically notable.
I've been skeptical of wikis in general and wikipedia in particular since wikis first appeared. A previous company I worked at had a wiki; the QA manager argued that anyone smart enough to edit one wouldn't be malicious (at the time, wikis were new enough that only IT geeks had heard of them). I argued that it was an awful idea, that intellect and morality are orthogonal to one another, and that No Good Could Come of This. Three months and one particularly vicious employee later, I was proved correct.
After many years, I've mellowed a bit. With good user controls and tracking (ie no anonymous edits, everything public and in the open), and if it's kept within a community (like a business, major school or community group) then normal social norms will make a wiki highly productive and useful. We're even implementing one at my new job.
But the OP, for all his linguistic florishes, is correct about another thing: this is why we use a representative democracy. The founding fathers avoided ballot initiatives, built swathes of government that were proudly NOT directly elected, and otherwise tried to put a brake on the perils of mob rule.
Of course, the advent of TV pretty much killed all that. As CS Lewis points out, people aren't clear when they talk about democratic behavior whether they mean the kind of behavior that democracies encourage, or the kind of behavior that keeps a democracy going. The two aren't the same.
In both ancient Greece (whose democracy didn't last as long as ours has) things became disorganized and they fell to conquest. In Rome, they were subjected to endless slave revolts, until finally a popular military coup put a series of dictators in power. It turned out that the people wanted their vote, but not as much as they wanted generous social services and lots of bloody entertainment.
I like Wikipedia. I'm an occassional contributor. If you accept its limitations, then it's a great resource. But if it also teaches you a little about the perils of democracy, then so much the better.
Apple's holding back the music industry by resisting song-specific pricing, keeping prices low, and promoting small independent labels at the expense of marketing driven hit machines.
In other words, if by "holding back the music business" you mean improving customer satisfaction, increasing efficency and reshaping the industry, then yeah that's exactly what they're doing. In the process, they're making crazy profits, opening new markets for themselves, and marginalizing the former market champions.
I know I'm not complaining.
A big part of the issue is that documentation and user interfaces largely reflect how the software was made, rather than how it is intended to be used.
>> For the love of bob
:)
> Microsoft Bob?
This is the holiday season, so please celebrate our religious diversity by showing respect to a devout member of the Church of the SubGenius.
(for more info)
You know, I really had my hopes up there for a second.
But then I read your post, and of course you're absolutely right. I remember how the shuttle people in NASA did everything they could to kill Delta Clipper. No doubt this will end up the same.
I second the notion. If your company chose to honor your resignation early, then that's their business.
.5% risk of something happening. Sometimes a previous employee did do something, and your HR or CIO person learned a hard lesson. Sometimes, the way you phrase your resignation letter leads people to think that you're vengeful or disgruntled (even if you didn't mean it that way).
We live in a litigous society. Some companies have different policies than others, but as someone who has laid people off and been laid off myself, I can say that there are reasons (sometimes even good ones) that people get treated like this. At a company with sensitive enough data or with enough legal exposure, offending people who are leaving anyway is worth it against a
Usually, this is a silly over-reaction, of course. In your position, I'd just shrug, let the CIO know that if he needs anything during the transition period you'd be happy to help in the knowledge transfer, and politely leave.
A good resignation usually comes from verbal notice to your supervisor, followed by a nice resignation letter. Any complaints about the company or its policies or managers don't belong in such a letter (you are leaving anyway, after all). You can mention them verbally later (preferrably during your last week informally to your manager, or during an exit interview). During those two weeks, you ought to be a consummate professional, helping with the transition and doing other things to ensure that you can go back to these people for a recommendation later on some future job.
Then you leave. If the place sucked, then this is the best part.
The problem is that some people stick around in a bad situation out of some sense of misguided loyalty. Loyalty is a good trait, and I value it in the people I work with. When there's a crisis (I mean a real one, not the daily "crises" that aren't really make-or-break), someone who does way more than they're paid for really impresses me.
But when loyalty means staying in a job you hate, or working with people who are taking advantage of you, then the right answer is a polite, professional and prompt resignation. Sticking through tough times is one thing, letting yourself get walked all over is another. A fast exit in the latter situation is the best way to avoid bitterness.
And yet... these people that nobody else "gives a shit" about are apparently getting front-row treatment. Interesting way to be ignored.
Obviously someone cares... look at Rathergate and the Dan Rather fiasco. Or Matt Drudge. Or James Lileks.
Or.... to get back into the tech field, the way outlets like Slashdot and Ars Technica influence the market (that is, us). People read them, they think about what is written there. You may not agree, but they've bought the most valuable commodity in advertising: a little piece of your attention span.
That's valuable.
They're writing this to a Governor. You don't write letters like that the same way you'd write to your Aunt Charlotte.
First, the letter is public. So no "hey how are ya" language. Instead, you're basically writing a persuasive essay masquerading as a letter.
Second, when the letter is received, it will be by a staffer who specializes in IT issues and IT policy. This staffer has probably spoken to the Government Relations (read: lobbyist) guy that at IBM that actually authored the letter. The two guys probably have spoken a great deal on the subject and already know all the arguments. They're just putting it in writing to garner support and document the reasons why OpenDocument is the correct approach. Also, a letter forces a response-- something that can help IBM move things forward.
By the way, MS certainly has a similar Govt Relations guy in there as well. He's writing letters for Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer's signature as well.
Third, this is a IT decision last, a political decision second-to-last, and a public policy decision first. There are lots of implications that have nothing to do with the relative merits of MS Office and OpenOffice.org. Open standards are the obvious ones. But also the likelihood that MS would support OpenDocument if it really came to it. MS investment in Mass would be another one (IBM, too). The real news in this letter is that IBM is willing to take a public stand on this. The fact of the letter is more important than its content.
Anyway, you write these letters in a way to advance a public conversation. It's like a press release or a "major public address" at a graduation or something. It's intended to take a dispute public and make a declaration about your organization's thoughts.
The mechanics of lobbying is a bit of a mystery to most people. This certainly is one part of it. It's worth understanding some of the basics of how it happens.
This is a natural outgrowth of the fact that they can't effectively index virii.
Therefore, they must be destroyed.
Uh, no. You haven't actually described any strategic benefits whatsoever, just illustrated the pass-the-buck structure of marketing; it's all about image. Did your company know what the actual strategic benefit of advertising was?
.9% you would have disappointed. But your reputation (intangible image) for quality wins more sales than that. Yes, it's hard to measure, yes it's hard to monetize, but there's a reason so many companies strive to have it.
Actually, I thought I explained rather well what the advantages proved to be for us. You dismiss "image" but the fact is that prior to our ad campaign customers expressed skepticism about our position in the market and financial viability. After the ads, we were recognized and it wasn't an issue anymore. The ads gave people a sense that we were more than an office, a demo, and some guys in suits. In other products' cases (not this particular one though) it had the other effect I described-- shortening the sales cycle and faster qualification (and self-qualification) of sales leads. That reduces cost of sale, which is a budget line item.
YMMV, of course, and I specifically did say that the benefit is fuzzy, difficult to measure and not applicable in all cases. But what I'm getting at is that it had a measureable effect in our case, so you can't simply dismiss it just because it's hard to measure.
Excellent (as opposed to adequate) customer service is also expensive, and its effects are also hard to measure. Going from 99% to 99.9% customer satisfaction usually costs more than the profit you would have gotten from that