...is permit the user to make custom changes and apply security hot-fixes. Whether or not this happens in practice depends far more on the attitude of the company deploying the SS than on the license itself.
Microsoft's MFC was a good example--most bugs were reported by users. Usually the solution was given as a workaround. Only on rare occasions was it suggested that you rebuild MFC and for good reason--non standard versions of MFC DLLs could break stuff, even if they were supposedly less buggy. Nevertheless, MS got a lot of feedback from MFC users.
OTOH, some of the other SS stuff was done because the companies felt pressured by OS. Worse yet, they were end-user apps like Office suites where most people don't look at the source. Since the original developers never anticipated source-level feedback from users, they just weren't "geared up" for it, or enthusiastic about it. You couldn't expect it to work very well.
Of course what SS can't do as well as OS is give the users control of the direction the code takes, or give them ownership of significant code they write to enhance the original package. So, the best you can hope for when releasing under SS is that if your product is popular enough people might send you small bug-fixes.
Well, problem 1 is easy enough. If the ISP has a consistant numbering system like you describe, and the address space is small then you are back to IPv4 style attacks through that ISP.
Problem 2 is solved by the solution to problem 1, because once you have "0wn3d" enough boxes you don't care where the query came from. The hard part is hiding your initial plant of the worm, but that's always been the hard part.
The bottom line? I doubt that simply upping the address space is going to eliminate worms.
Attackers will use any vulnerability they can find. For example, use an Outlook virus to harvest IP's contained in files on a user machine, then launch the worm from there.
Why is that so hard? Can't you just run a dictionary attack using the DNS? By dictionary attack, I mean, search for those "valuable 4 and 5 letter domain names" and move on from there.
Another way of looking at it is that what really matters is the energy that's delivered into your body, and where it's delivered.
So, touching (or more accurately, coming close to) a 10kV VanDeGraf generator? No big deal, because there are only a few electrons in the ball at that high potential. The ball discharges, and the belt takes a while to replenish the charge. Very little energy is delivered to the body. Most small VanDeGrafs in a physics class are not much worse than static from a rug. I know, I've done it.
How about a Tesla coil? Much more dangerous, because there is a continuous supply of high voltage--high enough to break down the resistance of some body parts and send current coursing through your central nervous system. Assuming the Tesla is even 50% efficient, it could deliver all the power of an electric saw into your body for a few minutes. Not pretty.
As a general rule, any voltage high enough to overcome the resistance of a body part and send current flowing through the body needs to be avoided.
Nevertheless, you won't see me grabbing 12V car battery leads either, because sometimes freaky things happen. What if you just happen to have microscopic scratches on both hands, and all those cold cranking amps find a path up one arm, accross your chest, and down the other arm? Enough energy to turn over a V-8 gets delivered. Not very nice.
So while "high voltage" is certainly one criterion (and for most common AC systems it's sufficient) there are a lot of other factors involved, especially the reaction of the body. If your body jumps back, you may be OK as long as you don't hit something. OTOH, if your muscles clench and you stay locked onto the supply... that's bad.
If you are talking strictly AC systems, you're right--higher voltage==greater danger is a valid assumption. I've found that household current accross my arm was not as bad as I thought it would be (though I wouldn't want to do it again). So, apparently my arm didn't break down at that voltage, and I*I*R delivered into the arm was only a little bit because only a little current flowed. OTOH, you hear stories all the time about guys getting seriously injured or killed by "high tension" (read, 10s of kV). The stuff can even break down your safety helmet, and flow straight into your head. Particularly nasty.
A legitimate "add cash" operation leaves a record in the database.
When the user tries to pass the counterfeit card, the database is checked and when it finds, for example, that "card 0x8782a321=54.21" but the card says "card=100.00" the POS terminal knows it's counterfeit. The integrated security camera clicks on, homes in on your face, and e-mails your picture to the authorities.
I like that. We in theory could do this now with old-fashioned bills. One camera (with a *very good* machine vision system) looks over the shoulder of the cashier. Camera one is looking at the serial numbers of the bills. Camera two is looking at the customer.
Camera one is hooked into a database that tracks the locations of bills and serial numbers (think WheresGeorge on steroids). If the system discovers a bill passed with SN that isn't in the database, or that is already in a till someplace else, the customer becomes a counterfeiting suspect. This obviously requires some sophistication. For example, a bill may not be in the till anymore, but if it left the till in Hawii, and enterred a till in Maine 45 minutes later, you know the bill in Maine is counterfeit. The program would obviously have to be updated if commercial hypersonic transports ever became available (!).
Such a system won't catch a counterfeiter every time, but the odds would catch up with him. A more cumbersome system that doesn't use machine vision and requires the cashier to run bills through a scanner could probably be implemented in a much shorter time. Building RFID tags into the money makes even better sense if they are robust enough, but ongoing passage of "microwaved" money would make you a counterfeiting suspect even if your money was being legitimately zapped..
I like this. It is, in some ways, the antithesis of "the beast" because they are numbering the money as opposed to numbering the people.
Funny you should mention Cuba, since four Cuban Coast Guardsmen just defected. What makes these defectors so special? They sailed right into a Florida harbor and had to go find an officer to surrender to. They were armed.
Way to protect the "homeland" guys.
Of course these were just guys who wanted good jobs and cable TV. What if it had been a boatload of Qs? Better yet, they docked at a MOTEL--a building fitting the exact profile described in yesterday's "code orange" alert upgrade.
The sad thing is, anybody who thinks Gore would have been any less of a lunkhead is just engaging in wishful thinking.
Come on, Democrats. Roosevelt? Court packing? Japanese internment? You know it's true.
Where to put your faith? God and the general public. We ended slavery. We ended Jim Crow. We ended McCarthyism. We stopped the Vietnam war. This too shall pass.
In fact, there are a couple of projects now trying to get together a free front end/IDE for the compiler
Don't just build an IDE for *one* compiler. Build a generic IDE that will work with any compiler, and use an XML-based config file to generate the dialog boxes that map to the command-line options for the compiler. It's something that I've wanted because I anticipate moving from Windows to MacOSX and/or *NIX at some point and I'd like to be able to use the same IDE and have the project files and everything work seemlessly regardless of the OS or the compiler. Yes, of course there will be some differences between compilers, but for the most part those differences can be mediated through the config files.
Also, build a generic IDE that doesn't target a MSFT product and they have a much harder time arguing that it's an attempt to violate their EULA.
...of Linux's press machine. Everybody's heard of Linux; how often do you hear about BSD? I mean, if you want to "rip off" a *NIX kernel, why would you mess with Linux when BSD is there for the taking without any hassle like this?
I can picture it now:
New hire/IT Wannabe We should use embedded Linux for that. It's free.
PHB Free. And I heard about it at the last junket.
Asok (thinking to himself) I wonder if I should inform them of the implications, or just lock in job security for myself when we have to do a re-write.
Unless you want to buy lumber from Canada, or drugs from Canada, or... (fill in whatever trade dispute is going on this week).
Don't get me wrong. Free trade is great, except when it's not free.
IMHO, the governments will take about 20 or 30 years to wake up and realize what everybody else already knows: Free Trade is just a buzzword. It invariably breaks down due to subsidies, contracts, political payoffs, etc.
We would be better off addmitting that what we really have is ad-hoc tarrif negotiations instead of deceiving ourselves with this "free trade" nonsense. At least the premise of a tarrif negotiation is honest.
Oh pulleaze. People are bad. When the right sequence of events occurs, evil can propogate from bad person, to bad person, magnifying itself. This happens regardless of the legal framework. Some frameworks are better than others. Soviet style socialism was probably more corrupt than global corporatism, and far more secretive. "In Soviet Russia..." this story would not have appeared in any of the state controlled news outlets. In fact, in the real Soviet Russia exploding TV sets were a leading cause of fire because the tubes were bad.
Exactly what is the conspiracy here? Are you trying to tell me that the Japanese engineer who stole the formula had a meeting with the contractors who cut corners, who then agreed to threaten the manufacturers so they wouldn't say whether or not they were guilty? And since I've got the Simpsons on my mind now, I want to know exactly how the saucer people were involved in all this.
No, this is not starting to sound like Soviet Russia at all. Don't you see the irony in complaining that we "can't communicate" by "publishing a list"? First, we are communicating on Slashdot. Second, the IEEE article already contains some preliminary investigative work that can be used to develop such a list.
No, it won't be easy to track down all the bad boards. Nobody ever said freedom was easy, but at least it's possible. So kwitcherbitchin, open your case, check the caps, and start asking questions.
SRBs and other dangerous (yet powerful) equipment should be used to launch the "stuff" to perform experiments and build human habitats.
A next generation expendable capsule should be built in cooperation with the Russians (for the practical experience) and others (to bring in modern updates to this time tested design).
Let's face it: The shuttle was built because it comported with our notions of how space travel ought to be. It would work great if we had duratanium and antimatter propulsion, but we don't.
Under an efficient system we could man the space station, establish a *permanent* presence on the moon using a combination of automation and human presence, and travel to Mars.
Separate the danger from the humans whenever possible. For example--lunar habitat module lands with no occupants. Occupants arrive in smaller, lighter, more easy to design LEM, board the module (assuming it landed properly) and then use the module's drive system to align it with other modules on the Lunar surface.
Once the Lunar presence is established, it can be the staging area for Mars and beyond. The knowledge that we gain building these systems might lead to duratanium and antimatter drive, making the shuttle practical again someday.
Until then, the mantra should be Powerful, Cheap and Dangerous (PCD) for the inanimate objects. Small Expensive and Safe(SES) for the humans. The shuttle is Powerful Expensive and Dangerous--not the way we should choose to merge those two acronyms (of course they didn't know that when the thing was on the drawing board--at least not the dangerous part).
I think that if the turning point comes *now* then we can undo the damage that was done post-Apollo. That means we hit Mars in 30 years. I'll be 64 years old. If I play my cards right, I'll be able to let the grandkids stay up late and watch history being made.
I wear Open Source Clothes, but they have no zippers or buttons. Just frog-type fasteners because the people that make the OSC believe that's the "best" fastener.
Of course I have access to needles, thread, a copper smelter, and various machine tools which give me the wonderful freedom to spend days fabricating a zipper for my Open Source jeans. I also make contributions to the Open Source Zipper project which has promised that they will have enough funds to purchase a zipper-matic manufacturing system in a few years.
Nevermind the fact that we don't drive the kids to soccer practice or eat out anymore. The time we spend cutting patterns has made us a stronger family even if my youngest boy has declared "Dad you're an idiot, I hate you, and the first thing I do when I leave home is shop at the Gap".
I wouldn't be caught dead at the Gap. Those families go there "enjoying" themselves and "saving time". If only they knew what slaves they are. I'd say more, but there's weaving to attend to, and I have to hit my daughter with the strap to make her do it because she can be so insolent at times.
You should be able to get more info by googling for "HTML escape sequence" or something like that. I believe/. supports all of them since it seems unlikely they'd present any security issues.
Downloadable music doesn't increase sales. It doesn't decrease sales either. It regresses sales to the mean.
For unsigned artists, it increases sales because they get global exposure which they can't get through some other medium.
For big name artists who are already known worldwide it decreases sales because the people who might otherwise knuckle under and pay will just download instead.
The people who argue that downloading increases sales for *everybody* are just trying to find arguments to support their desire for free downloads. Likewise, the people who argue that it decreases sales for *everybody* are just trying to protect their business.
Now obviously attacking the format, be it MP3 or whatever makes no sense at all. If the bigtime copyright holders want to persue illegal copying that's fine, but attacking P2P systems and the file formats makes no sense.
As much as many don't like it, the old bit about "when you're downloading MP3s you're downloading communism" has a kernel of truth to it. Socialist systems often regress people to the mean. Usually, the mean ends up lower too although command economies sometimes distribute resources towards one particular aspect of society and exceed the mean of that particular aspect under capitalism (see, Sputnik, Cuban Health Care). In a sense, the MP3 people have risen up and redistributed the wealth from large copyright holders to computer companies and smaller artists.
This presents me with a moral quandary. On the one hand, I dislike the Leftist revolutionary attitudes that some have. I don't believe people can justify the taking of something just because they think they should have it. On the other hand, the manipulation of the government by the corporations offends me equally. A pox on both their houses! When one side buys the law, and the other side breaks the law, the framework of society begins to unravel.
Our laws are supposed to be formed on the basis of civilized debate, not the outcome of a slugfest between thieves and scoundrels.
So for now, what very little music I buy, I buy legally; I haven't downloaded music very often, and when I did I felt like I was being a hypocrite, since I have argued in favor of IP rights. Of course, I'm mostly in the "radio is good enough" category of listener. If I were really, really pasionate about music I'm not sure what I'd do.
We don't need guts. We still live in a country governed by a constitution that has a BUILT IN capacity for REVOLUTION. Every 4 years the executive branch can change, and every 6 years the entire legislative branch can be TOTALLY CHANGED. The high court only judges constitutional matters, and since the Democrats have been hog-tying other judicial nominations I wager that the slow-to-change judiciary would change remarkably quickly were there to be a true revolution in the other two branches. In any event, the judiciary only judges according to the laws passed by the other two branches.
There is no lack of guts or will among the American people. The very fact that Ross Perot got as many votes as he did should tell you that the country is hungry for change. How can you claim that a country with an all-volunteer military that sacrifices as it does, with the brave astronauts that so recently sacrificed, with the guys who will risk their lives on a stock-car track, in an avalanche zone, or on a battle field has NO GUTS?
What's missing is LEADERSHIP.
What we need is a REVOLUTIONARY who is not a CRACKPOT.
Another way of putting this? There's a right way and a wrong way to disagree with the boss. You can't make public statements and show the guy up. That would result in a lack of respect for the boss, and possibly a breakdown in discipline throughout the organization. A strong leader can't abide insubordination on an ongoing basis for these reasons. What he had to say should have been said in private, and repeatedly if necessary until the boss said "you're a broken record" and the employee replied "I'm broken for a reason, Mr. President". If that still failed, then perhaps integrity demands that you resign and then state publicly *why* you are resigning.
Yeah, the encryption is weak, blah, blah, but that's beside the point. Isn't the data only as secure as the application that can access it? I guess these things are only used behind a firewall then, and they are just encrypted to protect against physical theft. They can't provide any security if the server is net facing can they? I mean, if Apache can access the data then just crack Apache above the level of drive access.
Your second highlighted section if very Cold War of course. Back then, it was enough that America didn't need to hide (as much). It made us feel good to know that we were better than the Soviet Union. Had that speech been made today, it wouldn't be phrased like that.
Well, with all the people making Quake jokes, this brings to mind something I read in the Washington Post. The special forces are equiped with grenade launchers. They were described as "a larger tube below the barrel of the rifle". I seem to recall them describing the grenades as being about an inch in diameter, and I assume they were cylindrical. They didn't say how many grenades a soldier could comfortably carry (perhaps it's classified). I'm thinking they aren't quite as hefty as the typical WWII grenade that most of us imagine. Imagine a quarter stick of dynamite with a steel jacket... ouch!
This is something that should be obvious to anybody with even the most rudimentary education in investing. When I heard that there were people working for Enron who had a million dollars in stock, the power to diversify (before the unscrupulous lockout) and failed to sieze that opportunity, it occured to me that there were more people to blame than Enron execs (I'm not excusing what they did). Blame also those who failed to educate the workers. Blame the workers themselves for not wondering "hey, what if my company goes bankrupt?". By no means do I hold out stocks as the only vehicle either. You should start with all cash, then when you have enough to make it worthwhile diversify into bonds, real estate (via REITs), and stocks (not necessarily in that order). A company in a portfolio can go bankrupt, and the portfolio will continue to gain if it's smartly diversified.
So... on the one hand, the foreign workers are serving us by working for us, but on the other hand American business is serving the foreigners by building the plants and employing them.
Projected outcome based on the service-leader principle? American business leads, American workers follow. Same as it ever was. As long as I can remember, the complaint has been that American workers aren't as smart as foreign workers (a Japanese highschool graduate actually knows algebra!).
So, if you want to lead in America don't just be a worker--get a stake in business. This can be a small stake, like owning shares in stocks, or it can be a more personal stake like actually owning your own small business (not for everybody, most people are better off just investing in somebody else's business). I've seen this work time and time again. Set some money aside, invest wisely, learn, learn, learn; but don't count on your job to be your only ticket to success.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. My bad. For "Shared Source" I read "Community Source" as in SCSL. If you can't compile, the source CD is a coaster.
Of course the Free Software movement is lilly white. Most Blacks want to work their way out of poverty.
...is permit the user to make custom changes and apply security hot-fixes. Whether or not this happens in practice depends far more on the attitude of the company deploying the SS than on the license itself.
Microsoft's MFC was a good example--most bugs were reported by users. Usually the solution was given as a workaround. Only on rare occasions was it suggested that you rebuild MFC and for good reason--non standard versions of MFC DLLs could break stuff, even if they were supposedly less buggy. Nevertheless, MS got a lot of feedback from MFC users.
OTOH, some of the other SS stuff was done because the companies felt pressured by OS. Worse yet, they were end-user apps like Office suites where most people don't look at the source. Since the original developers never anticipated source-level feedback from users, they just weren't "geared up" for it, or enthusiastic about it. You couldn't expect it to work very well.
Of course what SS can't do as well as OS is give the users control of the direction the code takes, or give them ownership of significant code they write to enhance the original package. So, the best you can hope for when releasing under SS is that if your product is popular enough people might send you small bug-fixes.
Well, problem 1 is easy enough. If the ISP has a consistant numbering system like you describe, and the address space is small then you are back to IPv4 style attacks through that ISP.
Problem 2 is solved by the solution to problem 1, because once you have "0wn3d" enough boxes you don't care where the query came from. The hard part is hiding your initial plant of the worm, but that's always been the hard part.
The bottom line? I doubt that simply upping the address space is going to eliminate worms.
Attackers will use any vulnerability they can find. For example, use an Outlook virus to harvest IP's contained in files on a user machine, then launch the worm from there.
Why is that so hard? Can't you just run a dictionary attack using the DNS? By dictionary attack, I mean, search for those "valuable 4 and 5 letter domain names" and move on from there.
Another way of looking at it is that what really matters is the energy that's delivered into your body, and where it's delivered.
So, touching (or more accurately, coming close to) a 10kV VanDeGraf generator? No big deal, because there are only a few electrons in the ball at that high potential. The ball discharges, and the belt takes a while to replenish the charge. Very little energy is delivered to the body. Most small VanDeGrafs in a physics class are not much worse than static from a rug. I know, I've done it.
How about a Tesla coil? Much more dangerous, because there is a continuous supply of high voltage--high enough to break down the resistance of some body parts and send current coursing through your central nervous system. Assuming the Tesla is even 50% efficient, it could deliver all the power of an electric saw into your body for a few minutes. Not pretty.
As a general rule, any voltage high enough to overcome the resistance of a body part and send current flowing through the body needs to be avoided.
Nevertheless, you won't see me grabbing 12V car battery leads either, because sometimes freaky things happen. What if you just happen to have microscopic scratches on both hands, and all those cold cranking amps find a path up one arm, accross your chest, and down the other arm? Enough energy to turn over a V-8 gets delivered. Not very nice.
So while "high voltage" is certainly one criterion (and for most common AC systems it's sufficient) there are a lot of other factors involved, especially the reaction of the body. If your body jumps back, you may be OK as long as you don't hit something. OTOH, if your muscles clench and you stay locked onto the supply... that's bad.
If you are talking strictly AC systems, you're right--higher voltage==greater danger is a valid assumption. I've found that household current accross my arm was not as bad as I thought it would be (though I wouldn't want to do it again). So, apparently my arm didn't break down at that voltage, and I*I*R delivered into the arm was only a little bit because only a little current flowed. OTOH, you hear stories all the time about guys getting seriously injured or killed by "high tension" (read, 10s of kV). The stuff can even break down your safety helmet, and flow straight into your head. Particularly nasty.
The money is anonymous, but it's numbered.
A legitimate "add cash" operation leaves a record in the database.
When the user tries to pass the counterfeit card, the database is checked and when it finds, for example, that "card 0x8782a321=54.21" but the card says "card=100.00" the POS terminal knows it's counterfeit. The integrated security camera clicks on, homes in on your face, and e-mails your picture to the authorities.
I like that. We in theory could do this now with old-fashioned bills. One camera (with a *very good* machine vision system) looks over the shoulder of the cashier. Camera one is looking at the serial numbers of the bills. Camera two is looking at the customer.
Camera one is hooked into a database that tracks the locations of bills and serial numbers (think WheresGeorge on steroids). If the system discovers a bill passed with SN that isn't in the database, or that is already in a till someplace else, the customer becomes a counterfeiting suspect. This obviously requires some sophistication. For example, a bill may not be in the till anymore, but if it left the till in Hawii, and enterred a till in Maine 45 minutes later, you know the bill in Maine is counterfeit. The program would obviously have to be updated if commercial hypersonic transports ever became available (!).
Such a system won't catch a counterfeiter every time, but the odds would catch up with him. A more cumbersome system that doesn't use machine vision and requires the cashier to run bills through a scanner could probably be implemented in a much shorter time. Building RFID tags into the money makes even better sense if they are robust enough, but ongoing passage of "microwaved" money would make you a counterfeiting suspect even if your money was being legitimately zapped..
I like this. It is, in some ways, the antithesis of "the beast" because they are numbering the money as opposed to numbering the people.
Funny you should mention Cuba, since four Cuban Coast Guardsmen just defected. What makes these defectors so special? They sailed right into a Florida harbor and had to go find an officer to surrender to. They were armed.
Way to protect the "homeland" guys.
Of course these were just guys who wanted good jobs and cable TV. What if it had been a boatload of Qs? Better yet, they docked at a MOTEL--a building fitting the exact profile described in yesterday's "code orange" alert upgrade.
The sad thing is, anybody who thinks Gore would have been any less of a lunkhead is just engaging in wishful thinking.
Come on, Democrats. Roosevelt? Court packing? Japanese internment? You know it's true.
Where to put your faith? God and the general public. We ended slavery. We ended Jim Crow. We ended McCarthyism. We stopped the Vietnam war. This too shall pass.
In fact, there are a couple of projects now trying to get together a free front end/IDE for the compiler
Don't just build an IDE for *one* compiler. Build a generic IDE that will work with any compiler, and use an XML-based config file to generate the dialog boxes that map to the command-line options for the compiler. It's something that I've wanted because I anticipate moving from Windows to MacOSX and/or *NIX at some point and I'd like to be able to use the same IDE and have the project files and everything work seemlessly regardless of the OS or the compiler. Yes, of course there will be some differences between compilers, but for the most part those differences can be mediated through the config files.
Also, build a generic IDE that doesn't target a MSFT product and they have a much harder time arguing that it's an attempt to violate their EULA.
...of Linux's press machine. Everybody's heard of Linux; how often do you hear about BSD? I mean, if you want to "rip off" a *NIX kernel, why would you mess with Linux when BSD is there for the taking without any hassle like this?
I can picture it now:
New hire/IT Wannabe We should use embedded Linux for that. It's free.
PHB Free. And I heard about it at the last junket.
Asok (thinking to himself) I wonder if I should inform them of the implications, or just lock in job security for myself when we have to do a re-write.
They got stoned, not drunk.
Unless you want to buy lumber from Canada, or drugs from Canada, or... (fill in whatever trade dispute is going on this week).
Don't get me wrong. Free trade is great, except when it's not free.
IMHO, the governments will take about 20 or 30 years to wake up and realize what everybody else already knows: Free Trade is just a buzzword. It invariably breaks down due to subsidies, contracts, political payoffs, etc.
We would be better off addmitting that what we really have is ad-hoc tarrif negotiations instead of deceiving ourselves with this "free trade" nonsense. At least the premise of a tarrif negotiation is honest.
Oh pulleaze. People are bad. When the right sequence of events occurs, evil can propogate from bad person, to bad person, magnifying itself. This happens regardless of the legal framework. Some frameworks are better than others. Soviet style socialism was probably more corrupt than global corporatism, and far more secretive. "In Soviet Russia..." this story would not have appeared in any of the state controlled news outlets. In fact, in the real Soviet Russia exploding TV sets were a leading cause of fire because the tubes were bad.
Exactly what is the conspiracy here? Are you trying to tell me that the Japanese engineer who stole the formula had a meeting with the contractors who cut corners, who then agreed to threaten the manufacturers so they wouldn't say whether or not they were guilty? And since I've got the Simpsons on my mind now, I want to know exactly how the saucer people were involved in all this.
No, this is not starting to sound like Soviet Russia at all. Don't you see the irony in complaining that we "can't communicate" by "publishing a list"? First, we are communicating on Slashdot. Second, the IEEE article already contains some preliminary investigative work that can be used to develop such a list.
No, it won't be easy to track down all the bad boards. Nobody ever said freedom was easy, but at least it's possible. So kwitcherbitchin, open your case, check the caps, and start asking questions.
SRBs and other dangerous (yet powerful) equipment should be used to launch the "stuff" to perform experiments and build human habitats.
A next generation expendable capsule should be built in cooperation with the Russians (for the practical experience) and others (to bring in modern updates to this time tested design).
Let's face it: The shuttle was built because it comported with our notions of how space travel ought to be. It would work great if we had duratanium and antimatter propulsion, but we don't.
Under an efficient system we could man the space station, establish a *permanent* presence on the moon using a combination of automation and human presence, and travel to Mars.
Separate the danger from the humans whenever possible. For example--lunar habitat module lands with no occupants. Occupants arrive in smaller, lighter, more easy to design LEM, board the module (assuming it landed properly) and then use the module's drive system to align it with other modules on the Lunar surface.
Once the Lunar presence is established, it can be the staging area for Mars and beyond. The knowledge that we gain building these systems might lead to duratanium and antimatter drive, making the shuttle practical again someday.
Until then, the mantra should be Powerful, Cheap and Dangerous (PCD) for the inanimate objects. Small Expensive and Safe(SES) for the humans. The shuttle is Powerful Expensive and Dangerous--not the way we should choose to merge those two acronyms (of course they didn't know that when the thing was on the drawing board--at least not the dangerous part).
I think that if the turning point comes *now* then we can undo the damage that was done post-Apollo. That means we hit Mars in 30 years. I'll be 64 years old. If I play my cards right, I'll be able to let the grandkids stay up late and watch history being made.
I wear Open Source Clothes, but they have no zippers or buttons. Just frog-type fasteners because the people that make the OSC believe that's the "best" fastener.
Of course I have access to needles, thread, a copper smelter, and various machine tools which give me the wonderful freedom to spend days fabricating a zipper for my Open Source jeans. I also make contributions to the Open Source Zipper project which has promised that they will have enough funds to purchase a zipper-matic manufacturing system in a few years.
Nevermind the fact that we don't drive the kids to soccer practice or eat out anymore. The time we spend cutting patterns has made us a stronger family even if my youngest boy has declared "Dad you're an idiot, I hate you, and the first thing I do when I leave home is shop at the Gap".
I wouldn't be caught dead at the Gap. Those families go there "enjoying" themselves and "saving time". If only they knew what slaves they are. I'd say more, but there's weaving to attend to, and I have to hit my daughter with the strap to make her do it because she can be so insolent at times.
Well, if they didn't append your medical records to every Word file, it really wouldn't be that bad. :)
Use < like this:
This<that.
You should be able to get more info by googling for "HTML escape sequence" or something like that. I believe /. supports all of them since it seems unlikely they'd present any security issues.
Downloadable music doesn't increase sales. It doesn't decrease sales either. It regresses sales to the mean.
For unsigned artists, it increases sales because they get global exposure which they can't get through some other medium.
For big name artists who are already known worldwide it decreases sales because the people who might otherwise knuckle under and pay will just download instead.
The people who argue that downloading increases sales for *everybody* are just trying to find arguments to support their desire for free downloads. Likewise, the people who argue that it decreases sales for *everybody* are just trying to protect their business.
Now obviously attacking the format, be it MP3 or whatever makes no sense at all. If the bigtime copyright holders want to persue illegal copying that's fine, but attacking P2P systems and the file formats makes no sense.
As much as many don't like it, the old bit about "when you're downloading MP3s you're downloading communism" has a kernel of truth to it. Socialist systems often regress people to the mean. Usually, the mean ends up lower too although command economies sometimes distribute resources towards one particular aspect of society and exceed the mean of that particular aspect under capitalism (see, Sputnik, Cuban Health Care). In a sense, the MP3 people have risen up and redistributed the wealth from large copyright holders to computer companies and smaller artists.
This presents me with a moral quandary. On the one hand, I dislike the Leftist revolutionary attitudes that some have. I don't believe people can justify the taking of something just because they think they should have it. On the other hand, the manipulation of the government by the corporations offends me equally. A pox on both their houses! When one side buys the law, and the other side breaks the law, the framework of society begins to unravel.
Our laws are supposed to be formed on the basis of civilized debate, not the outcome of a slugfest between thieves and scoundrels.
So for now, what very little music I buy, I buy legally; I haven't downloaded music very often, and when I did I felt like I was being a hypocrite, since I have argued in favor of IP rights. Of course, I'm mostly in the "radio is good enough" category of listener. If I were really, really pasionate about music I'm not sure what I'd do.
We don't need guts. We still live in a country governed by a constitution that has a BUILT IN capacity for REVOLUTION. Every 4 years the executive branch can change, and every 6 years the entire legislative branch can be TOTALLY CHANGED. The high court only judges constitutional matters, and since the Democrats have been hog-tying other judicial nominations I wager that the slow-to-change judiciary would change remarkably quickly were there to be a true revolution in the other two branches. In any event, the judiciary only judges according to the laws passed by the other two branches.
There is no lack of guts or will among the American people. The very fact that Ross Perot got as many votes as he did should tell you that the country is hungry for change. How can you claim that a country with an all-volunteer military that sacrifices as it does, with the brave astronauts that so recently sacrificed, with the guys who will risk their lives on a stock-car track, in an avalanche zone, or on a battle field has NO GUTS?
What's missing is LEADERSHIP.
What we need is a REVOLUTIONARY who is not a CRACKPOT.
Another way of putting this? There's a right way and a wrong way to disagree with the boss. You can't make public statements and show the guy up. That would result in a lack of respect for the boss, and possibly a breakdown in discipline throughout the organization. A strong leader can't abide insubordination on an ongoing basis for these reasons. What he had to say should have been said in private, and repeatedly if necessary until the boss said "you're a broken record" and the employee replied "I'm broken for a reason, Mr. President". If that still failed, then perhaps integrity demands that you resign and then state publicly *why* you are resigning.
Yeah, the encryption is weak, blah, blah, but that's beside the point. Isn't the data only as secure as the application that can access it? I guess these things are only used behind a firewall then, and they are just encrypted to protect against physical theft. They can't provide any security if the server is net facing can they? I mean, if Apache can access the data then just crack Apache above the level of drive access.
Your second highlighted section if very Cold War of course. Back then, it was enough that America didn't need to hide (as much). It made us feel good to know that we were better than the Soviet Union. Had that speech been made today, it wouldn't be phrased like that.
Well, with all the people making Quake jokes, this brings to mind something I read in the Washington Post. The special forces are equiped with grenade launchers. They were described as "a larger tube below the barrel of the rifle". I seem to recall them describing the grenades as being about an inch in diameter, and I assume they were cylindrical. They didn't say how many grenades a soldier could comfortably carry (perhaps it's classified). I'm thinking they aren't quite as hefty as the typical WWII grenade that most of us imagine. Imagine a quarter stick of dynamite with a steel jacket... ouch!
One word: diversify.
This is something that should be obvious to anybody with even the most rudimentary education in investing. When I heard that there were people working for Enron who had a million dollars in stock, the power to diversify (before the unscrupulous lockout) and failed to sieze that opportunity, it occured to me that there were more people to blame than Enron execs (I'm not excusing what they did). Blame also those who failed to educate the workers. Blame the workers themselves for not wondering "hey, what if my company goes bankrupt?". By no means do I hold out stocks as the only vehicle either. You should start with all cash, then when you have enough to make it worthwhile diversify into bonds, real estate (via REITs), and stocks (not necessarily in that order). A company in a portfolio can go bankrupt, and the portfolio will continue to gain if it's smartly diversified.
So... on the one hand, the foreign workers are serving us by working for us, but on the other hand American business is serving the foreigners by building the plants and employing them.
Projected outcome based on the service-leader principle? American business leads, American workers follow. Same as it ever was. As long as I can remember, the complaint has been that American workers aren't as smart as foreign workers (a Japanese highschool graduate actually knows algebra!).
So, if you want to lead in America don't just be a worker--get a stake in business. This can be a small stake, like owning shares in stocks, or it can be a more personal stake like actually owning your own small business (not for everybody, most people are better off just investing in somebody else's business). I've seen this work time and time again. Set some money aside, invest wisely, learn, learn, learn; but don't count on your job to be your only ticket to success.