There's a difference between being "natural" and "sustainable".
Yes, but the parent post isn't talking about "sustainable", it's talking about "natural".
The vast majority of natural creatures are also sustainable...
Which means that some minority of natural creatures are not sustainable. Being in that minority doesn't make humans unnatural. As you make clear, appeals to sustainability are not appeals to nature. And thus objections to unsustainability are not objections to nature.
Our conclusions are the same: natural creatures are sometimes unsustainable. You should be replying to the parent post, not to me.
If cows pollute more than cars, it's because we breed them in huge numbers. This is not "natural".
What do you mean? If we're products of evolution, then we humans are supremely natural. Furthermore, everything we do is supremely natural. Just as bees act according to their nature, and whales act according to their nature, so do we act according to our nature. How could it be otherwise? At what point would you say that "un-nature" has been introduced into the process?
Lions use teeth and claws to take their prey. This is natural. Apes use twigs to fish ants out of anthills. This is natural. Bats use sonar and aerobatic maneuvers to snatch bugs out of the air. This is natural. And we humans use our minds and hands to imagine and build tools to accomplish the desires of our hearts. This is natural.
Are you saying that space aliens have secretly induced us to act against our nature? Perhaps we are breeding unnatural numbers of cows to feed their alien appetites (it would explain the cattle abductions and mutilations). But wouldn't the aliens--and their cow-cravings--also be natural? Wouldn't that make the entire Human-Cow-Alien system yet another natural phenomenon?
Are you saying that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has laid down a moral law restricting the number of cows we can naturally breed, and that it goes against the FSM's law to breed more cows than that? If so, we can all look forward to being whipped with wet noodles for all eternity, in the afterlife.
But seriously, what natural or moral yardstick are you using to measure the nature of Man? Because it seems to me that if Man is a product of nature, then all the products of Man are also products of nature.
Cow population, nuclear reactors, SUVs, Catholicism, Nazism, anthropogenic factors in climate change: All natural. So where's the problem?
And don't say that the problem is that we're going to make ourselves extinct. Species make themselves extinct all the time. Nothing more natural than that. Ebola has a hard time spreading because it overuses its resources and kills its host too quickly. It's natural when viruses do it--and not just viruses; all organisms tend towards this, if not restrained by natural effects such as other organisms or environmental conditions (and note that the lack of such restraints is also natural). Why should it be unnatural when humans do it?
I say we carry on as before. Clean up the environment, sure, but for more immediate reasons of beauty and health: nobody likes to walk a littered beach, or suck down the smoggy L.A. air, after all.
In the 70s, scientists were absolutely convinced that they'd mastered the complex climate change models, and confidently assured us all that an Ice Age was imminent.
Nowadays, global warming is the new scientific fad. And not only does it appear that global warming is much greater in scope than any amount of anthropogenic factors can account for, it also appears that there's not much we can do about it anyway.
On top of all that, I suspect that the smarty men, for all their expert and well-intentioned efforts, still haven't mastered the climate change models to the extent some of us would like to think.
So I say we carry on as always: sometimes building, sometimes tearing down. Sometimes exploiting, sometimes preserving. Sometimes making a mess, sometimes cleaning it up. And always refining and improving our methods and priorities, not based on the current socio-scientific fads, but based rather on the traditional motivations: the ebb and flow of human desire, expressed individually and collectively by various means.
I mean, if we don't even properly understand climate change, and can have only a measurable but insignificant effect on it, then how can we possibly make good decisions about what sacrifices to make and what goals to pursue in relation to climate change?
There are plenty of other more sensible, more practical, and more meaningful reasons to change some of our behaviors. I, for one, would like to see more arguments for ecological responsibility based on those, and less arguments based on voodoo climatology.
Look, I understand your need to speechify about how the world is supposed to be. Believe me, I am all too painfully aware of how imperfect the law is, and how obscenely it has been perverted by the RIAA.
Which is precisely why I say, don't fuck with them if you can't take the heat. Because not even the law will be on your side. And if you do fuck with them, don't complain then that it's too hot for you. Because, as we all know, not even the law will be on your side.
Of course, maybe this poor kid didn't know all that. Maybe he hadn't done his homework, was just merrily bebopping through life, naively thinking, hey, music piracy, what's the big deal? It's like copying a tape, right?
Totally clueless. How's that for fucked up? There's this whole "hacker culture" out there, telling him go ahead, step to the man, rebel, fight for your rights, it's hip, it's cool... And it's all lies, because the reality is that the RIAA is a vast, heartless, soul-sucking beast, and it will absolutely destroy your life to feed its bizarre and inhuman appetites.
You agree wholeheartedly with nothing I've said, obviously.
The RIAA is a big bully. So either cross to the other side of the street, or if you'd rather fight him, don't complain when you feel his fist in your gut.
First of all, I acknowledged that the policy was bad policy. I'm not saying that the RIAA is going about this in the right way. In fact, they're going about it in a pretty fucked-up way. Which is kinda my point: you know how it's going to be if the dragon catches you stealing it's treasure, so whose fault is it when the dragon wakes up, sees you stealing its treasure, and then makes with the breath weapon?
Second, your analogy is incredibly bad.
MADD has no legal right or authority to enforce DUI laws or set up DUI checkpoints. The RIAA has all kinds of legal basis for enforcing their copyright.
Cars are, by and large, essential to the average citizen's daily life. If MADD were to do what you describe, it would result in unacceptable hardship for many individuals and whole communities. Music on CD is not an essential item. There's plenty of other ways to occupy your mind, if you can't afford a CD and don't want to mess with the RIAA dragon.
A criminal's possessions are often seized and auctioned off to cover some of the costs of their crimes. This is in many ways similar to what the RIAA is suggesting.
If you think that several years of college tuition is an exorbitant license fee to pay for pirating their content? Fine with me. But in that case, either don't pirate the content, or don't get caught, or don't come whining to me when you do get caught and have to make an Important Life Choice about what matters most to you: squaring things with the RIAA, or finishing school. As far as I'm concerned, you should have figured that out before you started goofing around in the dragon's lair.
Actually all I said was that kids don't have to pirate music, and that if they decide to do it anyway, they're not really in a position to complain when the music piracy boogeyman comes for them.
For my money, the best part of your rant is the part where you totally fail to come up with any objection to what I said, and are forced to object to other things I didn't actually say, in order to have an excuse to rant in the first place.
You could also not pirate stuff to begin with. Sure, the RIAA's enforcement policies are draconian, but if you know they're out to ruin your life, what kind of an idiot would you have to be to sign up for it?
Portable music is a privilege, not an entitlement. Here's an idea: don't pirate during while at school. Focus on paying tuition and learning things. Later, when you've got the degree and the earning potential, consider branching out into a life of crime.
Need to relax? Get yourself some public domain music. Or save up the whole twenty dollars you'd need to buy one CD of really good music--something classical, say, with lots of replay value and brain-strengthening effects.
Or just do without. Two hundred years ago, everybody did without. Maybe you should give it a try. Leave the RIAA, with its newfangled technologies and unreasonably harsh punishments out of your life entirely.
Or, if you're unwilling to do that, STFU and take the heat when the heat comes down. Yes, even if that means quitting school to pay for the totally forseeable consequences of your oh-so-3dgy anti-The Man lifestyle.
I'm for the citizens of NO, not incumbent telcos with rotten attitudes.
I dunno. I can kinda see the telco's point of view.
City, through some combination of incompetence, corruption, and bad luck, gets hit with a major disaster.
Telcos, in a fit of generosity (no doubt inspired by the PR value of "giving something back to the community"), donate lots of WiFi gear to the city to assist in the rebuilding efforts by setting up a temporary ad-hoc network.
City then announces that they plan on using the donated gear to establish a permanent WiFi network.
From the telcos' point of view, this raises all sorts of problems.
For one thing, it means that they've just entered into competition with themselves, at great expense. Who would sign up for that?
It also means that the city, which has so far refused to actually hire the telcos and pay for what is a very desireable and very expensive improvement to their city infrastructure, are trying to back-door their way into the improvement--by taking advantage of the telcos generous donation.
If I knew my generosity was going to be exploited by a guy who wouln't normally pay for my services, I'd think twice about being generous in the first place. And as soon as the telcos found out they were being taken advantage of, they started pulling back.
By being greedy, the City seems to have cost itself some portion of the original donation. Perhaps this is the incompetence and corruption that conspired with bad luck to cause the original disaster?
And this anecdote reads like a textbook example of "politically incorrect".
Sounds like Secretary Watt vastly overestimated the U.S.C.C.'s sense of humor. His resignation was probably for the best, even if Reagan could've used a man of his talent.
Once again, Slashdot imagines a problem the engineers in question could not possibly have forseen! One cannot help but wonder how the Apollo program could ever have succeeded, without Slashdot to catch the mistakes and fill in the gaps. Yay Slashdot!
"it would really delight the insurgency, because they only have to hack one and they have a million killing machines they can send at the US troops".
I'm with Masamune Shirow on this one: Advanced automated devices--especially military and paramilitary devices--will require almost-constant maintenance services from an advanced industrial infrastructure.
Hack one, and it's yours until its component failure. After that, you better hope you're in charge of a major industrial superpower, if you plan on repairing that component and continuing to use the device.
Hack a million, and they're yours until ten seconds later, when your enemy withdraws the support infrastructure...
But to be honest, after reading the article, I am quite impressed. I did not know this. Take, for example:
Since January, Koreans have been able to watch television broadcasts on cellphones, free, thanks to government-subsidized technology.
Enh. I don't find it all that impressive. "Free" in this case means, "paid for by taxing Korean citizens". Think about that for a moment, then ask yourself, "is delivering free TV to cell phones really the best use of your citizen's money?" Another good question to ask is, "wouldn't it be better for everybody to cut taxes, and let those citizens who actually want or need cellphone TV buy it themselves at market rates with the money you've let them keep?"
A few minutes on Google strongly suggests that this particular meme is not grounded in reality; that is, the original quote "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" was never properly sourced or verified. According to one account, reporter Peter Arnett attributed it to an anonymous Army officer. Presumably it's bandied about today because of its apparent truthiness, rather than its accurate depiction of official policy, strategy, or tactics.
Anyway, you're correct: the Pentagon isn't planning to wage war against the net as such. Whew!
My beef isn't really with the military, it's with policy, and how our money is spent.
Fair enough. I guess my point is that the current policy, and the current expenditures, resulted in immediate and effective relief operations that were unrivaled in scope and success by any other policy and system of expenditure in action at the time.
It's easy to complain about institutional shortcomings. Why doesn't anybody ever bother to inform themselves about the strengths exhibited by these same institutions? It's not like you can separate the one from the other, and keep only the good part.
To be fair, within 24 hours of the tsunami, the U.S. military had delivered two desalinization plants to the coast of Banda Aceh province in Indonesia, and had commenced a major airlift operation to bring supplies via helicopter to the otherwise-inaccesible areas of the worst-hit region.
The airlift operation continued for several weeks, and was unrivaled in scope and success by any other supply activities conducted by other governments, the U.N., and private organizations during the same time period. As far as I know, nobody except the U.S. military ever deployed any desalinization plants to tsunami-stricken regions, let alone two within 24 hours.
I don't know how much such a thing costs, but I imagine it's pretty expensive:
- Large store of relief supplies
- Airlift capacity for these supplies
- Desalinization plants
- Transportation systems for the desal plants
- Transportation systems for the relief supply storehouses
- Personnel to operate and maintain the airlift vehicles, desal plants, and transportation systems
Note that major disasters are pretty rare; there's going to be a lot of downtime for all this machinery. In order to keep it in good condition, ready to respond at a moment's notice, a lot of resources must be spent just on training, shakedown, preventive maintenance, routine inspections, etc. It's not just about delivering a desal plant on demand, but about maintaining at great expense the infrastructure necessary to even be able to deliver desal plants on demand.
Total up the cost of two nuclear submarines and an aircraft carriers (including their desal plants, transport helicopters, and stores of relief supplies): I'd bet that these items by themselves add up to more resources contributed to tsunami relief by the U.S. military than by all other donors combined. And that was just in the first 24 hours after the disaster, before the President and Congress even had a chance to study the problem thoroughly.
In military jargon, the phrase "fight the foo" usually means "to use in battle", not "to fight against".
The Pentagon doesn't view the Internet as an enemy, but as a battlefield and a weapon. When they talk about "fighting" the net, they're talking about developing tactics and strategies that will allow them to both use the net effectively to accomplish their missions and to effectively prevent enemy forces from using the net effectively against them.
If you read the reports, you will find them full of discussion about ways the net can be used effectively in war and methods for countering such usage by enemies during war. You will find very little about the net itself being an enemy that must be countered. It's all about the net as a tool that can be used, and a battlefield that must be mapped.
So you did remember that China is bigger, you just want to take the opportunity to promote the cause of Taiwan independence?
Another possibility is that he sincerely thinks China is smaller, as a logical consequence of sincerely thinking that Taiwan is not a part of China.
In any case, the USA is only bigger if you include California, Nevada, and Utah
In what way is Taiwan like these three states? It's a relatively recent entity. It's never been a part of the pretender parent nation. Its citizens never approved any union with the pretender. Indeed, it was formed explicitly to not be part of a union with the pretender. It's not even a part of the pretender's contiguous landmass. All of these are points of unlikeness. Did you have any points of likeness in mind?
Are you sure you wouldn't be happier just making a straightforward case for Chinese sovreignty over Taiwan?
I'm no more interested in sharing a theater with a bunch of idiots (a situation that seems to arise every time I go to the theater) than I am in sharing a road or an office with a bunch of idiots.
While I can't really avoid the idiots on the road and in the office, I can certainly avoid them in the theater, without giving up a quality moviegoing experience.
What made you think that a community full of idiots on the road and in the office would somehow magically not also be a community full of idiots in the movie theater?
If you think that I'm evaulating you on your "ability to arrange bits of cloth and leather", then your instruments need calibration. Badly.
I'm evaluating you on three criteria: Your claimed expertise (your resume), your exhibited expertise (your response to technical challenges during the interview process), and your professionalism and attitude (communicated primarily by your dress and demeanor, as well as your punctuality and preparedness).
I'm taking a chance by hiring you; a three- or four-hour interview and your resume is precious little to go on, in terms of the long-term commitment you want me to make. My team is very casual, but very hardworking and very professional. We enjoy a very positive reputation with our customers, who demand not just technical proficiency but also social proficiency. If you can't be botherd to make a good impression on your prospective teammates, they'd be the first to tell me you're not getting the job.
Emphasizing your technical contributions to the team isn't enough; I already have a stable of skilled technicians. Emphasizing the social cost you'll impose on my team is counter-productive.
Obviously, other managers may differ. Assuming it's the case, I congratulate you on finding a niche where your particular personality quirks don't greatly interfere with your pursuit of happiness. I probably wouldn't offer you a job, but I'll certainly wish you luck.
It's anecdotal of course but I have noticed that technology (hardware and software) sales people who are the best dressed tend to be the ones who know the least about the product.The sales guy who wears chinos and an oxford has a much better chance of explaining what the product actually does without having to quote the brochure
I think this is a corollary to the rule that the greater your level of mastery, the greater your privilege of letting your mastery speak for itself, and the less you are required to inspire confidence and communicate professionalism and commitment through other means (such as dress and demeanor).
That is, the problem isn't subject-matter experts dressing down. The problem is people showing up for a job interview dressed down, expecting to be given the benefit of the doubt that they're subject-matter experts before they've put in several years with the prospective employer, fully demonstrating that they're masters regardless of what they're wearing.
It's the whole attitude of "I'm so good, I don't need to show respect or professionalism; you should just read my resume and give me full credit immediately" that turns people off during an interview.
If your sole purpose during the interview is to get the job, you'll dress professionally, and take many other steps to convince me that I should risk several hundred thousand dollars a year investing in you.
If your purpose in the interview is to confront my prejudices, raise my awareness, communicate your disdain for my workplace customs... well, you may succeed in your purpose, but you won't get the job.
Remember, I'm not interviewing you in order to fight injustice, right wrongs, build a better tomorrow, celebrate diversity, or learn new things.
I'm interviewing you because I want to give lots of money to a skilled laborer in exchange for his skilled labor. You want lots of money? Do everything in your power to convince me that you're the laborer I'm looking for. If you don't want lots of money, don't waste my time and yours on some juvenile performance art crap about how even purple-haired freaks in muumuus can be good software engineers.
(I actually know a purple-haired muumuu freak who's a damn fine software engineer and an all-around genius of the first order. And even he puts on shoes, a suit, and a tie for his job interviews. He doesn't get his freak on until after he's established through other means that he's a worthy candidate.)
Stupid and unprofessional behaviour will only get worse if you make them angry - no matter how angry they make you.
If that's true, then how can you possibly blame CentOS for their attitude? By your logic, they were confronted with stupid and unprofessional behavior, and it could only have made them angry. Everything worked out exactly as you predict it should, and it was all caused by stupid and unprofessional behavior initiated by the City Manager. If he didn't want to be treated badly, he should never have started the way he did.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact of the matter is however downtown chicago [sic] is not a natural preserve....
In what way is it unnatural?
There's a difference between being "natural" and "sustainable".
Yes, but the parent post isn't talking about "sustainable", it's talking about "natural".
The vast majority of natural creatures are also sustainable...
Which means that some minority of natural creatures are not sustainable. Being in that minority doesn't make humans unnatural. As you make clear, appeals to sustainability are not appeals to nature. And thus objections to unsustainability are not objections to nature.
Our conclusions are the same: natural creatures are sometimes unsustainable. You should be replying to the parent post, not to me.
As a San Diego resident, I have to say, that would be pretty much the ideal outcome.
If cows pollute more than cars, it's because we breed them in huge numbers. This is not "natural".
What do you mean? If we're products of evolution, then we humans are supremely natural. Furthermore, everything we do is supremely natural. Just as bees act according to their nature, and whales act according to their nature, so do we act according to our nature. How could it be otherwise? At what point would you say that "un-nature" has been introduced into the process?
Lions use teeth and claws to take their prey. This is natural. Apes use twigs to fish ants out of anthills. This is natural. Bats use sonar and aerobatic maneuvers to snatch bugs out of the air. This is natural. And we humans use our minds and hands to imagine and build tools to accomplish the desires of our hearts. This is natural.
Are you saying that space aliens have secretly induced us to act against our nature? Perhaps we are breeding unnatural numbers of cows to feed their alien appetites (it would explain the cattle abductions and mutilations). But wouldn't the aliens--and their cow-cravings--also be natural? Wouldn't that make the entire Human-Cow-Alien system yet another natural phenomenon?
Are you saying that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has laid down a moral law restricting the number of cows we can naturally breed, and that it goes against the FSM's law to breed more cows than that? If so, we can all look forward to being whipped with wet noodles for all eternity, in the afterlife.
But seriously, what natural or moral yardstick are you using to measure the nature of Man? Because it seems to me that if Man is a product of nature, then all the products of Man are also products of nature.
Cow population, nuclear reactors, SUVs, Catholicism, Nazism, anthropogenic factors in climate change: All natural. So where's the problem?
And don't say that the problem is that we're going to make ourselves extinct. Species make themselves extinct all the time. Nothing more natural than that. Ebola has a hard time spreading because it overuses its resources and kills its host too quickly. It's natural when viruses do it--and not just viruses; all organisms tend towards this, if not restrained by natural effects such as other organisms or environmental conditions (and note that the lack of such restraints is also natural). Why should it be unnatural when humans do it?
I say we carry on as before. Clean up the environment, sure, but for more immediate reasons of beauty and health: nobody likes to walk a littered beach, or suck down the smoggy L.A. air, after all.
In the 70s, scientists were absolutely convinced that they'd mastered the complex climate change models, and confidently assured us all that an Ice Age was imminent.
Nowadays, global warming is the new scientific fad. And not only does it appear that global warming is much greater in scope than any amount of anthropogenic factors can account for, it also appears that there's not much we can do about it anyway.
On top of all that, I suspect that the smarty men, for all their expert and well-intentioned efforts, still haven't mastered the climate change models to the extent some of us would like to think.
So I say we carry on as always: sometimes building, sometimes tearing down. Sometimes exploiting, sometimes preserving. Sometimes making a mess, sometimes cleaning it up. And always refining and improving our methods and priorities, not based on the current socio-scientific fads, but based rather on the traditional motivations: the ebb and flow of human desire, expressed individually and collectively by various means.
I mean, if we don't even properly understand climate change, and can have only a measurable but insignificant effect on it, then how can we possibly make good decisions about what sacrifices to make and what goals to pursue in relation to climate change?
There are plenty of other more sensible, more practical, and more meaningful reasons to change some of our behaviors. I, for one, would like to see more arguments for ecological responsibility based on those, and less arguments based on voodoo climatology.
Look, I understand your need to speechify about how the world is supposed to be. Believe me, I am all too painfully aware of how imperfect the law is, and how obscenely it has been perverted by the RIAA.
Which is precisely why I say, don't fuck with them if you can't take the heat. Because not even the law will be on your side. And if you do fuck with them, don't complain then that it's too hot for you. Because, as we all know, not even the law will be on your side.
Of course, maybe this poor kid didn't know all that. Maybe he hadn't done his homework, was just merrily bebopping through life, naively thinking, hey, music piracy, what's the big deal? It's like copying a tape, right?
Totally clueless. How's that for fucked up? There's this whole "hacker culture" out there, telling him go ahead, step to the man, rebel, fight for your rights, it's hip, it's cool... And it's all lies, because the reality is that the RIAA is a vast, heartless, soul-sucking beast, and it will absolutely destroy your life to feed its bizarre and inhuman appetites.
You agree wholeheartedly with nothing I've said, obviously.
The RIAA is a big bully. So either cross to the other side of the street, or if you'd rather fight him, don't complain when you feel his fist in your gut.
First of all, I acknowledged that the policy was bad policy. I'm not saying that the RIAA is going about this in the right way. In fact, they're going about it in a pretty fucked-up way. Which is kinda my point: you know how it's going to be if the dragon catches you stealing it's treasure, so whose fault is it when the dragon wakes up, sees you stealing its treasure, and then makes with the breath weapon?
Second, your analogy is incredibly bad.
MADD has no legal right or authority to enforce DUI laws or set up DUI checkpoints. The RIAA has all kinds of legal basis for enforcing their copyright.
Cars are, by and large, essential to the average citizen's daily life. If MADD were to do what you describe, it would result in unacceptable hardship for many individuals and whole communities. Music on CD is not an essential item. There's plenty of other ways to occupy your mind, if you can't afford a CD and don't want to mess with the RIAA dragon.
A criminal's possessions are often seized and auctioned off to cover some of the costs of their crimes. This is in many ways similar to what the RIAA is suggesting.
If you think that several years of college tuition is an exorbitant license fee to pay for pirating their content? Fine with me. But in that case, either don't pirate the content, or don't get caught, or don't come whining to me when you do get caught and have to make an Important Life Choice about what matters most to you: squaring things with the RIAA, or finishing school. As far as I'm concerned, you should have figured that out before you started goofing around in the dragon's lair.
Actually all I said was that kids don't have to pirate music, and that if they decide to do it anyway, they're not really in a position to complain when the music piracy boogeyman comes for them.
For my money, the best part of your rant is the part where you totally fail to come up with any objection to what I said, and are forced to object to other things I didn't actually say, in order to have an excuse to rant in the first place.
Ah. Good point. If it's not telco-donated WiFi equipment, that changes things considerably. Thanks!
You could also not pirate stuff to begin with. Sure, the RIAA's enforcement policies are draconian, but if you know they're out to ruin your life, what kind of an idiot would you have to be to sign up for it?
Portable music is a privilege, not an entitlement. Here's an idea: don't pirate during while at school. Focus on paying tuition and learning things. Later, when you've got the degree and the earning potential, consider branching out into a life of crime.
Need to relax? Get yourself some public domain music. Or save up the whole twenty dollars you'd need to buy one CD of really good music--something classical, say, with lots of replay value and brain-strengthening effects.
Or just do without. Two hundred years ago, everybody did without. Maybe you should give it a try. Leave the RIAA, with its newfangled technologies and unreasonably harsh punishments out of your life entirely.
Or, if you're unwilling to do that, STFU and take the heat when the heat comes down. Yes, even if that means quitting school to pay for the totally forseeable consequences of your oh-so-3dgy anti-The Man lifestyle.
I'm for the citizens of NO, not incumbent telcos with rotten attitudes.
I dunno. I can kinda see the telco's point of view.
City, through some combination of incompetence, corruption, and bad luck, gets hit with a major disaster.
Telcos, in a fit of generosity (no doubt inspired by the PR value of "giving something back to the community"), donate lots of WiFi gear to the city to assist in the rebuilding efforts by setting up a temporary ad-hoc network.
City then announces that they plan on using the donated gear to establish a permanent WiFi network.
From the telcos' point of view, this raises all sorts of problems.
For one thing, it means that they've just entered into competition with themselves, at great expense. Who would sign up for that?
It also means that the city, which has so far refused to actually hire the telcos and pay for what is a very desireable and very expensive improvement to their city infrastructure, are trying to back-door their way into the improvement--by taking advantage of the telcos generous donation.
If I knew my generosity was going to be exploited by a guy who wouln't normally pay for my services, I'd think twice about being generous in the first place. And as soon as the telcos found out they were being taken advantage of, they started pulling back.
By being greedy, the City seems to have cost itself some portion of the original donation. Perhaps this is the incompetence and corruption that conspired with bad luck to cause the original disaster?
And this anecdote reads like a textbook example of "politically incorrect".
Sounds like Secretary Watt vastly overestimated the U.S.C.C.'s sense of humor. His resignation was probably for the best, even if Reagan could've used a man of his talent.
Once again, Slashdot imagines a problem the engineers in question could not possibly have forseen! One cannot help but wonder how the Apollo program could ever have succeeded, without Slashdot to catch the mistakes and fill in the gaps. Yay Slashdot!
"it would really delight the insurgency, because they only have to hack one and they have a million killing machines they can send at the US troops".
I'm with Masamune Shirow on this one: Advanced automated devices--especially military and paramilitary devices--will require almost-constant maintenance services from an advanced industrial infrastructure.
Hack one, and it's yours until its component failure. After that, you better hope you're in charge of a major industrial superpower, if you plan on repairing that component and continuing to use the device.
Hack a million, and they're yours until ten seconds later, when your enemy withdraws the support infrastructure...
Enh. I don't find it all that impressive. "Free" in this case means, "paid for by taxing Korean citizens". Think about that for a moment, then ask yourself, "is delivering free TV to cell phones really the best use of your citizen's money?" Another good question to ask is, "wouldn't it be better for everybody to cut taxes, and let those citizens who actually want or need cellphone TV buy it themselves at market rates with the money you've let them keep?"
A few minutes on Google strongly suggests that this particular meme is not grounded in reality; that is, the original quote "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" was never properly sourced or verified. According to one account, reporter Peter Arnett attributed it to an anonymous Army officer. Presumably it's bandied about today because of its apparent truthiness, rather than its accurate depiction of official policy, strategy, or tactics.
Anyway, you're correct: the Pentagon isn't planning to wage war against the net as such. Whew!
My beef isn't really with the military, it's with policy, and how our money is spent.
Fair enough. I guess my point is that the current policy, and the current expenditures, resulted in immediate and effective relief operations that were unrivaled in scope and success by any other policy and system of expenditure in action at the time.
It's easy to complain about institutional shortcomings. Why doesn't anybody ever bother to inform themselves about the strengths exhibited by these same institutions? It's not like you can separate the one from the other, and keep only the good part.
To be fair, within 24 hours of the tsunami, the U.S. military had delivered two desalinization plants to the coast of Banda Aceh province in Indonesia, and had commenced a major airlift operation to bring supplies via helicopter to the otherwise-inaccesible areas of the worst-hit region.
The airlift operation continued for several weeks, and was unrivaled in scope and success by any other supply activities conducted by other governments, the U.N., and private organizations during the same time period. As far as I know, nobody except the U.S. military ever deployed any desalinization plants to tsunami-stricken regions, let alone two within 24 hours.
I don't know how much such a thing costs, but I imagine it's pretty expensive:
- Large store of relief supplies
- Airlift capacity for these supplies
- Desalinization plants
- Transportation systems for the desal plants
- Transportation systems for the relief supply storehouses
- Personnel to operate and maintain the airlift vehicles, desal plants, and transportation systems
Note that major disasters are pretty rare; there's going to be a lot of downtime for all this machinery. In order to keep it in good condition, ready to respond at a moment's notice, a lot of resources must be spent just on training, shakedown, preventive maintenance, routine inspections, etc. It's not just about delivering a desal plant on demand, but about maintaining at great expense the infrastructure necessary to even be able to deliver desal plants on demand.
Total up the cost of two nuclear submarines and an aircraft carriers (including their desal plants, transport helicopters, and stores of relief supplies): I'd bet that these items by themselves add up to more resources contributed to tsunami relief by the U.S. military than by all other donors combined. And that was just in the first 24 hours after the disaster, before the President and Congress even had a chance to study the problem thoroughly.
In military jargon, the phrase "fight the foo" usually means "to use in battle", not "to fight against". The Pentagon doesn't view the Internet as an enemy, but as a battlefield and a weapon. When they talk about "fighting" the net, they're talking about developing tactics and strategies that will allow them to both use the net effectively to accomplish their missions and to effectively prevent enemy forces from using the net effectively against them. If you read the reports, you will find them full of discussion about ways the net can be used effectively in war and methods for countering such usage by enemies during war. You will find very little about the net itself being an enemy that must be countered. It's all about the net as a tool that can be used, and a battlefield that must be mapped.
So you did remember that China is bigger, you just want to take the opportunity to promote the cause of Taiwan independence?
Another possibility is that he sincerely thinks China is smaller, as a logical consequence of sincerely thinking that Taiwan is not a part of China.
In any case, the USA is only bigger if you include California, Nevada, and Utah
In what way is Taiwan like these three states? It's a relatively recent entity. It's never been a part of the pretender parent nation. Its citizens never approved any union with the pretender. Indeed, it was formed explicitly to not be part of a union with the pretender. It's not even a part of the pretender's contiguous landmass. All of these are points of unlikeness. Did you have any points of likeness in mind?
Are you sure you wouldn't be happier just making a straightforward case for Chinese sovreignty over Taiwan?
I'm no more interested in sharing a theater with a bunch of idiots (a situation that seems to arise every time I go to the theater) than I am in sharing a road or an office with a bunch of idiots.
While I can't really avoid the idiots on the road and in the office, I can certainly avoid them in the theater, without giving up a quality moviegoing experience.
What made you think that a community full of idiots on the road and in the office would somehow magically not also be a community full of idiots in the movie theater?
If you think that I'm evaulating you on your "ability to arrange bits of cloth and leather", then your instruments need calibration. Badly.
I'm evaluating you on three criteria: Your claimed expertise (your resume), your exhibited expertise (your response to technical challenges during the interview process), and your professionalism and attitude (communicated primarily by your dress and demeanor, as well as your punctuality and preparedness).
I'm taking a chance by hiring you; a three- or four-hour interview and your resume is precious little to go on, in terms of the long-term commitment you want me to make. My team is very casual, but very hardworking and very professional. We enjoy a very positive reputation with our customers, who demand not just technical proficiency but also social proficiency. If you can't be botherd to make a good impression on your prospective teammates, they'd be the first to tell me you're not getting the job.
Emphasizing your technical contributions to the team isn't enough; I already have a stable of skilled technicians. Emphasizing the social cost you'll impose on my team is counter-productive.
Obviously, other managers may differ. Assuming it's the case, I congratulate you on finding a niche where your particular personality quirks don't greatly interfere with your pursuit of happiness. I probably wouldn't offer you a job, but I'll certainly wish you luck.
It's anecdotal of course but I have noticed that technology (hardware and software) sales people who are the best dressed tend to be the ones who know the least about the product.The sales guy who wears chinos and an oxford has a much better chance of explaining what the product actually does without having to quote the brochure
I think this is a corollary to the rule that the greater your level of mastery, the greater your privilege of letting your mastery speak for itself, and the less you are required to inspire confidence and communicate professionalism and commitment through other means (such as dress and demeanor).
That is, the problem isn't subject-matter experts dressing down. The problem is people showing up for a job interview dressed down, expecting to be given the benefit of the doubt that they're subject-matter experts before they've put in several years with the prospective employer, fully demonstrating that they're masters regardless of what they're wearing.
It's the whole attitude of "I'm so good, I don't need to show respect or professionalism; you should just read my resume and give me full credit immediately" that turns people off during an interview.
If your sole purpose during the interview is to get the job, you'll dress professionally, and take many other steps to convince me that I should risk several hundred thousand dollars a year investing in you.
If your purpose in the interview is to confront my prejudices, raise my awareness, communicate your disdain for my workplace customs... well, you may succeed in your purpose, but you won't get the job.
Remember, I'm not interviewing you in order to fight injustice, right wrongs, build a better tomorrow, celebrate diversity, or learn new things.
I'm interviewing you because I want to give lots of money to a skilled laborer in exchange for his skilled labor. You want lots of money? Do everything in your power to convince me that you're the laborer I'm looking for. If you don't want lots of money, don't waste my time and yours on some juvenile performance art crap about how even purple-haired freaks in muumuus can be good software engineers.
(I actually know a purple-haired muumuu freak who's a damn fine software engineer and an all-around genius of the first order. And even he puts on shoes, a suit, and a tie for his job interviews. He doesn't get his freak on until after he's established through other means that he's a worthy candidate.)
Stupid and unprofessional behaviour will only get worse if you make them angry - no matter how angry they make you.
If that's true, then how can you possibly blame CentOS for their attitude? By your logic, they were confronted with stupid and unprofessional behavior, and it could only have made them angry. Everything worked out exactly as you predict it should, and it was all caused by stupid and unprofessional behavior initiated by the City Manager. If he didn't want to be treated badly, he should never have started the way he did.