However, we rather hate each other, lie to each other, steal from each other, produce films to annoy the other, get annoyed by totally unimportant media production from other people
Unfortunately the peace on Earth is not bootstrappable. If you have 99 countries that gave up wars and one that hasn't, very soon that one country will either conquer everyone else or will manipulate them without a conquest (but under a threat.) You can have peace only when you get to 100% of compliance and when you can guarantee that compliance forever.
This is a reason why when a SciFi author wants to depict a peaceful civilization he usually depends on a plot device that makes that civilization incapable of aggression. Even if just one individual can wiggle out of those restraints he becomes a fox in a henhouse.
If you think we are too violent, try to fix it (BTW selling guns is not going to help)
People are too violent for today's life. But they were nearly ideal for earlier societies. Guns are not relevant - they are just a tool. People were happily killing each other with sticks and stones and sharp pieces of metal for millennia. Guns are banned in UK, but who can claim that thousands of sharp knives in pockets are better? A knife is easier to acquire, and it needs no ammo, and it is silent, and it is untraceable.
People are violent because it is a genetic trait and a useful tool for survival. There were nonviolent species like dodo; they are extinct for a good reason. A nonviolent ghetto dweller will be soon a dead one. It's easier to be nonviolent when you are above the danger, of course. But the social mechanism that elevated you may fail at any time; the car of a mega-rich CEO of a mega-company can be stopped on the road by a gang, the CEO could be gragged out, beaten and held for ransom - or simply killed because the thugs wanted him squirm.
So if you are afraid of China: Meet them.
As we speak China is escalating border tensions with Japan - probably because Chinese leaders believe that Japan is distracted at this time and unable to respond. A flotilla of fishing ships is going to the islands right now. Those fishermen may be sacrificed at any time, by any side. China is interested in holding those islands, and so far they have the initiative. Meeting China to talk about that would be useless because fear of China is not imaginary.
You buy FLOS-software, it gets obsolete/abandoned/broken by something, you hire someone who fixes it (best case). You buy proprietary software, it gets obsolete/abandoned/broken by something...what are you going to do?
The cost of hiring a F/OSS developer (just one!) will be about $150K per year. This is because the developer's salary ($75K in this example) is only half of the expenses that the employer incurs. The rest is invisible to the employee and includes various payroll taxes, benefits, administration and management, resources, computers... This money can buy a lot of proprietary software and support.
Note that many industrial products became available only as a result of the industrial revolution, when massive improvements in efficiency reduced the price of goods to the level that most people could afford them. For example, Autodesk as a company toils for decades making their AutoCAD. They poured tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars into development. But you can buy AutoCAD LT for about $700 and enjoy most of that value. This is because one group of developers sells to many customers, and the customers share the expense. But here you are proposing to step back and have craftsmen at every customer's office. Even if these programmers share their work, not much of it can be reused because they will only implement what a specific customer wants, in a way he wants it. (Why to pay for features that one does not need?) Autodesk, for example, had to make universal software from the day zero; that's why it is reusable. They threw in AutoLISP also, for special needs. A hacker in an architect's office will not even be able to access enough knowledge to be productive, let alone to produce competitive software. He'd need help - but there isn't any (or not enough) because the niche is narrow and nobody cares about his market.
I'm 28, so while I've seen '91 and '93 and what followed, it was as a young kid without much understanding of what's going on - I can, of course, reflect on it now, but that's obviously not the same.
I was in Moscow in those years. In 1991 I and my friends took a car and drove around the White House when tanks and other light armor was still deployed. I don't remember what I did in 1993, but most likely I was at home, calling plague on both their houses.
my parents have lived through it, and while they also voice worries about who would come instead, they have a very strong antipathy towards Putin - from their words, largely because his policies remind them of some of the more annoying Soviet stuff they've seen back in 70s
It is indeed common, I agree. At the same time note how many people (25% or so) support Communists - and those guys wrote the book on "annoying Soviet stuff":-) I remember even photos of Stalin in truckers' cabs and in buses. Sometimes I wonder if majority of voters even understands what they want. What would an ideal, honest candidate have to say? "Brothers and Sisters. Our country needs your honest, hard work to survive. Effective immediately after my inauguration,..." - and who is going to vote for that guy??? And if the candidate doesn't promise to do what it takes to clean the house... guess what, the house will remain dirty.
I think that a coalition between more pragmatic liberals [...] and more moderate civic nationalists, would stand some chance at securing and holding power and actually improving things
Doesn't that define Putin, by the way? A pragmatic liberal and a moderate nationalist? I am not quite sure, though, how to frame a liberal. Putin is certainly a liberal compared to Brezhnev or Zhirinovsky; and at the same time he is a bloody butcher according to Novodvorskaya. Looks like a well centered position to me:-)
Perhaps. I'm not following his travails closely. But the problem is that revolutions tend to eat their children. If - let's imagine - the opposition wins and Putin disappears, the opposition will be immediately at each other throats. A timid but smart PR guy will be sidelined pretty soon; perhaps even murdered and the government will be framed for that. Useful idiots and all that. Navalny goes into Mausoleum, Limonov goes to Kremlin. All kinds of filth will seep upward through the cracks in the movement. (I don't want to say that there are only angels around Putin today; but it could be much worse.) You are mad that Yeltsin gave away much of wealth of Russia, for example? You haven't seen anything yet.
That's basically why I don't want changes. They are not likely to be good for anyone except a handful of new bosses, same as old bosses. I just can't see how Kasparov is going to rein in the entrenched, abusive "siloviki" (Army, MVD, etc.) Do you, I'm just curious? Maybe there is a silver bullet somewhere and I just don't see it? Or, perhaps, Kasparov will be personally biting corrupted bureaucrats?:-) [I don't think he bit anyone, but it was a good setup.] At this time I can only think of Koba's methods, such as take money, get convicted, enjoy your 10 years shoveling snow near Magadan. But that will not work politically, of course - the people will not want to elect a leader who will force them to work and be honest. This is yet another problem of democracy - it elects not leaders who are good for the country in the long term but leaders who are good for the voters in the short term.
Our problem is that we stick to "major alternatives". They all suck.
I thought for a moment you are talking about Obama and Romney:-) Yes, this problem is everywhere. Once people come to power they want to retain it. In the USA presidents are selected by a small group of people (leadership of the two parties, and other important people.) Those guys keep power forever, even though their selected presidents come and go.
I'd vote for Navalny in a heartbeat if he stood for next elections.
People who want power are the least competent to have it. Navalny is extremely power-hungry. My concern is that he would rule as lawyers do, by consensus. Can Russia, the homeland of Czapkovs, be ruled by consensus? I don't think so. Navalny may be a genius of PR, and PR may be all that he needs to gain power - but that's a far cry from what it takes to keep power (unless willing to become a doormat) and especially from what it takes to manage the country. On the other hand, we'll never know until we try... and that try may be fatal to the country. As they say, the demon that you know is always better, and the old horse won't damage the furrow. But I'm cautious and conservative by nature, not prone to experiments, and I don't fix things that are working well enough. In the end it's up to the voters, and if they want to risk it all for a chance... here is the flag, and here is the drum.
A stupid monarch is a bane of all monarchies. The last Russian Czar is a perfect example. There are just a few monarchies remaining in the world, and in none of them the monarch is actually ruling the country.
I would classify Putin as "doing what he can, to the best of his abilities." I don't know all his motivations, of course. With regard to wisdom, the alternative is worse. Should we, perhaps, elect Vladimir Volfovitch? Or perhaps a hopeless idealist and a certified weakling Yavlinsky is a better candidate? Maybe we should all march under red banners of comrade Zuyganov? But those are the major alternatives. None of them will be able to keep oligarchs under control. Under Yeltsin the country was ruled (robbed?) by private interests. That's why Khodorkhovsky kissed the tarmac; his financial crimes were, of course, a lie. He was guilty of acting against Russian interests, and he was rich enough to be dangerous. Putin was able to tell oligarchs to either accept supremacy of the state or get out. Without Putin the country by now would be ruled by Berezovsky and Co, for their personal financial gain. How would that be better?
People in Russia like strong authority and believe that that authority can protect them
In part they are correct. Governments exist to see the big picture and to practice controlled violence to maintain peace on a larger scale. For example, governments oppress criminal gangs. Individuals cannot do that for many good reasons. People do not want Wild West because it would quickly - within weeks - morph into rule of strongmen. We call such countries "failed states."
those sorts of state organizations crop up to provide that.
"Those sorts" of state organizations exist in the USA as well, they are called police, sheriff's department, national guard, FBI, and tens of other TLAs that are authorized to do law enforcement.
However, they feel they are the proper guardians of the people and the people cannot be trusted to run their own affairs.
You are correct. They do not trust the democracy on a scale above a city. But there is a good reason for that. Democracy is a very weak system, by design; it welcomes with open arms every two-bit villain that wants to destroy it. Naturally, many villains show up to try their skill in gaming the system. In Russia many were successful at that; some got elected, other installed their people at key positions, third had other people corrupted with money and power. A corrupt democracy is not a democracy at all; and the worst part is that the people of all walks of life are willing to corrupt the system. Some do so because they collect the money; other do so because they want the $service done and see no other way than to gild a hand - and in the end they pay the former group, sustaining the corruption. Basically, democracy will not survive in a society if that society is not valuing democracy and is not willing to fight for it. Every bribe moves the society away from democracy.
Putin's approach is closer to benevolent monarchy. As long as a wise monarch has absolute power he can install his trusted people into key positions, who then repeat the process. This method is better because the trusted leutenants are personally responsible, and if they get corrupted they will be severely punished. (Simply being fired from a top government job is no picnic for them, but a prison term is also a possibility.) Many say that such a "manually operated" system is hard to run because the man at the top has to blindly trust others. The people cannot make the right decision for him - but on the other hand they cannot make a wrong decision either. I agree that the system of this kind is not self-sustaining; you always have to have trusted, honest people at every vertex, or else the branches below become corrupted. But what else can you do if the people of your country are not willing to suffer for democracy? If the police stops you for speeding and you can give a bribe that is less than the fine and leaves no traces in your driving record it takes a lot of bravery to choose the fine over just giving the cash to the corrupt cop. Bribes make *your* life easier in the short term, and that's why they are so contagious.
In the end, though, government is not supposed to be a plaything for budding leaders. It is supposed to be a stable and fair system, like an OS in a computer, that enables you to do things and then steps away. Many people in Russia are happy with this worldview. Some are not, however -- like kernel hackers they want control; but instead of signing up for LKML and growing up within ranks they want to take a shortcut, find an exploitable hole and get root in one easy step.
If they just completed the schematic drawings this tells me that they are at least half a year away from production - if they are super good designers and if their prototype works right the first time they power it up.
The schematic is often the easiest part of the design. An EMC compliant PCB is usually harder; passing FCC/CE/* EMI compliance is harder; setting up for mass production is not for beginners either. Those guys just made the first step on a long road. And that's exactly why it's so hard to build hardware these days; the progress is so fast that by the time you are ready to manufacture the key parts are obsolete and out of production. Even if the parts are still available your design may be already obsolete because newer, better parts became available. It's either "design it under 3 months" or "do something else with your life."
That's the reason why the list is utterly pointless. It cannot be used going forward to correlate anything.
This leaves us with only two possibilities:
The FBI agent had the database on his computer just for sh1ts and giggles; the database appeared there spontaneously - it just condensed out of randomness of the Universe - because nobody admits collecting it.
Someone made that database for a purpose, and there is something that we don't know.
The paranoid in me tells me that the former is not very likely, but the latter is a near certainty.
Also note that if the table does not have the home address or the phone or the SSN of the owner then it means exactly nothing. The ID of the record can be a foreign key in some other table or a view. Or you can type a query with a JOIN simply by hand. That's how things are supposed to be anyway. For example, one person owns two phones, or two people share one phone, or there are three family members and four phones that they carry interchangeably.
Also, if the 3rd party software is no longer allowed to use this data it does not mean that the OS itself cannot access it and use in some nefarious ways. Fact is, if the information is out there then it is (or was) used by someone for some purpose. If existence of the purpose is actively denied it only makes things worse.
If you genuinely think not shitting on your fellow man = communism then I really don't know what to tell you.
Tell nothing. I lived under communism (or socialism, to be technically correct) for several decades. You can treat this as a fallacy of appeal to authority, but I know from the inside that the slope is very, very slippery. It's a positive feedback loop, constrained only by how much can one steal. If you think otherwise you are an idealist. Early socialists, in 1900's, had the same thoughts as you have today. Their society failed, and they understood why. But there is nothing in this world, short of mind control from satellites, that can make all people to not seek advantage over other people. If you know control theory you then know what happens next.
Imagine that you are a hiring manager. You have two candidates. One has problems; he requires special (non-technical) accomodations, special way to talk to him, special way to task him. You also need to train his coworkers about what they can say and do, and how they should react. The candidate cannot work full time, let alone overtime, and he is not dependable because his special needs may preclude him from showing up on a random day.
The other candidate needs none of that. Who will you pick, given that otherwise both candidates are equal?
If I were in place of the OP I would pick self-employment, even though the OP specifically mentions that he is not capable of managing himself. So go and get a partner into the firm who complements you! The partner does not need to be as smart as the OP in programming; but he needs to be a strong leader.
By the way, many successful startups are organized like that - simply because all people are different, and you need different personalities for different kinds of work. You cannot honestly expect a C++ coder to draw ads for a magazine or to fly into a different town, meet an executive of a different company, give him an elevator pitch, take him for drinks and in the end sign a contract. Similarly, your CEO is not likely to write a bubble sort of two integer arrays even if his life depends on it.
Trouble is, those that are like this tend to be in charge so it's not changing any time soon.
You don't need anyone "in charge" to form a company where all employees work as hard as they wish but earn the same share of the commune's profit. Go ahead, make it happen - there is no law against that. Be a shining proof that communism works! The world badly needs such an example, after 100 years of failures. So far the only somewhat successful examples of such approach are small communes - starting at the family and ending at the size of an Israeli kibbutz.
The "backed by the federal government" line is a lie. US dollars are not backed by anything. Inflation is the proof. In other words, the government will not take your $100 and give you a fixed, predermined amount of other goods that are equivalent. It used to be so with gold-backed currency, but that is no more. If you walk into the US Treasury with paper money they will not give you anything. They will tell you to go to the market and try to trade your money for whatever you need - and terms of that exchange will be governed by the market. If nobody wants your money... too bad, too sad.
The "its value is pretty well established" part is also not quite correct. The value is not set by the government, such as "One gallon of milk shall be sold for $3.00". The value of money is established by trading it for goods. At some point a barrel of oil was $10, and at other point in time it was $80. What changed - the oil or the money? My money is on the money, so to say - the oil today is the same oil as yesterday, the same as a decade ago. It's the money that got cheaper; that's why it takes more green paper to pay for the same barrel of the same oil. So much for "well established"...
The risk in the transaction seems very one sided.
The only risk is in liquidity of goods. Your money can be freely exchanged for pretty much anything else. My software cannot be exchanged at all (since ISVs license the software instead of selling it.) Your risk is not something to ignore; it's a one-way transaction. Plenty of transactions are like this; a dinner at a restaurant is an example, or a stay in a hotel, or a bottle of milk (you can't sell it back.) But you are facing the pressure to buy because you cannot eat your money, build stuff with your money, do work with your money - you need food, tools, materials to do whatever you do for a living. If you refuse to spend then the actual value of your money, even if it is pure gold, will be exactly zero. Money is valuable only because it can be exchanged for other things. If I give you 100 sea shells and call them money (which they might be, on some faraway island) what value you will extract from them? None as a payment tool. You only can use them as physical objects. You still can collect sea shells, or foreign currency, or ancient coins, or rare metals, but that won't be money until you use it for trading.
One-sidedness of transactions is everywhere. Your employer pays you regardless of how much value you added today to the company. (He does not even know that yet.) You then take this money, go to Starbucks and pay for a cup of a new coffee that you may like or may dislike. You both cannot revert these transactions. Money is acting like a universal grease here; in reality it is a zero sum component. Your employer paid you $100 for working whole day, even though he does not know what you did today. In exchange you gave $100 to a restaurant without knowing whether you will like the food or not. Both transactions are irreversible. Money only splits them into nice, independent halves, so that your employer doesn't have to pay you with your favorite meals.
Sure. But you are presuming that the legal department of a megacorporation is willing to spend their own coin for the general welfare of humanity. I wish it were so.
As far as this armchair lawyer understands, the lawyers will be sent after offenses that are (a) easy to prove and (b) clearly caused demonstrable harm. You can easily make a bulletproof case that wrongful termination of a broadcast caused harm to the business. But I don't think you can easily show that the libel even was there. You don't have the guilty mind - the algorithms in question have no mind. You would have to accept that the defense will claim an accident (which it was) and that no sentient, sapient human was involved with the libel. You would then have to show separate harm that resulted, and you would have to justify the penalty for the libel, and the judge has to agree... the penalty will be probably less than the money spent on trying this particular case.
When a company has a strong, obvious case of breach of contract - that can bring them millions, easily - they don't need to try a minor claim of libel that had no human involved. The main case, however, has humans everywhere - humans that signed up to do what they couldn't do; humans that misconfigured the broadcast so that it went through the DRM AI bots; humans that neglected to rein those bots in; humans that ignored the problem and singlehandedly decided that fulfillment of the contract is something "optional" and "not important" because it was a holiday. That case would be extremely strong, and the organizer of the show may end up owning UStream lock, stock and barrel.
Say what you want, but Apple hardware is attractive on its own, and some of that shine is transferred onto the owner.
As a geek you understand that the smooth glass of iPhone is technically equivalent to a murky, scratched up plexiglas of some Blackberry. Both are transparent enough. You also understand that an iPhone does not contain magic components inside - and, as matter of fact, it is pretty simple, parts-wise.
But your geeky X-ray vision has nothing to do with how other people perceive an iPhone. You value it low because as a sum of parts in a bag it is not that valuable, and you assign zero value to the shiny. But other people may not care what is inside as long as the object is nice, smooth and pleasant to walk with. Apple even managed to ship a bunch of nonfunctional phones (of "you are holding it wrong" fame) - and guess what, they sold them all. You can call that behavior stupid, but mass lunacy on such a scale calls for redefinition of terms. It is not "them" who are stupid; it's *you* who is not of their world. "They," the majority, follow adventures of Hollywood actors; we, a minority, gather at Slashdot and discuss technology. To each his own; a teen girl, who is in love with Justin Bieber, will never understand why, in your opinion, Verilog is not as good as VHDL.
So would Worldcon have standing to sue UStream for libel? False (and public) accusations in writing should qualify.
Libel - unlikely. However for breach of contract - certainly (unless the contract is written such as UStream is only responsible for timely collection of the fee.)
Organizers of the event, as I understand, specifically hired UStream to broadcast the event. The organizers had all the necessary licenses for broadcasting licensed materials. UStream was not supposed to interfere, not any more than a TV station is responsible for awarding penalties in a football match.
The broadcast was interrupted, and the fault of the broadcaster is undeniable. Organizers of the event incurred a large loss because the whole event is held for one only reason - to capture eyes, ears and minds of the audience. Otherwise the awards could be shipped with UPS Ground. I would expect the organizers to sue UStream for (a) failure to prevent the interruption and (b) for doing nothing to correct the problem.
Then the entire globe is one giant collective group of assholes.
Not at all. For example, I sell you some of my software. You give me some money, and it works fine. I give you some software, and it also works fine. None of us are taking advantage of the stupidity of a business partner. We simply exchange goods of an approximately equal value. But you value my software a little bit above the money, and I value your money a little bit above my software.
Even Apple does not specifically depend on other people's stupidity. After all, Apple sells functional computers. They may be overpriced for what they do, but in the eyes of the customer the price is fair. You may say that the customer is stupid to buy Apple. I don't use fruity boxes, personally. But that's just as correct as to say that girls who like fancy dresses are stupid because a single set of a North Korean uniform ought to be enough for everyone. Is a musician stupid because he buys an expensive guitar? Is a writer stupid because he wants to travel the world? Is a geek stupid because he wants yet another computer? They are all stupid, of course, in the eyes of a person who does not appreciate their goals. But that observer has no say because he is not competent to judge.
I think it's pretty hard to find such an abuse in the industry - the problem is self-correcting. But you can find examples in finances (like the Madoff's pyramid) or in politics; any mainstream politician today depends on stupidity of his voters; honest men finish last.
What does a celestial warrior-philosopher need with servants? Or glass palaces? Or floating hover-beds? Or tasty treats? Or hair? Or pathetically "younger" body of 35-40?
The age of 35-40 is believed to be the top of fitness of a man - both mental and physical.
The servants are necessary to hold the celestial warrior-philosopher down when, after a few years of confinement in an invisible castle in the sky, he realizes that he is a prisoner. But there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and noone to fight. Nobody can learn about his inventions in philosophy or martial arts. What would you do in such situation? Most people would go insane. Hence the servants (and Haloperidol, I guess.)
One of the biggest reasons that Linux hasn't made it on the desktop is poor Video Game Support!
Maybe it was a concern 10+ years ago when if you wanted to play the latest Doom you had to have a PC. But things changed, starting with PS3 and ending with a number of other usable consoles. I got PS3 here, for example, and a bunch of games on BlueRay disks for it. Since then I stopped playing on a PC, except a few old games that I care to remember now and then.
But I don't run Linux on my desktop - even though I'm well aware of Linux and I run it on a few servers here and elsewhere. I simply have zero reason to do so. The Windows tax, about $50, is paid at the time of purchase of a box, and I cannot imagine suing MS to get it back. Besides Win7 is pretty good as it is. IMO Win7 is better than a typical Linux distrubution. All the software is available for it; most of it is free enough. As the geeks get older they also get richer, and they value their time more than money; they learn that the money can be earned, but the time cannot. If a piece of software costs $100 (say, Quicken) and takes 5 minutes to get from nothing to a fully functioning system it is better than to spend $0 and waste weeks trying to cobble together a comparable solution. (Comparable? With WebConnect? Hard to believe; I haven't checked on GnuCash recently, though.)
So why in the world would a generic, average user want to use Linux? What are the advantages? In some cases I can understand that Linux can be easier to administer remotely, like when you are building a computer for your grandparents. But VNC is an option on Windows as well. Resistance to viruses? Perhaps - until a virus for Linux shows up. Anything else that a common man would care about? Something for what a common man would wipe his $50 investment clean and install Linux? I don't see a convincing reason to switch at all. Microsoft was wise enough to hide its tax well; on top of that if you go to Fry's and look at a computer with Linux, the price is the same - the money just goes not to MS but to the place where that Linux box was assembled. The customer does not feel a difference price-wise, but he feels a lot of difference usability-wise. That's why Linux on desktop is going nowhere; MS wares are cheap enough and good enough. Some even say that they are better than Linux (see above) but that may end with release of Win8.
This is also the reason why Linux on servers is alive and well. MS charges a lot of money for even an entry level server ($800 for a Small Business Server, IIRC) - this money will buy you a lot of stuff if you don't care about windows-specific functions like the domain controller or SharePoint services. Apache is even easier to configure than the IIS. Still, many businesses buy into SBS just to get MS Exchange.
The Start8 software indeed restores the button. However it does not restore the menu. Furthermore, it breaks the default Windows key action (activate the start screen.)
Once you click on the button it brings up an ugly mix of tiles; the only difference from the start screen is that *all* tiles are shown, and the panel that contains them is rooted in the desktop.
A better implementation would simply restore the classical menu and/or the Win7/Vista menu, with draggable items on white background that are arranged in expandable groups.
I am not sure if Start8 is a solution or a problem. I cannot recommend installing it.
Slashdot Mirror
However, we rather hate each other, lie to each other, steal from each other, produce films to annoy the other, get annoyed by totally unimportant media production from other people
Unfortunately the peace on Earth is not bootstrappable. If you have 99 countries that gave up wars and one that hasn't, very soon that one country will either conquer everyone else or will manipulate them without a conquest (but under a threat.) You can have peace only when you get to 100% of compliance and when you can guarantee that compliance forever.
This is a reason why when a SciFi author wants to depict a peaceful civilization he usually depends on a plot device that makes that civilization incapable of aggression. Even if just one individual can wiggle out of those restraints he becomes a fox in a henhouse.
If you think we are too violent, try to fix it (BTW selling guns is not going to help)
People are too violent for today's life. But they were nearly ideal for earlier societies. Guns are not relevant - they are just a tool. People were happily killing each other with sticks and stones and sharp pieces of metal for millennia. Guns are banned in UK, but who can claim that thousands of sharp knives in pockets are better? A knife is easier to acquire, and it needs no ammo, and it is silent, and it is untraceable.
People are violent because it is a genetic trait and a useful tool for survival. There were nonviolent species like dodo; they are extinct for a good reason. A nonviolent ghetto dweller will be soon a dead one. It's easier to be nonviolent when you are above the danger, of course. But the social mechanism that elevated you may fail at any time; the car of a mega-rich CEO of a mega-company can be stopped on the road by a gang, the CEO could be gragged out, beaten and held for ransom - or simply killed because the thugs wanted him squirm.
So if you are afraid of China: Meet them.
As we speak China is escalating border tensions with Japan - probably because Chinese leaders believe that Japan is distracted at this time and unable to respond. A flotilla of fishing ships is going to the islands right now. Those fishermen may be sacrificed at any time, by any side. China is interested in holding those islands, and so far they have the initiative. Meeting China to talk about that would be useless because fear of China is not imaginary.
You buy FLOS-software, it gets obsolete/abandoned/broken by something, you hire someone who fixes it (best case). You buy proprietary software, it gets obsolete/abandoned/broken by something...what are you going to do?
The cost of hiring a F/OSS developer (just one!) will be about $150K per year. This is because the developer's salary ($75K in this example) is only half of the expenses that the employer incurs. The rest is invisible to the employee and includes various payroll taxes, benefits, administration and management, resources, computers... This money can buy a lot of proprietary software and support.
Note that many industrial products became available only as a result of the industrial revolution, when massive improvements in efficiency reduced the price of goods to the level that most people could afford them. For example, Autodesk as a company toils for decades making their AutoCAD. They poured tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars into development. But you can buy AutoCAD LT for about $700 and enjoy most of that value. This is because one group of developers sells to many customers, and the customers share the expense. But here you are proposing to step back and have craftsmen at every customer's office. Even if these programmers share their work, not much of it can be reused because they will only implement what a specific customer wants, in a way he wants it. (Why to pay for features that one does not need?) Autodesk, for example, had to make universal software from the day zero; that's why it is reusable. They threw in AutoLISP also, for special needs. A hacker in an architect's office will not even be able to access enough knowledge to be productive, let alone to produce competitive software. He'd need help - but there isn't any (or not enough) because the niche is narrow and nobody cares about his market.
Yes, the possibilities are endless :-)
It's easy if both are programmers.
I'm 28, so while I've seen '91 and '93 and what followed, it was as a young kid without much understanding of what's going on - I can, of course, reflect on it now, but that's obviously not the same.
I was in Moscow in those years. In 1991 I and my friends took a car and drove around the White House when tanks and other light armor was still deployed. I don't remember what I did in 1993, but most likely I was at home, calling plague on both their houses.
my parents have lived through it, and while they also voice worries about who would come instead, they have a very strong antipathy towards Putin - from their words, largely because his policies remind them of some of the more annoying Soviet stuff they've seen back in 70s
It is indeed common, I agree. At the same time note how many people (25% or so) support Communists - and those guys wrote the book on "annoying Soviet stuff" :-) I remember even photos of Stalin in truckers' cabs and in buses. Sometimes I wonder if majority of voters even understands what they want. What would an ideal, honest candidate have to say? "Brothers and Sisters. Our country needs your honest, hard work to survive. Effective immediately after my inauguration, ..." - and who is going to vote for that guy??? And if the candidate doesn't promise to do what it takes to clean the house ... guess what, the house will remain dirty.
I think that a coalition between more pragmatic liberals [...] and more moderate civic nationalists, would stand some chance at securing and holding power and actually improving things
Doesn't that define Putin, by the way? A pragmatic liberal and a moderate nationalist? I am not quite sure, though, how to frame a liberal. Putin is certainly a liberal compared to Brezhnev or Zhirinovsky; and at the same time he is a bloody butcher according to Novodvorskaya. Looks like a well centered position to me :-)
Perhaps. I'm not following his travails closely. But the problem is that revolutions tend to eat their children. If - let's imagine - the opposition wins and Putin disappears, the opposition will be immediately at each other throats. A timid but smart PR guy will be sidelined pretty soon; perhaps even murdered and the government will be framed for that. Useful idiots and all that. Navalny goes into Mausoleum, Limonov goes to Kremlin. All kinds of filth will seep upward through the cracks in the movement. (I don't want to say that there are only angels around Putin today; but it could be much worse.) You are mad that Yeltsin gave away much of wealth of Russia, for example? You haven't seen anything yet.
That's basically why I don't want changes. They are not likely to be good for anyone except a handful of new bosses, same as old bosses. I just can't see how Kasparov is going to rein in the entrenched, abusive "siloviki" (Army, MVD, etc.) Do you, I'm just curious? Maybe there is a silver bullet somewhere and I just don't see it? Or, perhaps, Kasparov will be personally biting corrupted bureaucrats? :-) [I don't think he bit anyone, but it was a good setup.] At this time I can only think of Koba's methods, such as take money, get convicted, enjoy your 10 years shoveling snow near Magadan. But that will not work politically, of course - the people will not want to elect a leader who will force them to work and be honest. This is yet another problem of democracy - it elects not leaders who are good for the country in the long term but leaders who are good for the voters in the short term.
Our problem is that we stick to "major alternatives". They all suck.
I thought for a moment you are talking about Obama and Romney :-) Yes, this problem is everywhere. Once people come to power they want to retain it. In the USA presidents are selected by a small group of people (leadership of the two parties, and other important people.) Those guys keep power forever, even though their selected presidents come and go.
I'd vote for Navalny in a heartbeat if he stood for next elections.
People who want power are the least competent to have it. Navalny is extremely power-hungry. My concern is that he would rule as lawyers do, by consensus. Can Russia, the homeland of Czapkovs, be ruled by consensus? I don't think so. Navalny may be a genius of PR, and PR may be all that he needs to gain power - but that's a far cry from what it takes to keep power (unless willing to become a doormat) and especially from what it takes to manage the country. On the other hand, we'll never know until we try... and that try may be fatal to the country. As they say, the demon that you know is always better, and the old horse won't damage the furrow. But I'm cautious and conservative by nature, not prone to experiments, and I don't fix things that are working well enough. In the end it's up to the voters, and if they want to risk it all for a chance... here is the flag, and here is the drum.
A stupid monarch is a bane of all monarchies. The last Russian Czar is a perfect example. There are just a few monarchies remaining in the world, and in none of them the monarch is actually ruling the country.
I would classify Putin as "doing what he can, to the best of his abilities." I don't know all his motivations, of course. With regard to wisdom, the alternative is worse. Should we, perhaps, elect Vladimir Volfovitch? Or perhaps a hopeless idealist and a certified weakling Yavlinsky is a better candidate? Maybe we should all march under red banners of comrade Zuyganov? But those are the major alternatives. None of them will be able to keep oligarchs under control. Under Yeltsin the country was ruled (robbed?) by private interests. That's why Khodorkhovsky kissed the tarmac; his financial crimes were, of course, a lie. He was guilty of acting against Russian interests, and he was rich enough to be dangerous. Putin was able to tell oligarchs to either accept supremacy of the state or get out. Without Putin the country by now would be ruled by Berezovsky and Co, for their personal financial gain. How would that be better?
People in Russia like strong authority and believe that that authority can protect them
In part they are correct. Governments exist to see the big picture and to practice controlled violence to maintain peace on a larger scale. For example, governments oppress criminal gangs. Individuals cannot do that for many good reasons. People do not want Wild West because it would quickly - within weeks - morph into rule of strongmen. We call such countries "failed states."
those sorts of state organizations crop up to provide that.
"Those sorts" of state organizations exist in the USA as well, they are called police, sheriff's department, national guard, FBI, and tens of other TLAs that are authorized to do law enforcement.
However, they feel they are the proper guardians of the people and the people cannot be trusted to run their own affairs.
You are correct. They do not trust the democracy on a scale above a city. But there is a good reason for that. Democracy is a very weak system, by design; it welcomes with open arms every two-bit villain that wants to destroy it. Naturally, many villains show up to try their skill in gaming the system. In Russia many were successful at that; some got elected, other installed their people at key positions, third had other people corrupted with money and power. A corrupt democracy is not a democracy at all; and the worst part is that the people of all walks of life are willing to corrupt the system. Some do so because they collect the money; other do so because they want the $service done and see no other way than to gild a hand - and in the end they pay the former group, sustaining the corruption. Basically, democracy will not survive in a society if that society is not valuing democracy and is not willing to fight for it. Every bribe moves the society away from democracy.
Putin's approach is closer to benevolent monarchy. As long as a wise monarch has absolute power he can install his trusted people into key positions, who then repeat the process. This method is better because the trusted leutenants are personally responsible, and if they get corrupted they will be severely punished. (Simply being fired from a top government job is no picnic for them, but a prison term is also a possibility.) Many say that such a "manually operated" system is hard to run because the man at the top has to blindly trust others. The people cannot make the right decision for him - but on the other hand they cannot make a wrong decision either. I agree that the system of this kind is not self-sustaining; you always have to have trusted, honest people at every vertex, or else the branches below become corrupted. But what else can you do if the people of your country are not willing to suffer for democracy? If the police stops you for speeding and you can give a bribe that is less than the fine and leaves no traces in your driving record it takes a lot of bravery to choose the fine over just giving the cash to the corrupt cop. Bribes make *your* life easier in the short term, and that's why they are so contagious.
In the end, though, government is not supposed to be a plaything for budding leaders. It is supposed to be a stable and fair system, like an OS in a computer, that enables you to do things and then steps away. Many people in Russia are happy with this worldview. Some are not, however -- like kernel hackers they want control; but instead of signing up for LKML and growing up within ranks they want to take a shortcut, find an exploitable hole and get root in one easy step.
If they just completed the schematic drawings this tells me that they are at least half a year away from production - if they are super good designers and if their prototype works right the first time they power it up.
The schematic is often the easiest part of the design. An EMC compliant PCB is usually harder; passing FCC/CE/* EMI compliance is harder; setting up for mass production is not for beginners either. Those guys just made the first step on a long road. And that's exactly why it's so hard to build hardware these days; the progress is so fast that by the time you are ready to manufacture the key parts are obsolete and out of production. Even if the parts are still available your design may be already obsolete because newer, better parts became available. It's either "design it under 3 months" or "do something else with your life."
Does that mean no salad?
Eat salad at your own risk. The risk is very small, though. Probably comparable to the death in an airplane crash.
That's the reason why the list is utterly pointless. It cannot be used going forward to correlate anything.
This leaves us with only two possibilities:
The paranoid in me tells me that the former is not very likely, but the latter is a near certainty.
Also note that if the table does not have the home address or the phone or the SSN of the owner then it means exactly nothing. The ID of the record can be a foreign key in some other table or a view. Or you can type a query with a JOIN simply by hand. That's how things are supposed to be anyway. For example, one person owns two phones, or two people share one phone, or there are three family members and four phones that they carry interchangeably.
Also, if the 3rd party software is no longer allowed to use this data it does not mean that the OS itself cannot access it and use in some nefarious ways. Fact is, if the information is out there then it is (or was) used by someone for some purpose. If existence of the purpose is actively denied it only makes things worse.
the FBI should have a complete list of hundreds of millions of devices, not just 12 million.
SELECT * INTO agents_tbl FROM all_iphones_tbl WHERE <some_condition>;
If you genuinely think not shitting on your fellow man = communism then I really don't know what to tell you.
Tell nothing. I lived under communism (or socialism, to be technically correct) for several decades. You can treat this as a fallacy of appeal to authority, but I know from the inside that the slope is very, very slippery. It's a positive feedback loop, constrained only by how much can one steal. If you think otherwise you are an idealist. Early socialists, in 1900's, had the same thoughts as you have today. Their society failed, and they understood why. But there is nothing in this world, short of mind control from satellites, that can make all people to not seek advantage over other people. If you know control theory you then know what happens next.
Imagine that you are a hiring manager. You have two candidates. One has problems; he requires special (non-technical) accomodations, special way to talk to him, special way to task him. You also need to train his coworkers about what they can say and do, and how they should react. The candidate cannot work full time, let alone overtime, and he is not dependable because his special needs may preclude him from showing up on a random day.
The other candidate needs none of that. Who will you pick, given that otherwise both candidates are equal?
If I were in place of the OP I would pick self-employment, even though the OP specifically mentions that he is not capable of managing himself. So go and get a partner into the firm who complements you! The partner does not need to be as smart as the OP in programming; but he needs to be a strong leader.
By the way, many successful startups are organized like that - simply because all people are different, and you need different personalities for different kinds of work. You cannot honestly expect a C++ coder to draw ads for a magazine or to fly into a different town, meet an executive of a different company, give him an elevator pitch, take him for drinks and in the end sign a contract. Similarly, your CEO is not likely to write a bubble sort of two integer arrays even if his life depends on it.
Trouble is, those that are like this tend to be in charge so it's not changing any time soon.
You don't need anyone "in charge" to form a company where all employees work as hard as they wish but earn the same share of the commune's profit. Go ahead, make it happen - there is no law against that. Be a shining proof that communism works! The world badly needs such an example, after 100 years of failures. So far the only somewhat successful examples of such approach are small communes - starting at the family and ending at the size of an Israeli kibbutz.
The "backed by the federal government" line is a lie. US dollars are not backed by anything. Inflation is the proof. In other words, the government will not take your $100 and give you a fixed, predermined amount of other goods that are equivalent. It used to be so with gold-backed currency, but that is no more. If you walk into the US Treasury with paper money they will not give you anything. They will tell you to go to the market and try to trade your money for whatever you need - and terms of that exchange will be governed by the market. If nobody wants your money ... too bad, too sad.
The "its value is pretty well established" part is also not quite correct. The value is not set by the government, such as "One gallon of milk shall be sold for $3.00". The value of money is established by trading it for goods. At some point a barrel of oil was $10, and at other point in time it was $80. What changed - the oil or the money? My money is on the money, so to say - the oil today is the same oil as yesterday, the same as a decade ago. It's the money that got cheaper; that's why it takes more green paper to pay for the same barrel of the same oil. So much for "well established" ...
The risk in the transaction seems very one sided.
The only risk is in liquidity of goods. Your money can be freely exchanged for pretty much anything else. My software cannot be exchanged at all (since ISVs license the software instead of selling it.) Your risk is not something to ignore; it's a one-way transaction. Plenty of transactions are like this; a dinner at a restaurant is an example, or a stay in a hotel, or a bottle of milk (you can't sell it back.) But you are facing the pressure to buy because you cannot eat your money, build stuff with your money, do work with your money - you need food, tools, materials to do whatever you do for a living. If you refuse to spend then the actual value of your money, even if it is pure gold, will be exactly zero. Money is valuable only because it can be exchanged for other things. If I give you 100 sea shells and call them money (which they might be, on some faraway island) what value you will extract from them? None as a payment tool. You only can use them as physical objects. You still can collect sea shells, or foreign currency, or ancient coins, or rare metals, but that won't be money until you use it for trading.
One-sidedness of transactions is everywhere. Your employer pays you regardless of how much value you added today to the company. (He does not even know that yet.) You then take this money, go to Starbucks and pay for a cup of a new coffee that you may like or may dislike. You both cannot revert these transactions. Money is acting like a universal grease here; in reality it is a zero sum component. Your employer paid you $100 for working whole day, even though he does not know what you did today. In exchange you gave $100 to a restaurant without knowing whether you will like the food or not. Both transactions are irreversible. Money only splits them into nice, independent halves, so that your employer doesn't have to pay you with your favorite meals.
Sure. But you are presuming that the legal department of a megacorporation is willing to spend their own coin for the general welfare of humanity. I wish it were so.
As far as this armchair lawyer understands, the lawyers will be sent after offenses that are (a) easy to prove and (b) clearly caused demonstrable harm. You can easily make a bulletproof case that wrongful termination of a broadcast caused harm to the business. But I don't think you can easily show that the libel even was there. You don't have the guilty mind - the algorithms in question have no mind. You would have to accept that the defense will claim an accident (which it was) and that no sentient, sapient human was involved with the libel. You would then have to show separate harm that resulted, and you would have to justify the penalty for the libel, and the judge has to agree... the penalty will be probably less than the money spent on trying this particular case.
When a company has a strong, obvious case of breach of contract - that can bring them millions, easily - they don't need to try a minor claim of libel that had no human involved. The main case, however, has humans everywhere - humans that signed up to do what they couldn't do; humans that misconfigured the broadcast so that it went through the DRM AI bots; humans that neglected to rein those bots in; humans that ignored the problem and singlehandedly decided that fulfillment of the contract is something "optional" and "not important" because it was a holiday. That case would be extremely strong, and the organizer of the show may end up owning UStream lock, stock and barrel.
What more do you need?
It must be worth pursuing.
Say what you want, but Apple hardware is attractive on its own, and some of that shine is transferred onto the owner.
As a geek you understand that the smooth glass of iPhone is technically equivalent to a murky, scratched up plexiglas of some Blackberry. Both are transparent enough. You also understand that an iPhone does not contain magic components inside - and, as matter of fact, it is pretty simple, parts-wise.
But your geeky X-ray vision has nothing to do with how other people perceive an iPhone. You value it low because as a sum of parts in a bag it is not that valuable, and you assign zero value to the shiny. But other people may not care what is inside as long as the object is nice, smooth and pleasant to walk with. Apple even managed to ship a bunch of nonfunctional phones (of "you are holding it wrong" fame) - and guess what, they sold them all. You can call that behavior stupid, but mass lunacy on such a scale calls for redefinition of terms. It is not "them" who are stupid; it's *you* who is not of their world. "They," the majority, follow adventures of Hollywood actors; we, a minority, gather at Slashdot and discuss technology. To each his own; a teen girl, who is in love with Justin Bieber, will never understand why, in your opinion, Verilog is not as good as VHDL.
So would Worldcon have standing to sue UStream for libel? False (and public) accusations in writing should qualify.
Libel - unlikely. However for breach of contract - certainly (unless the contract is written such as UStream is only responsible for timely collection of the fee.)
Organizers of the event, as I understand, specifically hired UStream to broadcast the event. The organizers had all the necessary licenses for broadcasting licensed materials. UStream was not supposed to interfere, not any more than a TV station is responsible for awarding penalties in a football match.
The broadcast was interrupted, and the fault of the broadcaster is undeniable. Organizers of the event incurred a large loss because the whole event is held for one only reason - to capture eyes, ears and minds of the audience. Otherwise the awards could be shipped with UPS Ground. I would expect the organizers to sue UStream for (a) failure to prevent the interruption and (b) for doing nothing to correct the problem.
Then the entire globe is one giant collective group of assholes.
Not at all. For example, I sell you some of my software. You give me some money, and it works fine. I give you some software, and it also works fine. None of us are taking advantage of the stupidity of a business partner. We simply exchange goods of an approximately equal value. But you value my software a little bit above the money, and I value your money a little bit above my software.
Even Apple does not specifically depend on other people's stupidity. After all, Apple sells functional computers. They may be overpriced for what they do, but in the eyes of the customer the price is fair. You may say that the customer is stupid to buy Apple. I don't use fruity boxes, personally. But that's just as correct as to say that girls who like fancy dresses are stupid because a single set of a North Korean uniform ought to be enough for everyone. Is a musician stupid because he buys an expensive guitar? Is a writer stupid because he wants to travel the world? Is a geek stupid because he wants yet another computer? They are all stupid, of course, in the eyes of a person who does not appreciate their goals. But that observer has no say because he is not competent to judge.
I think it's pretty hard to find such an abuse in the industry - the problem is self-correcting. But you can find examples in finances (like the Madoff's pyramid) or in politics; any mainstream politician today depends on stupidity of his voters; honest men finish last.
What does a celestial warrior-philosopher need with servants? Or glass palaces? Or floating hover-beds? Or tasty treats? Or hair? Or pathetically "younger" body of 35-40?
The age of 35-40 is believed to be the top of fitness of a man - both mental and physical.
The servants are necessary to hold the celestial warrior-philosopher down when, after a few years of confinement in an invisible castle in the sky, he realizes that he is a prisoner. But there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and noone to fight. Nobody can learn about his inventions in philosophy or martial arts. What would you do in such situation? Most people would go insane. Hence the servants (and Haloperidol, I guess.)
One of the biggest reasons that Linux hasn't made it on the desktop is poor Video Game Support!
Maybe it was a concern 10+ years ago when if you wanted to play the latest Doom you had to have a PC. But things changed, starting with PS3 and ending with a number of other usable consoles. I got PS3 here, for example, and a bunch of games on BlueRay disks for it. Since then I stopped playing on a PC, except a few old games that I care to remember now and then.
But I don't run Linux on my desktop - even though I'm well aware of Linux and I run it on a few servers here and elsewhere. I simply have zero reason to do so. The Windows tax, about $50, is paid at the time of purchase of a box, and I cannot imagine suing MS to get it back. Besides Win7 is pretty good as it is. IMO Win7 is better than a typical Linux distrubution. All the software is available for it; most of it is free enough. As the geeks get older they also get richer, and they value their time more than money; they learn that the money can be earned, but the time cannot. If a piece of software costs $100 (say, Quicken) and takes 5 minutes to get from nothing to a fully functioning system it is better than to spend $0 and waste weeks trying to cobble together a comparable solution. (Comparable? With WebConnect? Hard to believe; I haven't checked on GnuCash recently, though.)
So why in the world would a generic, average user want to use Linux? What are the advantages? In some cases I can understand that Linux can be easier to administer remotely, like when you are building a computer for your grandparents. But VNC is an option on Windows as well. Resistance to viruses? Perhaps - until a virus for Linux shows up. Anything else that a common man would care about? Something for what a common man would wipe his $50 investment clean and install Linux? I don't see a convincing reason to switch at all. Microsoft was wise enough to hide its tax well; on top of that if you go to Fry's and look at a computer with Linux, the price is the same - the money just goes not to MS but to the place where that Linux box was assembled. The customer does not feel a difference price-wise, but he feels a lot of difference usability-wise. That's why Linux on desktop is going nowhere; MS wares are cheap enough and good enough. Some even say that they are better than Linux (see above) but that may end with release of Win8.
This is also the reason why Linux on servers is alive and well. MS charges a lot of money for even an entry level server ($800 for a Small Business Server, IIRC) - this money will buy you a lot of stuff if you don't care about windows-specific functions like the domain controller or SharePoint services. Apache is even easier to configure than the IIS. Still, many businesses buy into SBS just to get MS Exchange.
The Start8 software indeed restores the button. However it does not restore the menu. Furthermore, it breaks the default Windows key action (activate the start screen.)
Once you click on the button it brings up an ugly mix of tiles; the only difference from the start screen is that *all* tiles are shown, and the panel that contains them is rooted in the desktop.
A better implementation would simply restore the classical menu and/or the Win7/Vista menu, with draggable items on white background that are arranged in expandable groups.
I am not sure if Start8 is a solution or a problem. I cannot recommend installing it.