I don't understand why anyone would find the fact that most cultures have some sort of flood myth unusual. Humans tend to collect themselves around bodies of water for various reasons having to do with commerce, agriculture, transportation, etc. People that live near bodies of water occasionally experience floods. Flood stories tend to be dramatic because people have to make heroic efforts to make it through the tough times that ensue. It's not surprising that these flood stories make it into their mythology.
Nothing in the Bible has ever been disproven based on ancient findings by any reputable scientific investigation.
Let's go to the good book, shall we?
1 Kings 7:23He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.
The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is not 3.
If someone knows you, respects you, and happens to come into a position to offer a job, it almost doesn't matter what your skills set is. On the other hand, if someone who is offering a job doesn't know you, you almost certainly don't have what they are looking for.
What are you doing outside of work? If you're not spending time getting to know your local colleagues (via users groups, seminars, book groups, etc. etc.), you'll have to rely on lucking into your next job...and luck is pretty hard to come by these days.
Honestly chaps, how much does it help you to know about the latest rubish on TV, who won the superbowl or who is the latest TV evangelist if what you need is to implement an algorithm in C++?
Your boss doesn't tell you to implement a C++ algorithm. You have to figure that out based on non-technical communication. This isn't just a formal process either. I understand what my boss wants because we share a beer every now and then and talk baseball. It gives me key insights into what is needed that I don't get from requirements documents or meetings.
You guys should stop fooling yourselves, you may not understand the accent of your Indian, Sinagaporean, or Hongkonese counterparts, but their communication skills in written English are as good as those of native speakers who have a false sense of security believing that being native speaker gives you an innate advantage to communicate properly.
That's more an indictment of our lack of good communication training. If we think that Indians, Singaporans, etc. communicate as well as us, it's only because we do it so badly. As it is, my, barely above average communication skills are what is keeping me employed. I'm pretty confident of that.
Communication, yes, but even more importantly; Communication Skills. Foreign workers, even those that grow up in English-speaking countries (i.e. India) should not be able to compete in this area provided that we are well-trained in writing and speaking because only we share the cultural context of our bosses. This cultural context makes it easier for us to acertain what the boss wants and easier for us to make the boss understand what we've done.
If you cannot speak and write at least as well as the foreign worker that is replacing you, you don't have much else to offer.
God! I hope there are no spelling or grammatical errors in this posting;-)
Any given test tactic can be defeated somehow, but any such circumvention can in turn be defeated by the spammer. It's an armz race, baby:).
Exactly!
Of course, the spammer would eventually have to give up, simply because constant development would cost far too much.
Unfortunately, I don't agree. That may be the case for the individual spammer, but not as a collective. There are always new spammers crawling out from between the bathroom tiles, and they take advantage of the development costs borne by those that preceeded them. It's kind of the downside of the Open Source model.
When I wrote my original reply, I had your last scenario in mind (where spammers use email accounts set up all over the internet on potentially different hosts). The other scenarios you describe would be pretty simple to account for with a cooperative approach.
I'm not sure how you would use statistical analysis to find the test addresses though. Could you explain? Remember, you (the wannabe anti-spam conspirator, not the spammer) have to extract test addresses from the list sent to you by the spammer. These addresses might come from pretty much any domain and would probably be different for each list sent out. Remember also that, from what I understand, most spammer's email lists are already filled with invalid and cruddy addresses. I think you probably could count on a lot of intersection of valid addresses between conspirators, especially if this made the test addresses harder to find.
The way around this (from the spammer's perspective) would be to make sure you include a few tester email addresses (randomly generated, hard to find) in the spam address list that can be monitored. If no spam ever reaches my tester addresses, I don't pay you.
I'm sorry if I just advanced the spammer business plan, but I don't this counter plan would work either.
Interesting point and I think it also applies to moving information. It's true that moving physical objects is different from moving information, but they both require energy. Plus moving information also requires a pipeline of sorts consisting of all the very physical computer hardware that keeps everything running.
I think you're getting to the heart of the issue. I would add that I think it's more of a short-term vs. long-term interests thing. There's little question that many companies get short-term benefits from outsourcing even though many people here are hurt by it.
As a long-term strategy, however, even those CEOs that are all hot to get move their high skill jobs to India are committing corporate suicide. I mean, rich people will always be able to take care of themselves, but outsourcing high skill jobs ultimately creates a disincentive to educate people. Why should I spend money (or should government spend money) on education if there's no payoff at the end?
Plus, it's only a matter of time before the Indians (or the Chinese or the Russians or whoever) decide that there is more money to be made by offering their services directly rather than working for American masters. When that happens, we'll be left in a position where we are completely unable to compete.
It's a good idea I think. It wouldn't be hard to implement. A problem I see though is that viruses don't necessarily use the entire address book to send out messages. They might not ever pick the poison address. Also, I've heard that there are some viruses that harvest email addresses from browser caches or other such places. They would never find your poison address there.
Admittedly, I don't know how these rfid tags work (perhaps someone will enlighten me), but wouldn't a simple, directed blast of EM radiation disable them? I can see a market for simple devices that do this developing.
More palatable? I don't think so. But his ability to attract money (and controversy) does, I think, make is ideas more worthy of serious consideration. As much as I'd like to think otherwise, I don't think any of my ideas are worthy of a MacArthur "genius grant." (not that I'd turn one down, mind you).
I'm not sure I'm completely on board with RMS either, but I think there's a possibility that he's right and for that reason, I'm glad that he's there (and finding the means to sustain himself).
RMS is the classic schoolyard radical. He has all these social theories that he's never had to test in the real world, because he's spent his entire professional career subsisting on grant money.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that grant money simply falls from the sky to anyone who asks for it.
Grant money is just as scare a resource and has as many competitors for it as, say venture capital funds. I'd say the two processes are quite similar, in fact, though the critieria for making awards is somewhat different.
To the extent that RMS may have subsisted on grant funds is a reflection of the fact that people think his ideas have merit within the very real marketplace thereof.
C'mon moderators! The parent comment isn't a troll.
But you have to understand the designated Microsoft Rich Guy Roles. Bill Gates does the good works stuff, Paul Allen does the weird shit.
How much security do I need?
on
Security Warrior
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I think it's like that old joke about how to protect yourself from being killed by a bear. (I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you). I only need to be slightly more secure than the rest of you. Right now, frankly, that's not too hard.
Have you ever tried to explain a source control system to a salesguy or a manager?
Well, no, but I didn't really have to. I just installed the TortoiseCVS client and showed him how to right click a file (to be fair, he already knew how to do that).
But my main point is that versioning information should not go with the file. It should be separate.
This is older than 10 years, but Tim Bray tells a funny story about how he might have brought down AOL back in 1988 in response to getting a spam email from someone with the email address lipstick@aol.com.
He launched a job to send an angry response email every 10 seconds. He forgot about it until he heard a couple of guys talking a few days later about how their aol accounts were down over the weekend.
By comparison, the ISS is a waste and the Moon would be an expensive diversion. Space elevators would really open the solar system up for human - not just robot - exploration.
Actually...by comparison, ISS and the Moon would be pocket change.
It's actually a useful feature when you have multiple people working on a document
Unless you send it to 5 people and they all make changes and send it back. Then you have the merge job from hell. There are much better ways to work on a document in distributed fashion (e.g. cvs/subversion/some other source control system, or maybe rsync or even WebDAV). I still think Word is an abomination.
Leaving aside the authenticity of this story or the stupidity of SCO, doesn't this case illustrate why it is stupid to build a track changes feature into your word processor? Especially one that where a document file carries all of its revisions with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand why anyone would find the fact that most cultures have some sort of flood myth unusual. Humans tend to collect themselves around bodies of water for various reasons having to do with commerce, agriculture, transportation, etc. People that live near bodies of water occasionally experience floods. Flood stories tend to be dramatic because people have to make heroic efforts to make it through the tough times that ensue. It's not surprising that these flood stories make it into their mythology.
Let's go to the good book, shall we?
The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is not 3.
QED
...and start worrying about who you know.
If someone knows you, respects you, and happens to come into a position to offer a job, it almost doesn't matter what your skills set is. On the other hand, if someone who is offering a job doesn't know you, you almost certainly don't have what they are looking for.
What are you doing outside of work? If you're not spending time getting to know your local colleagues (via users groups, seminars, book groups, etc. etc.), you'll have to rely on lucking into your next job...and luck is pretty hard to come by these days.
Your boss doesn't tell you to implement a C++ algorithm. You have to figure that out based on non-technical communication. This isn't just a formal process either. I understand what my boss wants because we share a beer every now and then and talk baseball. It gives me key insights into what is needed that I don't get from requirements documents or meetings.
That's more an indictment of our lack of good communication training. If we think that Indians, Singaporans, etc. communicate as well as us, it's only because we do it so badly. As it is, my, barely above average communication skills are what is keeping me employed. I'm pretty confident of that.
Communication, yes, but even more importantly; Communication Skills. Foreign workers, even those that grow up in English-speaking countries (i.e. India) should not be able to compete in this area provided that we are well-trained in writing and speaking because only we share the cultural context of our bosses. This cultural context makes it easier for us to acertain what the boss wants and easier for us to make the boss understand what we've done.
If you cannot speak and write at least as well as the foreign worker that is replacing you, you don't have much else to offer.
God! I hope there are no spelling or grammatical errors in this posting ;-)
Exactly!
Unfortunately, I don't agree. That may be the case for the individual spammer, but not as a collective. There are always new spammers crawling out from between the bathroom tiles, and they take advantage of the development costs borne by those that preceeded them. It's kind of the downside of the Open Source model.
Man...that sucks!
When I wrote my original reply, I had your last scenario in mind (where spammers use email accounts set up all over the internet on potentially different hosts). The other scenarios you describe would be pretty simple to account for with a cooperative approach.
I'm not sure how you would use statistical analysis to find the test addresses though. Could you explain? Remember, you (the wannabe anti-spam conspirator, not the spammer) have to extract test addresses from the list sent to you by the spammer. These addresses might come from pretty much any domain and would probably be different for each list sent out. Remember also that, from what I understand, most spammer's email lists are already filled with invalid and cruddy addresses. I think you probably could count on a lot of intersection of valid addresses between conspirators, especially if this made the test addresses harder to find.
The way around this (from the spammer's perspective) would be to make sure you include a few tester email addresses (randomly generated, hard to find) in the spam address list that can be monitored. If no spam ever reaches my tester addresses, I don't pay you.
I'm sorry if I just advanced the spammer business plan, but I don't this counter plan would work either.
Interesting point and I think it also applies to moving information. It's true that moving physical objects is different from moving information, but they both require energy. Plus moving information also requires a pipeline of sorts consisting of all the very physical computer hardware that keeps everything running.
Hey, I'm not offering any advice until I get one of them donuts. Hand it over!
I think you're getting to the heart of the issue. I would add that I think it's more of a short-term vs. long-term interests thing. There's little question that many companies get short-term benefits from outsourcing even though many people here are hurt by it.
As a long-term strategy, however, even those CEOs that are all hot to get move their high skill jobs to India are committing corporate suicide. I mean, rich people will always be able to take care of themselves, but outsourcing high skill jobs ultimately creates a disincentive to educate people. Why should I spend money (or should government spend money) on education if there's no payoff at the end?
Plus, it's only a matter of time before the Indians (or the Chinese or the Russians or whoever) decide that there is more money to be made by offering their services directly rather than working for American masters. When that happens, we'll be left in a position where we are completely unable to compete.
Every collection of people has its underground economies. They often perform an important function so long as:
- The consumers don't abuse the system
- busybodies don't start poking around and trying to hold people accountable for what everybody is doing.
Balance the two and nobody really gets hurt.Isn't this why we created the Internet?
"we" meaning those propeller heads at MIT or Al Gore or whoever.
It's a good idea I think. It wouldn't be hard to implement. A problem I see though is that viruses don't necessarily use the entire address book to send out messages. They might not ever pick the poison address. Also, I've heard that there are some viruses that harvest email addresses from browser caches or other such places. They would never find your poison address there.
Admittedly, I don't know how these rfid tags work (perhaps someone will enlighten me), but wouldn't a simple, directed blast of EM radiation disable them? I can see a market for simple devices that do this developing.
More palatable? I don't think so. But his ability to attract money (and controversy) does, I think, make is ideas more worthy of serious consideration. As much as I'd like to think otherwise, I don't think any of my ideas are worthy of a MacArthur "genius grant." (not that I'd turn one down, mind you).
I'm not sure I'm completely on board with RMS either, but I think there's a possibility that he's right and for that reason, I'm glad that he's there (and finding the means to sustain himself).
You seem to be laboring under the impression that grant money simply falls from the sky to anyone who asks for it.
Grant money is just as scare a resource and has as many competitors for it as, say venture capital funds. I'd say the two processes are quite similar, in fact, though the critieria for making awards is somewhat different.
To the extent that RMS may have subsisted on grant funds is a reflection of the fact that people think his ideas have merit within the very real marketplace thereof.
C'mon moderators! The parent comment isn't a troll.
But you have to understand the designated Microsoft Rich Guy Roles. Bill Gates does the good works stuff, Paul Allen does the weird shit.
I think it's like that old joke about how to protect yourself from being killed by a bear. (I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you). I only need to be slightly more secure than the rest of you. Right now, frankly, that's not too hard.
Well, no, but I didn't really have to. I just installed the TortoiseCVS client and showed him how to right click a file (to be fair, he already knew how to do that).
But my main point is that versioning information should not go with the file. It should be separate.
This is older than 10 years, but Tim Bray tells a funny story about how he might have brought down AOL back in 1988 in response to getting a spam email from someone with the email address lipstick@aol.com.
He launched a job to send an angry response email every 10 seconds. He forgot about it until he heard a couple of guys talking a few days later about how their aol accounts were down over the weekend.
Check it out, it's pretty hilarious.
Actually...by comparison, ISS and the Moon would be pocket change.
Unless you send it to 5 people and they all make changes and send it back. Then you have the merge job from hell. There are much better ways to work on a document in distributed fashion (e.g. cvs/subversion/some other source control system, or maybe rsync or even WebDAV). I still think Word is an abomination.
Leaving aside the authenticity of this story or the stupidity of SCO, doesn't this case illustrate why it is stupid to build a track changes feature into your word processor? Especially one that where a document file carries all of its revisions with it.
There ain't no joy in MS Word.
Obey! or suffer the Heavenly Wrath of Rod!