IANAL, but IMHO it makes sense to draw that line at the point of provability.
In the morse code example you give I would say it probably wouldn't be actionable because it's heresay. If I overheard it and reported you, it would be my word against yours. The Secret Service may or may not start an investigation based on that, but they certainly wouldn't arrest you based on it. If I happened to have recorded it, however, it would be a completely different story: now I have proof that you actually "said" that.
Sanctity of Mind is irrelevant, as you've already voluntarily waved that right by expressing your views in a manner which can be clearly understood by another person, regardless of the impermenance of the medium.
And should we hold people accountable for information that exists merely because of a "technicality" (a piece of software being configured a certain way, in this case) when there was obviously no intent for that information to ever remain in concrete form?
Why shouldn't we? "Ignorance is no excuse", as they say, and neither is stupidity. The vast majority of evidence in any criminal case is left accidentally. Are you really suggesting we should throw it all out because the criminal "didn't mean to leave their fingerprints on the murder weapon?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the MPAA only control motion pictures?
That's more or less true. I suppose the television equivalent would be the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters).
That's on the political end, though, on the technical end we have SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers). With the rising quality of digital video (resolutions up to 6144x4096 are now becoming practical for high end production) the "two" industries will become increasingly indistinguishable.
What you fail to understand is that in order to communicate effectively you must use language appropriate to the context. This letter would be fine if it was posted as a response on Slashdot, but as a public statement as a representative of a corporation, it's unacceptable. An intelligent CEO would be conscious of how such sloppy, unprofessional writing reflects on the company and would take appropriate steps. It's not as if spelling and grammar checkers aren't readily available.
As the marketeers are fond of saying; perception is reality. Any CEO who fails to recognize that is unfit for the position.
The point is, while that might be OK for everyday communication, it's not OK in what is essentially a a corporate press release.
Business folks are fond of the saying,"Perception is reality." In this case, the CEO of the company has created the perception that he is: (a) uneducated, and therefore possibly unqualified to make the decision he's trying to defend, and (b) doesn't care about the companies public image.
I certainly hope that, given your level of education, you would be smart enough to at least run something through a spell check before you posted it as a public statement from your company. If not, then there's no way to make you understand what the problem is.
You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you're not new here. So, I'm not going to bother with this one. I will say this though - it's the comment that got you modded to zero as flamebait. Around here, that's like walking into a bar mitzvah and saying that you admire Mel Gibson's dad for his refreshing point of view.
You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you might not have this realized yet: slashbot groupthink != right.
The RIAA isn't doing anything wrong. Copyright infringment is against the law, you know, and sharing your entire music collection with everybody and their third uncle on kazaa is copyright infringement. You can argue till your blue in the face that it isn't, but you'd still be wrong.
I'll grant you, suing grandmothers and 12 year old girls is bad PR, and maybe even bad for business, but it isn't wrong. All the people who got sued were breaking the law.
And in this you see one of the major problems I feel open source has today.
None of the programs you describe are trying to do something new and imaginative, their aim is simply to clone someone else as efficently as possible.
If this is in fact a problem, and I'm not convinced it is, then it is certainly not restricted to OSS. How many proprietary apps can you name that are actually innovative?
We need more OSS apps which aim to be good in their own right, not simply because they are "a free replacement for X".
MS Word was a cheap replacement for WordPerfect. IE was a cheap replacement for Netscape. That's the way the software world works. To think that it should be magically different for OSS is just stupid.
As for the "need" to be innovative, I think in most areas that's a marketeer's delusion. The majority of people never do much more with their computers than what's provided by Windows plus MS Office, and even then they probably only use a tenth of the capabilities. "Innovative" implies that you're doing something new and different, when what most of us want is to do the same things we're doing now, only cheaper.
In many cases innovation can actually be harmful. Blender is a great example of this, with its innovative interface. Those who take the time to learn find it's much better than the industry standard apps, but most people who are into that sort of thing have already learned the other ones, and hate Blender because of its interface.
I'm not saying there aren't areas where innovation is important, I work in an industry where people are constantly finding innovative things to do with computers (video production equipment, if it matters). By and large, it isn't important in many of the areas where OSS most often gets hammered for this.
Since User felt it necessary to get in a huff and lodge a complaint with their boss, you should do the same. Clearly, User is harassing you by wrongfully accusing you of all manner of absurd acts.
In general I have to agree, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I had a pager while my wife was pregnant. I gave the number out to friends and my boss, but my wife was the only on who ever called it. I didn't renew the contract after my daughter was born.
Now my wife is in a school that requires that she live there during the week, and only gets to come home on weekends if she passes all her tests (CHP Academy, if it matters). I figured if I'm the only available parent I'd better be available, so I finally got a cell phone. Again, I gave the number to my friends and boss, but the only one that ever calls is my mother-in-law, to tell me where I can find my kid when I get off work.
I don't use IM, though. With a cellphone or pager I can at least be selective about who I give the number to. Most IM services don't give you that option, at least not last time I checked.
These have already been touched on, but I'm suffering from the delusion that I have something valuable to add, so:
As much as Java sucks in terms of performance when compared to languages like C, it's still apparent that there is a real need for a cross-platform interpretted language.
Java isn't interpreted. If you need a cross-platform interpreted language any of the FOSS "scripting" languages, eg Perl or Python, should serve just fine.
If we are ever going to get people to realize that having all the power at the desktop is a stupid idea and centralized application servers are a much better concept, we NEED something like Java. Admit it... there is nothing dumber than having a P4 sitting on a secretary's desktop when her most system taxing app is the media player she uses to listen to lite rock. The power needs to be in the data center/application service center with just a simple client for remote access. And NO http is NOT the answer. http is slow and clunky for apps like word processing. Instead, centralize apps with all processing taking place on the server and the remote client is just a remote display. For this we still need something like Java. Since Java is already there... why not just open it?
You've just described the thin-client model perfectly, as you already know. Given that thin-client with X predates Java by several years, I don't understand why you think there is a need for Java in this space.
I guess I can see the use if you're going to take the existing Windows fat-clients and use them like thin-clients (or, more precisely, bastardized hybrids of the two), but that just perpetuates/exacerbates the resource waste that seems to be the heart of your arguement. If you're in a true thin-client environment Java seems to have no real advantages over any other language, and some significant disadvantages (ie the memory sharing thing in the other thread).
I have nothing against Java, but I don't use it myself. I'm not going after any programming jobs, so I haven't had a need for that particular bullet point on my resume. All my programming is either for personal use at home, which is strictly on Linux, and I'm perfectly happy with C/C++ there, or shell scripting at work on QNX4 (they say it's ksh, but as AFAICT they've striped out all the improvements over sh except for command history (Oh, the pain!)).
I work for a company that used to be part of Tektronix (now part of Thomson). Those guys put Windows on everything. It sucks, and it's unstable, but it beats the crap out of whatever they used on their older equipment. Try using a Tek VM700 sometime. We "affectionately" called it the Vomit 700 because it was always puking. Of course then there was the VM700T, the 'T' standing for "Turbo", which just means it pukes faster.
Seriously, there were some test suites that were so bad that we wouldn't call the Unit Under Test bad unless it failed 3 times in a row. By comparison, Windows isn't so bad.
In their defense, though, this isn't a consumer electronics company. Their product lines have a long developement time, and to a large extent they're constrained to what was available at the start of the project. For many of them Windows was about all there was if you wanted a nice gui, and in most cases Windows is just the user interface, with all the work actually being done on something like VxWorks or Phar Lapp. The alternative on the ex-Tek products I deal with, which first hit the market in 1996, would have been something like QNX4 or Xenix: functional, but certainly not pretty.
OK. How about: "let five gay guys take you clothes shopping."
I'm not homophobic or anything, in fact I have many gay friends, but gay men tend to take the "negative" qualities of women and exagerate them. Letting 5 gay guys pick your wardrobe is NOT going to save you any time.
If you really want to save time, buy all black clothes. You can buy whatever color shirts you want, as long as everything else is black there won't be a "matching" problem.
The problem with the USPTO isn't that it doesn't take in enough cash, it's that congress, in their infinite wisdom, keeps "borrowing" cash that's supposed to be reinvested in the USPTO. Putting a stop to that would probably help the situation greatly.
This will probably never be read by anyone, but I haven't seen anyone else mention it.
My school, and probably yours as well, has a few intro classes for just about every subject area that aren't pre-requisites for anything else. Most students won't take them, because, well, why would they want to take an extra class that if they don't need to? But, these classes can be extremely helpful for someone in your situation. The class I took that I'm thinking would help you out was Intro to Algorithms. Based on the course code, I thought it would be between Intro to Computing and Intro to Programming, and I was right. IMHO it helped a lot when I started taking my "real" programming classes. I suspect your school has something similar.
FWIW my Intro to Programming class was based on C++, which I think is a harder first language than Java, which they switched to a few semesters after I took it. That wasn't my first programming class, though. I started out my college career at a JC taking an Electronic Technician certificate course, and one of the requirements was Assembly Language. Personally, I think Assembly is an excellent first programming class. Working at such a basic level you really get a feel for how the computer "thinks", which makes it a lot more clear why in higher level languages certain constructs work, and others don't. Anyway, as unobvious as it might seem, that could be a good class if you're having trouble with the programming end of things.
I haven't read the complete statement, so I'm just going on this little portion of the summary, and I assume you are as well.
Correct, and based on that breif summary you make some good points, so I decided to educate myself further by reading the article (or at least the portion pertaining to the immediate discussion, as I unfortunately don't have time to read the complete report).
Your interpretation of matters is one possibility. It is also possible that the panel was made up of people who have no appreciation for economic realities and made a recommendation that reflects that ignorance.
The panel we're talking about here, The CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention, is a scientific advisory panel. The purpose of these panels is to make policy recommendations based on science, not economics. Appointments to these panels are made, by both tradition and law, on the basis of merit, and in a manner which is supposed to minimize inappropriate influence by the appointing authority or by any special interest. In other words, NOT people with ties to the lead industry.
In this particular case, one of the appointees dismissed, Dr. Michael Weitzman, was a respected expert on the subject of lead exposure, having actually done research in the area and being widely published on the subject in peer-reviewed journals.
His replacement, Dr. William Banner, has never done any research related to lead exposure, and was at the time of his nomination retained as an expert witness by the Lead Industries Association. His expressed views on the subject are considered "fringe" by experts in the field. From the article: "As one medical researcher explains it, Banner's position either ignores or willfully misreads some four decades' worth of accumulating data on lead exposure in children."
Dr. Banner is at least a toxicologist, though. Another replacement, Dr. Kimberly Thompson, can't even claim that level of qualification. Additionally, according to the article, she "has no fewer than 22 funders with a financial interest in the deliberations of the CDC panel and at least two--Atlantic Richfield Corp. and E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Co.--named as defendants in the Rhode Island case against the lead paint industry." (the same case for which Dr. Banner was retained as an expert witness)
The quote introducing this portion of the paper, Undermining the Quality and Integrity of the Appointment Process, sums it up neatly I think. I would have just presented it alone, but I thought you might dismiss it as "sour grapes" from someone whose nomination to the commitee was scuttled:
"The real issue here is that we are allowing scientific advisory committees to be contaminated by people who have clear bias, clear financial conflicts that will not allow them to make unbiased scientific decisions."
I must conclude, after reading the relevant portion of the article, that my conclusions are certainly "fair", at least in the sense that they are supported by the evidence.
You might also dismiss this as "the sort of thing that happens all the time". You'd be wrong. Again from the article:"According to Dr. Susan Cummins, who chaired the CDC's lead advisory committee from 1995 to 2000, this was the first time an HHS secretary had ever rejected nominations by the committee or CDC staff. In place of the respected researchers the CDC staff had recommended, Thompson's office appointed five individuals who were all distinguished by the likelihood that they would oppose tightening the federal lead poisoning standard."
But there must be a recognition that 0 ppm of a toxic chemical is better than 50 ppm. The reason the legal limits aren't 0 for all these carcinogens and toxins is because it is understood that 0 ppm is impossible to achieve without doing away with the chemicals altogether, and we just can't afford to do that.
This is a gross simplification of the issue. There are many toxins which are harmful in high doses, but benefi
I think the line you're drawing between policy and science is both artificial and dangerous. Good policy is based on good science. It's that simple. When you have policies which directly contradict the science, such as the mentioned lead situation, those policies are at best wrong and stupid, and the political manueverings behind the specific example above suggest a fair amount of evil as well.
Picking a lock depends on minute imperfections in the pins themselves, primarily in their width. It's unlikely that you'll be able to set them from the inside out, they have to be set in the order of width.
I suppose a lock could be designed with different width pins, and in that case it would certainly need to be done as you describe, but I've never encountered one. I've always found it easiest to set them from the inside out.
At work one of the products I support is a high end telecine (converts film to video, just about any professional format you can think of). Many of the key technologies used were developed by Kodak. I specifically remember the Color Correction system being one, but I know that wasn't their only contribution.
One of my electronics instructors in college had been an electronic warfare guy on B-52s. He did some serious damage to one of our early warning systems during a test of some new anti-jamming equipment (they wanted to see how long it would take to pinpoint his position as he jammed while flying down the west coast from Alaska). Apparently his equipment had been miscalibrated, which caused him to jam on the wrong frequency.
I never asked him for details, but I got the impression he could have jammed just about any frequency he wanted, so I don't buy Estrada's statement.
Another funny story he had actually involved a garage door opener. This was back when such systems were new and expensive. IIRC this was in Wyoming or some similar sparsely populated state, and he was working at the base radar station. The doctor in the nearby town had a garage door opener installed, but apparantly it operated on the same frequency as the radar, and so every time the radar dish came around his garage door would go up or down.
if the lock could detect tampering like from a pick or a jiggler and THAT set off the alarm
Interesting idea. I think it would be fairly simple to distinguish between a key and a lockpick. You'd have to have contacts inside the lock for each tumbler. Typically, a key will set the tumblers from the outside in, while it's much easier to pick a lock from the inside out. I've never used a jiggler, so I don't know how you'd detect that. Of course, people who wanted to pick those locks would just develope techniques to defeat that.
An easier way would be to put an RFID in the key. Of course, then you're stuck going to a dealership to get a spare.
Either way, though, you're still subject to computer failures.
I guess I must concede that Bush may be more of an asshole than he is a dumbass, but it is still close.
Every once in a while he does something that makes me think he's not really as dumb as he seems, but then he follows it up with 5 or 6 things that prove that, no, he really is that dumb. He may be controlled by assholes, but he himself is most certainly a dumbass.
Listening to all sides and coming to a conclusion after carefully weighing the evidence is important, and decidedly NOT what the current administration has done. Rather, they have chosen to listen only to those who support their pre-concieved notions, or can provide justification for acts they have already decided to commit. Isn't that the entire point of the article?
I forget, who is it that decides which scientist is credible? And I guess the others are not paid by the lobbies of prominent administration detractors. And of course their theories don't conviniently support the agenda of the "others".
An excellent point, and the only answer I can come up with is "the Scientific Community", which is a poor answer. Maybe "Experts in the Field" is better.
Certainly, though, the Bush administration doesn't hold a monopoly on bad science. Greenpeace is just as guilty as the "Creation Scientists" in that regard. It's just that much more disappointing when our elected representatives, and indeed the most powerful men in the world, who are charged with our wellbeing, show such blatant disregard for Truth (and don't even get me started on Justice and the American Way).
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL, but IMHO it makes sense to draw that line at the point of provability.
In the morse code example you give I would say it probably wouldn't be actionable because it's heresay. If I overheard it and reported you, it would be my word against yours. The Secret Service may or may not start an investigation based on that, but they certainly wouldn't arrest you based on it. If I happened to have recorded it, however, it would be a completely different story: now I have proof that you actually "said" that.
Sanctity of Mind is irrelevant, as you've already voluntarily waved that right by expressing your views in a manner which can be clearly understood by another person, regardless of the impermenance of the medium.
And should we hold people accountable for information that exists merely because of a "technicality" (a piece of software being configured a certain way, in this case) when there was obviously no intent for that information to ever remain in concrete form?
Why shouldn't we? "Ignorance is no excuse", as they say, and neither is stupidity. The vast majority of evidence in any criminal case is left accidentally. Are you really suggesting we should throw it all out because the criminal "didn't mean to leave their fingerprints on the murder weapon?"
Requiring an additional license in order to use GPLed code is, in and of itself, a violation of the GPL.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the MPAA only control motion pictures?
That's more or less true. I suppose the television equivalent would be the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters).
That's on the political end, though, on the technical end we have SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers). With the rising quality of digital video (resolutions up to 6144x4096 are now becoming practical for high end production) the "two" industries will become increasingly indistinguishable.
But since you brought it up, the RIAA is in the wrong - and it's an opinion I came to all by myself.
The law says they're not. How do you back up your position?
What you fail to understand is that in order to communicate effectively you must use language appropriate to the context. This letter would be fine if it was posted as a response on Slashdot, but as a public statement as a representative of a corporation, it's unacceptable. An intelligent CEO would be conscious of how such sloppy, unprofessional writing reflects on the company and would take appropriate steps. It's not as if spelling and grammar checkers aren't readily available.
As the marketeers are fond of saying; perception is reality. Any CEO who fails to recognize that is unfit for the position.
The point is, while that might be OK for everyday communication, it's not OK in what is essentially a a corporate press release.
,"Perception is reality." In this case, the CEO of the company has created the perception that he is: (a) uneducated, and therefore possibly unqualified to make the decision he's trying to defend, and (b) doesn't care about the companies public image.
Business folks are fond of the saying
I certainly hope that, given your level of education, you would be smart enough to at least run something through a spell check before you posted it as a public statement from your company. If not, then there's no way to make you understand what the problem is.
And what is the RIAA doing wrong?
You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you're not new here. So, I'm not going to bother with this one. I will say this though - it's the comment that got you modded to zero as flamebait. Around here, that's like walking into a bar mitzvah and saying that you admire Mel Gibson's dad for his refreshing point of view.
You have an id # in the 500,000 range, so you might not have this realized yet: slashbot groupthink != right.
The RIAA isn't doing anything wrong. Copyright infringment is against the law, you know, and sharing your entire music collection with everybody and their third uncle on kazaa is copyright infringement. You can argue till your blue in the face that it isn't, but you'd still be wrong.
I'll grant you, suing grandmothers and 12 year old girls is bad PR, and maybe even bad for business, but it isn't wrong. All the people who got sued were breaking the law.
And in this you see one of the major problems I feel open source has today.
None of the programs you describe are trying to do something new and imaginative, their aim is simply to clone someone else as efficently as possible.
If this is in fact a problem, and I'm not convinced it is, then it is certainly not restricted to OSS. How many proprietary apps can you name that are actually innovative?
We need more OSS apps which aim to be good in their own right, not simply because they are "a free replacement for X".
MS Word was a cheap replacement for WordPerfect. IE was a cheap replacement for Netscape. That's the way the software world works. To think that it should be magically different for OSS is just stupid.
As for the "need" to be innovative, I think in most areas that's a marketeer's delusion. The majority of people never do much more with their computers than what's provided by Windows plus MS Office, and even then they probably only use a tenth of the capabilities. "Innovative" implies that you're doing something new and different, when what most of us want is to do the same things we're doing now, only cheaper.
In many cases innovation can actually be harmful. Blender is a great example of this, with its innovative interface. Those who take the time to learn find it's much better than the industry standard apps, but most people who are into that sort of thing have already learned the other ones, and hate Blender because of its interface.
I'm not saying there aren't areas where innovation is important, I work in an industry where people are constantly finding innovative things to do with computers (video production equipment, if it matters). By and large, it isn't important in many of the areas where OSS most often gets hammered for this.
Turn-about is fair play.
Since User felt it necessary to get in a huff and lodge a complaint with their boss, you should do the same. Clearly, User is harassing you by wrongfully accusing you of all manner of absurd acts.
In general I have to agree, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I had a pager while my wife was pregnant. I gave the number out to friends and my boss, but my wife was the only on who ever called it. I didn't renew the contract after my daughter was born.
Now my wife is in a school that requires that she live there during the week, and only gets to come home on weekends if she passes all her tests (CHP Academy, if it matters). I figured if I'm the only available parent I'd better be available, so I finally got a cell phone. Again, I gave the number to my friends and boss, but the only one that ever calls is my mother-in-law, to tell me where I can find my kid when I get off work.
I don't use IM, though. With a cellphone or pager I can at least be selective about who I give the number to. Most IM services don't give you that option, at least not last time I checked.
These have already been touched on, but I'm suffering from the delusion that I have something valuable to add, so:
As much as Java sucks in terms of performance when compared to languages like C, it's still apparent that there is a real need for a cross-platform interpretted language.
Java isn't interpreted. If you need a cross-platform interpreted language any of the FOSS "scripting" languages, eg Perl or Python, should serve just fine.
If we are ever going to get people to realize that having all the power at the desktop is a stupid idea and centralized application servers are a much better concept, we NEED something like Java. Admit it... there is nothing dumber than having a P4 sitting on a secretary's desktop when her most system taxing app is the media player she uses to listen to lite rock. The power needs to be in the data center/application service center with just a simple client for remote access. And NO http is NOT the answer. http is slow and clunky for apps like word processing. Instead, centralize apps with all processing taking place on the server and the remote client is just a remote display. For this we still need something like Java. Since Java is already there... why not just open it?
You've just described the thin-client model perfectly, as you already know. Given that thin-client with X predates Java by several years, I don't understand why you think there is a need for Java in this space.
I guess I can see the use if you're going to take the existing Windows fat-clients and use them like thin-clients (or, more precisely, bastardized hybrids of the two), but that just perpetuates/exacerbates the resource waste that seems to be the heart of your arguement. If you're in a true thin-client environment Java seems to have no real advantages over any other language, and some significant disadvantages (ie the memory sharing thing in the other thread).
I have nothing against Java, but I don't use it myself. I'm not going after any programming jobs, so I haven't had a need for that particular bullet point on my resume. All my programming is either for personal use at home, which is strictly on Linux, and I'm perfectly happy with C/C++ there, or shell scripting at work on QNX4 (they say it's ksh, but as AFAICT they've striped out all the improvements over sh except for command history (Oh, the pain!)).
I work for a company that used to be part of Tektronix (now part of Thomson). Those guys put Windows on everything. It sucks, and it's unstable, but it beats the crap out of whatever they used on their older equipment. Try using a Tek VM700 sometime. We "affectionately" called it the Vomit 700 because it was always puking. Of course then there was the VM700T, the 'T' standing for "Turbo", which just means it pukes faster.
Seriously, there were some test suites that were so bad that we wouldn't call the Unit Under Test bad unless it failed 3 times in a row. By comparison, Windows isn't so bad.
In their defense, though, this isn't a consumer electronics company. Their product lines have a long developement time, and to a large extent they're constrained to what was available at the start of the project. For many of them Windows was about all there was if you wanted a nice gui, and in most cases Windows is just the user interface, with all the work actually being done on something like VxWorks or Phar Lapp. The alternative on the ex-Tek products I deal with, which first hit the market in 1996, would have been something like QNX4 or Xenix: functional, but certainly not pretty.
OK. How about: "let five gay guys take you clothes shopping."
I'm not homophobic or anything, in fact I have many gay friends, but gay men tend to take the "negative" qualities of women and exagerate them. Letting 5 gay guys pick your wardrobe is NOT going to save you any time.
If you really want to save time, buy all black clothes. You can buy whatever color shirts you want, as long as everything else is black there won't be a "matching" problem.
The problem with the USPTO isn't that it doesn't take in enough cash, it's that congress, in their infinite wisdom, keeps "borrowing" cash that's supposed to be reinvested in the USPTO. Putting a stop to that would probably help the situation greatly.
This will probably never be read by anyone, but I haven't seen anyone else mention it.
My school, and probably yours as well, has a few intro classes for just about every subject area that aren't pre-requisites for anything else. Most students won't take them, because, well, why would they want to take an extra class that if they don't need to? But, these classes can be extremely helpful for someone in your situation. The class I took that I'm thinking would help you out was Intro to Algorithms. Based on the course code, I thought it would be between Intro to Computing and Intro to Programming, and I was right. IMHO it helped a lot when I started taking my "real" programming classes. I suspect your school has something similar.
FWIW my Intro to Programming class was based on C++, which I think is a harder first language than Java, which they switched to a few semesters after I took it. That wasn't my first programming class, though. I started out my college career at a JC taking an Electronic Technician certificate course, and one of the requirements was Assembly Language. Personally, I think Assembly is an excellent first programming class. Working at such a basic level you really get a feel for how the computer "thinks", which makes it a lot more clear why in higher level languages certain constructs work, and others don't. Anyway, as unobvious as it might seem, that could be a good class if you're having trouble with the programming end of things.
I haven't read the complete statement, so I'm just going on this little portion of the summary, and I assume you are as well.
Correct, and based on that breif summary you make some good points, so I decided to educate myself further by reading the article (or at least the portion pertaining to the immediate discussion, as I unfortunately don't have time to read the complete report).
Your interpretation of matters is one possibility. It is also possible that the panel was made up of people who have no appreciation for economic realities and made a recommendation that reflects that ignorance.
The panel we're talking about here, The CDC Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention, is a scientific advisory panel. The purpose of these panels is to make policy recommendations based on science, not economics. Appointments to these panels are made, by both tradition and law, on the basis of merit, and in a manner which is supposed to minimize inappropriate influence by the appointing authority or by any special interest. In other words, NOT people with ties to the lead industry.
In this particular case, one of the appointees dismissed, Dr. Michael Weitzman, was a respected expert on the subject of lead exposure, having actually done research in the area and being widely published on the subject in peer-reviewed journals.
His replacement, Dr. William Banner, has never done any research related to lead exposure, and was at the time of his nomination retained as an expert witness by the Lead Industries Association. His expressed views on the subject are considered "fringe" by experts in the field. From the article: "As one medical researcher explains it, Banner's position either ignores or willfully misreads some four decades' worth of accumulating data on lead exposure in children."
Dr. Banner is at least a toxicologist, though. Another replacement, Dr. Kimberly Thompson, can't even claim that level of qualification. Additionally, according to the article, she "has no fewer than 22 funders with a financial interest in the deliberations of the CDC panel and at least two--Atlantic Richfield Corp. and E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Co.--named as defendants in the Rhode Island case against the lead paint industry." (the same case for which Dr. Banner was retained as an expert witness)
The quote introducing this portion of the paper, Undermining the Quality and Integrity of the Appointment Process, sums it up neatly I think. I would have just presented it alone, but I thought you might dismiss it as "sour grapes" from someone whose nomination to the commitee was scuttled:
"The real issue here is that we are allowing scientific advisory committees to be contaminated by people who have clear bias, clear financial conflicts that will not allow them to make unbiased scientific decisions."
I must conclude, after reading the relevant portion of the article, that my conclusions are certainly "fair", at least in the sense that they are supported by the evidence.
You might also dismiss this as "the sort of thing that happens all the time". You'd be wrong. Again from the article:"According to Dr. Susan Cummins, who chaired the CDC's lead advisory committee from 1995 to 2000, this was the first time an HHS secretary had ever rejected nominations by the committee or CDC staff. In place of the respected researchers the CDC staff had recommended, Thompson's office appointed five individuals who were all distinguished by the likelihood that they would oppose tightening the federal lead poisoning standard."
But there must be a recognition that 0 ppm of a toxic chemical is better than 50 ppm. The reason the legal limits aren't 0 for all these carcinogens and toxins is because it is understood that 0 ppm is impossible to achieve without doing away with the chemicals altogether, and we just can't afford to do that.
This is a gross simplification of the issue. There are many toxins which are harmful in high doses, but benefi
I think the line you're drawing between policy and science is both artificial and dangerous. Good policy is based on good science. It's that simple. When you have policies which directly contradict the science, such as the mentioned lead situation, those policies are at best wrong and stupid, and the political manueverings behind the specific example above suggest a fair amount of evil as well.
Picking a lock depends on minute imperfections in the pins themselves, primarily in their width. It's unlikely that you'll be able to set them from the inside out, they have to be set in the order of width.
I suppose a lock could be designed with different width pins, and in that case it would certainly need to be done as you describe, but I've never encountered one. I've always found it easiest to set them from the inside out.
I wouldn't count them out just yet, either.
At work one of the products I support is a high end telecine (converts film to video, just about any professional format you can think of). Many of the key technologies used were developed by Kodak. I specifically remember the Color Correction system being one, but I know that wasn't their only contribution.
One of my electronics instructors in college had been an electronic warfare guy on B-52s. He did some serious damage to one of our early warning systems during a test of some new anti-jamming equipment (they wanted to see how long it would take to pinpoint his position as he jammed while flying down the west coast from Alaska). Apparently his equipment had been miscalibrated, which caused him to jam on the wrong frequency.
I never asked him for details, but I got the impression he could have jammed just about any frequency he wanted, so I don't buy Estrada's statement.
Another funny story he had actually involved a garage door opener. This was back when such systems were new and expensive. IIRC this was in Wyoming or some similar sparsely populated state, and he was working at the base radar station. The doctor in the nearby town had a garage door opener installed, but apparantly it operated on the same frequency as the radar, and so every time the radar dish came around his garage door would go up or down.
if the lock could detect tampering like from a pick or a jiggler and THAT set off the alarm
Interesting idea. I think it would be fairly simple to distinguish between a key and a lockpick. You'd have to have contacts inside the lock for each tumbler. Typically, a key will set the tumblers from the outside in, while it's much easier to pick a lock from the inside out. I've never used a jiggler, so I don't know how you'd detect that. Of course, people who wanted to pick those locks would just develope techniques to defeat that.
An easier way would be to put an RFID in the key. Of course, then you're stuck going to a dealership to get a spare.
Either way, though, you're still subject to computer failures.
That current policies regarding sexuality (preaching abstinence as the main solution to teen-age pregnany and other rubbish) are idiotic?
Well, this last one is biased, at least as you've worded it. (I agree with you though, FWIW, but you asked...)
I guess I must concede that Bush may be more of an asshole than he is a dumbass, but it is still close.
Every once in a while he does something that makes me think he's not really as dumb as he seems, but then he follows it up with 5 or 6 things that prove that, no, he really is that dumb. He may be controlled by assholes, but he himself is most certainly a dumbass.
Let's stay focused here.
He was staying focused.
Listening to all sides and coming to a conclusion after carefully weighing the evidence is important, and decidedly NOT what the current administration has done. Rather, they have chosen to listen only to those who support their pre-concieved notions, or can provide justification for acts they have already decided to commit. Isn't that the entire point of the article?
I forget, who is it that decides which scientist is credible? And I guess the others are not paid by the lobbies of prominent administration detractors. And of course their theories don't conviniently support the agenda of the "others".
An excellent point, and the only answer I can come up with is "the Scientific Community", which is a poor answer. Maybe "Experts in the Field" is better.
Certainly, though, the Bush administration doesn't hold a monopoly on bad science. Greenpeace is just as guilty as the "Creation Scientists" in that regard. It's just that much more disappointing when our elected representatives, and indeed the most powerful men in the world, who are charged with our wellbeing, show such blatant disregard for Truth (and don't even get me started on Justice and the American Way).
They say the flaws we see in others are actually our own.
Certainly seems to apply here.