"You must be one of them moral-absolutists. I don't suppose it will do any good for me to point out that everything in nature contradicts your statement."
Well you might say I was a moralist true, not an absolutist. Your argument that it is natural so there should be no judgement on say killing as being evil well evil depends on intent actually. Your argument is in a way absoulutism in that it justifies the idea of killing other humans as well just the way the jungle is get over it.
But if you adopt the idea that killing is the last resort which makes a judgement by society certainly as expressed by laws, religions and human behavior as it being a bad thing. I think it is generally held that rape is different from sex as say torturing to death by and individual for pleasure is different than a State execution.
My quote:
"War is not glorious and death is not a legitamate moral means to an end."
did not day war was evil as you suggested it did. I said it was not glorious. If you think it is glorious you either never have been in war, or need serious psychiatric care. In the case of our glorious President of course the first is definitely true, the second mere speculation.
When fail safe systems fail (you notice not if). It is the fail safe system that fails. If there is a code that can be sent, or a circuit within the unit that when energized by some source causes the machine to have approval for hitting a target, or to do the firing, then there is a possibility that that circuit will be energized from an unintended source at some time.
It only takes one such incident to say kill someone or for those who justify this type of technology, to kill the solders who own the device. You would be hard pressed to justify that sort of mistake.
But you might say, well we were able to kill so many other enemy (human being who happen to be on the other side of some political or power conflict (this week)), so that collateral damage, even though it was my son, was justified. Buu Rah...
Get a life. War is not glorious and death is not a legitamate moral means to an end. Self defense possibly but I don't think one can argue that in any form currently.
"Do you think Hezbollah or Hammas gives 100% accurate information and that the U.S. is just a lie machine seeking to destroy everyone's freedom?"
Considering that the Rebulican talking points that they paid commentators to push on the American public as independent views of the administration policies, coupled with lies to the american people about why we are in Iraq and why we needed to go into Iraq, the scandles that have come out about torture, detentions, kidnapping, eavsdropping, lobbiest influence, illegal use of campaingn moneys (which re-districted Texas to a Republican state 8 years early), sweethart no bid contracts, and recently the vice president's attempt to avoid investigation in his shooting of a citizen (like not allowing a drug or alcohol screen after the shooting (like any other citizen would be subjected to)), and this latest allowing the sail of our ports to a Arab country. I don't think you can say that the information we are getting from OUR administration is 100% accurate.
So your argument that the U.S. is not just another lie machine is a weak one. I sure as hell don't think our choice is the Bush administration or the Ayatollah. I would hope it is the enlightend choice of our people which has been more and more elightened as the indictiments and lies exposed have been hitting the public knowledge on a weekly if not daily basis.
I am just happy we don't have to wait more than about 9 more months to vote for a less Bush like set of peoples representatives in Washington.
Ideally the language should not make a difference, but it does. Ideally the pool of program designers should be able to lightly like deer jumping over branched on the path be able to jump from envirionment to environment, language to language without effort and escape the hounding wolves of project needs.
There are several issues on several scopes.
The problem at hand.
The developer needs to solve the problem at hand, either by re-tasking a tool
available or develop something new. Here the impedence match of the language
to the problem can govern how quickly that is done. If their are no learning
issues, probably quickly. If learning issues less quick and probably bad code
will come out (be honest, your first C , PHP, Java programs remember how
much you leaned about what not to do the second time). Each envirionment has
its own Lorenzian attractors to how an application will best be designed with
subtle changes in the computation model and features having deep effects.
The project as a whole.
If you have multiple people working on a project or multiple parts that are
different problems, then you may end up with different tool/language choices
for each part as appropriate, or not. This is more an issue with all the
open source products because you dont have the "I need 10 licenses to do this
project" issue. But that can be a double edged sword.
The IT department.
Different people doing different things and possibly different languages.
The Enterprise.
Multiple IT departments in multiple locations with one or more server farms
with all the products loaded and maintained.
From an economy of scale perspective if the Enterprise can standardize on a set of tools and languages, the procurment and maintenance staff has less burden and squacks less. With the software foundation and co. sniffing around for litigation opportunities, a well controlled stable of software is a wise risk avoidance strategy.
Like most opportunities, if someone comes to them and says its a good idea to standardize for those reasons they have a job and power given to them as a beauricrat in the company and a certain level of job security. They act as the buffer between reality and the executive.
The IT and HR folks would love to have people as not people as much as resources/FTE's where if you have a standard set of software tools you can move those pawns around so you have no slack time and can get the most out of your staff for the dollar spent. And if you standardize on the popular products you have more people to hire from (at lower wage, but lower experience) thinking that that buys you something.
So my observation (as one recently let go after 30 years on job) is that the standarization in companies comes from a number of different agenda's most of which revolve around corporate cost cutting and commoditization of the individual, risk avoidance aga
Absoulutely, and not only for these abuses, but the illegal detention of citizens, torture and kidnaping. I remember 1984 where there was a fuzzy war with the Northeast or some such fictional place. What a boon and blank check, a war on an idea, terroism, not terrorists you understand. If is was a war on terroists then when you got the last one you would be done but an undeclared war on an idea is so sweet to give you special war powers to do what you want without oversight, special budgetary clout, mobilizing patriotic sentiment when your popularity numbers are flagging, its sweet.
But when the joy ride is over there will be the piper to pay. Already impeachment and legal action have been talked about, the corrupt practices have started to be exposed and are crumbling, Delay, Abermoff... Rove... it will be interesting to see how it all comes down.
I remember the scene in "The Man Who Would be King" when Sean's cheek is bitten and the blood exposed his mortality. He and Michael Caine then "brazen it out" or some phrase acting bold and confident as they stroll through the crowd, trying to find the exit before the mob starts in. I don't know what made me think of that.
You make some good points but there are some things in you presentation I take issue with.
"And I'm not necessarily saying you are grinding an axe but your language in your reply does imply that you have an agenda of placing this administration in a bad light."
It is is standard technique to attack the messenger and question thier motives as a way to divert attention from the central issue and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the arguments or opinions raised. I would counter in the same vane that you seem to be an appologist for Bush or someone that feels that the President needs to be followed without question or that if Bush does wrong, if anyone else did wrong in the past in that same post, it makes it alright. Which I disagree with. The issues I raised were about what is happening now. The fact that Bush's ratings are down so badly are an indication that I am not the only one that is calling into question his actions, his judgement, his approach, his agenda and who is consituents really are.
Some of the central themes I see are that Bush and Co. do not want oversight. That is a key issue. The FISA court was set up so there was oversight by the judical branch as it has been all along and necesarrily so. What Bush did was direct that the wiretaps should be done without FISA oversight (which was for forgein nationals) and that U.S. Citizens were wiretapped. This I think is a clear and substantial change in the operation of wiretapping and clearly goes against the Constitutional protections we have as U.S. Citizens. This is different and on an entirely different level than all previous presidents.
The other practice that shows that they dont want oversight is the no bid contracts to Halliburton and its subsidiaries (the connection to Cheney is a source of deep concern). We have a bidding process and a disqualification process to prevent what appears to be happening here. It is our public money and there are steps that need to be taken to make sure that it is not missued. The stories of Halliburton abandoning trucks with flat tires because they could get more money in company for getting a new truck rather than replacing a tire is a good example of what has gone on without the necessary oversight.
"We are playing politics and bashing a president that isn't going to run again so we can gain a foothold into the next election. The orders have already been done, the taps are either completed or in process and do stand the test of legality at the moment so no one can claim they are weakening the defense of the citizens. It is an easy point to bash the president on even though Two-democrat president set the process up."
Thank God for that. What needs to happen is the unconstitutional practices be examined by the court and if found to be wanting, changed. If there are any practices that are deemed to be criminal, the criminals should be prosecuted. We have seen that happen with low level people in the Iraq prison torture scandle but its not over. We see in our state the inexorable climb up the responsibility later when these investigation proceed. Those at the top (yes even the president) needs to be held accountable for his actions. The reason I have spoken out is that without our oversight, without a good press, without the checks and balances that need to be in place. We WILL loose our freedom (not to mention those that are tortured or destroyed on the way).
"And the Geneva convention doesn't really have anything to do with this. Although it is good that it is there and we should follow the provisions in it, the last couple wars we were in was with people who didn't sign it. The idea that if we violate the Geneva Convention when dealing with enemies that don't subscribe to it going to cause them to not honor it is insane."
So you acribe to the theory that torture is OK and not only that but justified and should be practiced when thought to be of benefit. You are in good company as the administration had clearly shown the same lack of humanity and contraint. Your righ
"I know it is fun to bash Bush and the current administration. People always do it when thier party isn't in control. "
Actually it is the most painful thing to have to speak out about presidential malfeasance ( Misconduct or wrongdoing, especially by a public official. )
There are some constitutional issues here about illegal search and seizure that the Federal courts will undoubtedly have to deal with.
This administration plainly want the freedom to torture anyone that can provide them information about their enemies (not necessarily my enemies or your enemies but the enemies that the administration percieves as enemies to the State or themselves or their interests). This is clearly shown by there research and stance (a stretch) that they can legally torture some people. These people are "enemy combatants" and who determains who are enemy combatants? The White House. There seems to be a trail of the practices of torture at Gitmo were transfered to IRAQ with the visit of one of the Gitmo people in charge of that sort of thing. Now we find that the CIA probably has had secret prisons that detained and possible tortured individuals.
There is a deep morality issue here. Not whether something is legal but the very idea that our elected leader would treat anyone in the world with the reckless disregard that seems to be the case. The Geneva convention sets up some standards for the treatement of prisoners of war (people remember like you and me, with a mother and father, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, with maybe different ideas (which our Constitution protects here), or a different religion (which our Constitution protects here). But maybe just an asshole set of demagogic leaders which have issues with our... leaders. They are still people. The Geneva convention was set in place as much a protection for our own citizens that are captured in a conflict as it is just a moral guidline for human treatment of people (that happen to be cannon fodder in a conflict).
Back to my point. It is my opinion that that attitude and the carrying out of that attitude by action to spy on our citizens, torture individuals (certainly setting it up so our military and intellegence arm felt that it was alright to do) constitures wrong doing and missconduct of a public official. That kind of conduct should be held up to legal and constitutional standard and possibly even the international court (funny how this administration did not want to have anything to do with the international court).
We are having to deal not only with the fundemetalism abroad but here at home.
So it is not fun to bash Bush. It is painful and sad not only that these things seem to have been done. But the destroying in 5 short years what it took 200+ years to establish in the world as a moral authority.
Don't get hung up on the legal issue too much or what others have done. Bush has to live with and answer for His actions and his actions alone. If he does not want the critisim, don't torture people and don't spy on us, and certainly don't send agents out to interview the parents of a boy that ordered a copy of one of the worlds most infuential political books!
It's more fundemental that just knowing your enemies being stupid. A book of ideas is not the enemy and having a book of idea's is not a crime but a constitutional right. There are laws to prosecute someone who does bad or even treasonous things but there are no thought crimes (1984) in this country. Well not since the McCarthy era. But then it looks like the paranoid conservatives are at it again. Remeber the wanted to establish a TIPS line where people could call in and anonymously turn in their neighbors or for possesing certain books. (Farenheit 451). I think the government needs to find out why people don't like us and change, not invade their countries, kidnap and secretly torture their (or our) citizens. What was that latest revelation, oh yes, allowing eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without a warrant. I am so glad for term limits. I can't wait for my next vote.
Absolutely correct. It is really how we can store and distribute energy to be useful with the lowest total cost. Cost here taking into account all the energy, and envirionment and cleanup costs.
Idiocy is the wrong term. Trusting is a good positive thing. Hell you would problably pet a snake until it bit you. If you don't have trust you don't have a society. Just like in the olden times we would find what we thought was a safe place to live then we learn that the bear comes back to this cave every winter and we find a new cave. It is our nature to test limits. We want and need to find our own safe spaces. I challenge you to go into the rain forest and not find out through trial and error what is safe and what is not. You can't tell if a plant is benign or poisonous by its outward appearance. If you don't have someone to ask you find out be trying. It is the same here for users that don't spend a lot of time researching computers and the current hazards. The link looks just like a link a friend sent last week. Why not trust it. Well you learn. I am sure in your infancy in computers you learned somewhat the same way. Are you an idiot?
What the idiocy may be is that these funny little boxes with blinking lights are so important to us, and that if it broke we feel bad or worse have actually lost something. An interesting thought that the virtual world has become so important for so many people. But if I found the IDIOT who constructed the virus, well that is another story. There truely is an Idiot. Well ok not an idiot, a clever, un-empathetic, pathetic excuse for a human being to be more acturate obviously not an idiot.
I think you are overstating the size of the body of people that don't think that the Onion, its site or anything on it is not Parady. Just look at the comments on slashdot, controversial yes, "neither does anyone else" no.
I don't think you need to Satire the seal, but just use the picture with different words from the president to be part of a satire, It has been used quite regularly buy right wingers like Dennis Miller who regularly showed news photos and had the people on photograph saying different things, stupid funny things or lewd embarrising things as a form of Satire. This is exactly the same thing and the same type of Satire and I think will be shown to be completely acceptable because in the very words of the law, does not imply in any fashion whatsoever support or endorcement from the White House.
Your kidding of course. Showing the Presidential seal does not fall outside of the bounds of Satire, because clearly they are not implying Presidential support or endorcement. Therefore the use is acceptable. And if there is any White House that deserves Satire it is this one. But then again this White House now understands that their public ratings are so low that they can't afford any Satire that exposes the sad humor of the current administration. Go Onion, go free speech, go America, America, America.
"used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way thatsuggests presidential support or endorsement,"
Pardon me but if anyone that thinks that the Onion is not a joke and the the use of Bush's picture (and seal) is anything but satire, then you need to get out more, and I have a nice east coast bridge to sell you.
That being said the syntax above includes the qualifying phrase, "in any way thatsuggests presidential support or endorsement" whis is key. The in any way in not unquailified. Political satire by its nature is not-endorsed nor suggesting of endorsment or support. On the contrary is exactly the opposite, an un sanctioned criticism. Political Satire is also protected speech. So the White House counsel clearly did not read the law he put in his letter, or he was just telling the Onion that they certainly did not have support or endorsement of the White House. So now the Onion knows that that they are really doing Political Satire that is biting a little. Good for them.
You obviously didn't read your quote or understand the English of it. I think that makes you a prime canditate for a Bush White House appointment to a top critical Cabinet level post.
I think you are in error here. I don't think we think linearly at all. When we listen we are continually connecting to internal sidebars of meaning for each word spoken and each context encountered. It seems that this non-linear form is very natural against our internal holographic non-linear thought process.
We do have the ability to track on things in a linear fashion as time is sequenced, but life is not a linear thing. So much is happening in parallel and we track on one thread usually for focus. We have constructed linear forms of writting probably more controlled by the medium at hand rather and as you say the linear process of spoken discourse. But In a group we have multiple voices, multiple ideas, going on and internally we think in larger ways. It seems the spreading form of information that is Hypertext and beyond may give us a better external form of internal processes and may be the next big step in showing and using information.
There was one crash example I tried with my netscape browser 7.2 and it killed the browser. I came back with a question, end now or continue. Since Netscape uses Mozilla at its core it seems to be affected too.
That sites response to letting them know that they were putting out "Forbidden" tags was to come up with a "Compatiability Matrix" for which browsers and vesions of browsers would work with there site.
This is unfortunately the attitude of many sites and site designers. If it works for I.E. then we are done. We just docuement the bug with a compatibility matrix and we are golden. The problem here is in the branding, if you have Netscape and some versions of Firefox and a few others, our company logo will not show.
My contention is if you have a product that only works for one browser you have a client server application not a web application.
Bad analogy and you are right there are two victims. You can not be an accomplice by virtue of neglegence, accomplice implies.
If we look at the Wikipedia entry
"At law, an accomplice is a person who actively participates in the commission of a crime, even though they take no part in the actual criminal offence. "
The key here is actively participates which implies their participation, and knowledge. Here the knowledge of the crime is critically essential to being an accomplice. Not that is different than being culpablbe which is more in tune with your point. The owner of the PC can not be an accomplice without knowledge but may be culpable as a person with a swimming pool can be considered as having an attractive nusance. My feeling here is that even those people, if they have a high locked fence should not be held accountable for someone trespassing and using their swimming pool.
Would you think that a person who owns a house, if it was found that another person was able to break into their house and make calls from their phone should be accountable for those phone calls made. If that person has no idea that the house has been broken into and there is no way to track on there bill that the phone has been missued? Which is more the case here. The leaving the loaded gun example does not match up because no normal user of a PC knows that their PC can be hijacked, it is a foreign concept, when they were sold the PC they were not told, when they were sold the internet connection they were not told. The stories they might here on the new say evening new does not tell them that they are at risk. They have no way to know that it is possible or that it has happened. So they have been taken advantage without their knowledge and they are not culpable. PC's are not guns, not sold as guns, not advertised as having that capability (even though they can be missued that way). Kitchens knives are another example of dual use common household items. If someone comes in to your house (picking a lock etc) and takes your knife out and kills someone and then returns it and leaves not evidence. Are you culpable? I don't think so.
And yes I think in your example that the people that left their guns (inside the locked car inside the locked glove compartment out of sight) that had their property taken and used for a crime as victims. Especially after they find out that their property has been subverted to such terrible use. Wouldn't you feel some guilt, shame and regret having found that out, say it was one of your family or friends that was killed. Yes they are victims too.
Interesting take on the present state of things and the view of the corporation.
Several points come to mind about how it all fits together.
If a developer works for a company and the company owns the code, and the deveopler is paid a reasonable salary, and the company and its executives and stockholders make big bucks, then you could consider that the work that was done by the developer is like a paid out license. The company owns the code, the company is responsible for the code and the company should accept all the liability for the code.
That can be mitigated with the usual "pass the buck" legal tools such as disclaimers limits on warrentees in EULA's. Which limits (in some cases) the risk the company has.
If however you want, as Howard Schmidt advises, make the individual developer entirely accountable, then you should let them get the entirity of the profits from that work (if just to build up a loss reserve), or limit their liablility to some percentage of their benefit from that code. (which would go a long way to queching suites because no lawyer would make a profit from them).
As to CMMI it is programming management framework not a development framework. It does absolutely add several hundred percent to the development process without any guarentee of quality. One might argue for a smaller percentage but that is only in those cases where CMMI replaces equivalent processes already in place, and even in those case you never hear of it reducing the amount of overhead to a project.
I think sometimes is just comes down to common sense. "One size does not fit all".
CMMI adresses only one aspect of doing business, that of a defined project with a beginning and and end and this works well for a consulting business that is hired from the outside to do a project for some other company and then leave. For a business that is having work done, much of the time you have in place applications that need to be owned and tended and upgraded and repaired. The CMMI model does not address this continum of existance or ownership just the summer winds of projects that blow through. It adresses maybe the initial software design but not the ongoing care and maintanence.
If fosters a model where CMMI experts who know nothing of the application area come in and "manage" the project, with a common set of forms so everything looks like something good is happening and that the people know what they are doing.
It becomes a burden on the application developers that have to train the project managers about what is going on.
One thing that is lacking in the CMMI conversion I have observed is that no benchmarking has been done about quality or overhead of the processes before.
The industry stampede suggests that those questions have been answered and that CMMI is a universal good. I am extremely doubtful. You end up with trackable documentation sure, but not necessarily good result. Its a managers dream of course, things to read and documents to fill out, it seems like a more orderly world but I think it is just more paper loaded, sort of Project Management standardized Blogging. Maybe thats where it is all coming from, you think.
I have seen several projects already where the plans from this process have come out with say 150 tasks to preform with responsibilities and dates, but one thing missing. Either none or one task was on the list for the actual implementation of the system. This for me is a big red flag. If that can happen then the process feeds on itself so much that the actual work and purpose of the effort has a minor or no role. From my perspective this it where Project Management is headed and it links directly with where lawyers have gone. Where a legalistic burecratic middle structure grows up, finds a legal framework to leverage and then takes control of the organizaton milks the system. (well some people anyway)
We have a chance now to give good counsel about keeping reality and good checks and balances in the process. What we need are
Who gets sued has to do with who has the deepest pockets. If there is a billion dollar software company and a 50k programmer who introduced a defect. The lawyer for the plaintiff will counsel that the company and the store that sold you software (assuming it is a big store chain) will get sued to maximize the lawyers return on investment (not necesarrily yours). You see that with car accidents as well where the car company might also be getting sued if it looks like an argument can be made. Not that it make any sense but it will mean usually it is better for a company to settle than to pay their own lawyers big fees to take something to court where they might loose.
Doctors are leaving my State because of this practice. Malpractice Insurance is way up. Not because there is more malpractice but because the laws of the State and the courts and the lawyers are having a field day, and orgy of wealth sharing. (Well sharing among lawyers).
Its more a lawyer wealth acquisition opportunity than a user or industry complaint resolution or redress technique.
How many times have you heard a plaintiff say "I'm not suing for the money, just to get satifaction or prevent this from happening to someone else". You don't hear their lawyer saying that (pro-bono aside) so often the lawyer gets much much more of a settlement than the plaintiff. Wheres that at. Usually it is structured that the lawyer gets 50 or 70% of a settlement, but wait I'm not done, lawyers expenses (including time spent) are taken off the top before the split or taken out of your split. And I though project managment was a racket.
Your right things have changed. I don't think the problem is that people are permitted to operate more complicated equipment without knowledge but that there are people that now feel it is OK to invade and infest other peoples machines. That I don't think has anything to do with the complications of the device but the moral bankrupsy of a segment of the computer world. Hell they will break in to simple things if they can.
You might say that the manufactures of the systems have fallen down on the job in providing proper locks on the doors. But then if you go out into rural areas or small towns, people still leave keys in cars, and doors open because the cultures there still operate with some level of mutual respect and trust.
In the cities its another matter. Lock you door. So you might say the Internet started out in the country and has moved to the city. But my point is that the victim is not the looser, its the person invading and infesting for whatever reason. That practice should be condemned and those people should be punished. To call the victimes loosers I think is getting it fundementally wrong.
Your description of what you have to do to be safe would suggest that every private citizen now should have to hire a full time security administrator to keep from being penetrated. That sadly is close to being true and will be the downfall of a free and open internet. If you want a free and open internet, hunt down those asshole, stake them to the ground and let their victims file pass and spit on them. Or am I being too harsh here.
Your an idiot. That being said upfront. What are you going to say about yourself when your machine is zombied by someone that finds a hack that you and your antivirus company doesn't know about yet. Will you call yourself a loser, will you call for your own dismantling. Its not a question if but when.
And one of the major reasons this happens is that people like you feel that the person mugged is at fault for being mugged. Get real! Someone who finds a way to steal someones CPU for any reason is a bad person. They should be caught and punished, its theft and often time distruction of personal property. That is not acceptable behaviour, nor is calling the people who are the victims Lusers acceptable behaviour.
Now go to the corner and stay there for a 5 minute timeout.
Except of course those laws like the Constitution which has laws that protect our freedoms, like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc.
Those laws that spell out what freedoms can't be taken away. We need more laws like that!
Slashdot Mirror
"You must be one of them moral-absolutists. I don't suppose it will do any good for me to point out that everything in nature contradicts your statement."
Well you might say I was a moralist true, not an absolutist. Your argument that it is natural so there should be no judgement on say killing as being evil well evil depends on intent actually. Your argument is in a way absoulutism in that it justifies the idea of killing other humans as well just the way the jungle is get over it.
But if you adopt the idea that killing is the last resort which makes a judgement by society certainly as expressed by laws, religions and human behavior as it being a bad thing. I think it is generally held that rape is different from sex as say torturing to death by and individual for pleasure is different than a State execution.
My quote:
"War is not glorious and death is not a legitamate moral means to an end."
did not day war was evil as you suggested it did. I said it was not glorious. If you think it is glorious you either never have been in war, or need serious psychiatric care. In the case of our glorious President of course the first is definitely true, the second mere speculation.
Don't you watch the movies. According to John Gall in his system books.
The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small the latest.
When fail safe systems fail (you notice not if). It is the fail safe system that fails. If there is a code that can be sent, or a circuit within the unit that when energized by some source causes the machine to have approval for hitting a target, or to do the firing, then there is a possibility that that circuit will be energized from an unintended source at some time.
It only takes one such incident to say kill someone or for those who justify this type of technology, to kill the solders who own the device. You would be hard pressed to justify that sort of mistake.
But you might say, well we were able to kill so many other enemy (human being who happen to be on the other side of some political or power conflict (this week)), so that collateral damage, even though it was my son, was justified. Buu Rah...
Get a life. War is not glorious and death is not a legitamate moral means to an end. Self defense possibly but I don't think one can argue that in any form currently.
"Do you think Hezbollah or Hammas gives 100% accurate information and that the U.S. is just a lie machine seeking to destroy everyone's freedom?"
Considering that the Rebulican talking points that they paid commentators to push on the American public as independent views of the administration policies, coupled with lies to the american people about why we are in Iraq and why we needed to go into Iraq, the scandles that have come out about torture, detentions, kidnapping, eavsdropping, lobbiest influence, illegal use of campaingn moneys (which re-districted Texas to a Republican state 8 years early), sweethart no bid contracts, and recently the vice president's attempt to avoid investigation in his shooting of a citizen (like not allowing a drug or alcohol screen after the shooting (like any other citizen would be subjected to)), and this latest allowing the sail of our ports to a Arab country. I don't think you can say that the information we are getting from OUR administration is 100% accurate.
So your argument that the U.S. is not just another lie machine is a weak one. I sure as hell don't think our choice is the Bush administration or the Ayatollah. I would hope it is the enlightend choice of our people which has been more and more elightened as the indictiments and lies exposed have been hitting the public knowledge on a weekly if not daily basis.
I am just happy we don't have to wait more than about 9 more months to vote for a less Bush like set of peoples representatives in Washington.
Ideally the language should not make a difference, but it does. Ideally the pool of program designers should be able to lightly like deer jumping over branched on the path be able to jump from envirionment to environment, language to language without effort and escape the hounding wolves of project needs.
There are several issues on several scopes.
The problem at hand.
The developer needs to solve the problem at hand, either by re-tasking a tool
available or develop something new. Here the impedence match of the language
to the problem can govern how quickly that is done. If their are no learning
issues, probably quickly. If learning issues less quick and probably bad code
will come out (be honest, your first C , PHP, Java programs remember how
much you leaned about what not to do the second time). Each envirionment has
its own Lorenzian attractors to how an application will best be designed with
subtle changes in the computation model and features having deep effects.
The project as a whole.
If you have multiple people working on a project or multiple parts that are
different problems, then you may end up with different tool/language choices
for each part as appropriate, or not. This is more an issue with all the
open source products because you dont have the "I need 10 licenses to do this
project" issue. But that can be a double edged sword.
The IT department.
Different people doing different things and possibly different languages.
The Enterprise.
Multiple IT departments in multiple locations with one or more server farms
with all the products loaded and maintained.
From an economy of scale perspective if the Enterprise can standardize on a set of tools and languages, the procurment and maintenance staff has less burden and squacks less. With the software foundation and co. sniffing around for litigation opportunities, a well controlled stable of software is a wise risk avoidance strategy.
Like most opportunities, if someone comes to them and says its a good idea to standardize for those reasons they have a job and power given to them as a beauricrat in the company and a certain level of job security. They act as the buffer between reality and the executive.
The IT and HR folks would love to have people as not people as much as resources/FTE's where if you have a standard set of software tools you can move those pawns around so you have no slack time and can get the most out of your staff for the dollar spent. And if you standardize on the popular products you have more people to hire from (at lower wage, but lower experience) thinking that that buys you something.
So my observation (as one recently let go after 30 years on job) is that the standarization in companies comes from a number of different agenda's most of which revolve around corporate cost cutting and commoditization of the individual, risk avoidance aga
Absoulutely, and not only for these abuses, but the illegal detention of citizens, torture and kidnaping. I remember 1984 where there was a fuzzy war with the Northeast or some such fictional place. What a boon and blank check, a war on an idea, terroism, not terrorists you understand. If is was a war on terroists then when you got the last one you would be done but an undeclared war on an idea is so sweet to give you special war powers to do what you want without oversight, special budgetary clout, mobilizing patriotic sentiment when your popularity numbers are flagging, its sweet.
... Rove... it will be interesting to see how it all comes down.
But when the joy ride is over there will be the piper to pay. Already impeachment and legal action have been talked about, the corrupt practices have started to be exposed and are crumbling, Delay, Abermoff
I remember the scene in "The Man Who Would be King" when Sean's cheek is bitten and the blood exposed his mortality. He and Michael Caine then "brazen it out" or some phrase acting bold and confident as they stroll through the crowd, trying to find the exit before the mob starts in. I don't know what made me think of that.
You make some good points but there are some things in you presentation I take issue with.
"And I'm not necessarily saying you are grinding an axe but your language in your reply does imply that you have an agenda of placing this administration in a bad light."
It is is standard technique to attack the messenger and question thier motives as a way to divert attention from the central issue and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the arguments or opinions raised. I would counter in the same vane that you seem to be an appologist for Bush or someone that feels that the President needs to be followed without question or that if Bush does wrong, if anyone else did wrong in the past in that same post, it makes it alright. Which I disagree with. The issues I raised were about what is happening now. The fact that Bush's ratings are down so badly are an indication that I am not the only one that is calling into question his actions, his judgement, his approach, his agenda and who is consituents really are.
Some of the central themes I see are that Bush and Co. do not want oversight. That is a key issue. The FISA court was set up so there was oversight by the judical branch as it has been all along and necesarrily so. What Bush did was direct that the wiretaps should be done without FISA oversight (which was for forgein nationals) and that U.S. Citizens were wiretapped. This I think is a clear and substantial change in the operation of wiretapping and clearly goes against the Constitutional protections we have as U.S. Citizens. This is different and on an entirely different level than all previous presidents.
The other practice that shows that they dont want oversight is the no bid contracts to Halliburton and its subsidiaries (the connection to Cheney is
a source of deep concern). We have a bidding process and a disqualification process to prevent what appears to be happening here. It is our public money and there are steps that need to be taken to make sure that it is not missued. The stories of Halliburton abandoning trucks with flat tires because they could get more money in company for getting a new truck rather than replacing a tire is a good example of what has gone on without the necessary oversight.
"We are playing politics and bashing a president that isn't going to run again so we can gain a foothold into the next election. The orders have already been done, the taps are either completed or in process and do stand the test of legality at the moment so no one can claim they are weakening the defense of the citizens. It is an easy point to bash the president on even though Two-democrat president set the process up."
Thank God for that. What needs to happen is the unconstitutional practices be examined by the court and if found to be wanting, changed. If there are any practices that are deemed to be criminal, the criminals should be prosecuted. We have seen that happen with low level people in the Iraq prison torture scandle but its not over. We see in our state the inexorable climb up the responsibility later when these investigation proceed. Those at the top (yes even the president) needs to be held accountable for his actions. The reason I have spoken out is that without our oversight, without a good press, without the checks and balances that need to be in place. We WILL loose our freedom (not to mention those that are tortured or destroyed on the way).
"And the Geneva convention doesn't really have anything to do with this. Although it is good that it is there and we should follow the provisions in it, the last couple wars we were in was with people who didn't sign it. The idea that if we violate the Geneva Convention when dealing with enemies that don't subscribe to it going to cause them to not honor it is insane."
So you acribe to the theory that torture is OK and not only that but justified and should be practiced when thought to be of benefit. You are in good company as the administration had clearly shown the same lack of humanity and contraint. Your righ
"I know it is fun to bash Bush and the current administration. People always do it when thier party isn't in control. "
... leaders. They are still people. The Geneva convention was set in place as much a protection for our own citizens that are captured in a conflict as it is just a moral guidline for human treatment of people (that happen to be cannon fodder in a conflict).
Actually it is the most painful thing to have to speak out about presidential malfeasance ( Misconduct or wrongdoing, especially by a public official. )
There are some constitutional issues here about illegal search and seizure that the Federal courts will undoubtedly have to deal with.
This administration plainly want the freedom to torture anyone that can provide them information about their enemies (not necessarily my enemies or your enemies but the enemies that the administration percieves as enemies to the State or themselves or their interests). This is clearly shown by there research and stance (a stretch) that they can legally torture some people. These people are "enemy combatants" and who determains who are enemy combatants? The White House. There seems to be a trail of the practices of torture at Gitmo were transfered to IRAQ with the visit of one of the Gitmo people in charge of that sort of thing. Now we find that the CIA probably has had secret prisons that detained and possible tortured individuals.
There is a deep morality issue here. Not whether something is legal but the very idea that our elected leader would treat anyone in the world with the reckless disregard that seems to be the case. The Geneva convention sets up some standards for the treatement of prisoners of war (people remember like you and me, with a mother and father, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, with maybe different ideas (which our Constitution protects here), or a different religion (which our Constitution protects here). But maybe just an asshole set of demagogic leaders which have issues with our
Back to my point. It is my opinion that that attitude and the carrying out of that attitude by action to spy on our citizens, torture individuals (certainly setting it up so our military and intellegence arm felt that it was alright to do) constitures wrong doing and missconduct of a public official. That kind of conduct should be held up to legal and constitutional standard and possibly even the international court (funny how this administration did not want to have anything to do with the international court).
We are having to deal not only with the fundemetalism abroad but here at home.
So it is not fun to bash Bush. It is painful and sad not only that these things seem to have been done. But the destroying in 5 short years what it took 200+ years to establish in the world as a moral authority.
Don't get hung up on the legal issue too much or what others have done. Bush has to live with and answer for His actions and his actions alone. If he does not want the critisim, don't torture people and don't spy on us, and certainly don't send agents out to interview the parents of a boy that ordered a copy of one of the worlds most infuential political books!
It's more fundemental that just knowing your enemies being stupid. A book of ideas is not the enemy and having a book of idea's is not a crime but a constitutional right. There are laws to prosecute someone who does bad or even treasonous things but there are no thought crimes (1984) in this country. Well not since the McCarthy era. But then it looks like the paranoid conservatives are at it again. Remeber the wanted to establish a TIPS line where people could call in and anonymously turn in their neighbors or for possesing certain books. (Farenheit 451). I think the government needs to find out why people don't like us and change, not invade their countries, kidnap and secretly torture their (or our) citizens. What was that latest revelation, oh yes, allowing eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without a warrant. I am so glad for term limits. I can't wait for my next vote.
Absolutely correct. It is really how we can store and distribute energy to be useful with the lowest total cost. Cost here taking into account all the energy, and envirionment and cleanup costs.
Idiocy is the wrong term. Trusting is a good positive thing. Hell you would problably pet a snake until it bit you. If you don't have trust you don't have a society. Just like in the olden times we would find what we thought was a safe place to live then we learn that the bear comes back to this cave every winter and we find a new cave. It is our nature to test limits. We want and need to find our own safe spaces. I challenge you to go into the rain forest and not find out through trial and error what is safe and what is not. You can't tell if a plant is benign or poisonous by its outward appearance. If you don't have someone to ask you find out be trying. It is the same here for users that don't spend a lot of time researching computers and the current hazards. The link looks just like a link a friend sent last week. Why not trust it. Well you learn. I am sure in your infancy in computers you learned somewhat the same way. Are you an idiot?
What the idiocy may be is that these funny little boxes with blinking lights are so important to us, and that if it broke we feel bad or worse have actually lost something. An interesting thought that the virtual world has become so important for so many people. But if I found the IDIOT who constructed the virus, well that is another story. There truely is an Idiot. Well ok not an idiot, a clever, un-empathetic, pathetic excuse for a human being to be more acturate obviously not an idiot.
"and neither does anyone else."
I think you are overstating the size of the body of people that don't think that the Onion, its site or anything on it is not Parady. Just look at the comments on slashdot, controversial yes, "neither does anyone else" no.
I don't think you need to Satire the seal, but just use the picture with different words from the president to be part of a satire, It has been used quite regularly
buy right wingers like Dennis Miller who regularly showed news photos and had the people on photograph saying different things, stupid funny things or lewd embarrising things as a form of Satire. This is exactly the same thing and the same type of Satire and I think will be shown to be completely acceptable because in the very words of the law, does not imply in any fashion whatsoever support or endorcement from the White House.
"Satire will only cover you so far."
Your kidding of course. Showing the Presidential seal does not fall outside of the bounds of Satire, because clearly they are not implying Presidential support or endorcement. Therefore the use is acceptable. And if there is any White House that deserves Satire it is this one. But then again this White House now understands that their public ratings are so low that they can't afford any Satire that exposes the sad humor of the current administration. Go Onion, go free speech, go America, America, America.
"used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way thatsuggests presidential support or endorsement,"
Pardon me but if anyone that thinks that the Onion is not a joke and the the use of Bush's picture (and seal) is anything but satire, then you need to get out more, and I have a nice east coast bridge to sell you.
That being said the syntax above includes the qualifying phrase, "in any way thatsuggests presidential support or endorsement" whis is key. The in any way in not unquailified. Political satire by its nature is not-endorsed nor suggesting of endorsment or support. On the contrary is exactly the opposite, an un sanctioned criticism. Political Satire is also protected speech. So the White House counsel clearly did not read the law he put in his letter, or he was just telling the Onion that they certainly did not have support or endorsement of the White House. So now the Onion knows that that they are really doing Political Satire that is biting a little. Good for them.
You obviously didn't read your quote or understand the English of it. I think that makes you a prime canditate for a Bush White House appointment to a top critical Cabinet level post.
I think you are in error here. I don't think we think linearly at all. When we listen we are continually connecting to internal sidebars of meaning for each word spoken and each context encountered. It seems that this non-linear form is very natural against our internal holographic non-linear thought process.
We do have the ability to track on things in a linear fashion as time is sequenced, but life is not a linear thing. So much is happening in parallel and we track on one thread usually for focus. We have constructed linear forms of writting probably more controlled by the medium at hand rather and as you say the linear process of spoken discourse. But In a group we have multiple voices, multiple ideas, going on and internally we think in larger ways. It seems the spreading form of information that is Hypertext and beyond may give us a better external form of internal processes and may be the next big step in showing and using information.
Of course this leads to Frapping which is the process of getting an iced drink at the Starbucks down the street, waiting for your packets to arrive.
There was one crash example I tried with my netscape browser 7.2 and it killed the browser. I came back with a question, end now or continue. Since Netscape uses Mozilla at its core it seems to be affected too.
No but you start to get very stiff hairs on your legs and you look longingly at dogs fur.
I have a 3d party site that brands its content for us but does it using and tags. The tag is forbidden by the W3C standard
m l#h-13.2
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.ht
Notice "Start tag: required, End tag: forbidden"
Which is pretty unambiguous.
That sites response to letting them know that they were putting out "Forbidden" tags was to come up with a "Compatiability Matrix" for which browsers and vesions of browsers would work with there site.
This is unfortunately the attitude of many sites and site designers. If it works for I.E. then we are done. We just docuement the bug with a compatibility matrix and we are golden. The problem here is in the branding, if you have Netscape and some versions of Firefox and a few others, our company logo will not show.
My contention is if you have a product that only works for one browser you have a client server application not a web application.
Bad analogy and you are right there are two victims. You can not be an accomplice by virtue of neglegence, accomplice implies.
If we look at the Wikipedia entry
"At law, an accomplice is a person who actively participates in the commission of a crime, even though they take no part in the actual criminal offence. "
The key here is actively participates which implies their participation, and knowledge. Here the knowledge of the crime is critically essential to being an accomplice. Not that is different than being culpablbe which is more in tune with your point. The owner of the PC can not be an accomplice without knowledge but may be culpable as a person with a swimming pool can be considered as having an attractive nusance. My feeling here is that even those people, if they have a high locked fence should not be held accountable for someone trespassing and using their swimming pool.
Would you think that a person who owns a house, if it was found that another person was able to break into their house and make calls from their phone should be accountable for those phone calls made. If that person has no idea that the house has been broken into and there is no way to track on there bill that the phone has been missued? Which is more the case here. The leaving the loaded gun example does not match up because no normal user of a PC knows that their PC can be hijacked, it is a foreign concept, when they were sold the PC they were not told, when they were sold the internet connection they were not told. The stories they might here on the new say evening new does not tell them that they are at risk. They have no way to know that it is possible or that it has happened. So they have been taken advantage without their knowledge and they are not culpable. PC's are not guns, not sold as guns, not advertised as having that capability (even though they can be missued that way). Kitchens knives are another example of dual use common household items. If someone comes in to your house (picking a lock etc) and takes your knife out and kills someone and then returns it and leaves not evidence. Are you culpable? I don't think so.
And yes I think in your example that the people that left their guns (inside the locked car inside the locked glove compartment out of sight) that had their property taken and used for a crime as victims. Especially after they find out that their property has been subverted to such terrible use. Wouldn't you feel some guilt, shame and regret having found that out, say it was one of your family or friends that was killed. Yes they are victims too.
Interesting take on the present state of things and the view of the corporation.
Several points come to mind about how it all fits together.
If a developer works for a company and the company owns the code, and the deveopler is paid a reasonable salary, and the company and its executives and stockholders make big bucks, then you could consider that the work that was done by the developer is like a paid out license. The company owns the code, the company is responsible for the code and the company should accept all the liability for the code.
That can be mitigated with the usual "pass the buck" legal tools such as disclaimers limits on warrentees in EULA's. Which limits (in some cases) the
risk the company has.
If however you want, as Howard Schmidt advises, make the individual developer entirely accountable, then you should let them get the entirity of the profits from that work (if just to build up a loss reserve), or limit their liablility to some percentage of their benefit from that code. (which would go a long way to queching suites because no lawyer would make a profit from them).
As to CMMI it is programming management framework not a development framework. It does absolutely add several hundred percent to the development process without any guarentee of quality. One might argue for a smaller percentage but that is only in those cases where CMMI replaces equivalent processes already in place, and even in those case you never hear of it reducing the amount of overhead to a project.
I think sometimes is just comes down to common sense. "One size does not fit all".
CMMI adresses only one aspect of doing business, that of a defined project with a beginning and and end and this works well for a consulting business that is hired from the outside to do a project for some other company and then leave. For a business that is having work done, much of the time you have in place applications that need to be owned and tended and upgraded and repaired. The CMMI model does not address this continum of existance or ownership just the summer winds of projects that blow through. It adresses maybe the initial software design but not the ongoing care and maintanence.
If fosters a model where CMMI experts who know nothing of the application area come in and "manage" the project, with a common set of forms so everything looks like something good is happening and that the people know what they are doing.
It becomes a burden on the application developers that have to train the project managers about what is going on.
One thing that is lacking in the CMMI conversion I have observed is that no benchmarking has been done about quality or overhead of the processes before.
The industry stampede suggests that those questions have been answered and that CMMI is a universal good. I am extremely doubtful. You end up with trackable documentation sure, but not necessarily good result. Its a managers dream of course, things to read and documents to fill out, it seems like a more orderly world but I think it is just more paper loaded, sort of Project Management standardized Blogging. Maybe thats where it is all coming from, you think.
I have seen several projects already where the plans from this process have come out with say 150 tasks to preform with responsibilities and dates, but one thing missing. Either none or one task was on the list for the actual implementation of the system. This for me is a big red flag. If that can happen then the process feeds on itself so much that the actual work and purpose of the effort has a minor or no role. From my perspective this it where Project Management is headed and it links directly with where lawyers have gone. Where a legalistic burecratic middle structure grows up, finds a legal framework to leverage and then takes control of the organizaton milks the system. (well some people anyway)
We have a chance now to give good counsel about keeping reality and good checks and balances in the process. What we need are
Who gets sued has to do with who has the deepest pockets. If there is a billion dollar software company and a 50k programmer who introduced a defect. The lawyer for the plaintiff will counsel that the company and the store that sold you software (assuming it is a big store chain) will get sued to maximize the lawyers return on investment (not necesarrily yours). You see that with car accidents as well where the car company might also be getting sued if it looks like an argument can be made. Not that it make any sense but it will mean usually it is better for a company to settle than to pay their own lawyers big fees to take something to court where they might loose.
Doctors are leaving my State because of this practice. Malpractice Insurance is way up. Not because there is more malpractice but because the laws of the State and the courts and the lawyers are having a field day, and orgy of wealth sharing. (Well sharing among lawyers).
Its more a lawyer wealth acquisition opportunity than a user or industry complaint resolution or redress technique.
How many times have you heard a plaintiff say "I'm not suing for the money, just to get satifaction or prevent this from happening to someone else". You don't hear their lawyer saying that (pro-bono aside) so often the lawyer gets much much more of a settlement than the plaintiff. Wheres that at. Usually it is structured that the lawyer gets 50 or 70% of a settlement, but wait I'm not done, lawyers expenses (including time spent) are taken off the top before the split or taken out of your split. And I though project managment was a racket.
Your right things have changed. I don't think the problem is that people are permitted to operate more complicated equipment without knowledge but that there are people that now feel it is OK to invade and infest other peoples machines. That I don't think has anything to do with the complications of the device but the moral bankrupsy of a segment of the computer world. Hell they will break in to simple things if they can.
You might say that the manufactures of the systems have fallen down on the job in providing proper locks on the doors. But then if you go out into rural areas or small towns, people still leave keys in cars, and doors open because the cultures there still operate with some level of mutual respect and trust.
In the cities its another matter. Lock you door. So you might say the Internet started out in the country and has moved to the city. But my point is that the victim is not the looser, its the person invading and infesting for whatever reason. That practice should be condemned and those people should be punished. To call the victimes loosers I think is getting it fundementally wrong.
Your description of what you have to do to be safe would suggest that every private citizen now should have to hire a full time security administrator to keep from being penetrated. That sadly is close to being true and will be the downfall of a free and open internet. If you want a free and open internet, hunt down those asshole, stake them to the ground and let their victims file pass and spit on them. Or am I being too harsh here.
Your an idiot. That being said upfront. What are you going to say about yourself when your machine is zombied by someone that finds a hack that you and your antivirus company doesn't know about yet. Will you call yourself a loser, will you call for your own dismantling. Its not a question if but when.
And one of the major reasons this happens is that people like you feel that the person mugged is at fault for being mugged. Get real! Someone who finds a way to steal someones CPU for any reason is a bad person. They should be caught and punished, its theft and often time distruction of personal property. That is not acceptable behaviour, nor is calling the people who are the victims Lusers acceptable behaviour.
Now go to the corner and stay there for a 5 minute timeout.
Except of course those laws like the Constitution which has laws that protect our freedoms, like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc.
Those laws that spell out what freedoms can't be taken away. We need more laws like that!