It was trivial to get an immunization waiver at my state college in California. I wouldn't be surprised if it was equally easy in other colleges across the country. As I recall, all I needed to do was say, "I have religious objections to immunizations." After that, the health center staff handed me a form, I signed it and the college never bothered me again about the issue. I was fairly certain that I'd had the proper immunizations as a child, but I just didn't want to spend hours and hours hunting down the paperwork to prove it. A couple of months later, just to be on the safe side, I took advantage of a free immunization offer at the student health center and recieved the MMR injection. I can easily imagine that other students took the same out I did, but had never had their immunizations in the first place.
Since apparently you hadn't heard, the space shuttle is being retired. Criticizing it changes nothing now. The future of manned spaceflight is not tied to the shuttle as you claim.
Actually, I'm well aware of NASA's proposals for replacing the shuttle fleet, and I whole-heartedly support these proposals. Griffin seems to be putting the space agency in the right direction, and I have no serious dispute with his leadership. The main thrust of my argument - if you'll pardon the obvious pun - is that NASA continues to downplay safety concerns on the shuttle, a program that even Griffin admits was a bad idea in the first place. At the moment, the reward for returning the shuttle to active service, i.e. completing the ISS, just doesn't seem to justify the risks involved.
...the space shuttle program had nothing to do with manned settlements on the moon or Mars.
Sadly, you're absolutely correct. Back in the early 1970s, NASA officials sold Congress on the space shuttle concept by arguing that a reusable shuttle would reduce the costs and increase the frequency of manned space travel. With three decades of hindsight, I think it's reasonable to say that the shuttle program achieved neither of these goals.
In my mind, that was one of the biggest problems with the shuttle - it never looked like an appropriate follow-on to the success of Apollo. Instead of boldly going where no man had gone before, America adopted a beancounting approach to space travel with the shuttle, going where we'd already been dozens of times before, with the vain hope that it would be less expensive this time. The ISS has done nothing to change this. I'm afraid that I just don't care if we ever learn to teach ants how to sort tiny screws in space.
You and I may disagree on this point, but I believe that the future of manned spaceflight lies in reaching out towards the edges of the solar system, putting men and women on Mars and beyond. So this is why I'm still wondering what NASA has accomplished with the shuttle program that even comes close to the earlier Apollo program.
Regarding costs, I've never seen a published comparison for operating the shuttle vs. launching Apollo missions in real dollars but according to Wikipedia, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2005 dollars) for 11 flights, including 6 landings. In comparison, the space shuttle program has used a total of $145 billion of NASA budget over the years, and has flown 114 missions. The average cost per mission then is $1.3 billion, but that includes R&D and construction of the shuttles and their facilities. Directly related costs per launch are quoted at only $55 million, meaning it would cost only that much to add another launch to the manifest, assuming no further problem mitigation needs to be performed. Yes, $1.3 billion is too much to justify the program, but when it was originally expected to launch 12-24 times per year (200-400 launches by now).
See my point above. The Apollo program put men on the moon; no one doubts that NASA spectacularly accomplished its goals with Apollo. In comparison, the shuttle program failed to meet most of its stated goals, as the Wikipedia article you reference suggests. We received something infinitely valuable for the $135 billion 2005 dollars spent on Apollo. Despite the enormous risks, not a single astronaut died in space during the lunar program. Now contrast that with the space shuttle program. We received something less obvious and tangible with the space shuttle, and it has so far cost the lives of 14 astronauts. With the price of gas toping $3 a gallon in the U.S., let's use an oil analogy here: if we hit a gusher with Apollo, then the shuttle program has turned out to be a mostly dry well.
After reading these two articles, it's clear that *nothing* has changed at NASA since the Columbia disaster. The engineers still say, "We're a little worried about X," while NASA management says, "We've noted your concerns, but were going to push ahead and do it anyway." Great, just great. It's just so obvious now that NASA managers took the CAIB report to heart. Way to go guys.
According to the article, NASA's own safety chief doesn't want the next shuttle to fly without additional changes to the external tank foam. Apparently, the head of shuttle safety doesn't get a veto vote on when or if the shuttle goes up. Think about that. We lost seven astronauts in the Challenger accident because NASA managers refused to listen to the engineers, and we lost seven more again in Columbia for the same reasons. How long will it take, how many more astronauts must die before NASA's top management realizes that aeronautical engineering isn't some kind of political game?
Once upon a time, I believed in what NASA accomplished. The early team of pioneers at NASA clearly had 'the Right Stuff'. They pushed the envelope of national achievement and they expanded the boundaries of human endeavor. They did grand and amazing things, many of which quite literally changed the world. Nowadays, the early pioneers at NASA are gone, passed away or retired, and we're left with bureaucrats running a manned space program that looks more like a gigantic roulette wheel of risk than a program which achieves results. Nowadays, the best that NASA can say after a launch is, "Gee, we didn't kill anyone this time." But where are the tangible rewards for taking these risks? Why are we asking more men and women to put their lives on the line? What do we gain when an astronaut goes into orbit for the umpteenth time?
Over the past 25 years, the shuttle has proven to be a death trap for any astronaut brave enough or foolish enough to jump in the cockpit. It was a bad design from the beginning, a compromise engineered to gain dollars and support from military sources which later abandoned the program entirely. The space shuttle never lived up to any of the promises NASA managers made in the 1970s. It's killed 14 men and women since then. Space travel has become more expensive than it was in the Apollo days, it occurs less frequently then before and the shuttle breaks no new ground when it goes into space. Tying the future of manned spaceflight to a single piece of overly-complex hardware like the space shuttle was an obvious mistake. Since its inception, the space shuttle has probably done more to retard human progress in space than to advance the final frontier.
Considering all this, I have just three words -- fuck you NASA. Fuck you NASA, for turning American manned space travel into a deadly joke. Fuck you NASA, for playing politics with astronauts' lives. Fuck you NASA, for wasting billions of dollars building a spacecraft which lists, among its most notable accomplishments, the first American fatalities in space. Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars. Fuck you NASA, for turning over responsibility of space shuttle safety to a bunch of gutless managers more concerned about their careers and NASA PR than solid aeronautical engineering. Fuck you NASA, for creating a manned space agency that couldn't seemingly engineer itself out of a paper bag.
Instead of running this home computer program in-house, why not just outsource the job to a local or national computer repair shop? That way, you can let someone else worry about the liability issues. As an added bonus, any standard computer shop will have far more experience in dealing with the kinds of problems that home computers typically encounter than you might have. That fact alone could easily make outsourcing a cheaper proposition then running the show on your own. It's definately food for thought.
In addition to these obvious advantages, outsourcing also allows you to accurately track the costs of the program and draw your budgets accordingly. You and your boss can sit down and allocate each employee a certain dollar amount of gratis tech support, which will avoid the problem of Sue in Accounting bringing her desktop computer in every day for a month so you can wipe out the latest spyware her son aquired while searching for Internet p0rn. Also, you can offer special services with an outsourced program, like in-home system repair for CEOs or, if you work with a national chain, remote repair services for the sales team.
Finally, you should consider the tax issues you could run into if you keep the program in-house. Technically, the type of program you describe could be seen by government tax collectors as employee compensation. That means someone is going to have to track who receives what services, because the government is surely going to want its cut too. With outsourcing, you sidestep all of these problems and are left to concentrate on your primary mission -- maintaining the corporate IT infrastructure.
Having spent most of last year living carless in the big city, I'm here to tell you that personal cargo capacity is very important factor in designing an efficient and useful low-emissions vehicle for urban transport, a factor that the 'clever' car designers seem to have ignored. Where am I going to store my groceries in this thing? I suppose the passenger seat might do the trick, but with that kind of limited space, why am I driving a car anyway? I can take a taxi just as easily, or even a bus. Hell -- maybe I could even buy a bike, which might help reduce both my fat ass and be good for the environment. What's the use in owning a car that costs twice as much as a regular car, but which has no room to transport me and the occasional junk I buy at the store?
As I see it, no urban vehicle is going to catch on with buyers unless it has some, even if limited, cargo carrying capacity. Small size is great -- especially when you consider the parking situation in most cities -- and fuel efficiency is wonderful, but if it doesn't move both me *and* my stuff, what good is it?
About six months ago, I met a young woman in a bar who'd just gotten back the results from one of these 'personality' tests she took for a potential employer. Amazingly enough, they'd assigned her a letter grade on this test: she scored a D+. Wonderful. How sweet. After a half hour of discussion, I convinced her to walk outside and burn the stupid thing. The barmaid got pissed with the fire, but fuck it -- incineration is the only appropriate way to deal with this kind of garbage.
In my opinion, passing judgement on anyone's personality is a pointless and elitest exercize. It's the same with drug testing. In my experience, it's a sure bet that companies which utilize these tests never expect to maintain the same standards they want to hold me to. When potential employers start offering the results of their owners/executives/managers personality tests, I'll be more willing to take them. Until that time -- and I'm not holding my breath -- I'll look elsewhere for work. I'm just not that interested in being someone's worker drone.
Having graduated with my degree in journalism about nine months ago, I couldn't agree with you more that plagerism runs rampant in many, many school programs for future newspaper writers. I think half the problem is the hazy, self-centered, mostly situational ethics structure that even mainstream journalists still strongly adhere to. As far as I can tell, there are no absolutes when it comes to ethics in journalism. This seems to encourage thinking like, "If I can get away with it, why not take the easy way out?" With no solid ethical foundation to support them, is it any wonder that journalists, both new and established ones, so often stray into trouble?
At one point in my journalism ethics class, the question came up, "If you were a photographer working for a newspaper, and you witnessed an accident occuring right in front of you, should you stand there taking pictures, or do you run to help the victims?" Frankly, I couldn't believe that *anyone* would choose the former, but a substancial number of my classmates thought otherwise. Our instructor in that class said she believed that there were merits for either action, and she declined to set any kind of moral standard to follow.
With ethics like that, is it any wonder that journalism keeps getting a black-eye among the public?
Until about a month ago, I rode BART each day as part of my daily commute. I agree with Chronicle -- the underground trains are far too noisy to hold an intelligent phone conversation for any length of time. When I commuted on BART, I spent my 45 minutes reading and writing emails. 802.11 connectivity might have been useful then, but cell phone calls would have been utterly pointless.
As I see it, San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, loves to talk about how he's going to 'unwire' the city with 802.11 hotspots but, at least in the year I lived there, I saw zero progress from my home just three blocks off of Union Square. 802.11 on BART would be a great first step in the cities wireless plan, but I wouldn't hold my breath just yet. It was always tough to find free Internet in San Francisco and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Plain geography and an astonishing number of already-installed 802.11 APs is going to dictate an expensive wireless rollout in the city. As far as I can see, neither the city government nor anyone else seems willing to pony-up the kind of money it will take to blanket the city with 802.11.
Having woken up this morning to find that the Windows 2003 server which runs email, web and a few other things for my domain just fucked-up *again*, I'm not exactly thrilled with the boys from Redmond at this moment. Frankly, I'm tired of Microsoft's shitty-ass software and a host support documents that, most times, seem to be written by people who have no idea what they're talking about. Sure, Linux has its share of problems, but I have yet to see just one FUBARed file fuck-up an entire Linux server. Today, it looks like that's exactly what happened with my Windows 2003 box. Thanks Microsoft, for all the love.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft can go fuck themselves for the years of sub-par software and headaches they've given me. This mornings fiasco is just the latest in a long string of failures for Bill and company to get a god-dammed clue. No, I don't want DRM, no, I don't want my box rooted 5 minutes after I connect it to the Internet and I don't want any of the crap you guys seem so happy to shove down my throat. I just want an OS that works, reliably, without problem after problem after problem.
If I were in South Korea, I'd be celebrating now. No more Microsoft? Great! Now we can go get something useful done, instead of having to babysit a yet another sick Microsoft server. Freedom from Redmond? It's like blessing from on high.
Frankly, I'm not buying it. I think the whole S.F. = Free Wi-Fi deal isn't going to happen. Newsom talks big, and he looks good in front of a camera, but when it comes to running the city, I'm not in the least bit impressed. This isn't gonna happen.
I live in San Francisco, less than three blocks from Union Square, and I'd just be happy if local government could keep garbage and human feces off the damn streets. Free Wi-Fi from the same mayor who pulled the whole 'Care Not Cash' scam on us, the one that was supposed to bring in all the vagrants off the streets yet hasn't done a damn thing that I can see? Yeah, right... Even at 4:45 a.m. I get hit-up for change on the streets here. Yeah, Newsom's gonna give us free Wi-Fi. Please. Give me a break.
San Francisco can't even route the stupid buses around the city with any sense of sanity; how are they going to route packets any better? Sure, Google knows what they're doing, but they're down in Mountain View, where local government is small and generally sane and they don't have the geographical problems San Francisco has. I think we're going to see a lot of press releases and a few public talks, and then Google will spend millions trying to squeeze packets between the numerous hills and tall buildings the city sports all over the place. They'll get a few hot-spots going, realize that it will take lots more money than they want to spend to totally unwire the city, then they'll quietly shove the project into some closet somewhere, never again to see the light of day.
Sure, it sounds like a good plan; blanket the city with free Internet access for residents and tourists alike. But San Francisco has so many more pressing issues to deal with that this just feels like another one of Gavin's 'feel-good' moves. I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not giving up my cable modem either.
I think this is an amazingly funny story. It's a standing joke in the newspaper business that all journalists tend to be a little inept when it comes to anything technical, like adding two numbers together for example, so I'm not at all surprised to see that this happened. However, I am pleased to note that many of my colleagues turned an adverse situation into an opportunity to reconnect with long lost friends and coworkers. That's journalism for you -- it's all about the gab.
So I took a look at the Seattle-area prices for Flexcar and, low and behold, they have a special deal for University of Washington students. I'm guessing that no one in the Marketing department at Flexcar gave much thought to the moniker for that rate package, amusingly called 'UPASS'.
Hummm... 'UPASS'... it makes me wonder; are they trying to tell the student's what they are going to get for using that special rate, or are they suggesting amourous activities for couples in the back seat of their cars?
I've been around the corporate racetrack a few times; long enough to know that when your boss starts counting pennies, it means that she don't consider your services crucial to the bottom line.
Corporate executives frequently get all kinds of benefits and bonuses, anything from hard cash, interest-free loans, company cars, company-financed homes, dry cleaning, free lunches, maid service, etc. all because there is a perception that these individuals are difficult to replace and are critical to successful implementation of the company's long-term strategy. I've rarely heard anyone in a boardroom argue over the merits of any company-financed perk, except in cases where management was looking for an excuse to get rid of someone and wanted to encourage that person to get rid of themselves.
The message is clear - if your company is tightening the ropes on this type of spending, than there's a good chance that someone has determined that you are:
Expendable
Easily replaceable
Soon to be replaced with a cheaper alternative
Don't fool yourself into thinking that flexible hours or last week's heroics in fixing the email server mean anything to the people at the top of the corporate food chain. The problem with IT is that every system failure is often seen as an indication that you're not doing your job properly, and even when nothing fails, it's a red flag to your boss that she can probably get someone less qualified and less expensive to do the same job that you're doing. It's a no-win situation. Unless you're dealing some moneymaking aspect of the company (i.e., that the company generates cash via IT services) than chances are good that you're about to be sidelined and replaced. Cash and compensation is always the bottom line for respect in any business endeavor; if you're not seeing dollars or perks, you have no respect coming down from upper-management.
According to Yahoo!, this afternoon the US Senate approved changes to the 'Can SPAM' Act, i.e. S.877. If I'm reading this right, it means that the Congress will need to go back and vote on the measure again before it hits the President's desk. Since House members are already off for the Thanksgiving holiday until Dec. 8th, we'll still have several days to let Congress know that we're unhappy with the bill before the final vote. While I realize there's little chance we'll see any major changes in the bill, you never know, stranger things have happened.
Personally, I was looking forward to suing SPAMers here in California. It sounded like a nice new occupation for all of us out-of-work IT staffers.
If you read the press release from Loudeye it's clear that they knew exactly what MIT intended to do with their $30,000 purchase. Hell, Loudeye claims they are the only company authorized to arrange this type of licensing scheme for MIT. How can they turn around and claim now that MIT didn't ask them for the right kind of licenses? What, did Loudeye just forget to tell MIT about the problem? What did Loudeye's execs. expect would happen?
But you've really got to love the quote from Vivendi;
Kelly Mullens, a spokeswoman for Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, said, "It is unfortunate that MIT launched a service in an attempt to avoid paying recording artists, union musicians and record labels. Loudeye recognized that they had no right to deliver Universal's music to the MIT service, and MIT acted responsibly by removing the music."
Now let me see if I understand this: I design a legal music service for college students. I contact a company that tells me they have music rights for sale, I buy them for $30,000 and then I start the service. But, less than a week later, a music label calls me on the carpet, claiming I 'avoided paying music artists, union musicians and record labels'? What was the $30,000 to Loudeye for then, if not a payment on behalf of recording artists, union musicians and recording labels? Did Vivendi not get their cut, miss the memo, what?
It's beyond me why the music industry would want to shut down the LAMP service. I mean, as I understand it, it's more like a radio station than an MP3 download tool like Napster or Kazaa. Does this mean that the labels don't want college kids listening to music legally? Did radio-like venues become taboo or something while I slept? This debacle is sure to send one message clearly to students across the US - there is no way to stay legally compliant with the RIAA and still listen to music. Now, what's that message likely to encourage?
SiteFinder wasn't an 'innovation'; it was a marketing, ploy pure and simple. Verisign hoped to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals by routing domain-name typos to a site they controlled, ostensibly to then re-direct Internet users to sites and services that Verisign stands to make a buck on. MacLaughlin is insulting the collective intelligence - or, in some cases, the lack thereof - of Internet users by labeling his marketing gimmick as a service to help users resolve Internet errors. It's bullshit and it's disingenuous to call this an 'innovation' - with that logic you might as well call SPAM an 'informational opportunity' for the millions of users forced to wade through it. Get real.
ICANN pulled the plug on this little power play and I'm thankful they had the courage to do it. It's nice to see ICANN finally show a little backbone for a change. Verisign wanted to alter a fundamental part of how the Internet works - they wanted to change how the network responds to errors. ICANN correctly smacked this down. Imagine if the post office started sending malformed letters to the Direct Marketing Association: the public would be up in arms about it. Are we any more surprised that Internet users don't appreciate the same treatment? Looking at it this way underscores what so outraged ICANN but it ignores the fact that Verisign began this whole stunt when they bypassed what few Internet standards processes we do have. Did Verisign submit an RFC to suggest their change in Internet standards? Nope, not that I'm aware of. Did they address the issue with the Internet community and gain approval that way? Again, not that I'm aware of. They unilaterally decided to make the change, regardless of how the change might affect other Internet users, and that's why ICANN told them to knock it off.
Here's a thought Mr. MacLaughlin: do us all a favor next time and just ask before you decide to make a major change in Internet standards. The whole reason the Internet is useful to its users is because we cooperate, because there is a method and a process for change that everyone else follows. Internet users don't care if you make a buck on-line, but we'd rather you did so up-front instead of using (or, in this case, abusing) your privileged position as a registrar and the maintainer of the.com database. And quit crying because ICANN brought you to task for being the on-line version of a schoolyard bully. You tried, you lost, now move on and do something constructive. Oh, and stop listening to everything those guys and girls down in Marketing tell you - try listening to the techies for a change. Maybe you'll learn something.
Good point. I'd counter your concern by pointing out that state shield laws typically arise out of a common law concept that reporters have a need to protect their sources. Without some protection, whistleblowers and others probably wouldn't talk to the press at all. That kind of leaves the whole Fourth Estate thing swirling down the toilet. There's a compelling public interest in allowing reporters to keep some secrets; compelling enough I think that the courts might just rule in favor of it. Who knows, stranger things have happened.
I think it's very illuminating though that the question of source anonymity is probably most critical in issues concerning the Federal government. The Washington press corps would evaporate in a heartbeat if they couldn't guarantee some anonymity to their sources. State and local reporters have a much easier time getting their officials to talk 'on the record'; it's the Federal officials that always seem to ask for deep background protection. Unless we want a completely closed political process - which I think is what the Bush administration is pushing hard far anyway - we're going to have to draw some lines somewhere.
The whole issue is deeply troubling and I admit that the new emphasis on 'national security' has me a little spooked. I imagine many working journalists feel the same way. A few weeks ago I tried to ask my Media Law instructor what he thought the USA Patriot Act meant to reporters - he dodged my question. It figures. I think we're very likely to see some court rulings on this issue within the next few years, if not sooner.
As a former tech worker turned journalism student I'm appalled at the actions of the FBI in this case - if it turns out to be true. Until I can see one of these alleged letters I'm inclined to reserve judgment on the issue though. We have very little to go on at this point. But I can tell you from personal experience that courts and government agencies often have a difficult time forcing journalists to reveal their sources or notes on their stories. There's a huge presumption in US law that the press does not have to willingly share information with the courts or government investigations and there are statutes, called shield laws, in many states that exempt reporters from revealing information.
A case in point: About a year ago, I had the privilege of sitting next to a friend of mine in court as he tried to keep the identity of an anonymous source out of the hands of the defense attorneys during the sentencing phase of a murder trial. My friend, a working journalist for San Diego Magazine, wrote a story on the Danielle van Dam murder case in which he quoted a police source saying, 'he hit her, and that was it.' The defense argued that this quote might mean that the victim died before the accused took her out of her home. Why might this be important? If true, the prosecution's argument for a death sentence would not have held up since it was the kidnapping charge that put the death penalty on the table in the case. You can't kidnap a corpse, or so the defense argued.
So what happened with my friend? The judge in the case threw out the defense motion, stating that the one-line mention in my friend's article didn't really say much about what might have happened in the home to the victim. The judge also explained that the California Shield Laws protected my friend from having to reveal his sources anyway. It was an interesting experience though, and I'm glad that I got a chance to see the First Amendment at work. But I think it also shows how difficult it is to get information out of a reporter if they don't want to voluntarily share it. Personally, I think the FBI is going to have an uphill battle in the Lamo case.
If you're interested in similar First Amendment issues and how they relate to the press try the First Amendment Project, an organization of attorneys and other interested individuals that works to ensure freedom of expression for artists, activists and journalists.
I picked up this book yesterday for a writing class at SFSU and I agree, it's a gem. My favorite quote (so far):
Flammable - An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.
Consider the length of time this so-called vulnerability has lurked in the device driver code for all those operating systems, than ask why no one discovered the problem sooner. Could it be that there's nothing to be worried about?
I'm guessing this problem has gone undetected so long because uber-short frames don't naturally occur on most Ethernet installations. Networks typically send real data, not empty frames, that's why we build them in the first place. You have to intentionally generate super-small frames if you want to see them. All the examples @Stake provides are based on ICMP Echo/Echo Replies, where you can specify the packet length at the command line. Show me some real network traffic that exhibits this problem, than I'll start to worry.
Still not convinced? Well, consider that you can't exploit the issue beyond even a single router, and that the vulnerability in most cases is just rehashed data, stuff that's already gone out on the wire. How big a security issue is that? Seems like the least of my problems. I'd worry more about one un-patched system on the network or one stupid marketroid opening a TELNET secession to the web server than I'd worry about this.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and declare this a non-issue. I'm sure the guys over at @Stake are happy to have something to show their bosses (and the media) so soon after the holidays, but it just doesn't look very serious from where I'm sitting.
The Bush Administration Guide to SPAM
on
ISP Chief on Spam
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· Score: 4, Funny
As much as I detest government regulation interfering with rich business leaders trying to eek out big profits, I think it's time that the Bush administration take notice and do something about the SPAM problem. I'm suggesting you make it a Federal felony Mr. President, because the state-by-state approach just isn't working. SPAMer's are stealing the rightful profits out of the pockets of ISP owner's, just the same way that the eco-freaks are stealing new business opportunities from the oil industry. But it's much worse then that.
You see, Internet bandwidth is a lot like oil. Everyone needs to use some, but there's a big group of rustlers out there right now that don't pay their fair share for it. They steal it, right out from under the Internet oilman's nose, because there are no stiff penalties to prevent it. These rustlers, let's call them terrorists because that's what they really are, tap Internet wells from across state lines, and if the state takes an interest, they just move their pumps to another state that hasn't run into the problem yet. Some of these pirates are stealing up to 40 percent of the Internet oilman's production. How can the poor Internet oilman operate under those kinds of circumstances?
Mr. President, it's simple really. SPAMers are terrorists, out to steal business profits by selling the modern equivalent of oil without paying the oilman for it. How can the administration not do something about this?
Some of these Internet oilmen are in Texas, a state I know you love and cherish. While I'm sure your advisors keep telling you that it's the hippies in the liberal-land of California that are behind this Internet thing, they're wrong. Those left-wing Silicon Valley jerks only build the equipment that the Internet oilmen use, like making the pumps and the hoses, they don't actually run the Internet oil business. Texans could run the Internet wells, if only your administration gives them a chance and does something about these profit-terrorists we call SPAMers.
Hell, if you're willing to suspend civil liberties for guys like Jose Padilla, why not just forget the legal process and let the tribunals deal with these losers? They are enemy combatants Mr. President, traitors in the war on profitability, and I'm sure you can find a nice deep hole for them somewhere. I've got addresses and phone numbers Mr. Bush, and I'm ready to help the fight on terrorism!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most technical support staffers already official representatives of the companies they work for? When I did technical support for computer manufacturers, the word 'representative' was in every title I held. So what's different now?
I think the real problem is that companies are afraid low-paid techs might take out some of their job frustrations in on-line forums, where the eyes of supervisors are usually absent. That, and the fact that by putting their help in writing on a public forum, these companies worry that their employees might reveal embarrassing service issues to a wider audience instead of just one customer at a time. Of course, if these same companies bothered to instill in their employees a sense of professionalism and loyalty, or God forbid maybe even pride in their work, I doubt there would be a problem with this.
The truth is, you represent any company you work for, regardless of if you're on the clock or not. Executives certainly realize this, but it's easy to blame low customer satisfaction scores on employees just trying to lend a hand to angry customer's they meet in other parts of the on-line community.
If this is going to succeed anywhere, San Diego's Gaslamp district is probably one of the better places to start. I live in San Diego, and I can tell you that the Pacific Theater is dead center of one of the biggest party zones outside of Los Angeles. Add that to the very high local population of 18 to 24-year olds from all the local colleges, universities and the Navy and Marine bases, and you've got what looks like a good chance of making a buck or two.
Personally, I wish them success. I wouldn't mind giving it a try myself. It will be interesting to see just what they've got set up come January.
If you take a look at ICANN's homepage you will see a number of references to new and proposed bylaws for the organization. The first proposal looks to have surfaced on Oct 2 of this year. I'm guessing what's happened recently is that ICANN voted to adopt the proposals and that's why Allerbach and the rest of the 'At Large' directors are out of a job. It's a guess, but it fits the available facts. But this certainly isn't really new information, not unless you count proposals posted over three weeks ago as new. Allerbach likely knew this was coming, it wasn't just some 'out of the blue' move from ICANN.
Reading through the proposals I note that they suggest eliminating a number of directorships, not just the At Large directors. The proposals call for shifting the functions of the At Large directors to an At Large advisory committee and a Manager of Public Participation. There are a bunch of other suggestions on reform, et. al. in the documents, feel free to have a look on your own if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of the ICANN organizational process.
Finally, I don't personally know Allerbach and I can't say one way or the other if his departure from the ICANN Board of Directors is appropriate or not. He may be a stark raving nutcase for all I know, or he may be the last voice of reason and integrity in the organization, who knows? Not me. I can however guarantee that suing the organization, regardless of the reasons he did so, was unlikely to win him any friends on the board. After that, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone that ICANN wants to close-up the ranks of their Board of Directors and avoid this type of public embarrassment in the future. But I think it's inaccurate to claim that ICANN forced him out, there's nothing to substantiate that.
Whatever the reasons, I wish him luck in the future and hope that he will continue his efforts to keep ICANN accountable for their policies and actions and keep the process open to public comment and criticism. God knows they need someone to hold them accountable.
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It was trivial to get an immunization waiver at my state college in California. I wouldn't be surprised if it was equally easy in other colleges across the country. As I recall, all I needed to do was say, "I have religious objections to immunizations." After that, the health center staff handed me a form, I signed it and the college never bothered me again about the issue. I was fairly certain that I'd had the proper immunizations as a child, but I just didn't want to spend hours and hours hunting down the paperwork to prove it. A couple of months later, just to be on the safe side, I took advantage of a free immunization offer at the student health center and recieved the MMR injection. I can easily imagine that other students took the same out I did, but had never had their immunizations in the first place.
Since apparently you hadn't heard, the space shuttle is being retired. Criticizing it changes nothing now. The future of manned spaceflight is not tied to the shuttle as you claim.
Actually, I'm well aware of NASA's proposals for replacing the shuttle fleet, and I whole-heartedly support these proposals. Griffin seems to be putting the space agency in the right direction, and I have no serious dispute with his leadership. The main thrust of my argument - if you'll pardon the obvious pun - is that NASA continues to downplay safety concerns on the shuttle, a program that even Griffin admits was a bad idea in the first place. At the moment, the reward for returning the shuttle to active service, i.e. completing the ISS, just doesn't seem to justify the risks involved.
Sadly, you're absolutely correct. Back in the early 1970s, NASA officials sold Congress on the space shuttle concept by arguing that a reusable shuttle would reduce the costs and increase the frequency of manned space travel. With three decades of hindsight, I think it's reasonable to say that the shuttle program achieved neither of these goals.
In my mind, that was one of the biggest problems with the shuttle - it never looked like an appropriate follow-on to the success of Apollo. Instead of boldly going where no man had gone before, America adopted a beancounting approach to space travel with the shuttle, going where we'd already been dozens of times before, with the vain hope that it would be less expensive this time. The ISS has done nothing to change this. I'm afraid that I just don't care if we ever learn to teach ants how to sort tiny screws in space.
You and I may disagree on this point, but I believe that the future of manned spaceflight lies in reaching out towards the edges of the solar system, putting men and women on Mars and beyond. So this is why I'm still wondering what NASA has accomplished with the shuttle program that even comes close to the earlier Apollo program.
Regarding costs, I've never seen a published comparison for operating the shuttle vs. launching Apollo missions in real dollars but according to Wikipedia, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2005 dollars) for 11 flights, including 6 landings. In comparison, the space shuttle program has used a total of $145 billion of NASA budget over the years, and has flown 114 missions. The average cost per mission then is $1.3 billion, but that includes R&D and construction of the shuttles and their facilities. Directly related costs per launch are quoted at only $55 million, meaning it would cost only that much to add another launch to the manifest, assuming no further problem mitigation needs to be performed. Yes, $1.3 billion is too much to justify the program, but when it was originally expected to launch 12-24 times per year (200-400 launches by now).
See my point above. The Apollo program put men on the moon; no one doubts that NASA spectacularly accomplished its goals with Apollo. In comparison, the shuttle program failed to meet most of its stated goals, as the Wikipedia article you reference suggests. We received something infinitely valuable for the $135 billion 2005 dollars spent on Apollo. Despite the enormous risks, not a single astronaut died in space during the lunar program. Now contrast that with the space shuttle program. We received something less obvious and tangible with the space shuttle, and it has so far cost the lives of 14 astronauts. With the price of gas toping $3 a gallon in the U.S., let's use an oil analogy here: if we hit a gusher with Apollo, then the shuttle program has turned out to be a mostly dry well.
I also want to point out that this "obvious
After reading these two articles, it's clear that *nothing* has changed at NASA since the Columbia disaster. The engineers still say, "We're a little worried about X," while NASA management says, "We've noted your concerns, but were going to push ahead and do it anyway." Great, just great. It's just so obvious now that NASA managers took the CAIB report to heart. Way to go guys.
According to the article, NASA's own safety chief doesn't want the next shuttle to fly without additional changes to the external tank foam. Apparently, the head of shuttle safety doesn't get a veto vote on when or if the shuttle goes up. Think about that. We lost seven astronauts in the Challenger accident because NASA managers refused to listen to the engineers, and we lost seven more again in Columbia for the same reasons. How long will it take, how many more astronauts must die before NASA's top management realizes that aeronautical engineering isn't some kind of political game?
Once upon a time, I believed in what NASA accomplished. The early team of pioneers at NASA clearly had 'the Right Stuff'. They pushed the envelope of national achievement and they expanded the boundaries of human endeavor. They did grand and amazing things, many of which quite literally changed the world. Nowadays, the early pioneers at NASA are gone, passed away or retired, and we're left with bureaucrats running a manned space program that looks more like a gigantic roulette wheel of risk than a program which achieves results. Nowadays, the best that NASA can say after a launch is, "Gee, we didn't kill anyone this time." But where are the tangible rewards for taking these risks? Why are we asking more men and women to put their lives on the line? What do we gain when an astronaut goes into orbit for the umpteenth time?
Over the past 25 years, the shuttle has proven to be a death trap for any astronaut brave enough or foolish enough to jump in the cockpit. It was a bad design from the beginning, a compromise engineered to gain dollars and support from military sources which later abandoned the program entirely. The space shuttle never lived up to any of the promises NASA managers made in the 1970s. It's killed 14 men and women since then. Space travel has become more expensive than it was in the Apollo days, it occurs less frequently then before and the shuttle breaks no new ground when it goes into space. Tying the future of manned spaceflight to a single piece of overly-complex hardware like the space shuttle was an obvious mistake. Since its inception, the space shuttle has probably done more to retard human progress in space than to advance the final frontier.
Considering all this, I have just three words -- fuck you NASA. Fuck you NASA, for turning American manned space travel into a deadly joke. Fuck you NASA, for playing politics with astronauts' lives. Fuck you NASA, for wasting billions of dollars building a spacecraft which lists, among its most notable accomplishments, the first American fatalities in space. Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars. Fuck you NASA, for turning over responsibility of space shuttle safety to a bunch of gutless managers more concerned about their careers and NASA PR than solid aeronautical engineering. Fuck you NASA, for creating a manned space agency that couldn't seemingly engineer itself out of a paper bag.
Instead of running this home computer program in-house, why not just outsource the job to a local or national computer repair shop? That way, you can let someone else worry about the liability issues. As an added bonus, any standard computer shop will have far more experience in dealing with the kinds of problems that home computers typically encounter than you might have. That fact alone could easily make outsourcing a cheaper proposition then running the show on your own. It's definately food for thought.
In addition to these obvious advantages, outsourcing also allows you to accurately track the costs of the program and draw your budgets accordingly. You and your boss can sit down and allocate each employee a certain dollar amount of gratis tech support, which will avoid the problem of Sue in Accounting bringing her desktop computer in every day for a month so you can wipe out the latest spyware her son aquired while searching for Internet p0rn. Also, you can offer special services with an outsourced program, like in-home system repair for CEOs or, if you work with a national chain, remote repair services for the sales team.
Finally, you should consider the tax issues you could run into if you keep the program in-house. Technically, the type of program you describe could be seen by government tax collectors as employee compensation. That means someone is going to have to track who receives what services, because the government is surely going to want its cut too. With outsourcing, you sidestep all of these problems and are left to concentrate on your primary mission -- maintaining the corporate IT infrastructure.
Having spent most of last year living carless in the big city, I'm here to tell you that personal cargo capacity is very important factor in designing an efficient and useful low-emissions vehicle for urban transport, a factor that the 'clever' car designers seem to have ignored. Where am I going to store my groceries in this thing? I suppose the passenger seat might do the trick, but with that kind of limited space, why am I driving a car anyway? I can take a taxi just as easily, or even a bus. Hell -- maybe I could even buy a bike, which might help reduce both my fat ass and be good for the environment. What's the use in owning a car that costs twice as much as a regular car, but which has no room to transport me and the occasional junk I buy at the store?
As I see it, no urban vehicle is going to catch on with buyers unless it has some, even if limited, cargo carrying capacity. Small size is great -- especially when you consider the parking situation in most cities -- and fuel efficiency is wonderful, but if it doesn't move both me *and* my stuff, what good is it?
About six months ago, I met a young woman in a bar who'd just gotten back the results from one of these 'personality' tests she took for a potential employer. Amazingly enough, they'd assigned her a letter grade on this test: she scored a D+ . Wonderful. How sweet. After a half hour of discussion, I convinced her to walk outside and burn the stupid thing. The barmaid got pissed with the fire, but fuck it -- incineration is the only appropriate way to deal with this kind of garbage.
In my opinion, passing judgement on anyone's personality is a pointless and elitest exercize. It's the same with drug testing. In my experience, it's a sure bet that companies which utilize these tests never expect to maintain the same standards they want to hold me to. When potential employers start offering the results of their owners/executives/managers personality tests, I'll be more willing to take them. Until that time -- and I'm not holding my breath -- I'll look elsewhere for work. I'm just not that interested in being someone's worker drone.
Having graduated with my degree in journalism about nine months ago, I couldn't agree with you more that plagerism runs rampant in many, many school programs for future newspaper writers. I think half the problem is the hazy, self-centered, mostly situational ethics structure that even mainstream journalists still strongly adhere to. As far as I can tell, there are no absolutes when it comes to ethics in journalism. This seems to encourage thinking like, "If I can get away with it, why not take the easy way out?" With no solid ethical foundation to support them, is it any wonder that journalists, both new and established ones, so often stray into trouble?
At one point in my journalism ethics class, the question came up, "If you were a photographer working for a newspaper, and you witnessed an accident occuring right in front of you, should you stand there taking pictures, or do you run to help the victims?" Frankly, I couldn't believe that *anyone* would choose the former, but a substancial number of my classmates thought otherwise. Our instructor in that class said she believed that there were merits for either action, and she declined to set any kind of moral standard to follow.
With ethics like that, is it any wonder that journalism keeps getting a black-eye among the public?
Until about a month ago, I rode BART each day as part of my daily commute. I agree with Chronicle -- the underground trains are far too noisy to hold an intelligent phone conversation for any length of time. When I commuted on BART, I spent my 45 minutes reading and writing emails. 802.11 connectivity might have been useful then, but cell phone calls would have been utterly pointless.
As I see it, San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, loves to talk about how he's going to 'unwire' the city with 802.11 hotspots but, at least in the year I lived there, I saw zero progress from my home just three blocks off of Union Square. 802.11 on BART would be a great first step in the cities wireless plan, but I wouldn't hold my breath just yet. It was always tough to find free Internet in San Francisco and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Plain geography and an astonishing number of already-installed 802.11 APs is going to dictate an expensive wireless rollout in the city. As far as I can see, neither the city government nor anyone else seems willing to pony-up the kind of money it will take to blanket the city with 802.11.
Having woken up this morning to find that the Windows 2003 server which runs email, web and a few other things for my domain just fucked-up *again*, I'm not exactly thrilled with the boys from Redmond at this moment. Frankly, I'm tired of Microsoft's shitty-ass software and a host support documents that, most times, seem to be written by people who have no idea what they're talking about. Sure, Linux has its share of problems, but I have yet to see just one FUBARed file fuck-up an entire Linux server. Today, it looks like that's exactly what happened with my Windows 2003 box. Thanks Microsoft, for all the love.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft can go fuck themselves for the years of sub-par software and headaches they've given me. This mornings fiasco is just the latest in a long string of failures for Bill and company to get a god-dammed clue. No, I don't want DRM, no, I don't want my box rooted 5 minutes after I connect it to the Internet and I don't want any of the crap you guys seem so happy to shove down my throat. I just want an OS that works, reliably, without problem after problem after problem.
If I were in South Korea, I'd be celebrating now. No more Microsoft? Great! Now we can go get something useful done, instead of having to babysit a yet another sick Microsoft server. Freedom from Redmond? It's like blessing from on high.
Frankly, I'm not buying it. I think the whole S.F. = Free Wi-Fi deal isn't going to happen. Newsom talks big, and he looks good in front of a camera, but when it comes to running the city, I'm not in the least bit impressed. This isn't gonna happen.
I live in San Francisco, less than three blocks from Union Square, and I'd just be happy if local government could keep garbage and human feces off the damn streets. Free Wi-Fi from the same mayor who pulled the whole 'Care Not Cash' scam on us, the one that was supposed to bring in all the vagrants off the streets yet hasn't done a damn thing that I can see? Yeah, right... Even at 4:45 a.m. I get hit-up for change on the streets here. Yeah, Newsom's gonna give us free Wi-Fi. Please. Give me a break.
San Francisco can't even route the stupid buses around the city with any sense of sanity; how are they going to route packets any better? Sure, Google knows what they're doing, but they're down in Mountain View, where local government is small and generally sane and they don't have the geographical problems San Francisco has. I think we're going to see a lot of press releases and a few public talks, and then Google will spend millions trying to squeeze packets between the numerous hills and tall buildings the city sports all over the place. They'll get a few hot-spots going, realize that it will take lots more money than they want to spend to totally unwire the city, then they'll quietly shove the project into some closet somewhere, never again to see the light of day.
Sure, it sounds like a good plan; blanket the city with free Internet access for residents and tourists alike. But San Francisco has so many more pressing issues to deal with that this just feels like another one of Gavin's 'feel-good' moves. I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not giving up my cable modem either.
I think this is an amazingly funny story. It's a standing joke in the newspaper business that all journalists tend to be a little inept when it comes to anything technical, like adding two numbers together for example, so I'm not at all surprised to see that this happened. However, I am pleased to note that many of my colleagues turned an adverse situation into an opportunity to reconnect with long lost friends and coworkers. That's journalism for you -- it's all about the gab.
So I took a look at the Seattle-area prices for Flexcar and, low and behold, they have a special deal for University of Washington students. I'm guessing that no one in the Marketing department at Flexcar gave much thought to the moniker for that rate package, amusingly called 'UPASS'.
Hummm... 'UPASS'... it makes me wonder; are they trying to tell the student's what they are going to get for using that special rate, or are they suggesting amourous activities for couples in the back seat of their cars?
I've been around the corporate racetrack a few times; long enough to know that when your boss starts counting pennies, it means that she don't consider your services crucial to the bottom line.
Corporate executives frequently get all kinds of benefits and bonuses, anything from hard cash, interest-free loans, company cars, company-financed homes, dry cleaning, free lunches, maid service, etc. all because there is a perception that these individuals are difficult to replace and are critical to successful implementation of the company's long-term strategy. I've rarely heard anyone in a boardroom argue over the merits of any company-financed perk, except in cases where management was looking for an excuse to get rid of someone and wanted to encourage that person to get rid of themselves. The message is clear - if your company is tightening the ropes on this type of spending, than there's a good chance that someone has determined that you are:
Don't fool yourself into thinking that flexible hours or last week's heroics in fixing the email server mean anything to the people at the top of the corporate food chain. The problem with IT is that every system failure is often seen as an indication that you're not doing your job properly, and even when nothing fails, it's a red flag to your boss that she can probably get someone less qualified and less expensive to do the same job that you're doing. It's a no-win situation. Unless you're dealing some moneymaking aspect of the company (i.e., that the company generates cash via IT services) than chances are good that you're about to be sidelined and replaced. Cash and compensation is always the bottom line for respect in any business endeavor; if you're not seeing dollars or perks, you have no respect coming down from upper-management.
According to Yahoo!, this afternoon the US Senate approved changes to the 'Can SPAM' Act, i.e. S.877. If I'm reading this right, it means that the Congress will need to go back and vote on the measure again before it hits the President's desk. Since House members are already off for the Thanksgiving holiday until Dec. 8th, we'll still have several days to let Congress know that we're unhappy with the bill before the final vote. While I realize there's little chance we'll see any major changes in the bill, you never know, stranger things have happened.
Personally, I was looking forward to suing SPAMers here in California. It sounded like a nice new occupation for all of us out-of-work IT staffers.
Sorry, wrong story. You're thinking of the Heinlein classic The Man Who Sold the Moon , not Stranger in a Strange Land .
If you read the press release from Loudeye it's clear that they knew exactly what MIT intended to do with their $30,000 purchase. Hell, Loudeye claims they are the only company authorized to arrange this type of licensing scheme for MIT. How can they turn around and claim now that MIT didn't ask them for the right kind of licenses? What, did Loudeye just forget to tell MIT about the problem? What did Loudeye's execs. expect would happen?
But you've really got to love the quote from Vivendi;
Kelly Mullens, a spokeswoman for Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, said, "It is unfortunate that MIT launched a service in an attempt to avoid paying recording artists, union musicians and record labels. Loudeye recognized that they had no right to deliver Universal's music to the MIT service, and MIT acted responsibly by removing the music."
Now let me see if I understand this: I design a legal music service for college students. I contact a company that tells me they have music rights for sale, I buy them for $30,000 and then I start the service. But, less than a week later, a music label calls me on the carpet, claiming I 'avoided paying music artists, union musicians and record labels'? What was the $30,000 to Loudeye for then, if not a payment on behalf of recording artists, union musicians and recording labels? Did Vivendi not get their cut, miss the memo, what?
It's beyond me why the music industry would want to shut down the LAMP service. I mean, as I understand it, it's more like a radio station than an MP3 download tool like Napster or Kazaa. Does this mean that the labels don't want college kids listening to music legally? Did radio-like venues become taboo or something while I slept? This debacle is sure to send one message clearly to students across the US - there is no way to stay legally compliant with the RIAA and still listen to music. Now, what's that message likely to encourage?
SiteFinder wasn't an 'innovation'; it was a marketing, ploy pure and simple. Verisign hoped to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals by routing domain-name typos to a site they controlled, ostensibly to then re-direct Internet users to sites and services that Verisign stands to make a buck on. MacLaughlin is insulting the collective intelligence - or, in some cases, the lack thereof - of Internet users by labeling his marketing gimmick as a service to help users resolve Internet errors. It's bullshit and it's disingenuous to call this an 'innovation' - with that logic you might as well call SPAM an 'informational opportunity' for the millions of users forced to wade through it. Get real.
ICANN pulled the plug on this little power play and I'm thankful they had the courage to do it. It's nice to see ICANN finally show a little backbone for a change. Verisign wanted to alter a fundamental part of how the Internet works - they wanted to change how the network responds to errors. ICANN correctly smacked this down. Imagine if the post office started sending malformed letters to the Direct Marketing Association: the public would be up in arms about it. Are we any more surprised that Internet users don't appreciate the same treatment? Looking at it this way underscores what so outraged ICANN but it ignores the fact that Verisign began this whole stunt when they bypassed what few Internet standards processes we do have. Did Verisign submit an RFC to suggest their change in Internet standards? Nope, not that I'm aware of. Did they address the issue with the Internet community and gain approval that way? Again, not that I'm aware of. They unilaterally decided to make the change, regardless of how the change might affect other Internet users, and that's why ICANN told them to knock it off.
Here's a thought Mr. MacLaughlin: do us all a favor next time and just ask before you decide to make a major change in Internet standards. The whole reason the Internet is useful to its users is because we cooperate, because there is a method and a process for change that everyone else follows. Internet users don't care if you make a buck on-line, but we'd rather you did so up-front instead of using (or, in this case, abusing) your privileged position as a registrar and the maintainer of the .com database. And quit crying because ICANN brought you to task for being the on-line version of a schoolyard bully. You tried, you lost, now move on and do something constructive. Oh, and stop listening to everything those guys and girls down in Marketing tell you - try listening to the techies for a change. Maybe you'll learn something.
Good point. I'd counter your concern by pointing out that state shield laws typically arise out of a common law concept that reporters have a need to protect their sources. Without some protection, whistleblowers and others probably wouldn't talk to the press at all. That kind of leaves the whole Fourth Estate thing swirling down the toilet. There's a compelling public interest in allowing reporters to keep some secrets; compelling enough I think that the courts might just rule in favor of it. Who knows, stranger things have happened.
I think it's very illuminating though that the question of source anonymity is probably most critical in issues concerning the Federal government. The Washington press corps would evaporate in a heartbeat if they couldn't guarantee some anonymity to their sources. State and local reporters have a much easier time getting their officials to talk 'on the record'; it's the Federal officials that always seem to ask for deep background protection. Unless we want a completely closed political process - which I think is what the Bush administration is pushing hard far anyway - we're going to have to draw some lines somewhere.
The whole issue is deeply troubling and I admit that the new emphasis on 'national security' has me a little spooked. I imagine many working journalists feel the same way. A few weeks ago I tried to ask my Media Law instructor what he thought the USA Patriot Act meant to reporters - he dodged my question. It figures. I think we're very likely to see some court rulings on this issue within the next few years, if not sooner.
As a former tech worker turned journalism student I'm appalled at the actions of the FBI in this case - if it turns out to be true. Until I can see one of these alleged letters I'm inclined to reserve judgment on the issue though. We have very little to go on at this point. But I can tell you from personal experience that courts and government agencies often have a difficult time forcing journalists to reveal their sources or notes on their stories. There's a huge presumption in US law that the press does not have to willingly share information with the courts or government investigations and there are statutes, called shield laws, in many states that exempt reporters from revealing information.
A case in point: About a year ago, I had the privilege of sitting next to a friend of mine in court as he tried to keep the identity of an anonymous source out of the hands of the defense attorneys during the sentencing phase of a murder trial. My friend, a working journalist for San Diego Magazine, wrote a story on the Danielle van Dam murder case in which he quoted a police source saying, 'he hit her, and that was it.' The defense argued that this quote might mean that the victim died before the accused took her out of her home. Why might this be important? If true, the prosecution's argument for a death sentence would not have held up since it was the kidnapping charge that put the death penalty on the table in the case. You can't kidnap a corpse, or so the defense argued.
So what happened with my friend? The judge in the case threw out the defense motion, stating that the one-line mention in my friend's article didn't really say much about what might have happened in the home to the victim. The judge also explained that the California Shield Laws protected my friend from having to reveal his sources anyway. It was an interesting experience though, and I'm glad that I got a chance to see the First Amendment at work. But I think it also shows how difficult it is to get information out of a reporter if they don't want to voluntarily share it. Personally, I think the FBI is going to have an uphill battle in the Lamo case.
If you're interested in similar First Amendment issues and how they relate to the press try the First Amendment Project, an organization of attorneys and other interested individuals that works to ensure freedom of expression for artists, activists and journalists.
I picked up this book yesterday for a writing class at SFSU and I agree, it's a gem. My favorite quote (so far):
Flammable - An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.
Priceless!
Consider the length of time this so-called vulnerability has lurked in the device driver code for all those operating systems, than ask why no one discovered the problem sooner. Could it be that there's nothing to be worried about?
I'm guessing this problem has gone undetected so long because uber-short frames don't naturally occur on most Ethernet installations. Networks typically send real data, not empty frames, that's why we build them in the first place. You have to intentionally generate super-small frames if you want to see them. All the examples @Stake provides are based on ICMP Echo/Echo Replies, where you can specify the packet length at the command line. Show me some real network traffic that exhibits this problem, than I'll start to worry.
Still not convinced? Well, consider that you can't exploit the issue beyond even a single router, and that the vulnerability in most cases is just rehashed data, stuff that's already gone out on the wire. How big a security issue is that? Seems like the least of my problems. I'd worry more about one un-patched system on the network or one stupid marketroid opening a TELNET secession to the web server than I'd worry about this.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and declare this a non-issue. I'm sure the guys over at @Stake are happy to have something to show their bosses (and the media) so soon after the holidays, but it just doesn't look very serious from where I'm sitting.
As much as I detest government regulation interfering with rich business leaders trying to eek out big profits, I think it's time that the Bush administration take notice and do something about the SPAM problem. I'm suggesting you make it a Federal felony Mr. President, because the state-by-state approach just isn't working. SPAMer's are stealing the rightful profits out of the pockets of ISP owner's, just the same way that the eco-freaks are stealing new business opportunities from the oil industry. But it's much worse then that.
You see, Internet bandwidth is a lot like oil. Everyone needs to use some, but there's a big group of rustlers out there right now that don't pay their fair share for it. They steal it, right out from under the Internet oilman's nose, because there are no stiff penalties to prevent it. These rustlers, let's call them terrorists because that's what they really are, tap Internet wells from across state lines, and if the state takes an interest, they just move their pumps to another state that hasn't run into the problem yet. Some of these pirates are stealing up to 40 percent of the Internet oilman's production. How can the poor Internet oilman operate under those kinds of circumstances?
Mr. President, it's simple really. SPAMers are terrorists, out to steal business profits by selling the modern equivalent of oil without paying the oilman for it. How can the administration not do something about this?
Some of these Internet oilmen are in Texas, a state I know you love and cherish. While I'm sure your advisors keep telling you that it's the hippies in the liberal-land of California that are behind this Internet thing, they're wrong. Those left-wing Silicon Valley jerks only build the equipment that the Internet oilmen use, like making the pumps and the hoses, they don't actually run the Internet oil business. Texans could run the Internet wells, if only your administration gives them a chance and does something about these profit-terrorists we call SPAMers.
Hell, if you're willing to suspend civil liberties for guys like Jose Padilla, why not just forget the legal process and let the tribunals deal with these losers? They are enemy combatants Mr. President, traitors in the war on profitability, and I'm sure you can find a nice deep hole for them somewhere. I've got addresses and phone numbers Mr. Bush, and I'm ready to help the fight on terrorism!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most technical support staffers already official representatives of the companies they work for? When I did technical support for computer manufacturers, the word 'representative' was in every title I held. So what's different now?
I think the real problem is that companies are afraid low-paid techs might take out some of their job frustrations in on-line forums, where the eyes of supervisors are usually absent. That, and the fact that by putting their help in writing on a public forum, these companies worry that their employees might reveal embarrassing service issues to a wider audience instead of just one customer at a time. Of course, if these same companies bothered to instill in their employees a sense of professionalism and loyalty, or God forbid maybe even pride in their work, I doubt there would be a problem with this.
The truth is, you represent any company you work for, regardless of if you're on the clock or not. Executives certainly realize this, but it's easy to blame low customer satisfaction scores on employees just trying to lend a hand to angry customer's they meet in other parts of the on-line community.
Sad really, just another example of PHB syndrome.
If this is going to succeed anywhere, San Diego's Gaslamp district is probably one of the better places to start. I live in San Diego, and I can tell you that the Pacific Theater is dead center of one of the biggest party zones outside of Los Angeles. Add that to the very high local population of 18 to 24-year olds from all the local colleges, universities and the Navy and Marine bases, and you've got what looks like a good chance of making a buck or two.
Personally, I wish them success. I wouldn't mind giving it a try myself. It will be interesting to see just what they've got set up come January.
If you take a look at ICANN's homepage you will see a number of references to new and proposed bylaws for the organization. The first proposal looks to have surfaced on Oct 2 of this year. I'm guessing what's happened recently is that ICANN voted to adopt the proposals and that's why Allerbach and the rest of the 'At Large' directors are out of a job. It's a guess, but it fits the available facts. But this certainly isn't really new information, not unless you count proposals posted over three weeks ago as new. Allerbach likely knew this was coming, it wasn't just some 'out of the blue' move from ICANN.
Reading through the proposals I note that they suggest eliminating a number of directorships, not just the At Large directors. The proposals call for shifting the functions of the At Large directors to an At Large advisory committee and a Manager of Public Participation. There are a bunch of other suggestions on reform, et. al. in the documents, feel free to have a look on your own if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of the ICANN organizational process.
Finally, I don't personally know Allerbach and I can't say one way or the other if his departure from the ICANN Board of Directors is appropriate or not. He may be a stark raving nutcase for all I know, or he may be the last voice of reason and integrity in the organization, who knows? Not me. I can however guarantee that suing the organization, regardless of the reasons he did so, was unlikely to win him any friends on the board. After that, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone that ICANN wants to close-up the ranks of their Board of Directors and avoid this type of public embarrassment in the future. But I think it's inaccurate to claim that ICANN forced him out, there's nothing to substantiate that.
Whatever the reasons, I wish him luck in the future and hope that he will continue his efforts to keep ICANN accountable for their policies and actions and keep the process open to public comment and criticism. God knows they need someone to hold them accountable.