Consider that many cell phones include cameras. Authorities might want to minimized negative publicity photographs or videos being transmitted the next time something like Kent State happens. Jam the cell phone spectrum and then confiscate all phones from people in the area as evidence.
There was an article on Salon about how everyone can be a photographer now. How we can get much closer to wars and protests because it is more difficult for authorities to corral an ordinary person with a mobile phone than it is to corral a television cameraman.
Perhaps in figure the first thing the authorities will do is jam all the cell phones before they move in to "pacify" the protestors.
If you get the chance to play with someone else's 49G+, I think that there is a great chance you will change your mind. An AC posted some of the differences. This Calculator really isn't just a + edition, if should have been given a whole new number.
The 49G+ is a fantastic calculator. It craps all over the the 49G. The only complaints about the 49G+ around are that some of the early keyboards were a bit naff. I have a 49G+ and a Ti Voyage 200 - heck even the guys over at TiCalc.org think that the 49G+ is fricking awesome.
Education is part of it. It costs a bucketload more to get a degree in the USA than it does anywhere else in the world. Sure, the education system is great - but those of us from countries that provide government subsidized education to their citizens have an advantage. We don't have your overhead. Part of the reason that Indian and Russian engineers can work for much less is that there seemlingly equivelant education costs them a whole lot less.
Those would be those heavily subsidized agricultural workers wouldn't they? Because of protectionism - Sugar costs 3 times as much in the US as it does in the rest of the world. In the recent FTA negotiated by Australia and the USA, both countries that heavily promote free trade, a bucketload of agricultural subsidies were kept (no doubt to the bemusement of the EU trade people who keep being pestered by Australia and the US to drop their subsidies).
Industry protection seems to be a matter more of political convenience than economic necessity. The US and European farm sectors are subsidised out the wazoo. Why are the politicians that are pushing this stuff willing to have IT and Manufacturing outsourced, but unwilling to stop paying Bob the Corn Farmer a proportion of your taxes so that he can sell his uncompetitive goods.
Why isn't IT as deserving of protection as the sugar industry?
Though it is going to be a lot harder to repeal in the US if the MPAA and RIAA are able to point to these agreements and say "look, this sort of legislation is standard across the world!".
Most of the content providers here (film/TV) are already arguing against the FTA because it goes towards dismantling the Australian content rules (so much Australian made content must be shown on TV). Local artists don't seem to be yelling for this sort of stuff.
Actually the local content rules are responsible for things like Kylie Minogue, Russel Crowe and The Wiggles - so maybe complete domination of the Australian airwaves by reruns of whatever the Waynes brothers are doing wouldn't have been such a bad thing.
One controversial aspect of the FTA that the US side was pushing for was the dismantling of the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The PBS is a list of specific medicinal drugs subsidized by the Government. I think it involves limiting of prices on the part of the manufacturer as well. Only certain medicines get on the PBS, but it means that the cost of treating a lot of medical conditions is lower as the pharmaceutical company's take is less. The giant US pharmaceutical manufacturers wanted to scrap this scheme and charge whatever they decided the market rate is. The conservative government in Australia knew that if it caved on the PBS, it would be electoral suicide (prices would jump 10 fold for most people using these drugs).
Some of the reports I've read suggest that the USA/.au FTA is "so good" that it will be the basis of future US bilateral free trade agreements. So what Australia cops today, other countries seeking an FTA with the US will cop tomorrow.
As for the carrot and stick. The current.au government has yet to show us the carrots in this deal, all we seem to be getting is a whole lot of stick. Speaking of which, isn't it funny that two of the most vocal "drop agricultural barriers" advocates at the WTO didn't drop any agricultural barriers between them when they negotiated a bilateral FTA?
I'm sure the New Zealanders (who were excluded from a US/NZ FTA because they wouldn't join in with Iraq and won't allow nuclear warships in port) are really upset that they missed out on this one.
Actually a lot of complex experiments (unless they come up with something totally unexpected like Cold Fusion) - are not reproduced.
The reason is that it is difficult enough to get funding for a complex experiment at the best of times. If you try to get funding to perform a complex experiment that someone else has already performed, you are a lot less likely to be successful.
So although the theory is that scientific experiments are always directly replicated, in most cases scientists don't have the will (why go where someone has gone before) or the funds to do so.
I disagree about your statement about education. India (and many other nations) have a relatively cheap University education sector.
The academics at Indian Universities aren't going to be all that far behind the academics at American Universities. The likelyhood is that many of the top Indian academics are going to be trained in the US (or the UK or EU) anyway. So the quality of education that students outside the US are going to be getting will be comparable to what US students are getting. It is likely that they even use the same textbooks! The difference is mainly what it costs to get those educations.
What particular aspect of education is not "exportable?" (that is, is there any particular reason that the US will always have the best Univeristy education system?)
The cost of US education is probably far to high - it certainly is compared to an equivelant education elsewhere in the world.
The amusing thing of course is that historically the Ph.D is the "real" doctor. A few centuries back the medical groups petitioned to be allowed to have the title that was originally reserved for those that had contributed to the sum of human knowledge (Ph.D). They got it - and now, a few hundred years later it is the Ph.D's that are not considered "real" doctors.
Do you get upset if an RHCE uses the word engineer? Or is that different because it is Linux?
By the way - CCNA = Associate not Architect. CCIE is Expert not Engineer. Both MCSE and RHCE should be Expert rather than Engineer - but being Slashdot, I guess only Microsoft is in the wrong here.
What I'd love to know is why it is okay for Red Hat to use Red Hat Certified Engineer but that it isn't okay for MS to use Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer?
Re:why aren't we using the Russian Shuttle now?
on
The Return of Apollo?
·
· Score: 1
It isn't a restaurant, but rather a fairly crappy theme park attraction. The Buran in Gorky Park was not the one that flew in orbit. It is in pretty bad condition and it only costs a few roubles to get to walk inside. They've ripped out pretty much everything that was inside it to convert it to this attraction. However sadly it hasn't been maintained in any semblence of good condition, it is covered in bird poop, grass is growing out of some parts, and one of the tires was flat. It isn't even promoted well once you get to Gorky Park. I had to take the ferris wheel to get up high enough to figure out where the damn thing was - over by the river near the roller coaster for anyone that is interested.
Star Trek was not about going out and "Kicking Ass" - Star Trek was never about going out an "Kicking Ass". Once they start using that as a plot device they've discarded one of the core things that make Star Trek "Star Trek".
Star Trek is not Aliens, Star Trek is not Starship Troopers - Star Trek is not about overgunned battleships dropping combat squads onto invaded colony planets with the main characters shouting things like "hut hut hut" and "yo!".
Star Trek, for better or for worse, has ALWAYS been about the attempt to resolve things peacefully rather than by resorting to violence. You may disagree with that, you may think it is all "touchy feely" and silly - but go back and watch the TNG and TOS - that was a big part of the underlying philosophy.
This is a good series for a person with an average level of experience to get some form of understanding what sort of expoits are out there. Many of these computer security type books go a little too much for the hype (watch out for the 31337 haX0rz!) and not enough stepping you simply through why and how an expoit works. Someone new to Linux admining will pick up more about Linux security reading this book than they will many others. It contains a good list of the most popular expoits. Of course your box won't be entirely secure if you read this book (security is a process) and to a seasoned sysadmin much of this will be old hat. It will however mean that your system is probably less hackable than some other administrators who has a similar level of experience but hasn't read this book.
This series Windows 2000 offering is very good as well - not a lot of hype but tends to get down to the brass tacks of how to start to secure an out of the box installation.
The only problem with these books is how quickly they do become dated. You won't get an amazing amount of use out of them in 5 years time except for as some sort of historical perspective. Not a lot of depth into the methodology of locating exploits - just more a list of exploits and how to understand their use.
Without trying to sound like an advertisment, I've found O'Reilly's Safari service is ebooks over the web done RIGHT. They get your contribution which funds the library, you get cheap access to books that would otherwise cost you a lot more money legitimately. The only downside is that you don't get the geek-cred of having all of those animal books on your shelf at work.
Has anyone seen any other publishers offering a similar service that is as good value wise? I wasn't particularly impressed by the offering from Wrox but I'm guessing that someone else out there will follow O'Reilly's lead.
I've been reading Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree (a book on understanding globalization that I saw recommended here on/. once) and part of what he says supports your ideas.
Globalization will lead to a reduction in the size of the middle class as a natural by product of globalization is the movement of jobs overseas to places where the cost of living (and hence the overheads of the jobs) is not as high. Of course by the time the majority of the middle class realises it there won't be a whole lot of it left. It all comes down to the question - "what exactly about my job cannot be done by someone from a country where the cost of living isn't so high?". The shorter the list of items, the less secure you are from parts (if not all) of your job being moved somewhere else.
I've worked as a part time Sysadmin from Australia for an American company where the servers are hosted in the USA. When your servers are sitting somewhere like Rackspace, it doesn't matter if you are on a cable connection from across the town or across the pacific ocean. The currency conversion rate mean that I made what I'd normally make in.au working as a Sysadmin but that the US company I worked for only had to pay me about half of what they'd have to pay me if I lived over there.
I've been in a position of being offered a H1B but realised that it wasn't necessary for me to uproot my life and move halfway across the world. All of this playing with the H1B legislation is moving deck chairs about on the titanic - technology has reached a stage where people can effectively work for a company from halfway around the world.
Something like this would be even better when flying from Australia to the rest of the world. If you've ever been on a flight from Australia to Europe or to the USA this would be so good it isn't funny.
On another note - can you imagine if they upgraded Air Force One to one of these cool looking jets? It would have to be worth a whole lot of diplomacy points to have POTUS jet about in something that looks straight out of the Thunderbirds.
This seems to add a whole lot of cool things including:
"... three different Internet and LAN game styles, including turn-based, simultaneous, and for the first time in a Civilization game, a turnless mode. Civilization game fans around the world can now face off in short, fast-paced games like Elimination, Regicide and Capture the Flag or play a more traditional Civilization-style game; in addition the expansion will support "Play by Email" and Hotseat games and will include multiplayer scenario support. Play the World will also expand your Civilization experience by adding eight new "Great Leaders;" eight new civilizations with specialized units for each; new map features including airfields, outposts and radar towers; two new terrain sets that allow players to customize their maps; additional interface enhancements like unit stacking and auto-bombard; and complete game editor and scenario support, including feudal Japan and World War II unit packs, that will allow players to create scenarios from any time period."
This should be coming out in December or so - where as SimCity 4 is slated for 2003. So perhaps you better mention to the g/f that there is another period of non-communication coming up.
One problem with the CF 802.11b cards an iPaq is that it draws a lot of power. You definitely do *not* want to leave the card in for any length of time if your unit is switched off otherwise you'll turn your iPaq on and the battery will be drained. It is okay if you want to use your handheld for a short amount of time wirelessly - but for anything longer you'll need to have your AC adapter plugged in, which kinda restricts your mobility. I'm not sure how they'd stack up on a Palm - but the amount of power these things draw is a definite downside to using them on a handheld for any length of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider that many cell phones include cameras. Authorities might want to minimized negative publicity photographs or videos being transmitted the next time something like Kent State happens. Jam the cell phone spectrum and then confiscate all phones from people in the area as evidence.
There was an article on Salon about how everyone can be a photographer now. How we can get much closer to wars and protests because it is more difficult for authorities to corral an ordinary person with a mobile phone than it is to corral a television cameraman.
Perhaps in figure the first thing the authorities will do is jam all the cell phones before they move in to "pacify" the protestors.
If you get the chance to play with someone else's 49G+, I think that there is a great chance you will change your mind. An AC posted some of the differences. This Calculator really isn't just a + edition, if should have been given a whole new number.
I'm afraid it makes a huge difference.
The 49G+ is a fantastic calculator. It craps all over the the 49G. The only complaints about the 49G+ around are that some of the early keyboards were a bit naff. I have a 49G+ and a Ti Voyage 200 - heck even the guys over at TiCalc.org think that the 49G+ is fricking awesome.
Education is part of it. It costs a bucketload more to get a degree in the USA than it does anywhere else in the world. Sure, the education system is great - but those of us from countries that provide government subsidized education to their citizens have an advantage. We don't have your overhead. Part of the reason that Indian and Russian engineers can work for much less is that there seemlingly equivelant education costs them a whole lot less.
Those would be those heavily subsidized agricultural workers wouldn't they? Because of protectionism - Sugar costs 3 times as much in the US as it does in the rest of the world. In the recent FTA negotiated by Australia and the USA, both countries that heavily promote free trade, a bucketload of agricultural subsidies were kept (no doubt to the bemusement of the EU trade people who keep being pestered by Australia and the US to drop their subsidies).
Industry protection seems to be a matter more of political convenience than economic necessity. The US and European farm sectors are subsidised out the wazoo. Why are the politicians that are pushing this stuff willing to have IT and Manufacturing outsourced, but unwilling to stop paying Bob the Corn Farmer a proportion of your taxes so that he can sell his uncompetitive goods.
Why isn't IT as deserving of protection as the sugar industry?
Though it is going to be a lot harder to repeal in the US if the MPAA and RIAA are able to point to these agreements and say "look, this sort of legislation is standard across the world!".
Most of the content providers here (film/TV) are already arguing against the FTA because it goes towards dismantling the Australian content rules (so much Australian made content must be shown on TV). Local artists don't seem to be yelling for this sort of stuff.
Actually the local content rules are responsible for things like Kylie Minogue, Russel Crowe and The Wiggles - so maybe complete domination of the Australian airwaves by reruns of whatever the Waynes brothers are doing wouldn't have been such a bad thing.
One controversial aspect of the FTA that the US side was pushing for was the dismantling of the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The PBS is a list of specific medicinal drugs subsidized by the Government. I think it involves limiting of prices on the part of the manufacturer as well. Only certain medicines get on the PBS, but it means that the cost of treating a lot of medical conditions is lower as the pharmaceutical company's take is less. The giant US pharmaceutical manufacturers wanted to scrap this scheme and charge whatever they decided the market rate is. The conservative government in Australia knew that if it caved on the PBS, it would be electoral suicide (prices would jump 10 fold for most people using these drugs).
Some of the reports I've read suggest that the USA/.au FTA is "so good" that it will be the basis of future US bilateral free trade agreements. So what Australia cops today, other countries seeking an FTA with the US will cop tomorrow.
.au government has yet to show us the carrots in this deal, all we seem to be getting is a whole lot of stick. Speaking of which, isn't it funny that two of the most vocal "drop agricultural barriers" advocates at the WTO didn't drop any agricultural barriers between them when they negotiated a bilateral FTA?
As for the carrot and stick. The current
I'm sure the New Zealanders (who were excluded from a US/NZ FTA because they wouldn't join in with Iraq and won't allow nuclear warships in port) are really upset that they missed out on this one.
1. Slashdot story about Sysadmins
2. MCSE Joke
3. Karma!
Actually a lot of complex experiments (unless they come up with something totally unexpected like Cold Fusion) - are not reproduced.
The reason is that it is difficult enough to get funding for a complex experiment at the best of times. If you try to get funding to perform a complex experiment that someone else has already performed, you are a lot less likely to be successful.
So although the theory is that scientific experiments are always directly replicated, in most cases scientists don't have the will (why go where someone has gone before) or the funds to do so.
I disagree about your statement about education. India (and many other nations) have a relatively cheap University education sector.
The academics at Indian Universities aren't going to be all that far behind the academics at American Universities. The likelyhood is that many of the top Indian academics are going to be trained in the US (or the UK or EU) anyway. So the quality of education that students outside the US are going to be getting will be comparable to what US students are getting. It is likely that they even use the same textbooks! The difference is mainly what it costs to get those educations.
What particular aspect of education is not "exportable?" (that is, is there any particular reason that the US will always have the best Univeristy education system?)
The cost of US education is probably far to high - it certainly is compared to an equivelant education elsewhere in the world.
Why not settle on Merkins rather than USian ;-)
A quick search on Google shows that Violins can be hidiously expensive. Check some of the screenshots of the Violin Maker Database:
s .h tml
http://members.aol.com/violinmakers/violinmaker
Specifically the prices listed here:
http://members.aol.com/violinmakers/Qvalue.jpg
I'm seeing a bucketload over 200K.
The amusing thing of course is that historically the Ph.D is the "real" doctor. A few centuries back the medical groups petitioned to be allowed to have the title that was originally reserved for those that had contributed to the sum of human knowledge (Ph.D). They got it - and now, a few hundred years later it is the Ph.D's that are not considered "real" doctors.
Do you get upset if an RHCE uses the word engineer? Or is that different because it is Linux?
By the way - CCNA = Associate not Architect. CCIE is Expert not Engineer. Both MCSE and RHCE should be Expert rather than Engineer - but being Slashdot, I guess only Microsoft is in the wrong here.
What I'd love to know is why it is okay for Red Hat to use Red Hat Certified Engineer but that it isn't okay for MS to use Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer?
Ba weep granna weep ninny bang
It isn't a restaurant, but rather a fairly crappy theme park attraction. The Buran in Gorky Park was not the one that flew in orbit. It is in pretty bad condition and it only costs a few roubles to get to walk inside. They've ripped out pretty much everything that was inside it to convert it to this attraction. However sadly it hasn't been maintained in any semblence of good condition, it is covered in bird poop, grass is growing out of some parts, and one of the tires was flat. It isn't even promoted well once you get to Gorky Park. I had to take the ferris wheel to get up high enough to figure out where the damn thing was - over by the river near the roller coaster for anyone that is interested.
Star Trek was not about going out and "Kicking Ass" - Star Trek was never about going out an "Kicking Ass". Once they start using that as a plot device they've discarded one of the core things that make Star Trek "Star Trek".
Star Trek is not Aliens, Star Trek is not Starship Troopers - Star Trek is not about overgunned battleships dropping combat squads onto invaded colony planets with the main characters shouting things like "hut hut hut" and "yo!".
Star Trek, for better or for worse, has ALWAYS been about the attempt to resolve things peacefully rather than by resorting to violence. You may disagree with that, you may think it is all "touchy feely" and silly - but go back and watch the TNG and TOS - that was a big part of the underlying philosophy.
This is a good series for a person with an average level of experience to get some form of understanding what sort of expoits are out there. Many of these computer security type books go a little too much for the hype (watch out for the 31337 haX0rz!) and not enough stepping you simply through why and how an expoit works. Someone new to Linux admining will pick up more about Linux security reading this book than they will many others. It contains a good list of the most popular expoits. Of course your box won't be entirely secure if you read this book (security is a process) and to a seasoned sysadmin much of this will be old hat. It will however mean that your system is probably less hackable than some other administrators who has a similar level of experience but hasn't read this book.
This series Windows 2000 offering is very good as well - not a lot of hype but tends to get down to the brass tacks of how to start to secure an out of the box installation.
The only problem with these books is how quickly they do become dated. You won't get an amazing amount of use out of them in 5 years time except for as some sort of historical perspective. Not a lot of depth into the methodology of locating exploits - just more a list of exploits and how to understand their use.
Without trying to sound like an advertisment, I've found O'Reilly's Safari service is ebooks over the web done RIGHT. They get your contribution which funds the library, you get cheap access to books that would otherwise cost you a lot more money legitimately. The only downside is that you don't get the geek-cred of having all of those animal books on your shelf at work.
Has anyone seen any other publishers offering a similar service that is as good value wise? I wasn't particularly impressed by the offering from Wrox but I'm guessing that someone else out there will follow O'Reilly's lead.
I've been reading Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree (a book on understanding globalization that I saw recommended here on /. once) and part of what he says supports your ideas.
.au working as a Sysadmin but that the US company I worked for only had to pay me about half of what they'd have to pay me if I lived over there.
Globalization will lead to a reduction in the size of the middle class as a natural by product of globalization is the movement of jobs overseas to places where the cost of living (and hence the overheads of the jobs) is not as high. Of course by the time the majority of the middle class realises it there won't be a whole lot of it left. It all comes down to the question - "what exactly about my job cannot be done by someone from a country where the cost of living isn't so high?". The shorter the list of items, the less secure you are from parts (if not all) of your job being moved somewhere else.
I've worked as a part time Sysadmin from Australia for an American company where the servers are hosted in the USA. When your servers are sitting somewhere like Rackspace, it doesn't matter if you are on a cable connection from across the town or across the pacific ocean. The currency conversion rate mean that I made what I'd normally make in
I've been in a position of being offered a H1B but realised that it wasn't necessary for me to uproot my life and move halfway across the world. All of this playing with the H1B legislation is moving deck chairs about on the titanic - technology has reached a stage where people can effectively work for a company from halfway around the world.
Something like this would be even better when flying from Australia to the rest of the world. If you've ever been on a flight from Australia to Europe or to the USA this would be so good it isn't funny.
On another note - can you imagine if they upgraded Air Force One to one of these cool looking jets? It would have to be worth a whole lot of diplomacy points to have POTUS jet about in something that looks straight out of the Thunderbirds.
You'll be happy to know then that they have announced an expansion to Civ III called "Play The World" - http://www.civ3.com/pressrelease.cfm
... three different Internet and LAN game styles, including turn-based, simultaneous, and for the first time in a Civilization game, a turnless mode. Civilization game fans around the world can now face off in short, fast-paced games like Elimination, Regicide and Capture the Flag or play a more traditional Civilization-style game; in addition the expansion will support "Play by Email" and Hotseat games and will include multiplayer scenario support. Play the World will also expand your Civilization experience by adding eight new "Great Leaders;" eight new civilizations with specialized units for each; new map features including airfields, outposts and radar towers; two new terrain sets that allow players to customize their maps; additional interface enhancements like unit stacking and auto-bombard; and complete game editor and scenario support, including feudal Japan and World War II unit packs, that will allow players to create scenarios from any time period."
...
This seems to add a whole lot of cool things including:
"
This should be coming out in December or so - where as SimCity 4 is slated for 2003. So perhaps you better mention to the g/f that there is another period of non-communication coming up.
Of course, there is also the release of MOO3
One problem with the CF 802.11b cards an iPaq is that it draws a lot of power. You definitely do *not* want to leave the card in for any length of time if your unit is switched off otherwise you'll turn your iPaq on and the battery will be drained. It is okay if you want to use your handheld for a short amount of time wirelessly - but for anything longer you'll need to have your AC adapter plugged in, which kinda restricts your mobility. I'm not sure how they'd stack up on a Palm - but the amount of power these things draw is a definite downside to using them on a handheld for any length of time.