Mr. Ukab, there are two gentlemen here to see you. They say their names are Faegre and Benson, on behalf of the National Pork Board. And just so you know, they have a large, thick envelope with your name on it. It looked for a moment, however, like the address for the ThinkGeek offices had been scratched out and yours hurriedly added.
Both film and digital have their respective strengths and weaknesses, their best uses and those situations where they are not the best choice-so why do we try to make it into camps in a holy war between film and digital? So maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't-my guess is he would at least try both. I think he could and would make quality images no matter which media he used, because it's the photographer's eye and technique that truly make the difference.
Just finished reading the section of the article that was headed as "Filters that fight back." I think that the biggest issues that keep such an approach from working are fundamental features of the e-mail infrastructure itself: 1) the lack of verification, and 2) the store-and-forward and replicative nature of email itself.
In other systems I am aware of in which active countermeasures may appear (such as firewalls, and tcpwrappers), the adversary can be established with reasonable certainty in most cases; however, because the From and Reply-To addresses can be (and often are) forged and most owners of relaying machines are unaware they are misconfigured, it seems doubtful countermeasures would work at that step. If one uses the URLs, as suggested in the article, it is not guaranteed that the "million" emails sent out will hit the next server along their path at a particular time, so it seems doubtful you can guarantee a massive traffic burst at once. Indeed, what may be seen instead is incremental bursts of traffic at the delivery retry intervals of various mailserver software.
Other questions also arise, such as: 1) how much additional load will a mailserver experience from hitting the links; 2) what additional security issues are introduced in doing so (what if, for instance, the code to do this results in a security vulnerability); 3) how can it be done in such a way that DDOS attacks against innocent victims can be avoided; and 4) how can you get enough people to both upgrade their systems and cooperate in a useful way to do this. Issues 1 and 2 are probably obvious questions to ask-issues 3 and 4, however, I believe suffer from the same weaknesses as some of the current BL schemes. Also, some localities have legal codes which prohibit the interruption of legitimate access to a system, and the server in this case definitely has a way to track back to you at that point, which potentially make participants vulnerable to legal or civil actions.
While I admire Mr. Graham and his efforts in the spam-wars, and find it an intriguing idea, I do not think this approach will truly be successful until changes are made to the underpinning email system that may reduce some of the issues mentioned, but hopefully will themselves make an impact on the issue without being too onerous to prevent wide-spread adoption.
Rhetoric is find and good, but anyone can thump their chest and say they are for this or against that-the proof of their commitment is in the actions they take after the speeches and editorials of this week are curbside awaiting removal next week.
Perhaps their first step, if they are truly interested in reducing the level of spam, would be to start at the point of installation. My past experience has been that unless one went in and did a custom install, many times things were installed that were not only completely unnecessary for the average user, but unknown to those very users. And in what were often insecure default configurations. SMTP servers are not needed in every installation location, even less frequently is the need to allow relay from addresses outside of the network on which the machine resides, and proxy servers are necessary even less frequently still. Yet some past default install configurations would install services such as these, services unneeded whose removal could prove at times to be a Herculean task.
Step number two closely coincides with this: customer education. Very few people I know want to wade through a 1000+-page book or two on configuring just one piece of software on their machine, but many of the users who find themselves being contacted by their local abuse personnel have no idea the steps that led to their machine being an unwitting conduit for exploitation and relay. It seems that a little extra work to make the default configurations more secure, and to advise the less-advanced installing users in clearer terms what the potential consequences of configuration choices could be, could result in enormous payoffs in reducing the number of systems that could be used for such nefarious purposes.
It has been some time since I have spent much time working with systems based on their software, and perhaps the experiences I have had with their software (which led to my comments above) are no longer the case. I hope this is so, but do not believe it to be the case yet. I truly hope they are earnest in their claim of a desire for a spam-free future, and to this end, I hope they will truly work with the standards bodies and the community-at-large to help eradicate the problem.
Why not just use definitions that can already be made, such as 1/12.0107(8)-th the mass of one Avogadro's constant of a sample of 100% pure carbon-12? or 1/132.90545(2)-th the mass of one Avogadro's constant of a sample of 100% pure cesium-133 (which is its only naturally occurring isotope)? Or base it from the half the energy of the gamma ray generated by the annihilation of a positron-electron pair having no energy from acceleration, or something similar? Yes, it is a bit problematic that most of the physical features it could be based on now seem difficult to measure in a lab, because they relate back to something on the atomic scale, and the counting of objects at that scale or in such a number to be useful daily is difficult. At least, though, it would then be reproducible.
Having read the NIST articlereferenced by another respondent earlier, I can agree with their reasons for considering the adoption of another, more accessible standard. One of the cornerstones of science is the ability to reproduce results. Perhaps it is overdue that the unit of mass (kilogram) join its other basic breathern, the units of time (second) and length (meter), in being based not upon one physical sample, but upon a physical quantity that is reproducible and available to laboratories world-wide.
Sounds like a good book. As someone with a system dropped into his lap which was never designed to be distributed (but now is), the review interested me, and I'm likely to soon try to obtain the book (or at least look at it).
One problem I often faced by developers is not so much that they don't want to write good secure code, but they are under such deadlines that they can't take a break to learn how. For some, their early training may not have included the idea of the application being distributed, or prepared them for the issues inherent in such environments. The other issue I tend to see is users during testing clamoring that the security that may have been put is unnecessary, or slows down the process, or it is too much to remember, or... *bang head against nearest hard surface, repeat*
In response to your sig (and slightly off-topic to the article), an off-shoot of the Cygwin project (housed at http://sources.redhat.com/ ), includes an implementation (under "More projects") of XFree86 using the Cygwin API to run under Windows 9x/NT/2k/XP.
Since you can transfer names between registrars, what happens if someone decides to buy one in this when someone else is legitimately trying to get it but doesn't want to use Verisign/NSI (V/NSI)?
This also sounds a bit like it is aimed for those same who would try to sue anyone with a domain name containing even the same letters or digits as their trademark (even though there are only 36 of them total). Now, if you fail to renew on time, will they be able to grab your domain from under you, or will there be a "cooling off" period for domains before they can be taken over by the person purchasing them in this auction?
I am sure these are only the tip of the iceberg, once this policy is considered. It seems to me that such a policy would require the application of thought, logic, and common sense, to try to minimize problems should it be implemented. (I know-my experience leads me to believe that such won't be applied either.)
After the first few times I played, I considered (but haven't had the chance to do anything with) the idea of a model aircraft (airplane or helicopter) mounted with some form of paint projector (low or high rate of fire), possibly with a camera unit for remote control. Has anyone played with the idea for close air support, and if so, has anyone also thought about the scoring as to when it would be out of commission? (Yes, I know wouldn't be tourny-legal, but with the right friends, might make things more interesting.):^)
Ok, you're playing a game that is normally played in a wooded, roped-off playing area, using either trees and bushes for cover, or a few barricades made by either friends or the people running the paintball field. There's hardly any walls, so no place for the sills, so it DOESN'T MATTER if it is Windows compatible... and if it isn't, oh well-
From the Yahoo article, Mr. Visse of MSN marketing stated that "All of our development work for the new MSN.com is...W3C standard." However (IIRC), the W3C standard for web browsers states that a browser it to ignore any tags it does not know how to handle. This being the case, then, there is no reason to disallow a browser, since it should ignore anything it does not know.
Also, I can confirm I received the message trying Mozilla 0.94, lynx 2.8.4dev.16. and direct telnet to port 80.
...never, never, never assume anything. Assumption is the mother of all uuck fups.
Case in point: Ask about skills related to your current projects that don't appear on the person's resume. Admittedly, most information about writing resumes seems to point to writing them as concisely as possible, but if a major skill you are needing (or think you will be needing) is not mentioned in the resume, ask about it.
I have seen this when it happened, where a skill that turned out to be quite critical (but since everyone else there had the skill, it was also assumed the candidate did as well) was lacking but it was only discovered to be the case after the candidate had been there for a few months. Not a pretty situation.
And never, never, never assume. And even on the items they mention that they are familiar with, ask. You should be able to ask a few questions on an area to feel them out in it without making them wonder where the bright light and rubber hose are.
And never, never, never assume. Ask them about how they feel about coworkers and their present job (or last job, as the case may be), or how their present (or former) coworkers would describe them. Everyone it seems tries to present their best mask at an interview-it is your job to remove that mask and find their day-to-day one. Ask them if they favor a n*rf gun with a large number of rounds, or one that has longer range but only holds one or two rounds.
And never, never, never make assumptions. Ask them if they have a life outside of the digital world. Ask them how they relax and let off steam. Ask them what gets them steamed or stressed. Do you really want to be going through this process again this time next year because the person you hired has to take a long vacation to the rubber-walled inn?
And never, never, never make assumptions. Read the other comments to this article-the SBR (signal-to-BS ratio) for this article has been quite high (at least to now). There are quite a few nuggets of truth in the comments for the harvesting.
Remember that you are there to find out if they will fit in with the needs and goals of your company-they are there to show they do (or at least can).
I've worked for an ISP that provided cable modem (CM) service, and I have used both cable modems and DSL. It does depend on the provider, yes, but there are also other factors to consider.
With cable modems, the speed also depends on where the concentrators for your segment of cable are (that includes how many others are using the service, and how much bandwidth is available to your segment), and any sources of line noise or other problems.
With DSL, the distance to the CO (central office) affects your speed (the further from the CO, the lower your speed will be), as does the quality of the lines between you and the CO (in your walls, building, between your building and the CO, and the lines and equipment in the CO, plus any sources of line noise and the like).
Another factor, but one you may not have considered, is the bandwidth of your provider out to the rest of the Internet. If you have 4Mbps to your location, but the provider only has a 1.544Mbps T-1 out to the rest of the 'Net, then your game of Q3 with your buddies from work/school who are also on that provider may be great, but you will likely see a slow download from SourceForge or your favorite p0rn site at peak usage times. (Over-subscribing bandwidth would not be surprising-before such high-speed services, it was not uncommon for providers to subscribe users sometimes to the rate of 10 to 15 per available modem line, because on average you won't use your capacity to anywhere close to 100% most of the time.)
Providers may also limit the bandwidth of uploads to discourage the running of servers from their networks. Many of them may consider the ability to run a web or mail server a billable service to be offered to commercial customers, and thus may offer higher speeds or additional addressing in their packages aimed to their business clients. (It would not seem to be very prudent of them to offer partial T-1 access at several hundred dollars per month and turn around and offer T-1 speed DSL/CM service for $50 per month when the customer can get a box to do NAT and put their entire office on that DSL/CM connection for an initial few hundred dollars or less, now would it?)
Since they are also the ones to catch the brunt of (calls / emails / other complaints) about (SPAM / illegal materials / hack attempts / etc.) that appear to originate from their network, even if they have no control over such, limiting such things by limiting the ability to run servers can sound like a reasonable step.
Not attempting to justify anything, just pointing out a few things to consider.
No, it would not be the same if you attempted something similar from a geosynchronous or geostationary orbit. A geostationary or geosynchronous orbit (altitude of either is roughly 35000 km) is still an orbit, just that its velocity is such that it takes the same length of time to orbit as the earth takes to rotate. Using a balloon as the jump platform ensures that the jump point is stationary relative to the atmosphere, and thus the only frictional heating results from downward velocity (which could reach a maximum of the Mach 1.5 range mentioned in the article, but will lessen as the jumper reaches thicker portions of the atmosphere), unlike debris or vehicles entering the atmosphere (whose velocities in the range of 5 km/s or higher).
The thing is, it doesn't matter if it is a good product or not-a product is only dead when we, the users, say it is dead, or the "big thing" when we let it be.
Too many times, however, we let those who repute themselves as "experts" say something is dead. We hear and don't look at the product or item in question (because we don't have the time, familiarity, or what-not), but instead give them the very credence they want but may not yet have by walking away from it, thus essentially starving it to death.
We have also done the very same by allowing the same "experts" to say this or that will be the next "big thing." Flocking to it, we thus made it indeed the next "big thing" to flirt across the stage. It was only afterwards that we the users looked upon it in the daylight of honest evaluation, to find it was not as hyped, but instead lacking, only to find that it had pushed its inroads in deeply enough that we could no longer easily remove it.
In doing thus, we have also increased the strength of the so-called "expert"'s word, making it more likely that the next thing they pronounce dead does indeed die, and the next thing they pronounce the "big thing" is indeed that. What we have done most of all, however, is to let slip a little further away one more freedom-the freedom to choose.
Slashdot Mirror
Rocket science is still a challenging science. Where is Werner von Braun when we need him?
Wernher von Braum currently resides at 2823 King St., Alexandria, Virginia, USA; however, he apparently has not been responding to correspondence or inquiries since at least Jun. 16, 1977.
The other white meat.
Mr. Ukab, there are two gentlemen here to see you. They say their names are Faegre and Benson, on behalf of the National Pork Board. And just so you know, they have a large, thick envelope with your name on it. It looked for a moment, however, like the address for the ThinkGeek offices had been scratched out and yours hurriedly added.
Can I use my iTunes gift card to pay the tax?
I have done so for more than 25 years with no hallucinations (as far as I can tell) or baseless paranoia.
And remember, kids-it isn't "baseless paranoia" if they actually *ARE* out to get you....
Both film and digital have their respective strengths and weaknesses, their best uses and those situations where they are not the best choice-so why do we try to make it into camps in a holy war between film and digital? So maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't-my guess is he would at least try both. I think he could and would make quality images no matter which media he used, because it's the photographer's eye and technique that truly make the difference.
Just finished reading the section of the article that was headed as "Filters that fight back." I think that the biggest issues that keep such an approach from working are fundamental features of the e-mail infrastructure itself: 1) the lack of verification, and 2) the store-and-forward and replicative nature of email itself.
In other systems I am aware of in which active countermeasures may appear (such as firewalls, and tcpwrappers), the adversary can be established with reasonable certainty in most cases; however, because the From and Reply-To addresses can be (and often are) forged and most owners of relaying machines are unaware they are misconfigured, it seems doubtful countermeasures would work at that step. If one uses the URLs, as suggested in the article, it is not guaranteed that the "million" emails sent out will hit the next server along their path at a particular time, so it seems doubtful you can guarantee a massive traffic burst at once. Indeed, what may be seen instead is incremental bursts of traffic at the delivery retry intervals of various mailserver software.
Other questions also arise, such as: 1) how much additional load will a mailserver experience from hitting the links; 2) what additional security issues are introduced in doing so (what if, for instance, the code to do this results in a security vulnerability); 3) how can it be done in such a way that DDOS attacks against innocent victims can be avoided; and 4) how can you get enough people to both upgrade their systems and cooperate in a useful way to do this. Issues 1 and 2 are probably obvious questions to ask-issues 3 and 4, however, I believe suffer from the same weaknesses as some of the current BL schemes. Also, some localities have legal codes which prohibit the interruption of legitimate access to a system, and the server in this case definitely has a way to track back to you at that point, which potentially make participants vulnerable to legal or civil actions.
While I admire Mr. Graham and his efforts in the spam-wars, and find it an intriguing idea, I do not think this approach will truly be successful until changes are made to the underpinning email system that may reduce some of the issues mentioned, but hopefully will themselves make an impact on the issue without being too onerous to prevent wide-spread adoption.
Rhetoric is find and good, but anyone can thump their chest and say they are for this or against that-the proof of their commitment is in the actions they take after the speeches and editorials of this week are curbside awaiting removal next week.
Perhaps their first step, if they are truly interested in reducing the level of spam, would be to start at the point of installation. My past experience has been that unless one went in and did a custom install, many times things were installed that were not only completely unnecessary for the average user, but unknown to those very users. And in what were often insecure default configurations. SMTP servers are not needed in every installation location, even less frequently is the need to allow relay from addresses outside of the network on which the machine resides, and proxy servers are necessary even less frequently still. Yet some past default install configurations would install services such as these, services unneeded whose removal could prove at times to be a Herculean task.
Step number two closely coincides with this: customer education. Very few people I know want to wade through a 1000+-page book or two on configuring just one piece of software on their machine, but many of the users who find themselves being contacted by their local abuse personnel have no idea the steps that led to their machine being an unwitting conduit for exploitation and relay. It seems that a little extra work to make the default configurations more secure, and to advise the less-advanced installing users in clearer terms what the potential consequences of configuration choices could be, could result in enormous payoffs in reducing the number of systems that could be used for such nefarious purposes.
It has been some time since I have spent much time working with systems based on their software, and perhaps the experiences I have had with their software (which led to my comments above) are no longer the case. I hope this is so, but do not believe it to be the case yet. I truly hope they are earnest in their claim of a desire for a spam-free future, and to this end, I hope they will truly work with the standards bodies and the community-at-large to help eradicate the problem.
Why not just use definitions that can already be made, such as 1/12.0107(8)-th the mass of one Avogadro's constant of a sample of 100% pure carbon-12? or 1/132.90545(2)-th the mass of one Avogadro's constant of a sample of 100% pure cesium-133 (which is its only naturally occurring isotope)? Or base it from the half the energy of the gamma ray generated by the annihilation of a positron-electron pair having no energy from acceleration, or something similar? Yes, it is a bit problematic that most of the physical features it could be based on now seem difficult to measure in a lab, because they relate back to something on the atomic scale, and the counting of objects at that scale or in such a number to be useful daily is difficult. At least, though, it would then be reproducible.
Having read the NIST article referenced by another respondent earlier, I can agree with their reasons for considering the adoption of another, more accessible standard. One of the cornerstones of science is the ability to reproduce results. Perhaps it is overdue that the unit of mass (kilogram) join its other basic breathern, the units of time (second) and length (meter), in being based not upon one physical sample, but upon a physical quantity that is reproducible and available to laboratories world-wide.
Reference for constants: The NIST Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty
Sounds like a good book. As someone with a system dropped into his lap which was never designed to be distributed (but now is), the review interested me, and I'm likely to soon try to obtain the book (or at least look at it).
One problem I often faced by developers is not so much that they don't want to write good secure code, but they are under such deadlines that they can't take a break to learn how. For some, their early training may not have included the idea of the application being distributed, or prepared them for the issues inherent in such environments. The other issue I tend to see is users during testing clamoring that the security that may have been put is unnecessary, or slows down the process, or it is too much to remember, or... *bang head against nearest hard surface, repeat*
In response to your sig (and slightly off-topic to the article), an off-shoot of the Cygwin project (housed at http://sources.redhat.com/ ), includes an implementation (under "More projects") of XFree86 using the Cygwin API to run under Windows 9x/NT/2k/XP.
Since you can transfer names between registrars, what happens if someone decides to buy one in this when someone else is legitimately trying to get it but doesn't want to use Verisign/NSI (V/NSI)?
This also sounds a bit like it is aimed for those same who would try to sue anyone with a domain name containing even the same letters or digits as their trademark (even though there are only 36 of them total). Now, if you fail to renew on time, will they be able to grab your domain from under you, or will there be a "cooling off" period for domains before they can be taken over by the person purchasing them in this auction?
I am sure these are only the tip of the iceberg, once this policy is considered. It seems to me that such a policy would require the application of thought, logic, and common sense, to try to minimize problems should it be implemented. (I know-my experience leads me to believe that such won't be applied either.)
After the first few times I played, I considered (but haven't had the chance to do anything with) the idea of a model aircraft (airplane or helicopter) mounted with some form of paint projector (low or high rate of fire), possibly with a camera unit for remote control. Has anyone played with the idea for close air support, and if so, has anyone also thought about the scoring as to when it would be out of commission? (Yes, I know wouldn't be tourny-legal, but with the right friends, might make things more interesting.) :^)
From the Yahoo article, Mr. Visse of MSN marketing stated that "All of our development work for the new MSN.com is...W3C standard." However (IIRC), the W3C standard for web browsers states that a browser it to ignore any tags it does not know how to handle. This being the case, then, there is no reason to disallow a browser, since it should ignore anything it does not know.
Also, I can confirm I received the message trying Mozilla 0.94, lynx 2.8.4dev.16. and direct telnet to port 80.
...never, never, never assume anything. Assumption is the mother of all uuck fups.
Case in point: Ask about skills related to your current projects that don't appear on the person's resume. Admittedly, most information about writing resumes seems to point to writing them as concisely as possible, but if a major skill you are needing (or think you will be needing) is not mentioned in the resume, ask about it.
I have seen this when it happened, where a skill that turned out to be quite critical (but since everyone else there had the skill, it was also assumed the candidate did as well) was lacking but it was only discovered to be the case after the candidate had been there for a few months. Not a pretty situation.
And never, never, never assume. And even on the items they mention that they are familiar with, ask. You should be able to ask a few questions on an area to feel them out in it without making them wonder where the bright light and rubber hose are.
And never, never, never assume. Ask them about how they feel about coworkers and their present job (or last job, as the case may be), or how their present (or former) coworkers would describe them. Everyone it seems tries to present their best mask at an interview-it is your job to remove that mask and find their day-to-day one. Ask them if they favor a n*rf gun with a large number of rounds, or one that has longer range but only holds one or two rounds.
And never, never, never make assumptions. Ask them if they have a life outside of the digital world. Ask them how they relax and let off steam. Ask them what gets them steamed or stressed. Do you really want to be going through this process again this time next year because the person you hired has to take a long vacation to the rubber-walled inn?
And never, never, never make assumptions. Read the other comments to this article-the SBR (signal-to-BS ratio) for this article has been quite high (at least to now). There are quite a few nuggets of truth in the comments for the harvesting.
Remember that you are there to find out if they will fit in with the needs and goals of your company-they are there to show they do (or at least can).
-----
"I am but an egg."
I've worked for an ISP that provided cable modem (CM) service, and I have used both cable modems and DSL. It does depend on the provider, yes, but there are also other factors to consider.
With cable modems, the speed also depends on where the concentrators for your segment of cable are (that includes how many others are using the service, and how much bandwidth is available to your segment), and any sources of line noise or other problems.
With DSL, the distance to the CO (central office) affects your speed (the further from the CO, the lower your speed will be), as does the quality of the lines between you and the CO (in your walls, building, between your building and the CO, and the lines and equipment in the CO, plus any sources of line noise and the like).
Another factor, but one you may not have considered, is the bandwidth of your provider out to the rest of the Internet. If you have 4Mbps to your location, but the provider only has a 1.544Mbps T-1 out to the rest of the 'Net, then your game of Q3 with your buddies from work/school who are also on that provider may be great, but you will likely see a slow download from SourceForge or your favorite p0rn site at peak usage times. (Over-subscribing bandwidth would not be surprising-before such high-speed services, it was not uncommon for providers to subscribe users sometimes to the rate of 10 to 15 per available modem line, because on average you won't use your capacity to anywhere close to 100% most of the time.)
Providers may also limit the bandwidth of uploads to discourage the running of servers from their networks. Many of them may consider the ability to run a web or mail server a billable service to be offered to commercial customers, and thus may offer higher speeds or additional addressing in their packages aimed to their business clients. (It would not seem to be very prudent of them to offer partial T-1 access at several hundred dollars per month and turn around and offer T-1 speed DSL/CM service for $50 per month when the customer can get a box to do NAT and put their entire office on that DSL/CM connection for an initial few hundred dollars or less, now would it?)
Since they are also the ones to catch the brunt of (calls / emails / other complaints) about (SPAM / illegal materials / hack attempts / etc.) that appear to originate from their network, even if they have no control over such, limiting such things by limiting the ability to run servers can sound like a reasonable step.
Not attempting to justify anything, just pointing out a few things to consider.
No, it would not be the same if you attempted something similar from a geosynchronous or geostationary orbit. A geostationary or geosynchronous orbit (altitude of either is roughly 35000 km) is still an orbit, just that its velocity is such that it takes the same length of time to orbit as the earth takes to rotate. Using a balloon as the jump platform ensures that the jump point is stationary relative to the atmosphere, and thus the only frictional heating results from downward velocity (which could reach a maximum of the Mach 1.5 range mentioned in the article, but will lessen as the jumper reaches thicker portions of the atmosphere), unlike debris or vehicles entering the atmosphere (whose velocities in the range of 5 km/s or higher).
The thing is, it doesn't matter if it is a good product or not-a product is only dead when we, the users, say it is dead, or the "big thing" when we let it be.
Too many times, however, we let those who repute themselves as "experts" say something is dead. We hear and don't look at the product or item in question (because we don't have the time, familiarity, or what-not), but instead give them the very credence they want but may not yet have by walking away from it, thus essentially starving it to death.
We have also done the very same by allowing the same "experts" to say this or that will be the next "big thing." Flocking to it, we thus made it indeed the next "big thing" to flirt across the stage. It was only afterwards that we the users looked upon it in the daylight of honest evaluation, to find it was not as hyped, but instead lacking, only to find that it had pushed its inroads in deeply enough that we could no longer easily remove it.
In doing thus, we have also increased the strength of the so-called "expert"'s word, making it more likely that the next thing they pronounce dead does indeed die, and the next thing they pronounce the "big thing" is indeed that. What we have done most of all, however, is to let slip a little further away one more freedom-the freedom to choose.