The problem is most Americans are bad at judging accents so the South Africans frequently sound English.
Despite what your cultural sensitivity professor must have taught you it's also not OK to be bigoted against the American race. Some of us talk English real good, two.
Dramatic example, I'll grant you. So good, in fact, I tried the comparison myself for a product I'm actually planning to buy. In the middle of that process, I found a major problem with your example. Would somebody who's really in the market for any wood cutting tool be more likely to search "wood cutting" or a more specific term, for the type of wood cutting tool: "chainsaw", "router", "planer", etc? By the same token, I submit that anybody searching for such a vague term as "wood cutting" is as likely to be satisfied with the information available on Runescape as to be shopping for any of those specialty tools! The advantage Google has over Sourcetool, and specialty search engines in general, is that with a very small amount of experience, people of normal intelligence can tune the specificity of our search results to match our subject matter knowledge, so Google is useful both for general and specialized searches.
I have an audio amplifier that stopped working, and I want to find a replacement part. I'm not going to Google (or Sourcetool) "electronics," I'm going to open the device (or pay a repairman to do that, if I didn't know what I'm doing, but either way the next step is the same), identify the malfunctioning part(s), and search for the specific item(s) needing replacement. Having done those steps, I found that for the more realistic example search term "electrolytic capacitor" I got more useful results from Google than from Sourcetool, measuring both in quantity and quality -- the occasional relatively independent perspective from an academic source is advantageous to a savvy shopper.
If the article is correct, Google is not acting on good faith.
I've tried to read NYT articles in the past, and I'm offended at the quality of their web services. Never again. The Cnet article, no surprise, was only about antitrust issues very generally, and did not mention anything specific or informative in any way. Nevertheless, if the/. summary is fair, then Dan Savage is just biting the hand that feeds him.
To all the people who screamed about how Google is not a monopoly and made Microsoft jokes when Slashdot ran the Yahoo deal antitrust investigation, remember that Google does have more than 70% of the online ad market, and then put yourself in this guy's position. What are your options? MSN ads? You're screwed, because you can't take your business elsewhere.
This Dan Savage has no business whatsoever without Google, yet he complains that Google doesn't give him enough money. Waa.
Now, about this "monopoly" talk, Google's success has been without government coercive measures against would-be competitors and without handouts to Google. So, what's the problem? It's difficult to compete against Google, because Google is better than their competitors. Waa.
I am not saying this information should be banned. I just think that the information shouldn't be so accesible that a 8 year old can just click a link and see the best way to bomb something.
Parents are responsible for limiting their 8-year-olds' access. That's not my responsibility until I have an 8-year-old of my own. And to the complaint that kids should be able to benefit from the educational potential of the Internet, without danger of being exposed to objectionable material, that is possible, too. You just need to learn how to use something like this on computers you own. It's not my duty to do it for you. It's your responsibility to look after the children you claim as tax deductions.
Information is not illegal. It's how you act on it that creates a liability.
Information may not be illegal, but shouldn't MISinformation be? It is in some cases already.
The investors' programs sold low because of a typo in a source they trusted without verification. That's bad decision-making, automated, not Google's fault and not the Florida Sentinel Sun's fault. (typo intended)
Shout FIRE in a crowded theater when there isn't one, for example.
If you want to argue by analogy, make it fit. Consider a computer-controlled fire alarm. One that dials 9-11 based merely on speech-recognition of the word "fire" spoken by somebody in the room would be a good analogy to the programs in use for stop-loss on Wall Street. That was a stupid design. A sensible computer-controlled fire alarm at least checks for source(s) of heat, particulates and/or carbon monoxide. Instead of automatically dialing 9-11, it should also notify the property owner, who would then have to manually dial 9-11, if he decides the fire is real.
Instead of such a sensible algorithm, investors are automating sales based on one variable: stock price decrease. The same investors could make their stop-loss programs less risky to themselves by adding a method to send a TXT message to their BlackBerry (TM), with the ticker symbol, price decrease and time interval of the decrease. It could have a simple Y/N dialog, and depending on the number of shares they hold, they could then decide to check Bloomberg first, or just sell if they're reckless.
Redundancy and manual checks before important transactions are not novel concepts. Failure to require verification, and implementation of a design having a single point of catastrophic failure, were reckless choices. Google didn't write that faulty software. Those who did deserve to bear the full burden of the losses it caused. They have already enjoyed the full benefits of the same software, when it worked as intended without verification. Losses totaling $1.14B probably won't substantially improve programming in general, but it's a good start.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it actually happens. If I go to holidays and leave the door of my house open, it does not mean that something actually happens.
What's your address, and when are you going on holiday next? I lock my door so any thief who decides my house is the one he wants to rob, at least has some obstacle. If I forgot to lock my door on my last holiday and nothing was stolen, it doesn't mean I would assume I would be so lucky every time, and intentionally leave the door open thereafter.
There is no indication here at all that anyone externally found out about the problem before. It is basically that you found out that what you did over the last two years was vulnerable to potential attacks. How will it affect the future? Not at all, as the issue gets fixed.
So, fixing the vulnerability is the right thing to do, as soon as you know it's vulnerable. Why wait until after it's been exploited, once you know you have a vulnerability that is greater than it could be? Minimize every identifiable risk, up to but not past the point that the cost equals the benefit. What's so difficult, or costly, about ditching a few keys and replacing with better ones?
Ah, and right now no one unauthorised actually has the key yet. It is only technically possible to crack it much easier...
To assume that a bad thing that has not happened yet therefore cannot happen in the future is very, very stupid -- whenever anything of value is involved. And of course we are discussing something of value, or else I wouldn't be bothering to argue about it. Would you?
Nice try. The problem with Techies is that they don't get the larger picture. They focus on the blinking red herrings they are so used to and where they believe in. ...
The whole signing shit is a troll for the privacy church. What they forget are the proportions and what is really important.
I agree with some of what you've said above. For example your statement to the effect that RedHat generally is a positive contributor to the Open Source community is agreeable.
RedHat as a company applies the usual tactics but as a community member gives a lot. Sure corporations are vulnerable to money. Novell is a good example...
But I don't see good reasons for your other, general statements about signing, privacy, proportions, what is important, and whether patching known vulnerabilities before a known exploit occurs is a good idea. That seems to be what you're calling a "red herring" and that to me is absurd. Patching known vulnerabilities is clever like a fox.
People have been dinging me on Effect vs. Affect for 3 decades. They are all right and all wrong, because legitimate dictionaries give one of the definitions of "affect" (verb) as "to have (verb) an effect (noun) upon".
Unfortunately, when one attempts to just verb the noun "effect," the different usage also affects its meaning. A verb "effect" does exist, but it means "to cause, or to bring into existence," as in "Bruce Perens was instrumental in effecting the 'Open Source Definition,' and continues to effect changes to it, as well as affecting changes effected by others."
I'm always careful to get these things right, because one never knows when one will meet a stickler who not only knows such trivia, but will tell point it out when you're wrong. Also, it's a far more stable subject to master than computer security. Less logical, in English, but the stupid rules are the same as they were 10 years ago.
I think of compulsive grammarian disorder like body odor; if nobody in your circle of acquaintances is annoyingly attentive to grammar, it's probably you. And I don't know anybody more careful about grammar than me.
You do not like Putin because he started to tax and control properly oil companies, and oil costs not 7 USD as it used to be, but times higher, but people in Russia like him exactly for this. Because they build road, schools, etc. on this money. They even started to build autobahn from Pacific ocean to the Baltic sea.
I'm glad your gas prices have dropped, but it looks to me like your petroleum industry is holding you hostage, making clear to Russians without ever saying it directly, that if your petroleum industry is not the wealthiest industry in the world, nobody else will build you roads, schools, etc., you will be poor, maybe even starve. Our oil industry tries to do the same thing. In English, the word "scam" refers to something like taxpayers giving billions of $ to Exxon in years when the oil market is a little bit challenging for it, and not getting that money back from Exxon when it's able to succeed a few years later, in a kinder market. Excuse me, I meant to say, "the kindest market any US company has ever enjoyed."
Re:Think of the children.. And other reasons to wo
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People worry too much as it is.
Worst of all are the ones who are preoccupied with whether others are worrying about too many things.
If people choose to live unhealthy lifestyles than I'm not going to get real worked up about it.
The problem is that they don't chose that lifestyle. They don't go out and consciously decide that they want to become fat and addicted to smokes, instead it happens as a combination of genes and their social surroundings.
Wrong, people do choose our lifestyles, one choice at a time, and I can prove it to you. Don't ever post anything to/. or any other website, ever. You will choose not to be shaped by this part of your social surroundings [me], but to instead do as you please. Once you knew it was a risk, you became ethically responsible to accept the outcome of each action you chose. Legal responsibility doesn't even require knowledge, it simply comes with the status "adult." If you wish not to be held accountable for your choices and take responsibility for informing yourself, you don't deserve the rights of an adult. Prove to me that you're only the product of your surroundings; don't reply.
It's a problem because like smoking and other addictions, such people can become a burden on society.
It's a problem because collectivist, misnamed "insurance" schemes entitle such people to become a burden on society.
If we were all as awesome as you we could live in Ayn Rand's utopia. Alas, it is not so.
Enter paternalism. When you were a child you were too stupid to understand that...
You are beneath me. Your argument is childish. If you want to opt into an arrangement in which you are treated like a child, knock yourself out. But your right to swing your stupidity around ends where an expense to me is incurred.
Russia is developing quickly. Russia owns most of the world's territory and energy resources, which cannot be reproduced by humans. If you ever have been at the oil-refinery or saw "Druzhba" pipeline you would not say that it is low-tech, it is as high-tech as it gets.
If you measure "high-tech" only according to complexity, I will be the first to concede that petroleum mining and refining are highly complex. But for their costs and benefits to human society, I prefer the clean elegance of solar and wind power, "which cannot be reproduced by humans" either, but which can be harnessed without any cost to neighbors.
At the same time the USA lags behind.
We don't brag about using 19th century technology, and call it "high-tech."
It is in urgent need of its "perestroika". They still use the imperial measurement system, believe it or not. All those medieval feet, stones, miles, inches, arrow flights, etc.
Yeah, that's dire.
But when it starts the whole world will be shaken. The US internal changes and accompanying social struggle will affect the whole world. We saw it already in Georgia and South Ossethia. That war was part of the US election campaign.
I am genuinely sorry for my "President." I cannot understand why all the other voters did not call for his immediate resignation, when he commented publicly about Putin's soul!! It was not the stupidest or most evil thing he did while in office, but it was enough to terminate his employment.
PRESIDENT BUSH: I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.
Discussions of another world leader's character on such a personal level are certainly appropriate in private discussions with close advisors, but those are not the words of a statesman who believes in democratic principles and human rights. They are the words of a man making a personal commitment to another man, at the expense of both nations. They amount to a public, metaphysical blank check, and he does not have authorization to write those. I apologize for his support of your former "President."
But what will happen when the pushes will come to shoves in the USA?
Hopefully, we will not make the same mistake three times in a row. If George W. Bush becomes prime minister in 2009, I'll eat crow.
My guess is that companies don't want security. They want security labels.
I think you're right.
They want to show that yes, they passed some audit, so they're secure and may deal with financial transactions or other "high security required" crap. Whether they really are secure or not, who cares?
Only their insurance companies, who ultimately absorb all losses, have reason to care. So the question becomes, "Why doesn't the insurance industry care?" Evidence (crappy standards & porous security on the system comprising 90% of the network, for starters) suggests that the relevant demand curve is such that the perceived level of risk (which equals the incentive to buy insurance) minus the total actual losses claimed, is currently at or near its maximum, with the result that insurance companies, the nominal cost-bearers, are not motivated to demand standards with any more technological legitimacy than the so-called "OOXML Standard." But if the demand curve is as I hypothesize, they are not truly "cost-bearers" in any meaningful sense. The "cost" of business losses to all computer crimes are subtracted from all insurance payments to determine the profit margins that insurance companies realize from IT, but obviously when zero insurance payments are made, the demand for insurance itself completely, and pay-in minus pay-out equals zero. Since some risk is required to make insurance desirable, the inflated cost of doing business is also a side effect that does not motivate anybody within the insurance industry, nor at the tops of the corporations which are their biggest customers, to want technologically valid standards in IT, or at least not better ones than these, which are known in the trade to be crap. In fact, lax security tends to encourage embezzlement by making it both profitable, and of limited interest to the parties directly involved. Only the customer suffers, and only in increased cost of doing business, and in the barriers to enter new markets that result in the totally immeasurable reduction of consumer choices, in comparison to a theoretical ideal. Speculation aside, the large amount of capital required to enter the insurance racket effectively precludes all newcomers from it, therefore free market competition is theoretically impossible, and any present deviations from free market ideals can be expected to remain in perpetuity.
Hoppe:
An uninsurable risk is one where the following condition holds: If I know with regard to a particular risk some or all of the factors that determine its outcome, then such a thing is no longer accidental; its likelihood can be individually affected, and therefore cannot possibly be insured. Or, to formulate it somewhat differently, everything that is within either full or partial control of an individual actor cannot be insured -- cannot be risk-pooled -- but falls within the realm of personal or individual responsibility. ...
Take an example where we have at least partial control. Can I insure myself against the risk of making business losses? Obviously not. While I have no direct control over the actions of the buyers and non-buyers of my products (those who do directly determine my profits and losses) I do have some control over my business's success or failure. I have control over my production costs, as well as the kind and quality and price of the product I produce. In fact, I can make losses deliberately if I want to. It would be impossible for me to pool my risk with other business people, as if losses were something like being struck by lightening.
Now with this distinction between accidental events, which are insurable, and events that are uninsurabl
now, if you only want the benefit of search engine traffic but don't want people to see any part of your site's content without having paid for it first, then you are a douche. and you should be delisted. because if every site had such policies, then google's web search would cease to work.
If I have content which customers will pay to access, I will charge them for it. If you do not, but believe you have some under development and therefore want to use the Internet for publicity, you have a good reason choose to offer your content free of charge (until you can concoct something profitable). But because you think that due to your lack of a revenue-generator, therefore everybody should refuse the profit you haven't figured out how to earn, you are the douche!
it is perfectly within your legal rights to be a douche. but that doesn't mean people can't call you out on your douche-like behavior.
I don't read a lot of astronomy, and the amount of unfamiliar terminology was a bit tedious to me after just a couple pages. Based on your summary, I'll file the article under "eventually read in full."
No, it's not thermodynamics, although I'll try a probabilistic argument that makes sense to me.
A circle is symmetrical no matter which line you choose through the center, as long as you cut it in halves, but a non-circular ellipse is asymmetrical across any line other than its major axis or its minor axis; if you slice it in halves anywhere else, you end up with identical, but asymmetrical slices, which will overlap perfectly if you rotate one 180 degrees, but not if you fold over the line you sliced. Therefore, using symmetry as an estimate, and estimating the number of possible orbits as constrained only by the outer radius of the Sun, possible elliptical orbits are therefore an enormous superset to circular ones for any specified area, ie, for the set of all possible orbits of one body around another. The recent discovery of the quantization of space means the ratio is not infinite, but most likely would be estimated as such by any existent computer, including Big Blue.
Extrapolating without taking the time for research-quality mathematical rigor, for two bodies to have circular symmetry is quite a lot "likelier" than for 3 or more, even if all are spherical, and therefore self-symmetrical. Numerical simulations of the three-body (and higher) problem are notoriously processor-intensive, a convenient excuse for me to not do them. Besides, trying to sketch a 3-planet system with 1 or more perfectly circular orbits will probably be more instructive. One solution is that both orbiting planets are in perfect synchronization, which I think we can agree intuitively, is not highly "likely." Is it possible for the system's center of mass to be so perfectly synchronized, without the path of each planet being in lockstep with the other[s]?... in a 3-body [ = 2 planet] system?... what about for greater numbers of planets? Again, I'm not doing the math myself, but as you can see, for situations we expect, ie planets of different sizes, likelihood of any circular orbits asymptotically approaches zero.
estimate: total possible circular orbits / total possible elliptical orbits, CO/EO --> 0 for # of planets >= 2
I'd guess tidal locking would tend to help gravitationally-bound systems achieve equilibrium, but I would not expect that to mean circular orbits, because there are far more possible equilibria with combinations of elliptical orbits than with circular orbits. So I agree with the GP, it is very unlikely that any orbits would return to perfect circles after they're perturbed into elliptical ones.
Another estimation: over cosmic timescales, at least one planet in a solar system of several planets is likely to be perturbed once, or more. Considering that the formation of the second planet in the same solar system would cause the center of mass of the system to begin wobbling, ie to perturb the first planet, I think this is a very safe assumption for all solar systems of 2+ planets.
I work a LOT but it's very rewarding knowing that as long as a solution is going to be helpful AND not be extremely expensive.....the red tape associated with 20 IT workers in a small type company isn't going to stop my progress. I've been able to roll out more effective solutions alone in a 1:90 ratio than 20 of us had with a 1:20 at the previous job.
That's also consistent with what Frederick P. Brooks' "sacred book" says about partitionability of tasks: some are more partitionable than others.
The rest of your post is pretty insightful though.
I disagree. At first glance, I thought he opened with a strong point, but as I re-read, I think he blames the people for what in fact is an artifact of scale. refactored:
....it's the nature of hierarchical systems like corporates that the _WORST_ companies, employing the WORST methods employ the most people because they are so inefficient that they need to get the job done.
On the contrary, I think the largest corporations have larger proportional workforces because scale increases the difficulty of anybody overseeing the whole operation. As a result, larger numbers of middle managers with overlapping knowledge are employed, giving the appearance that none of them can do their own jobs without assistance. In fact, it's the same redundancy principle that is the fundamental genius of the Internet's design. refactored:
And, depending on multiple factors like... how complete their monopoly is[1], how rich their niche is[2], how fat their investors pockets are[3], how crooked their pocket politicians are...[4] they last a widely varying length of time. As they say, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.[5]
4 points awarded for truth, and 1 for style.
Having lots of employees does not make a company good.
You're right of course, but that is the central thesis of Fred Brooks' book, The Mythical Man-Month, which refactored sarcastically calls a "sacred book" and disputes about a "magic bullet." The insightful comment you offered in your attempt to support refactored contradicts your statement that the rest of r's post "is pretty insightful."
PS To anybody about to undertake their first management role in software development, I highly recommend this book, for its style and its insights into when more workers can help meet a deadline, and in turn how to provide well-reasoned estimates of completion time.
If they would deduce this from actual statistical data, it would show something, but deducing this from simulation seems a a bit to trustful to the current state of science if you ask me
Kettle, you have not produced the regression analysis showing 95% or greater correlation for your claim, required to support such conclusion.
And I still have a huge problem with models based upon data that started during our last "little Ice age". When you start when temperatures are low, of course your going to get models that show the temperatures going up.
Some temperature increase is to be expected, corresponding to sunspot cycles, whose periodic nature is easy to see from a glance at the Vostok ice cores and other long-term tracking of temperature, but have you directly compared the rate of warming since the 1850s to the rate during previous warming periods? I tell you, this is not normal.
When I turn on my car, I expect its temperature to rise a certain amount, until it's around 200F. But based on the design of the automobile and some knowledge of thermodynamics, I also expect the radiator to remove thermal energy from the engine, and to do so at a sufficient rate for the long-term health of my engine. So if, instead of the expected increase, its temperature rises by 300F or more, I know there's a problem with the radiator. I don't write off all temperature increase, regardless of magnitude, because my understanding of engine temperatures is more sophisticated than, during operation, expect "temperatures going up." Instead, I have a theoretical model and empirical evidence which I use to set parameters for the expected range of temperature increase during operation of the heat source, which in one case is the engine, and in the other, the Sun. Am I cheating, because when I measure the increase I "start when temperatures are low"? No, that's good, old-fashioned, proper vehicle care. You can run a car for a few minutes without radiator fluid and not suffer any damage, but once the temperature of air under the hood approaches the intended operating temperature of the engine, passive air cooling effectively stops and if you don't cut the engine within a very short time, catastrophic damage is certain.
Likewise for the climate, we expect some temperature increase after each [Little] Ice Age, and at other times, after peaks in mean temperature, we expect long cooling trends. But we also have known since Arrhenius, that CO2, nitrous oxide and other gases that are common products of industrial and vehicle combustion, substantially inhibit radiant heat loss. No model I know predicts that conduction and convection can make up the difference. So, keeping at the forefront of your mind these crucial facts which are the basis of the theory of anthropogenic global mean temperature increase; knowing that since the 1800s we have been significantly inhibiting the function of the planet's radiator by adding insulation in the form of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in concentrations unprecedented in the fossil, geological and ice core records, how can you claim to expect -- and hypothetically, how would you explain if you found it -- any result other than accordingly unprecedented retention of thermal energy, and more rapid increase in global mean temperature than has ever been documented in nature?
Its a fallacy simply because every time scientists try to model starting from any other point the models do not show the same thing.
No, that is not true. In a century and a half, we have documented increases in mean temperature of a magnitude that should occur over millennia, based on previous cycles in global mean temperature.
Since the police had a warrant, some judge thought they had enough reasonable suspicion to go in and make these raids.
Wrong. The judge has the legal right to provide a certificate of reasonable suspicion, which the law calls a "search warrant." That document provides only limited rights to search and a judge's power does not allow him to provide anybody permission to conduct these raids, which were illegal, nor any other criminal abuses of search warrants by performing searches in a manner that exceeds the parameters of their warrant. A crime was committed when the warrant was illegally executed before it was presented. No judge has the power to make these raids legal.
Or -- they didn't produce it until last because they didn't want any evidence destroyed before they could secure it. People with incriminating evidence do that.
Some do, and they can be charged with evidence tampering, but their guilt is no excuse to violate other suspects' legal rights. Burden of proof is always on the accusers. You "law & order" types need to remember that the body of law that the government is responsible to uphold includes "innocent until proven guilty."
Bill Moyers' recent interview of Andrew Bacevich, former Army Colonel and current professor of history and international relations at Boston University, provides very compelling answers to those questions. The primary subject is the connection between our present fiscal and military crises, which Bacevich shows are caused by consumer demand for cheap disposable plastic crap, which he primarily discusses in more scholarly terms like unlimited credit and negative rate of saving. The tipping point of our fall from a nation of producers to one of consumer, military imperialists, was the level to which Lyndon Johnson decided to escalate our role in Vietnam, about 1965. The continuation of this fiscal and military crisis depends on the myth that Reagan was a champion of small government despite the fact that he expanded it, both in budget and scope.
ANDREW BACEVICH: (about Reagan) It's Morning in America. And you don't have to sacrifice, you can have more, all we need to do is get government out of the way, and drill more holes for oil, because the President led us to believe the supply of oil was infinite.
BILL MOYERS: You describe Ronald Reagan as the "modern prophet of profligacy. The politician who gave moral sanction to the empire of consumption."
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, to understand the truth about President Reagan, is to understand why so much of what we imagined to be our politics is misleading and false. He was the guy who came in and said we need to shrink the size of government. Government didn't shrink during the Reagan era, it grew.
He came in and he said we need to reduce the level of federal spending. He didn't reduce it, it went through the roof, and the budget deficits for his time were the greatest they had been since World War Two.
BILL MOYERS: And do you remember that it was his successor, his Vice President, the first President Bush who said in 1992, the American way of life is not negotiable.
ANDREW BACEVICH: And all presidents, again, this is not a Republican thing, or a Democratic thing, all presidents, all administrations are committed to that proposition. Now, I would say, that probably, 90 percent of the American people today would concur. The American way of life is not up for negotiation.
What I would invite them to consider is that, if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, and of course you need to ask yourself, what is it you value most. That if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, then we need to change the American way of life. We need to modify that which may be peripheral, in order to preserve that which is at the center of what we value.
The connection of reckless consumerism supported by military imperialism, to the erosion of civil liberties is by now obvious, so I'll spell them out for the Republican readers. Reagan, and the GOP generally during and since his presidency, have simultaneously transferred wealth and legal privilege from the lower and middle classes to the upper class, and appealed to American consumers of "Law & Order" products like the interventionist foreign policy advanced by such crimes as the Iran-Contra treasons of Reagan and Oliver North, and the creep toward our present surveillance society in which victims have no functioning legal process for demanding documentation of federal government violations of our right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, because nobody knows which 3-letter agency to petition nor where to address our complaints. Public protest is the last legal recourse of those who have exhausted, or never had, any judicial remedy available for their grievances.
War and spying of course always go hand in hand, and convincing voters to fund either requires appeals to fear. Whether those fears are real or fabricated, accurate or exaggerated
The US, based on our Patent Office alone, deserves the world's scorn for classifying such trivia as "novel and non-obvious." It's like a 3-year-old on a playground, using the word "mine" to describe every toy, with no understanding of what the word means. I am ashamed to be an American!
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is most Americans are bad at judging accents so the South Africans frequently sound English.
Despite what your cultural sensitivity professor must have taught you it's also not OK to be bigoted against the American race. Some of us talk English real good, two.
I have an audio amplifier that stopped working, and I want to find a replacement part. I'm not going to Google (or Sourcetool) "electronics," I'm going to open the device (or pay a repairman to do that, if I didn't know what I'm doing, but either way the next step is the same), identify the malfunctioning part(s), and search for the specific item(s) needing replacement. Having done those steps, I found that for the more realistic example search term "electrolytic capacitor" I got more useful results from Google than from Sourcetool, measuring both in quantity and quality -- the occasional relatively independent perspective from an academic source is advantageous to a savvy shopper.
If the article is correct, Google is not acting on good faith.
I've tried to read NYT articles in the past, and I'm offended at the quality of their web services. Never again. The Cnet article, no surprise, was only about antitrust issues very generally, and did not mention anything specific or informative in any way. Nevertheless, if the /. summary is fair, then Dan Savage is just biting the hand that feeds him.
To all the people who screamed about how Google is not a monopoly and made Microsoft jokes when Slashdot ran the Yahoo deal antitrust investigation, remember that Google does have more than 70% of the online ad market, and then put yourself in this guy's position. What are your options? MSN ads? You're screwed, because you can't take your business elsewhere.
This Dan Savage has no business whatsoever without Google, yet he complains that Google doesn't give him enough money. Waa.
Now, about this "monopoly" talk, Google's success has been without government coercive measures against would-be competitors and without handouts to Google. So, what's the problem? It's difficult to compete against Google, because Google is better than their competitors. Waa.
I am not saying this information should be banned. I just think that the information shouldn't be so accesible that a 8 year old can just click a link and see the best way to bomb something.
Parents are responsible for limiting their 8-year-olds' access. That's not my responsibility until I have an 8-year-old of my own. And to the complaint that kids should be able to benefit from the educational potential of the Internet, without danger of being exposed to objectionable material, that is possible, too. You just need to learn how to use something like this on computers you own. It's not my duty to do it for you. It's your responsibility to look after the children you claim as tax deductions.
Information is not illegal. It's how you act on it that creates a liability.
Information may not be illegal, but shouldn't MISinformation be? It is in some cases already.
The investors' programs sold low because of a typo in a source they trusted without verification. That's bad decision-making, automated, not Google's fault and not the Florida Sentinel Sun's fault. (typo intended)
Shout FIRE in a crowded theater when there isn't one, for example.
If you want to argue by analogy, make it fit. Consider a computer-controlled fire alarm. One that dials 9-11 based merely on speech-recognition of the word "fire" spoken by somebody in the room would be a good analogy to the programs in use for stop-loss on Wall Street. That was a stupid design. A sensible computer-controlled fire alarm at least checks for source(s) of heat, particulates and/or carbon monoxide. Instead of automatically dialing 9-11, it should also notify the property owner, who would then have to manually dial 9-11, if he decides the fire is real.
Instead of such a sensible algorithm, investors are automating sales based on one variable: stock price decrease. The same investors could make their stop-loss programs less risky to themselves by adding a method to send a TXT message to their BlackBerry (TM), with the ticker symbol, price decrease and time interval of the decrease. It could have a simple Y/N dialog, and depending on the number of shares they hold, they could then decide to check Bloomberg first, or just sell if they're reckless.
Redundancy and manual checks before important transactions are not novel concepts. Failure to require verification, and implementation of a design having a single point of catastrophic failure, were reckless choices. Google didn't write that faulty software. Those who did deserve to bear the full burden of the losses it caused. They have already enjoyed the full benefits of the same software, when it worked as intended without verification. Losses totaling $1.14B probably won't substantially improve programming in general, but it's a good start.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it actually happens. If I go to holidays and leave the door of my house open, it does not mean that something actually happens.
What's your address, and when are you going on holiday next? I lock my door so any thief who decides my house is the one he wants to rob, at least has some obstacle. If I forgot to lock my door on my last holiday and nothing was stolen, it doesn't mean I would assume I would be so lucky every time, and intentionally leave the door open thereafter.
There is no indication here at all that anyone externally found out about the problem before. It is basically that you found out that what you did over the last two years was vulnerable to potential attacks. How will it affect the future? Not at all, as the issue gets fixed.
So, fixing the vulnerability is the right thing to do, as soon as you know it's vulnerable. Why wait until after it's been exploited, once you know you have a vulnerability that is greater than it could be? Minimize every identifiable risk, up to but not past the point that the cost equals the benefit. What's so difficult, or costly, about ditching a few keys and replacing with better ones?
Ah, and right now no one unauthorised actually has the key yet. It is only technically possible to crack it much easier...
To assume that a bad thing that has not happened yet therefore cannot happen in the future is very, very stupid -- whenever anything of value is involved. And of course we are discussing something of value, or else I wouldn't be bothering to argue about it. Would you?
Nice try. The problem with Techies is that they don't get the larger picture. They focus on the blinking red herrings they are so used to and where they believe in.
...
The whole signing shit is a troll for the privacy church. What they forget are the proportions and what is really important.
I agree with some of what you've said above. For example your statement to the effect that RedHat generally is a positive contributor to the Open Source community is agreeable.
RedHat as a company applies the usual tactics but as a community member gives a lot. Sure corporations are vulnerable to money. Novell is a good example...
But I don't see good reasons for your other, general statements about signing, privacy, proportions, what is important, and whether patching known vulnerabilities before a known exploit occurs is a good idea. That seems to be what you're calling a "red herring" and that to me is absurd. Patching known vulnerabilities is clever like a fox.
Emerson to them all!
Emerson? The poet, Ralph Waldo? What about him?
People have been dinging me on Effect vs. Affect for 3 decades. They are all right and all wrong, because legitimate dictionaries give one of the definitions of "affect" (verb) as "to have (verb) an effect (noun) upon".
Unfortunately, when one attempts to just verb the noun "effect," the different usage also affects its meaning. A verb "effect" does exist, but it means "to cause, or to bring into existence," as in "Bruce Perens was instrumental in effecting the 'Open Source Definition,' and continues to effect changes to it, as well as affecting changes effected by others."
:D
I'm always careful to get these things right, because one never knows when one will meet a stickler who not only knows such trivia, but will tell point it out when you're wrong. Also, it's a far more stable subject to master than computer security. Less logical, in English, but the stupid rules are the same as they were 10 years ago.
I think of compulsive grammarian disorder like body odor; if nobody in your circle of acquaintances is annoyingly attentive to grammar, it's probably you. And I don't know anybody more careful about grammar than me.
Solar and wind are scams.
I'll let you try to tell it to the Dutch! Or, maybe "scam" is some Russian slang, perhaps for something very advanced, or very successful.
One will not be able to fuel a vehicle with them, or with electricity.
You might be right -- about something else.
A battery is worse to the environment than a fossil engine.
Maybe a battery is worse,but not this type of battery. It will even be made in Russia, and other articles show that the design is very viable.
You do not like Putin because he started to tax and control properly oil companies, and oil costs not 7 USD as it used to be, but times higher, but people in Russia like him exactly for this. Because they build road, schools, etc. on this money. They even started to build autobahn from Pacific ocean to the Baltic sea.
I'm glad your gas prices have dropped, but it looks to me like your petroleum industry is holding you hostage, making clear to Russians without ever saying it directly, that if your petroleum industry is not the wealthiest industry in the world, nobody else will build you roads, schools, etc., you will be poor, maybe even starve. Our oil industry tries to do the same thing. In English, the word "scam" refers to something like taxpayers giving billions of $ to Exxon in years when the oil market is a little bit challenging for it, and not getting that money back from Exxon when it's able to succeed a few years later, in a kinder market. Excuse me, I meant to say, "the kindest market any US company has ever enjoyed."
People worry too much as it is.
Worst of all are the ones who are preoccupied with whether others are worrying about too many things.
If people choose to live unhealthy lifestyles than I'm not going to get real worked up about it.
The problem is that they don't chose that lifestyle. They don't go out and consciously decide that they want to become fat and addicted to smokes, instead it happens as a combination of genes and their social surroundings.
Wrong, people do choose our lifestyles, one choice at a time, and I can prove it to you. Don't ever post anything to /. or any other website, ever. You will choose not to be shaped by this part of your social surroundings [me], but to instead do as you please. Once you knew it was a risk, you became ethically responsible to accept the outcome of each action you chose. Legal responsibility doesn't even require knowledge, it simply comes with the status "adult." If you wish not to be held accountable for your choices and take responsibility for informing yourself, you don't deserve the rights of an adult. Prove to me that you're only the product of your surroundings; don't reply.
It's a problem because like smoking and other addictions, such people can become a burden on society.
It's a problem because collectivist, misnamed "insurance" schemes entitle such people to become a burden on society.
If we were all as awesome as you we could live in Ayn Rand's utopia. Alas, it is not so.
...
Enter paternalism. When you were a child you were too stupid to understand that
You are beneath me. Your argument is childish. If you want to opt into an arrangement in which you are treated like a child, knock yourself out. But your right to swing your stupidity around ends where an expense to me is incurred.
Russia is developing quickly. Russia owns most of the world's territory and energy resources, which cannot be reproduced by humans. If you ever have been at the oil-refinery or saw "Druzhba" pipeline you would not say that it is low-tech, it is as high-tech as it gets.
If you measure "high-tech" only according to complexity, I will be the first to concede that petroleum mining and refining are highly complex. But for their costs and benefits to human society, I prefer the clean elegance of solar and wind power, "which cannot be reproduced by humans" either, but which can be harnessed without any cost to neighbors.
At the same time the USA lags behind.
We don't brag about using 19th century technology, and call it "high-tech."
It is in urgent need of its "perestroika". They still use the imperial measurement system, believe it or not. All those medieval feet, stones, miles, inches, arrow flights, etc.
Yeah, that's dire.
But when it starts the whole world will be shaken. The US internal changes and accompanying social struggle will affect the whole world. We saw it already in Georgia and South Ossethia. That war was part of the US election campaign.
I am genuinely sorry for my "President." I cannot understand why all the other voters did not call for his immediate resignation, when he commented publicly about Putin's soul!! It was not the stupidest or most evil thing he did while in office, but it was enough to terminate his employment.
PRESIDENT BUSH: I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.
Discussions of another world leader's character on such a personal level are certainly appropriate in private discussions with close advisors, but those are not the words of a statesman who believes in democratic principles and human rights. They are the words of a man making a personal commitment to another man, at the expense of both nations. They amount to a public, metaphysical blank check, and he does not have authorization to write those. I apologize for his support of your former "President."
But what will happen when the pushes will come to shoves in the USA?
Hopefully, we will not make the same mistake three times in a row. If George W. Bush becomes prime minister in 2009, I'll eat crow.
My guess is that companies don't want security. They want security labels.
I think you're right.
They want to show that yes, they passed some audit, so they're secure and may deal with financial transactions or other "high security required" crap. Whether they really are secure or not, who cares?
Only their insurance companies, who ultimately absorb all losses, have reason to care. So the question becomes, "Why doesn't the insurance industry care?" Evidence (crappy standards & porous security on the system comprising 90% of the network, for starters) suggests that the relevant demand curve is such that the perceived level of risk (which equals the incentive to buy insurance) minus the total actual losses claimed, is currently at or near its maximum, with the result that insurance companies, the nominal cost-bearers, are not motivated to demand standards with any more technological legitimacy than the so-called "OOXML Standard." But if the demand curve is as I hypothesize, they are not truly "cost-bearers" in any meaningful sense. The "cost" of business losses to all computer crimes are subtracted from all insurance payments to determine the profit margins that insurance companies realize from IT, but obviously when zero insurance payments are made, the demand for insurance itself completely, and pay-in minus pay-out equals zero. Since some risk is required to make insurance desirable, the inflated cost of doing business is also a side effect that does not motivate anybody within the insurance industry, nor at the tops of the corporations which are their biggest customers, to want technologically valid standards in IT, or at least not better ones than these, which are known in the trade to be crap. In fact, lax security tends to encourage embezzlement by making it both profitable, and of limited interest to the parties directly involved. Only the customer suffers, and only in increased cost of doing business, and in the barriers to enter new markets that result in the totally immeasurable reduction of consumer choices, in comparison to a theoretical ideal. Speculation aside, the large amount of capital required to enter the insurance racket effectively precludes all newcomers from it, therefore free market competition is theoretically impossible, and any present deviations from free market ideals can be expected to remain in perpetuity.
The good news is that business losses are not insurable! According to Austrian economic theory, they are a matter of personal responsibility, conceptually identical to getting out of bed in the morning to work for a wage.
Hoppe:
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An uninsurable risk is one where the following condition holds: If I know with regard to a particular risk some or all of the factors that determine its outcome, then such a thing is no longer accidental; its likelihood can be individually affected, and therefore cannot possibly be insured. Or, to formulate it somewhat differently, everything that is within either full or partial control of an individual actor cannot be insured -- cannot be risk-pooled -- but falls within the realm of personal or individual responsibility.
Take an example where we have at least partial control. Can I insure myself against the risk of making business losses? Obviously not. While I have no direct control over the actions of the buyers and non-buyers of my products (those who do directly determine my profits and losses) I do have some control over my business's success or failure. I have control over my production costs, as well as the kind and quality and price of the product I produce. In fact, I can make losses deliberately if I want to. It would be impossible for me to pool my risk with other business people, as if losses were something like being struck by lightening.
Now with this distinction between accidental events, which are insurable, and events that are uninsurabl
now, if you only want the benefit of search engine traffic but don't want people to see any part of your site's content without having paid for it first, then you are a douche. and you should be delisted. because if every site had such policies, then google's web search would cease to work.
If I have content which customers will pay to access, I will charge them for it. If you do not, but believe you have some under development and therefore want to use the Internet for publicity, you have a good reason choose to offer your content free of charge (until you can concoct something profitable). But because you think that due to your lack of a revenue-generator, therefore everybody should refuse the profit you haven't figured out how to earn, you are the douche!
it is perfectly within your legal rights to be a douche. but that doesn't mean people can't call you out on your douche-like behavior.
Thanks for that!
I don't read a lot of astronomy, and the amount of unfamiliar terminology was a bit tedious to me after just a couple pages. Based on your summary, I'll file the article under "eventually read in full."
No, it's not thermodynamics, although I'll try a probabilistic argument that makes sense to me.
... in a 3-body [ = 2 planet] system? ... what about for greater numbers of planets? Again, I'm not doing the math myself, but as you can see, for situations we expect, ie planets of different sizes, likelihood of any circular orbits asymptotically approaches zero.
A circle is symmetrical no matter which line you choose through the center, as long as you cut it in halves, but a non-circular ellipse is asymmetrical across any line other than its major axis or its minor axis; if you slice it in halves anywhere else, you end up with identical, but asymmetrical slices, which will overlap perfectly if you rotate one 180 degrees, but not if you fold over the line you sliced. Therefore, using symmetry as an estimate, and estimating the number of possible orbits as constrained only by the outer radius of the Sun, possible elliptical orbits are therefore an enormous superset to circular ones for any specified area, ie, for the set of all possible orbits of one body around another. The recent discovery of the quantization of space means the ratio is not infinite, but most likely would be estimated as such by any existent computer, including Big Blue.
Extrapolating without taking the time for research-quality mathematical rigor, for two bodies to have circular symmetry is quite a lot "likelier" than for 3 or more, even if all are spherical, and therefore self-symmetrical. Numerical simulations of the three-body (and higher) problem are notoriously processor-intensive, a convenient excuse for me to not do them. Besides, trying to sketch a 3-planet system with 1 or more perfectly circular orbits will probably be more instructive. One solution is that both orbiting planets are in perfect synchronization, which I think we can agree intuitively, is not highly "likely." Is it possible for the system's center of mass to be so perfectly synchronized, without the path of each planet being in lockstep with the other[s]?
estimate: total possible circular orbits / total possible elliptical orbits, CO/EO --> 0 for # of planets >= 2
I'd guess tidal locking would tend to help gravitationally-bound systems achieve equilibrium, but I would not expect that to mean circular orbits, because there are far more possible equilibria with combinations of elliptical orbits than with circular orbits. So I agree with the GP, it is very unlikely that any orbits would return to perfect circles after they're perturbed into elliptical ones.
Another estimation: over cosmic timescales, at least one planet in a solar system of several planets is likely to be perturbed once, or more. Considering that the formation of the second planet in the same solar system would cause the center of mass of the system to begin wobbling, ie to perturb the first planet, I think this is a very safe assumption for all solar systems of 2+ planets.
I work a LOT but it's very rewarding knowing that as long as a solution is going to be helpful AND not be extremely expensive.....the red tape associated with 20 IT workers in a small type company isn't going to stop my progress. I've been able to roll out more effective solutions alone in a 1:90 ratio than 20 of us had with a 1:20 at the previous job.
That's also consistent with what Frederick P. Brooks' "sacred book" says about partitionability of tasks: some are more partitionable than others.
I could've sworn we were talking about IT, not programmers.
Programmers are IT.
The rest of your post is pretty insightful though.
I disagree. At first glance, I thought he opened with a strong point, but as I re-read, I think he blames the people for what in fact is an artifact of scale.
refactored:
....it's the nature of hierarchical systems like corporates that the _WORST_ companies, employing the WORST methods employ the most people because they are so inefficient that they need to get the job done.
On the contrary, I think the largest corporations have larger proportional workforces because scale increases the difficulty of anybody overseeing the whole operation. As a result, larger numbers of middle managers with overlapping knowledge are employed, giving the appearance that none of them can do their own jobs without assistance. In fact, it's the same redundancy principle that is the fundamental genius of the Internet's design.
refactored:
And, depending on multiple factors like... how complete their monopoly is[1], how rich their niche is[2], how fat their investors pockets are[3], how crooked their pocket politicians are...[4] they last a widely varying length of time. As they say, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.[5]
4 points awarded for truth, and 1 for style.
Having lots of employees does not make a company good.
You're right of course, but that is the central thesis of Fred Brooks' book, The Mythical Man-Month, which refactored sarcastically calls a "sacred book" and disputes about a "magic bullet." The insightful comment you offered in your attempt to support refactored contradicts your statement that the rest of r's post "is pretty insightful."
PS To anybody about to undertake their first management role in software development, I highly recommend this book, for its style and its insights into when more workers can help meet a deadline, and in turn how to provide well-reasoned estimates of completion time.
I've never had the slightest interest in anything except strict monogamy.
You sir, lack imagination.
Or:
You, sir, lack focus.
Or:
You both have different preferences which are both legitimate, but you, sir, lack manners.
If they would deduce this from actual statistical data, it would show something, but deducing this from simulation seems a a bit to trustful to the current state of science if you ask me
Kettle, you have not produced the regression analysis showing 95% or greater correlation for your claim, required to support such conclusion.
And I still have a huge problem with models based upon data that started during our last "little Ice age". When you start when temperatures are low, of course your going to get models that show the temperatures going up.
Some temperature increase is to be expected, corresponding to sunspot cycles, whose periodic nature is easy to see from a glance at the Vostok ice cores and other long-term tracking of temperature, but have you directly compared the rate of warming since the 1850s to the rate during previous warming periods? I tell you, this is not normal.
When I turn on my car, I expect its temperature to rise a certain amount, until it's around 200F. But based on the design of the automobile and some knowledge of thermodynamics, I also expect the radiator to remove thermal energy from the engine, and to do so at a sufficient rate for the long-term health of my engine. So if, instead of the expected increase, its temperature rises by 300F or more, I know there's a problem with the radiator. I don't write off all temperature increase, regardless of magnitude, because my understanding of engine temperatures is more sophisticated than, during operation, expect "temperatures going up." Instead, I have a theoretical model and empirical evidence which I use to set parameters for the expected range of temperature increase during operation of the heat source, which in one case is the engine, and in the other, the Sun. Am I cheating, because when I measure the increase I "start when temperatures are low"? No, that's good, old-fashioned, proper vehicle care. You can run a car for a few minutes without radiator fluid and not suffer any damage, but once the temperature of air under the hood approaches the intended operating temperature of the engine, passive air cooling effectively stops and if you don't cut the engine within a very short time, catastrophic damage is certain.
Likewise for the climate, we expect some temperature increase after each [Little] Ice Age, and at other times, after peaks in mean temperature, we expect long cooling trends. But we also have known since Arrhenius, that CO2, nitrous oxide and other gases that are common products of industrial and vehicle combustion, substantially inhibit radiant heat loss. No model I know predicts that conduction and convection can make up the difference. So, keeping at the forefront of your mind these crucial facts which are the basis of the theory of anthropogenic global mean temperature increase; knowing that since the 1800s we have been significantly inhibiting the function of the planet's radiator by adding insulation in the form of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in concentrations unprecedented in the fossil, geological and ice core records, how can you claim to expect -- and hypothetically, how would you explain if you found it -- any result other than accordingly unprecedented retention of thermal energy, and more rapid increase in global mean temperature than has ever been documented in nature?
Its a fallacy simply because every time scientists try to model starting from any other point the models do not show the same thing.
No, that is not true. In a century and a half, we have documented increases in mean temperature of a magnitude that should occur over millennia, based on previous cycles in global mean temperature.
Since the police had a warrant, some judge thought they had enough reasonable suspicion to go in and make these raids.
Wrong. The judge has the legal right to provide a certificate of reasonable suspicion, which the law calls a "search warrant." That document provides only limited rights to search and a judge's power does not allow him to provide anybody permission to conduct these raids, which were illegal, nor any other criminal abuses of search warrants by performing searches in a manner that exceeds the parameters of their warrant. A crime was committed when the warrant was illegally executed before it was presented. No judge has the power to make these raids legal.
Or -- they didn't produce it until last because they didn't want any evidence destroyed before they could secure it. People with incriminating evidence do that.
Some do, and they can be charged with evidence tampering, but their guilt is no excuse to violate other suspects' legal rights. Burden of proof is always on the accusers. You "law & order" types need to remember that the body of law that the government is responsible to uphold includes "innocent until proven guilty."
ANDREW BACEVICH: (about Reagan) It's Morning in America. And you don't have to sacrifice, you can have more, all we need to do is get government out of the way, and drill more holes for oil, because the President led us to believe the supply of oil was infinite.
BILL MOYERS: You describe Ronald Reagan as the "modern prophet of profligacy. The politician who gave moral sanction to the empire of consumption."
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, to understand the truth about President Reagan, is to understand why so much of what we imagined to be our politics is misleading and false. He was the guy who came in and said we need to shrink the size of government. Government didn't shrink during the Reagan era, it grew.
He came in and he said we need to reduce the level of federal spending. He didn't reduce it, it went through the roof, and the budget deficits for his time were the greatest they had been since World War Two.
BILL MOYERS: And do you remember that it was his successor, his Vice President, the first President Bush who said in 1992, the American way of life is not negotiable.
ANDREW BACEVICH: And all presidents, again, this is not a Republican thing, or a Democratic thing, all presidents, all administrations are committed to that proposition. Now, I would say, that probably, 90 percent of the American people today would concur. The American way of life is not up for negotiation.
What I would invite them to consider is that, if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, and of course you need to ask yourself, what is it you value most. That if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, then we need to change the American way of life. We need to modify that which may be peripheral, in order to preserve that which is at the center of what we value.
The connection of reckless consumerism supported by military imperialism, to the erosion of civil liberties is by now obvious, so I'll spell them out for the Republican readers. Reagan, and the GOP generally during and since his presidency, have simultaneously transferred wealth and legal privilege from the lower and middle classes to the upper class, and appealed to American consumers of "Law & Order" products like the interventionist foreign policy advanced by such crimes as the Iran-Contra treasons of Reagan and Oliver North, and the creep toward our present surveillance society in which victims have no functioning legal process for demanding documentation of federal government violations of our right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, because nobody knows which 3-letter agency to petition nor where to address our complaints. Public protest is the last legal recourse of those who have exhausted, or never had, any judicial remedy available for their grievances.
War and spying of course always go hand in hand, and convincing voters to fund either requires appeals to fear. Whether those fears are real or fabricated, accurate or exaggerated
The US, based on our Patent Office alone, deserves the world's scorn for classifying such trivia as "novel and non-obvious." It's like a 3-year-old on a playground, using the word "mine" to describe every toy, with no understanding of what the word means. I am ashamed to be an American!