Which, as my dad taught me, is a bunk argument. You may no longer be a minor after your 18th birthday, but you're not an ADULT until you can take care of yourself. If you live in your parents house, you have to abide by their rules. If they're paying your way through college, they have a right to know how you're doing in school. If they're providing your health insurance, they should have a right to your medical records. That's what being a DEPENDENT is all about.
If other people are pouring their resources into you, they have a right to know how they're being used (and yes, I am a parent, and I like this idea).
How about this concept moved into the corporate world -- a three-click report that gives you the productivity level, amount of time spent talking, idleness, last 5 applications opened, last 20 websites accessed, and whatever else might be relevant. Typing speed. Current assignment. Last unauthorized break from working. Exact length of lunch break.
Self interest should be the BIGGEST reason for imposing tariffs, and not just on I.T., but across the board. I saw a great quote on the subject recently that basically boiled down to this: The U.S. has the highest cost and standard of living, per capita, in the world. The globalization of jobs means that they will tend to gravitate towards the nations with the lowest costs and standards of living. This has two potential implications for the U.S.:
1) The "We don't compete" scenario: All of the good jobs will eventually move offshore. We'll still have a limited amount of low paying service positions, but that's it. Per capita income and standard of living plummet, and the U.S. becomes a third world nation with a big military.
2) The "we compete" scenario: We somehow manage to get competetive with the offshore workers. This causes per-capita income to plummet and standards of living to decline. Once again, the U.S. becomes a third world nation with a big military.
And that thought should scare the hell out of people, because poor, desperate people with big militaries have a nasty habit of doing horrible things.
Fact is, when you're at the top of the heap, the ONLY way to compete with the guys at the bottom on price is to lower your standard of living and incomes. That scenario should NOT be acceptable to any American who cares for his/her country. Are tariffs fair? Not really, but I'd rather not sell out my kids future just so some exec can show improved quarterlies and take home a bonus.
Some days, sometimes, I think that I'll live to see a revolution in this country and either a return to the things that made this country great (freedom, community, family)...or the imposition of a protectionist socialist regime(hey, we've got a growing socialist movement here so it's possible). If that happens, I predict that it'll be a subject like this one that provides the catalyst.
Hrm, well, I've personally got prior art on #27. I helped to write a targeted ad inclusion system for a (now defunct) early ecommerce site in 1994. It was a horrible PERL/Delphi Frankenstein application, but it did track ads by type, and serve them up to the user based on their responses to ads of the same type (using weighted averages). As far as I remember, Amazon didn't even EXIST at the time I wrote that, so I'm sure my software predated theirs!
Which brings up two interesting questions. 1) Who do I contact to show prior art? I'm not interested in getting a patent myself, but I'd like to help shoot this one down. 2) What kind of evidence do you need to prove prior art on business processes? The concept was originally mine, but it was developed while working for a company that doesn't exist anymore. So who owns the idea? Can I offer the work as prior art? What kind of evidence is really needed to prove that I wrote the code in 1994, and not yesterday?
I'd say the SMTP customer is responsible for the bill. When you toss up an email server, you are essentially telling the world that they can send messages to this port, and that you will accept them. Until we get a federal law in place prohibiting spam, I'd say that putting up an email server equates to accepting the risk that you're going to get a LOT of mail. It's like tossing up a website and then whining about getting Slashdotted. If you put up the site, you are placing out for the publics viewing. If a LOT of people are interested in your content and run up your bandwidth costs, that's your problem.
Whenever you put up ANY kind of public resource (Internet or otherwise), you should determine how much usage you can actually support/afford, and then put policies or systems in place to enforce those limits. If you can't be bothered to make sure that your resources aren't abused, then you have nobody but yourself to blame when people abuse them.
No AC posting? I do hope that Anonymous Posting will still be enabled. I'd actually consider subscribing to beat the rush, but I've protected myself while posting using the Anonymous feature more than once and would be disturbed to see it disabled.
Won't work. Most colleges today have web based facilities that allow students to review and update their registration info. Heck, the college I work for allows web users to do everything from change their name, to register for classes and financial aid, to connect to our alumni association and donate money. When you have that kind of functionality online, you are forced to have realtime (or near-realtime) communications between the backend administrative systems and the frontend web systems. With comprehensive web-based applications like this, you can make them hack-resistant, but never hack-proof.
Don't forget BOSSES! I had the joy of working for a small dotcom with poor management a number of years back, and bailed after six months when our paychecks started showing up late and when I walked into accounting and saw the accountants desk covered in "Past Due!" and "Final Collections Notice!" letters.
A year later, I'd heard they'd gone under and had almost forgotten about them when I tried to refinance my wifes car and was turned down because of poor credit. Poor credit?!?! I'm a homeowner, I have five credit cards, and two car loans, and I had never been so much as a day late in making a payment. I had 10 years of history, and all my balances were low. So what do you think I found when I pulled my 3 agency report? A $1,400+ dollar Pacific Bell phone bill in collections, that went to CarHunting.Com Inc (they can't sue me for slander, the FBI is still trying to track the owner down for defrauding creditors and employees). A call to a couple former employees revealed that the companies phone service had been shut off shortly after I left, and that the owner had used MY name and MY SSN to secure a new account and get them turned back on. Most NORMAL people at that point would think that a simple phone call to the phone company could straighten this out, right? Wrong. It took two years of fighting, and three investigations, before the phone company would finally acknowledge that the bill wasn't mine and remove it from my credit report. Even the notarized affidavits from former employees, and work records showing that I'd been working soemwhere else at the time, weren't enough to convince them that it wasn't my bill. In fact, it wasn't until I hired a lawyer and the lawyer started talking to the FTC and they began talking about lawsuits for FCRA violations that the phone company finally caved and removed the bill.
So the risk soesn't exist only when applying for a job, but during and after your job as well. And it's ALWAYS a pain in the butt to fix this kind of stuff. A simple rule of thumb though, is to ONLY give personally identifiable information (birthdates, SSN's, etc) to companies that you can verify are real and trustworthy. And DON'T work for scum. If a company will screw its customers, it'll probably screw its employees too.
Direct democracy will never work because human beings are emotional, not rational, creatures. Case in point: September 11, 2001.
Do you remember the poll numbers in the days and weeks following the attack? At one point, a few days after the attack, one poll showed that 60% of respondents supported using nuclear weapons in retaliation. If the people, pissed off and grieving, had direct access to our governmental mechanisms, we would have nuked Afghanistan flat.
For all of its flaws, our current conflict-oriented representative democracy works quite well. It forced the people running our government to actually debate the issue, and gave people the time they needed to cool off. The system WORKS.
Re:The ./ obsession with a cashless society?
on
The Future of Money
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· Score: 2, Informative
I DISagree. I have $6 in cash sitting in my wallet right now, and it's been there untouched for over a month because I rarely use paper money anymore.
I live in Northern California, and everything is wired. I buy food and groceries using my ATM card. I pay my bills using EFT or checks. When my car needs gas, all of the pumps have built in readers. Even the local McDonalds, Wendy's, and Burger Kings have card readers at the counter. EVERY store I visit, from WalMart, to SaveMart(groceries), to the dingy little corner store run by the non-english speaking Punjabi down the street, has some type of card reader capable of processing electronic transactions. To be 100% honest, I can't even remember the last time I was in a store that didn't take plastic. In many areas, the cashless society is already here for those who choose to embrace it. For everyone else, it's just a matter of time.
No, but you can bet they'd log the IP's and ID everyone who did (you'll have your very own file in the Homeland Defense offices). After that, they might pick up a handful of people randomly and prosecute them "to set an example". After so many recent high profile attacks against military web targets, the Pentagon is out to get anyone who touches their networks and even smells like a hacker right now. Even if thousands of people use the forms or admin interface, both the military and the FBI have the resources to track and ID each and every one. I'm not sure that they could get a conviction, but even without one they could seriously screw with your life.
Geez people, I worked for enough government agencies to know that you DO NOT F**K with this stuff. Even just browsing the admin interfaces can get you charged with "trespassing on a government network", a felony for most American citizens. If you're actually dumb enough to try and register a domain, that "trespassing" turns into illegal access, and the penalties go WAY up. These people do NOT play around, they WILL turn the IP's over to the FBI, and if they get annoyed enough, you could easily find yourself cuffed and stuffed (they probably wouldn't charge you, but an embarrasing arrest at work or at school, coupled with an overnight visit to the nearest federal holding facility and some intensive questioning are NOT something you want to experience).
To be entirely fair, there's a good reason why dockworkers get paid more than programmers...when was the last time you heard of a programmer getting killed doing his job. That rope he's looping over a capstan is attached to a very large, very heavy ship that's rocking with the swells and tide, and shifting as loads are added or removed. One wrong move and that rope could easily crush a person, or snap and cut someone in half. It may be a job anyone can do, but it's also one that you've got to risk your life for.
I agree. I've had a DSL line for nearly four years and have never downloaded or shared pirated music. If I'm going to be charged an "RIAA Tax", you can damned well bet I'm going to change that! I own more than 600 records, tapes(DAT), and CD's (mostly classical, folk, and various forms of electronica), and I'll rip and host them all just to spite the bastards. What are they going to do, sue me? I've got the means to take them to court and fight it, and it shouldn't be too hard to make the argument that the activity should be allowable since "I'm paying for it anyway".
The RIAA could be shooting themselves in the foot with this one:-)
None of which will soon matter. The problem with unions is that they reward mediocrity and supress innovation by placing seniority above skill, and bracketing everybody into the same payscale to be "fair". This is causing those jobs to move offshore, which results in those "protected and unionized" workers losing their jobs to a $2 an hour substinence programmer in Mumbai. IMO, a crappy non-union job is better than no job at all.
Gah, I forgot to mention the third fan (for the curious). Mounted inside the rear of the case is an Antec 120MM thermally controlled fan (aka "SmartFan"). Not only is this fan very quiet, but since I replaced the thermistor it doesn't even come on unless the case starts getting really hot...warm day, no ac, GeForce4 working hard...you get the picture. In fact, I don't think it's turned on once in the last month or two (ambient case temp has to reach 32C before it activates) .
One of these days I'll borrow someones digital camera and throw up a website, but for now a description will have to do you:
For the fans, I picked up a pair of Panaflo 120MM Ultra Quiets (PanaFlo L1A P/N:FBA12G12L1A). These are great fans for a low noise setup because they move a LOT of air with practically zero noise. I mounted these inside the front of my case (below the fdd) by cutting two large holes in the cases sheetmetal (many cases already have one fan mount here).
Next, I picked up a 3*3 sheet of very thin sheet metal from a local HVAC supply store, and sat down with a pencil and paper to design the CPU vent. Basically, I designed a four sided, open-ended metal box that passed from the front of my case to the back. At the front, it's mounted to the fan and is the same width as the fan (this allows it to mount to the fan boltholes, and prevents air leakage. From there it tapered down to the width of my CPU heatsink at the CPU mount, and continued on to the back of the case at that width (picture an odd looking square funnel in your mind, with a few kinks to get everything to line up). Once I had my sketch, I glued it onto the metal, cut the sheet in the appropriate places, and bent it to create the finished box (take your time and do this right, sheetmetal is unforgiving if you bend it wrong, and it can be VERY sharp). I then cut a square hole midway down the vent for my CPU heat sink, and closed the seam with a few sheetmetal screws. This basically gives me a square tube running from the front of my case and out the back. The fan pushes cool air into the front, and because the heatsink sticks into the vent and the air is forced through it, the hot air passes out the back. The system works very well, and my CPU temps (P4 1.6@2333Mhz), never crack 55C under full load.
Here's THE most imporant step to the project: After test-fitting the duct, I picked up a can of rubberized tool dip-insulator (PlastiDip) from the local hardware store (dayglow yellow). Mechanics and electricians buy this stuff to dip their metal handled tools in in order to protect against electrical shock or heat transfer, but I used it to keep the metal duct from shorting anything, and to provide a little extra sound dampening (keeps the vent sides from vibrating with the airflow). I'd suggest buying enough to dip the whole thing, but if you're short on cash you can just pour it over the outside (I've heard that there are spray-can versions, but I couldn't find them). After it has hardened, take a brush to the inside and make sure your seams and any protruding edges are also coated to smooth out any spots that might impede airflow (and generate noisy vibrations.)
The second fan sits in a much simpler five sided sheetmetal box. This box just has vent flaps cut into it that direct the air to specific parts of the case. For spots further away from the fan, small tubes were fabricated from the sheet metal and pop-riveted on above the vents in order to "aim" the air at a specific spot. This targeted cooling means that the overall case temperature is a little higher, but that the items I'm really worried about (RAM, video chipset, mobo chipset) get all the air they need. After the fabrication was done and the second box was tested, it was treated to the same dip-insulation as the first vent.
Couple this with an Enermax Whisper power supply, and you've got a silent computer that runs pretty cool. The whole project, BTW, it took me about a week to finish, and about $50 worth of materials. If you don't have sheet metal shears and a smooth faced hammer (for folding the metal) it might cost you a little more.
I disagree completely. While PC's generate a lot of heat, the trick to keeping them alive is moving that heat to another location...not turning the heat into sound. With my own daily driver, a P4 overclocked by more than 600Mhz, the loudest noise I hear is my hard drive head seeking...and even that is barely audible. Why? Planning! Rather than plunking down some cash for a small diameter, extreme RPM, LOUD series of fans like so many overclockers do, I mounted three low noise, high pitch 120MM fans with some very carefully planned (and custom fabricated) internal ductwork. The end result is the same airflow as the smaller, high RPM fans, but at a noise level that won't wake the baby.
Choosing your poison just gets you killed...I'd rather engineer a solution that'll get me what I want at no cost.
As a government employee who has done software development at several levels of government, I have to take issue with all of your points:
Bush is trying to outsource them too. This isn't really a "bad thing". Government software engineering projects tend to be horribly expensive, behind schedule, and "lacking" in every sense of the word. Government developers are horribly underpaid, most are underskilled, and very, very few give a damn about the quality of the software they release.
Outsourcing projects like these will pump money into the economy, and more importantly for software developers, convert low paying government programming jobs into higher paying private sector programming jobs. Will some government employees lose their jobs? Sure, but if a government programmer with 10+ years experience with a particular system can't convince its new contracting company that he's worth hiring onto the project, then I'd have to question whether or not he should have been working on the project in the first place.
Plus, their hiring practices favor young snots because the unions protect the good jobs for their own members Flat out untrue. Most government employee unions couldn't give a rip about who gets hired where, as long as the new employee pays his monthly union dues. The ONLY time I've ever seen government unions get pissy are when management positions open up, and then the unions simply want to see internal staff be given preference over outsiders (that's not to say that unions aren't problematic, but that's an entirely different topic).
and nobody is going to hire a 50-year-old for an entry level position Are you kidding me? Government agencies would be tripping over each other to hire a 50 year old entry level programmer just so they could prove that their "fair and nondiscriminatory" hiring practices are being followed! Even with the anti-AA hits that government HR directors have faced over the last several years, old people, minorities, the disabled, and veterans are still THE most highly sought after applicants in most government agencies. Old programmers never die, they just get government jobs!;-)
I drive this section of the Cap City freeway quite often (used to be several times a day, now it's a few a week), and I couldn't tell you how many times I've inched past this spot at about 5MPH. So what happens to this thing when you've got six lanes of traffic inching by, and they're all listening to different things?
Of course, my biggest concern is wrecks. This particular spot is already a popular wreck site, with the Garden highway exit, the CalExpo grounds (location of the yearly state fair and dozens of other big draws), the way too narrow for its capacity American River Bridge and curve, and one of the biggest shopping malls in the region all located off of this short stretch of overcrowded highway. The LAST thing this spot really needs is another visual distraction:\
A quick Google search turn up these. The "Declaration of Causes" is a VERY interesting read, as it provides a unique third party view into the comparative conditions present during the Civil War, and absolutely blasts the Union for the way they handled the secession.
Oh, and the Cherokee weren't the only Native American CSA supporters. The Chickasaws, the Seminole, the Creek, the Choctaw, and many other smaller tribes also signed onto the CSA. They understood that the federal government of the U.S. planned to eliminate their soveregnity and destroy them with incoming settlers, while settlers in the southern states had long recognized the Cherokee and other tribes as seperate nations with their own land. When the Union won the war, the Native Americans fate was sealed.
The American Civil War was fought over state sovereignty, not emancipation.
Actually, you've hit on one of the biggest problems with modern discussions about the U.S. Civil War. Everybody today likes to argue about why the war was fought, and wants to pick ou the ONE reason. The problem with that is there is NO ONE reason that the war was fought. To some extent, everyone is right, and everyone is wrong.
1) Slavery- Yes, large plantation owners with many slaves were afraid of losing them. Some of these people were evil racist bigots, and others were good people who inherited a mess and were desperately trying to keep their businesses operating. These people, as large wealthy business owners, had a lot of influence and loudly supported secession. 2) States rights- Most of the people who fought for the south didn't care much about slavery one way or the other. There was a strong feeling both in the south AND the north, that the states should be "independent", with only a figurehead federal government. These people didn't see themselves as Americans or Confederates, they thought of themselves as Kentuckians, or Georgians, or Alabamans. They had long complained about the northern states domination of the economy, and there was a general feeling that the northerners controlled the federal government. 3)Taxes- Yep, that's right, taxes. The northerners were really big on taxes and tarrifs, which really hurt the import/export dependent south. In fact, 80% of the tarriffs that the north insisted on, were paid by southern states. This fact angered southern industrialists greatly, and was widely viewed as an attempt to stifle business. 4) Immigration- Largely forgotten today, immigration was also a big issue in the 1850's. The northerners, for the most part, were really big on unbridled immigration to "populate the continent". Many southerners didn't care for the idea of allowing immigrants to populate the whole country (and especially the southern states), and wanted more control over who came and went. 5) Indian treaties- Here's a fact that has been almost erased from modern textbooks about the Civil War because it doesn't fit peoples preconceived notions of what the CSA was all about: Many politicians in the southern states were growing tired of the wars with Native Americans, and wanted to begin honoring treaties and make peace with the native Americans, while the northern states insisted on militarily removing them from their lands, irregardless of treaties (yes, I am aware that not all southerners agreed on this point). The Cherokee Nation itself willingly joined the CSA, and blasted the north for ignoring the very freedoms of self determination that it claimed to represent.
I'm sure that there were hundreds of other localized issues that I'm overlooking here that got other communities and regions involved in secession, but I think the point is made. There was no one reason for the Civil War, and no one brush that all secessionists can be painted with. They were not all good people, nor were they all evil. People who try to label all southerners with one label simply display a fundamental lack of understanding on the issue.
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Which, as my dad taught me, is a bunk argument. You may no longer be a minor after your 18th birthday, but you're not an ADULT until you can take care of yourself. If you live in your parents house, you have to abide by their rules. If they're paying your way through college, they have a right to know how you're doing in school. If they're providing your health insurance, they should have a right to your medical records. That's what being a DEPENDENT is all about.
If other people are pouring their resources into you, they have a right to know how they're being used (and yes, I am a parent, and I like this idea).
How about this concept moved into the corporate world -- a three-click report that gives you the productivity level, amount of time spent talking, idleness, last 5 applications opened, last 20 websites accessed, and whatever else might be relevant. Typing speed. Current assignment. Last unauthorized break from working. Exact length of lunch break.
You've obviously never worked in a call center...
Short memory. They did it with IE to kill Netscape, and they'll do it with Google to kill them too.
That's what I was thinking, and it's the first one that's got a chuckle out of me today :)
3. Self-interest
Self interest should be the BIGGEST reason for imposing tariffs, and not just on I.T., but across the board. I saw a great quote on the subject recently that basically boiled down to this: The U.S. has the highest cost and standard of living, per capita, in the world. The globalization of jobs means that they will tend to gravitate towards the nations with the lowest costs and standards of living. This has two potential implications for the U.S.:
1) The "We don't compete" scenario: All of the good jobs will eventually move offshore. We'll still have a limited amount of low paying service positions, but that's it. Per capita income and standard of living plummet, and the U.S. becomes a third world nation with a big military.
2) The "we compete" scenario: We somehow manage to get competetive with the offshore workers. This causes per-capita income to plummet and standards of living to decline. Once again, the U.S. becomes a third world nation with a big military.
And that thought should scare the hell out of people, because poor, desperate people with big militaries have a nasty habit of doing horrible things.
Fact is, when you're at the top of the heap, the ONLY way to compete with the guys at the bottom on price is to lower your standard of living and incomes. That scenario should NOT be acceptable to any American who cares for his/her country. Are tariffs fair? Not really, but I'd rather not sell out my kids future just so some exec can show improved quarterlies and take home a bonus.
Some days, sometimes, I think that I'll live to see a revolution in this country and either a return to the things that made this country great (freedom, community, family)...or the imposition of a protectionist socialist regime(hey, we've got a growing socialist movement here so it's possible). If that happens, I predict that it'll be a subject like this one that provides the catalyst.
Hrm, well, I've personally got prior art on #27. I helped to write a targeted ad inclusion system for a (now defunct) early ecommerce site in 1994. It was a horrible PERL/Delphi Frankenstein application, but it did track ads by type, and serve them up to the user based on their responses to ads of the same type (using weighted averages). As far as I remember, Amazon didn't even EXIST at the time I wrote that, so I'm sure my software predated theirs!
Which brings up two interesting questions. 1) Who do I contact to show prior art? I'm not interested in getting a patent myself, but I'd like to help shoot this one down. 2) What kind of evidence do you need to prove prior art on business processes? The concept was originally mine, but it was developed while working for a company that doesn't exist anymore. So who owns the idea? Can I offer the work as prior art? What kind of evidence is really needed to prove that I wrote the code in 1994, and not yesterday?
I'd say the SMTP customer is responsible for the bill. When you toss up an email server, you are essentially telling the world that they can send messages to this port, and that you will accept them. Until we get a federal law in place prohibiting spam, I'd say that putting up an email server equates to accepting the risk that you're going to get a LOT of mail. It's like tossing up a website and then whining about getting Slashdotted. If you put up the site, you are placing out for the publics viewing. If a LOT of people are interested in your content and run up your bandwidth costs, that's your problem.
Whenever you put up ANY kind of public resource (Internet or otherwise), you should determine how much usage you can actually support/afford, and then put policies or systems in place to enforce those limits. If you can't be bothered to make sure that your resources aren't abused, then you have nobody but yourself to blame when people abuse them.
No AC posting? I do hope that Anonymous Posting will still be enabled. I'd actually consider subscribing to beat the rush, but I've protected myself while posting using the Anonymous feature more than once and would be disturbed to see it disabled.
Won't work. Most colleges today have web based facilities that allow students to review and update their registration info. Heck, the college I work for allows web users to do everything from change their name, to register for classes and financial aid, to connect to our alumni association and donate money. When you have that kind of functionality online, you are forced to have realtime (or near-realtime) communications between the backend administrative systems and the frontend web systems. With comprehensive web-based applications like this, you can make them hack-resistant, but never hack-proof.
Don't forget BOSSES! I had the joy of working for a small dotcom with poor management a number of years back, and bailed after six months when our paychecks started showing up late and when I walked into accounting and saw the accountants desk covered in "Past Due!" and "Final Collections Notice!" letters.
A year later, I'd heard they'd gone under and had almost forgotten about them when I tried to refinance my wifes car and was turned down because of poor credit. Poor credit?!?! I'm a homeowner, I have five credit cards, and two car loans, and I had never been so much as a day late in making a payment. I had 10 years of history, and all my balances were low. So what do you think I found when I pulled my 3 agency report? A $1,400+ dollar Pacific Bell phone bill in collections, that went to CarHunting.Com Inc (they can't sue me for slander, the FBI is still trying to track the owner down for defrauding creditors and employees). A call to a couple former employees revealed that the companies phone service had been shut off shortly after I left, and that the owner had used MY name and MY SSN to secure a new account and get them turned back on. Most NORMAL people at that point would think that a simple phone call to the phone company could straighten this out, right? Wrong. It took two years of fighting, and three investigations, before the phone company would finally acknowledge that the bill wasn't mine and remove it from my credit report. Even the notarized affidavits from former employees, and work records showing that I'd been working soemwhere else at the time, weren't enough to convince them that it wasn't my bill. In fact, it wasn't until I hired a lawyer and the lawyer started talking to the FTC and they began talking about lawsuits for FCRA violations that the phone company finally caved and removed the bill.
So the risk soesn't exist only when applying for a job, but during and after your job as well. And it's ALWAYS a pain in the butt to fix this kind of stuff. A simple rule of thumb though, is to ONLY give personally identifiable information (birthdates, SSN's, etc) to companies that you can verify are real and trustworthy. And DON'T work for scum. If a company will screw its customers, it'll probably screw its employees too.
Wrong. From the Windows EULA:
You may install, use, access, display and run one copy of the Product on a single computer...
The Windows EULA DOES preclude running more than one instance of the OS on a single machine. You need multiple licenses for multiple instances.
Direct democracy will never work because human beings are emotional, not rational, creatures. Case in point: September 11, 2001.
Do you remember the poll numbers in the days and weeks following the attack? At one point, a few days after the attack, one poll showed that 60% of respondents supported using nuclear weapons in retaliation. If the people, pissed off and grieving, had direct access to our governmental mechanisms, we would have nuked Afghanistan flat.
For all of its flaws, our current conflict-oriented representative democracy works quite well. It forced the people running our government to actually debate the issue, and gave people the time they needed to cool off. The system WORKS.
I DISagree. I have $6 in cash sitting in my wallet right now, and it's been there untouched for over a month because I rarely use paper money anymore.
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I live in Northern California, and everything is wired. I buy food and groceries using my ATM card. I pay my bills using EFT or checks. When my car needs gas, all of the pumps have built in readers. Even the local McDonalds, Wendy's, and Burger Kings have card readers at the counter. EVERY store I visit, from WalMart, to SaveMart(groceries), to the dingy little corner store run by the non-english speaking Punjabi down the street, has some type of card reader capable of processing electronic transactions. To be 100% honest, I can't even remember the last time I was in a store that didn't take plastic. In many areas, the cashless society is already here for those who choose to embrace it. For everyone else, it's just a matter of time.
Kinda sucks when the power goes out though
No, but you can bet they'd log the IP's and ID everyone who did (you'll have your very own file in the Homeland Defense offices). After that, they might pick up a handful of people randomly and prosecute them "to set an example". After so many recent high profile attacks against military web targets, the Pentagon is out to get anyone who touches their networks and even smells like a hacker right now. Even if thousands of people use the forms or admin interface, both the military and the FBI have the resources to track and ID each and every one. I'm not sure that they could get a conviction, but even without one they could seriously screw with your life.
Geez people, I worked for enough government agencies to know that you DO NOT F**K with this stuff. Even just browsing the admin interfaces can get you charged with "trespassing on a government network", a felony for most American citizens. If you're actually dumb enough to try and register a domain, that "trespassing" turns into illegal access, and the penalties go WAY up. These people do NOT play around, they WILL turn the IP's over to the FBI, and if they get annoyed enough, you could easily find yourself cuffed and stuffed (they probably wouldn't charge you, but an embarrasing arrest at work or at school, coupled with an overnight visit to the nearest federal holding facility and some intensive questioning are NOT something you want to experience).
I know curiosity can be great, but leavitalone!
To be entirely fair, there's a good reason why dockworkers get paid more than programmers...when was the last time you heard of a programmer getting killed doing his job. That rope he's looping over a capstan is attached to a very large, very heavy ship that's rocking with the swells and tide, and shifting as loads are added or removed. One wrong move and that rope could easily crush a person, or snap and cut someone in half. It may be a job anyone can do, but it's also one that you've got to risk your life for.
;-)
Well, until now anyway
I agree. I've had a DSL line for nearly four years and have never downloaded or shared pirated music. If I'm going to be charged an "RIAA Tax", you can damned well bet I'm going to change that! I own more than 600 records, tapes(DAT), and CD's (mostly classical, folk, and various forms of electronica), and I'll rip and host them all just to spite the bastards. What are they going to do, sue me? I've got the means to take them to court and fight it, and it shouldn't be too hard to make the argument that the activity should be allowable since "I'm paying for it anyway".
:-)
The RIAA could be shooting themselves in the foot with this one
None of which will soon matter. The problem with unions is that they reward mediocrity and supress innovation by placing seniority above skill, and bracketing everybody into the same payscale to be "fair". This is causing those jobs to move offshore, which results in those "protected and unionized" workers losing their jobs to a $2 an hour substinence programmer in Mumbai. IMO, a crappy non-union job is better than no job at all.
Gah, I forgot to mention the third fan (for the curious). Mounted inside the rear of the case is an Antec 120MM thermally controlled fan (aka "SmartFan"). Not only is this fan very quiet, but since I replaced the thermistor it doesn't even come on unless the case starts getting really hot...warm day, no ac, GeForce4 working hard...you get the picture. In fact, I don't think it's turned on once in the last month or two (ambient case temp has to reach 32C before it activates) .
One of these days I'll borrow someones digital camera and throw up a website, but for now a description will have to do you:
For the fans, I picked up a pair of Panaflo 120MM Ultra Quiets (PanaFlo L1A P/N:FBA12G12L1A). These are great fans for a low noise setup because they move a LOT of air with practically zero noise. I mounted these inside the front of my case (below the fdd) by cutting two large holes in the cases sheetmetal (many cases already have one fan mount here). Next, I picked up a 3*3 sheet of very thin sheet metal from a local HVAC supply store, and sat down with a pencil and paper to design the CPU vent. Basically, I designed a four sided, open-ended metal box that passed from the front of my case to the back. At the front, it's mounted to the fan and is the same width as the fan (this allows it to mount to the fan boltholes, and prevents air leakage. From there it tapered down to the width of my CPU heatsink at the CPU mount, and continued on to the back of the case at that width (picture an odd looking square funnel in your mind, with a few kinks to get everything to line up). Once I had my sketch, I glued it onto the metal, cut the sheet in the appropriate places, and bent it to create the finished box (take your time and do this right, sheetmetal is unforgiving if you bend it wrong, and it can be VERY sharp). I then cut a square hole midway down the vent for my CPU heat sink, and closed the seam with a few sheetmetal screws. This basically gives me a square tube running from the front of my case and out the back. The fan pushes cool air into the front, and because the heatsink sticks into the vent and the air is forced through it, the hot air passes out the back. The system works very well, and my CPU temps (P4 1.6@2333Mhz), never crack 55C under full load.
Here's THE most imporant step to the project: After test-fitting the duct, I picked up a can of rubberized tool dip-insulator (PlastiDip) from the local hardware store (dayglow yellow). Mechanics and electricians buy this stuff to dip their metal handled tools in in order to protect against electrical shock or heat transfer, but I used it to keep the metal duct from shorting anything, and to provide a little extra sound dampening (keeps the vent sides from vibrating with the airflow). I'd suggest buying enough to dip the whole thing, but if you're short on cash you can just pour it over the outside (I've heard that there are spray-can versions, but I couldn't find them). After it has hardened, take a brush to the inside and make sure your seams and any protruding edges are also coated to smooth out any spots that might impede airflow (and generate noisy vibrations.)
The second fan sits in a much simpler five sided sheetmetal box. This box just has vent flaps cut into it that direct the air to specific parts of the case. For spots further away from the fan, small tubes were fabricated from the sheet metal and pop-riveted on above the vents in order to "aim" the air at a specific spot. This targeted cooling means that the overall case temperature is a little higher, but that the items I'm really worried about (RAM, video chipset, mobo chipset) get all the air they need. After the fabrication was done and the second box was tested, it was treated to the same dip-insulation as the first vent.
Couple this with an Enermax Whisper power supply, and you've got a silent computer that runs pretty cool. The whole project, BTW, it took me about a week to finish, and about $50 worth of materials. If you don't have sheet metal shears and a smooth faced hammer (for folding the metal) it might cost you a little more.
I disagree completely. While PC's generate a lot of heat, the trick to keeping them alive is moving that heat to another location...not turning the heat into sound. With my own daily driver, a P4 overclocked by more than 600Mhz, the loudest noise I hear is my hard drive head seeking...and even that is barely audible. Why? Planning! Rather than plunking down some cash for a small diameter, extreme RPM, LOUD series of fans like so many overclockers do, I mounted three low noise, high pitch 120MM fans with some very carefully planned (and custom fabricated) internal ductwork. The end result is the same airflow as the smaller, high RPM fans, but at a noise level that won't wake the baby.
Choosing your poison just gets you killed...I'd rather engineer a solution that'll get me what I want at no cost.
As a government employee who has done software development at several levels of government, I have to take issue with all of your points:
;-)
Bush is trying to outsource them too.
This isn't really a "bad thing". Government software engineering projects tend to be horribly expensive, behind schedule, and "lacking" in every sense of the word. Government developers are horribly underpaid, most are underskilled, and very, very few give a damn about the quality of the software they release.
Outsourcing projects like these will pump money into the economy, and more importantly for software developers, convert low paying government programming jobs into higher paying private sector programming jobs. Will some government employees lose their jobs? Sure, but if a government programmer with 10+ years experience with a particular system can't convince its new contracting company that he's worth hiring onto the project, then I'd have to question whether or not he should have been working on the project in the first place.
Plus, their hiring practices favor young snots because the unions protect the good jobs for their own members
Flat out untrue. Most government employee unions couldn't give a rip about who gets hired where, as long as the new employee pays his monthly union dues. The ONLY time I've ever seen government unions get pissy are when management positions open up, and then the unions simply want to see internal staff be given preference over outsiders (that's not to say that unions aren't problematic, but that's an entirely different topic).
and nobody is going to hire a 50-year-old for an entry level position
Are you kidding me? Government agencies would be tripping over each other to hire a 50 year old entry level programmer just so they could prove that their "fair and nondiscriminatory" hiring practices are being followed! Even with the anti-AA hits that government HR directors have faced over the last several years, old people, minorities, the disabled, and veterans are still THE most highly sought after applicants in most government agencies. Old programmers never die, they just get government jobs!
I drive this section of the Cap City freeway quite often (used to be several times a day, now it's a few a week), and I couldn't tell you how many times I've inched past this spot at about 5MPH. So what happens to this thing when you've got six lanes of traffic inching by, and they're all listening to different things?
:\
Of course, my biggest concern is wrecks. This particular spot is already a popular wreck site, with the Garden highway exit, the CalExpo grounds (location of the yearly state fair and dozens of other big draws), the way too narrow for its capacity American River Bridge and curve, and one of the biggest shopping malls in the region all located off of this short stretch of overcrowded highway. The LAST thing this spot really needs is another visual distraction
A quick Google search turn up these. The "Declaration of Causes" is a VERY interesting read, as it provides a unique third party view into the comparative conditions present during the Civil War, and absolutely blasts the Union for the way they handled the secession.
Oh, and the Cherokee weren't the only Native American CSA supporters. The Chickasaws, the Seminole, the Creek, the Choctaw, and many other smaller tribes also signed onto the CSA. They understood that the federal government of the U.S. planned to eliminate their soveregnity and destroy them with incoming settlers, while settlers in the southern states had long recognized the Cherokee and other tribes as seperate nations with their own land. When the Union won the war, the Native Americans fate was sealed.
The American Civil War was fought over state sovereignty, not emancipation.
Actually, you've hit on one of the biggest problems with modern discussions about the U.S. Civil War. Everybody today likes to argue about why the war was fought, and wants to pick ou the ONE reason. The problem with that is there is NO ONE reason that the war was fought. To some extent, everyone is right, and everyone is wrong.
1) Slavery- Yes, large plantation owners with many slaves were afraid of losing them. Some of these people were evil racist bigots, and others were good people who inherited a mess and were desperately trying to keep their businesses operating. These people, as large wealthy business owners, had a lot of influence and loudly supported secession.
2) States rights- Most of the people who fought for the south didn't care much about slavery one way or the other. There was a strong feeling both in the south AND the north, that the states should be "independent", with only a figurehead federal government. These people didn't see themselves as Americans or Confederates, they thought of themselves as Kentuckians, or Georgians, or Alabamans. They had long complained about the northern states domination of the economy, and there was a general feeling that the northerners controlled the federal government.
3)Taxes- Yep, that's right, taxes. The northerners were really big on taxes and tarrifs, which really hurt the import/export dependent south. In fact, 80% of the tarriffs that the north insisted on, were paid by southern states. This fact angered southern industrialists greatly, and was widely viewed as an attempt to stifle business.
4) Immigration- Largely forgotten today, immigration was also a big issue in the 1850's. The northerners, for the most part, were really big on unbridled immigration to "populate the continent". Many southerners didn't care for the idea of allowing immigrants to populate the whole country (and especially the southern states), and wanted more control over who came and went.
5) Indian treaties- Here's a fact that has been almost erased from modern textbooks about the Civil War because it doesn't fit peoples preconceived notions of what the CSA was all about: Many politicians in the southern states were growing tired of the wars with Native Americans, and wanted to begin honoring treaties and make peace with the native Americans, while the northern states insisted on militarily removing them from their lands, irregardless of treaties (yes, I am aware that not all southerners agreed on this point). The Cherokee Nation itself willingly joined the CSA, and blasted the north for ignoring the very freedoms of self determination that it claimed to represent.
I'm sure that there were hundreds of other localized issues that I'm overlooking here that got other communities and regions involved in secession, but I think the point is made. There was no one reason for the Civil War, and no one brush that all secessionists can be painted with. They were not all good people, nor were they all evil. People who try to label all southerners with one label simply display a fundamental lack of understanding on the issue.