Do you ever stop to consider, just once, the possibility that you may derive indirect benefits from things and that government isn't about benefiting just YOU, its about the community.
By that reasoning, it is better to let the state kill you, and harvest your organs to be transplanted into recipients who desperately need them -- you can save more lives dead than you can support (your own) alive.
That reasoning resulted in my father being taxed for national health care in Canada, but when he needed lifesaving surgery, he was denied it, even though it would have cost far less than he had contributed over the years. Communist Canadian bastards murdered him.
Granted, the U.S. is not Canada (thank deity_of_choice), but whether the former U.S.S.R., Canada, or the U.S., large-scale government involvement in just about anything yields the worst possible management. Small scale local governments are more adaptable to their community's unique needs, more answerable to their residents, and more easily overthrown when things go bad.
People should not have to involuntarily subsidize services they do not use, unless a clear and direct benefit to them can be demonstrated. Even then, I'd be wary about forcing direct support. An example might be street lights in less desirable neighborhoods permitting crime to be better controlled by making not providing a safe haven where petty thieves can hide under cover of darkness -- this can reduce insurance and policing costs for everyone.
Verizon trying to sell me DSL at $19.95 a month, when I already have a static IP Advanced Data Services DSL link from them (at around $35/month) to my ISP of choice (Blargh! at about another $35/month) is worse. (At least VoIP saves me that and more).
You'd think that their left hand would know what their right hand was doing. You'd think wrong.
I almost failed the INS inspection interview for my most recent TN-1 visa because I could not underestand the inspector's English. (He was of foreign decent, but not Chinese.)
For example, he'd ask, "How long live you United States?".
Did he want to know how long I had lived in the U.S. in total (5-1/2 years mostly on an H1-B with LC and GC pending)?
Did he want to know how long how long I had been currently in the U.S. (Not at all since I'd returned to Canada following the telcom bust).
If I misinterpreted his question, my answer could be construed as a lie, and a commitment of a felony (lying to an immigration officer).
Frustrated, I answered, "I do not now live in the United States. I returned to Canada from the U.S. in January 2002, as required by the terms of my visa. I have lived in the United States, legally, from 1999 to 2002."
I was worried that my longish (but accurate) answer would have been misinterpreted as misleading.
Another person was yelled at: "You pay... that man... $110!" He acted confused. I could imagine that he didn't want to pay "that man" $110 (perhaps thinking it a bribe) because he needed the $110 to pay his processing fee to the cashier.
As for me, I was admitted, and approved for a new H1-B (which will require a border trip soon).
they finally felt safe to procede only to be stopped and written a ticket
I thought that it was acceptable to treat "stuck" traffic signals as stop signs, after waiting one cycle (to see if they were, in fact stuck).
Granting, the whole issue of what is "long enough" for a particular light is questionable, but it should stand as a reasonable defense against the ticket.
Many have made this point, but I will reply to this response.
I maintain that this is not a DDOS, or distributed denial of service attack, despite the fact that the attacking (accessing?) agents are distributed, and the cummulative effect may result in denial of service.
However, this only happens if enough people voluntarily chose to run the screen saver. Lycos has not control over how many people do that. It's rather like calling for a picket against some place of business and having thousands of people show up, mill back and forth, and make it difficult for people to conduct business. There is no guarantee that enough people will show up to be disruptive. Furthermore, people can chose to stop participating at any time.
The effect is distributed, but it sucessfully denying service can't be guaranteed by the instigator: he is providing a tool that lets people access a particular web site repeatedly. There are lots of tools that do that: I have an automatically updating stock ticker on my Fedora Core 2 box, for example. Perhaps a lot of people chose to run a similar stock ticker. Heck, my Vonage locked VoIP ATA hits a.mil timeserver repeatedly (Vonage support personnel insist this is with permission, though why they can't provide their own time server I don't know -- it's not like the ATA should need a stratum 2 clock source).
Even the argument that a single user repeatedly hitting a web site is "theft of service" fails if the level of that single user's access is low enough to be, by itself, insignificant.
If anything, this is a DAOS, or distribute access of service protest mechanism. I would not be quick to call it an attack. A peaceful protest is probably the best analogy -- rather like people assembling outside a controversial place of business making it uncomfortable, but not impossible, for patrons to enter.
What's missing is only the local police showing up to disperse the crowd. Certainly a technical system could be designed where a court can authorise blanket "cease access to this site for this length of time" orders to major ISPs, if this were desired.
Of course, there may be a legal case to be made against the instigator of such distributed access, if it can be proven that there was malicious intent to disable the target site. I don't think that's the case here: there may be a tort case because the "backoff" mechanism failed, but that does not strike me as criminal.
People voluntarily chose to run this, no? It isn't like there's one person using a bunch of machines (with or without their owner's permission) to launch a coordinated attack.
Rather, it's a bunch of people coordinating their requests for information. At worst, it's civil disobedience (though not directed at government) or an organized, peaceful protest.
I had a similar idea a while back, where people supportive of a cause could voluntarily elect to permit their computers to engage in simultaneous activity coordinated from a single point. It's cool to see this.
My phone switch wasn't defective, but just reacted badly to these new-fangled signals that didn't exist yet when the switch was certified by the telco.
"Certified by the telco" probably just means that it was deemed acceptable to connect to their network, i.e. that it would do no harm, not that the telco would guarnetee that it would work as you expect -- that would be between you and the manufacturer.
Does the telco in question sell or lease their own phones, or offer an operational (and not just interconnect) certification? If so, using anything else is likely at your own risk.
There should, at least, be minimum and maximum ringing levels (frequency, cadence, duration, and level) at which the ringer should ring, and specs for acceptable non-ringing signals.
I know that the equipment we provided stayed well within the specs documented by the telco in qustion -- "ring tap" was a problem we took seriously.
Of course, I have no way of knowing if those specs were "sloppy" or enforced on certification of third-party equipment, leading to your problem. If the problem you encountered were widespread, we certainly would have heard of it.
I suspect that your equipment was just outside the design parameters that were followed (that's always a risk when third-party stuff is involved). From your description of the fix, it sounds like it lacked a "snubbing network" around an electronic ringer that it should have had.
IIRC, on what is and is not a derivative work, he replied, "It depends."
This makes sense in a way, becuase the term "derivative work" is implied to be taken in the context of copyright law, and not some technical test to be met.
I think a bigger problem is that we give greater credence to bullshit counterarguments than they deserve.
For all our apparant risk-taking and bravado, I think that technical people are ultra-conservative: we're just better at evaluating technical risks than most.
So, when someone counters with a "what if" that challenges a theory of a problem that we have, we give it disproportionate attention: anything possible and risky must be disproven before we can proceed.
The right thing to do, of course, is to take the counter-arguments to our theories in stride, and disprove them by carefully crafted experiment. That's the scientific method.
Alas, the world does not work that was: merely accepting the possibility that one's theory may have a flaw is an acceptance of defeat. Game over. You don't get to run that experiment. At least that's the way it is nine times out of ten.
Even daring to speak up against such odds is folly: leadership is born not of technical acumen but of those who have amassed sufficient power to discharge a challenge on the weakness of the slightest uncertainty instead of the merits of an objective test. It is also a precarious position: butressed more by luck than skill. I don't know if "leaders" sleep peacefully because they can shrug off uncertainties or because they are ignorantly oblivious of them.
The best one can do is to be truthful without angering the "gods" too much and to satisfy one's self with the somewhat smug knowledge that fire was tamed by an engineer willing to risk getting burned and not a manager afraid of a blister.
I've had asshole bosses too: I remember one idiot who asked if I could develop communication system over serial and "ethernet" hardware.
No brainer: TCP/IP (already supported) over Ethernet or PPP (serial). I quoted 2-3 weeks to implement the application layer stuff over that.
Idiot insisted that "for an embedded system", TCP/IP was "too fat" of a footprint: replace it with a home grown solution: we "only" had 128 MB RAM, "after all".
My protests that anything I could do in three weeks would be unlikely to be "leaner" than an embedded TCP/IP implementation fell on deaf ears. I was asked to implement a TCP/IP look- alike in three weeks from scratch.
Well, it took six, (admitedly for a functional, but half-assed job) and I got shat on royally for "taking too long".
So, I too, have been in dev hell.
Giving my resignation to that asshole was a most pleasant experience. The $7k or so relo expense payback was not so much fun, but easily offset by the signing bonus for my next job.
My advise to those with idiots for managers is to keep your nose to the ground, and look for a better opportunity. Don't quit until you get something better lined up.
This guy was a real piece of work: two days after I started, he started sending me anti-American email (being a Canadian firm in Canada, this was fair game). Since my son is an American citizen, I was not amused.
About five years ago, I worked for a major test equipment manufacturer who was contracted to deliver a test system for POTS lines (which could eventually do ADSL prequalification) to a national telco in a major European country. The idea was to test every POTS line in the system (millions of them) every night to detect early signs of degradation so repair crews could be dispatched before dialtone was completely lost.
As you can imagine, this involved a distributed system of test heads in each central office, networked back to a central command and control site. The sysem worked well, but had one flaw: downloading new firmware to the test heads was fraught with problems, and often led to the test head "locking up", even though a backup copy of firmware was always present, along with a hardware watchdog timer (though it was possible to lock out the watchdog interrupt, particularly when reprogramming flash, so it was a less than perfect watchdog). In these situations, one had to dispatch a "truck roll" to the affected central office, and replace EPROMs by hand.
Needless to say, the customer was pissed. More worrying was that even if we fixed the software download problem (which we were unable to reproduce in the lab), was that we'd be paying for truck rolls all over the country. This was a not insignificant amount of money.
Management frittered away time, instead of authorizing a root cause analysis, by requesting tweaks to TCP/IP operating parameters, and testing to see if the problem was getting better or worse. This did not prove illuminating, time was wasted, and the customer was getting royally angry.
Finally, a small team of us were permitted to undertake a root cause analysis to find and fix the problem: the engineer responsible for the embedded flash file system, the telecom engineer on the control side, and I: responsible for the embedded O/S, and TCP/IP stack (inherited from the supplier of the embedded O/S). We wanted a month. We got two weeks. Remember, deploying experimental software to live COs requires so many layers of approval, it isn't funny, and we were worried that would be our biggest bottleneck.
Finally, the controller telecom engineer was able to reproduce the problem, by attempting to download software from our controllers to deployed equipment in a single central office (getting permission was a feat in itself -- while there was little danger of affecting telephone service, this was a live CO).
The problem was clear: the data network was slow (9600 b/s over an X.25 PVC, carrying PPP-encapsulated TCP/IP), resulting in the use of large MTUs to minimize packetizing overhead (latency wasn't an issue - throughput was). Because of the way the controller's TCP/IP stack worked, it misestimated the packet/ack round trip time: it used a one byte payload for the first packet, and full MTUs after that. The resulting packet ACK timeout and retransmissions exposed an inconsistency between controller and embedded TCP/IP stacks that caused the embedded system to lock up.
Great. Now, how to fix it?
The fix wasn't a big deal (I implemented a fix in the embedded TCP/IP code since we didn't have source to the controller TCP/IP stack), but deploying it was: remember we couldn't download the code sucessfully, and we didn't want to pay for a truck roll.
At this point, I proposed something daring: download a small patch, in as few packets as possible (we could send three full MTUs safely). which would patch the existing code in place, which would be good enough to reliably download a complete replacement.
The thought of "self-modifying code" freaked management out to no end: it went against every rule in the book. But all three of us stood our ground: the only other alternative was a truck roll to each central office in the country. Reluctantly, we were allowed to proceed with that fix.
At this point, we had about ten days left. I had managed to get approval to pipeline the dev and tes
Nothing irritated me more on FC1 and FC2 than Ctrl-Alt-Backspace not restoring the user-access-friendly changes to certain device files: one had to actually log out from the console X session, then let another user log in. Otherwise, the first users "temporary" ownership overrides would stick.
Having logged out for years using Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, this was a tough habit to break (and my wife still oopses over this one frequently).
Granted, assigning temporary device ownership to non-root console logins was a nice modern touch, but not making it in harmony with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace was a real pain. I suppose one could argue that "drastic" console X session termination does not have to be clean, but I'd counter that if such termination logs one out of the console, the usual console logout functions should be at least attempted.
Technically, you might very well have to! Because, you would have said that you intended to live in Ontario permanently on your application form, and could be charged with fraud. (This may not apply to people born in Ontario, who do not have to sign such an application for OHIP coverage if they don't leave and return).
I suppose one can have the intent to reside in Ontario permanently, but still move at some time in the distant future. But, then the argument hinges on what one's intent was. That's murky enough for me to set off alarm bells.
What reasonable person, could honestly "intend" to reside somewhere permanently? Someone knowing they have a limited number of days/months/years to live? Perhaps. I know that if I become unemployed I will certainly look far and wide for employment. Heck, I'm always on the lookout for a significantly better job (thought the present one leaves me quite satisfied). To boot, I have a history of moving internationally for employment, visa, and tax reasons. Any argument I might make about "permanent residency intent", could be easily ripped to shreds.
I'm fairly certain that strict interpretation of the OHIP application agreement against large numbers of people leaving Ontario won't happen, at least not in the near future -- it would be political suicide. But, like many Canadian laws, and required agreements, many may run afoul of this one, so it can be used selectively, like a club, against so-called "troublemakers": perhaps persons, like myself, who dare criticize a broken system. I see that as a sign of a desperate govenment aparatus, and quite revealing of the effectiveness, or rather ineffectiveness, of government policy: socialized medicine,as implemented in Canada, does not work.
So, I look at a strict interpretation of laws, and required agreements ("Sure, you can get an OHIP card! Agree to this!! Just sign!!!" Yeah, right), to see of one can reasonably live in a place that has them. I've come to the conclusion that it is impossible to survive as a law-abiding person in Canada.
If you've taken the time to read that rambling, abhorrent work, Mein Kamph (tr. "My Fight"), the author (the mention of who's name would lead to shouts of "Godwin's Law! You Lose!"), notes that most people are not downright evil, but rather generally corrupt: they'll speed, cheat on their taxes, and accept bribes, but are unlikely to rape, maim, or kill. Threatened exposure and punishment of such corruption is enough to "keep them in line". Just pass so many laws that just about everyone has to break some of them just to survive.
I do not wish to live in a society like that, and, to be fair, Canada certainly is not incinerating Jews by the millions. But, Canada IS slowly murdering taxpayers by preventing them from saving their own lives with resources they had earned. I don't blindly accept the notion that attrocity should be measured by a ruler marked in "millions killed per year", letting Canada slip under the radar that finally revealed the horrors of Nazi German rule. Attrocity should be measured by the degree of state interference in the lives of its citizens. The Canadian Health Care system is thus most definately abominably atrocious.
To point to its few successes is as sickening as to note that, despite selectively slaughering millions, Hitler had charisma and his pleasant moments. There, I said it. Godwin's law: you win. Hope you don't get sick in Canada.
Me: "Oh, and for this benefit, at least in Ontario, you have to agree to never leave the province or pay back whatever health services you ever received at whatever rate is dictated."
Section D clearly has one sign under, among other things, "I confirm that: ()I make and intend to continue making my permanent and principle home in Ontario."
I inquired what "permanent" means in this context, because there is a subsequent "() I will be physically present in Ontario for at least 5 months (153 days) in the 12-month period immediately after this application." I was told, in no uncertain terms, that having any plans to ever possibly leave (as a software engineer, I work all over North America, for extend periods outside Canada), would be construed as non-permanent intent, and fraud on my part, if I signed the form.
I can understand a reasonable waiting period to obtain coverage, and even a reasonable residency requirement. But, I cannot accept a permanent residency requirement, or non-disclosure of the amounts to be repaid if residency is cut short. That smacks of tactics of the former Soviet Union and desparation on the part of the Ontario government.
There is also a section, where one is asked, "How long do you intend to live in Ontario? ()permanently ()temporarily"" reinforcing the requirement for permanent residency to obtain coverage.
You don't pay back your money for services if you leave, in fact, OHIP pays for up to 3 months of your coverage if you move to another province, just like most other provinces do.
OHIP provides for up to three months of coverage (at OHIP rates, rather useless in the U.S.), if you leave the province, yes, but this is intended for temporary leaves.
What's worse is that many employers (and certainly mine, for the year or so I was in Ontario), won't provide ANY benefits unless you subscribe to the government system (This is the law for suplemental health benefits: they must be suplemental and not replacements for covered services -- it is illegal for those eligible for healthcare coverage to pay for it. So-called "private" clinics have been tolerated, but a crack-down on them started recently, citing that they violate the Health Act."
In the end, I signed a version of the form, replacing "permanently" where appropriate, with "not less than 153 days", submitted it, and was granted an OHIP card. I made clear the modification I made, and that I would not make a false declaration. The clerk responded that "that's impossible -- the form is secure" so I did not press the matter. This enabled me to get employment benefits. My wife and son were not so lucky (though only I needed coverage to keep my job): my wife was refused on the grounds that she could not prove she lived with me -- she was asked for a bank account statement listing an Ontario address, but when she provided one issued by her U.S. bank, this was suddenly not acceptable. I was told my son would have to renounce his American citizenship (or I do so in his stead), to obtain coverage. My wife is Canadian by birth, and our son American by birth, and Canadian by blood. It was not worth the legal fees to file suit against the Ontario government.
Despite having OHIP coverage, I never used it, and chose to pay for services rendered to my wife and son in Canada.
We now live in the Seattle, WA area, and have excellent health insurance (my employer pays the US$1160 or so monthly premiums -- this is a non-taxable benefit, and typical in the U.S. (though the coverage is far better than most, with no copays)).
A side effect of the low taxes I pay here, is that I can contribute several hundred dollars a month to various charities that provide care to the destitute. I could never afford to do that in Canada.
In Canada you pay hefty taxes for healthcare that is promised but rarely delivered: waiting lines are so long that most people referred to a cardiac specialist die before they ever get to see one. My father was denied lifesaving surgery (well at first his doctors refused to disclose his need for it lest he want it), and was so impoverished by the taxes he paid over his working life that he could not afford to purchase it himself (easily paid several times over if he had saved the tax dollars earmarked for healtcare). Bunch of murdering bastards, the Canadian government is.
Oh, and for this benefit, at least in Ontario, you have to agree to never leave the province or pay back whatever health services you ever received at whatever rate is dictated.
The elderly get short shrift here: since they generally don't pay significant taxes after their earning years, it makes little sense to provide care to them: they're a drain on the system, rather than a revenue source. This despite probably having paid most into the healthcare system via their income taxes.
I remember a decade ago that many radio talk shows covering "fixing" the Canadian healthcare crisis got lots of calls from senior citizens arguing against reform because they could not afford to pay for healthcare. Today these same seniors call in to complain that they'd been robbed and cheated by paying into a healthcare system that has left them unserved and destitute.
Ever see a mob (like, say, strikers on a picket line) outside a store preventing customers from entering? Or someone inundated with hate mail or a petition?
Well, as a libertarian, if pressed, I'd generally lean Republican instead of Democrat, if those were my only two options.
However, as of late, Republicans have lost all sense of small government and fiscal restraing, while moving dangerously toward a theocracy.
I'dve preferred a Democrat President just to move the Administration at odds with the House and Senate and provide some room for reflection (Stalemated governments do little good, but can't do much bad either).
Of course, I can't vote in U.S. elections (and would've voted Libertarian rather than for a perceived lesser of two evils if I could), so my opinion is rather moot.
Sounds good to me too.:-) All together now: "Good Riddance!" Though, you'll find Canadians generally find Democrats too far to the right (yes, "the right" ?!) for their liking.
Saw a comical map of U.S.A. and Canada with the post-election democratic States combined with Canada to form the "United States of Canada", and the (religeous right) republican areas labeled "Jesusland".
Second, since I'm Canadian.. these are my tax dollars too
Typical Canadian attitide: "I'm being robbed blind, so I'll be damned if you aren't as well."
How long will it be before Canadians realize just how badly their government is robbing and murdering (taking tax $ for "healthcare" and then not providing it in life and death situations despite more having been paid in taxes that the cost to pay for lifesaving surgery required) them?
Canadian culture is all about identifying with an impoverished group unable to sustain it's desired goals in order to get a handout stolen from hardworking individuals.
I, at least, managed to leave -- temporarily anyway, and hopefully permanently. I will not stand by and be taxed to support an ongoing genocide of the productive: Americans (and others) get my charity freely, instead.
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By that reasoning, it is better to let the state kill you, and harvest your organs to be transplanted into recipients who desperately need them -- you can save more lives dead than you can support (your own) alive.
That reasoning resulted in my father being taxed for national health care in Canada, but when he needed lifesaving surgery, he was denied it, even though it would have cost far less than he had contributed over the years. Communist Canadian bastards murdered him.
Granted, the U.S. is not Canada (thank deity_of_choice), but whether the former U.S.S.R., Canada, or the U.S., large-scale government involvement in just about anything yields the worst possible management. Small scale local governments are more adaptable to their community's unique needs, more answerable to their residents, and more easily overthrown when things go bad.
People should not have to involuntarily subsidize services they do not use, unless a clear and direct benefit to them can be demonstrated. Even then, I'd be wary about forcing direct support. An example might be street lights in less desirable neighborhoods permitting crime to be better controlled by making not providing a safe haven where petty thieves can hide under cover of darkness -- this can reduce insurance and policing costs for everyone.
You'd think that their left hand would know what their right hand was doing. You'd think wrong.
For example, he'd ask, "How long live you United States?".
Did he want to know how long I had lived in the U.S. in total (5-1/2 years mostly on an H1-B with LC and GC pending)?
Did he want to know how long how long I had been currently in the U.S. (Not at all since I'd returned to Canada following the telcom bust).
If I misinterpreted his question, my answer could be construed as a lie, and a commitment of a felony (lying to an immigration officer).
Frustrated, I answered, "I do not now live in the United States. I returned to Canada from the U.S. in January 2002, as required by the terms of my visa. I have lived in the United States, legally, from 1999 to 2002."
I was worried that my longish (but accurate) answer would have been misinterpreted as misleading.
Another person was yelled at: "You pay... that man... $110!" He acted confused. I could imagine that he didn't want to pay "that man" $110 (perhaps thinking it a bribe) because he needed the $110 to pay his processing fee to the cashier.
As for me, I was admitted, and approved for a new H1-B (which will require a border trip soon).
I thought that it was acceptable to treat "stuck" traffic signals as stop signs, after waiting one cycle (to see if they were, in fact stuck).
Granting, the whole issue of what is "long enough" for a particular light is questionable, but it should stand as a reasonable defense against the ticket.
I maintain that this is not a DDOS, or distributed denial of service attack, despite the fact that the attacking (accessing?) agents are distributed, and the cummulative effect may result in denial of service.
However, this only happens if enough people voluntarily chose to run the screen saver. Lycos has not control over how many people do that. It's rather like calling for a picket against some place of business and having thousands of people show up, mill back and forth, and make it difficult for people to conduct business. There is no guarantee that enough people will show up to be disruptive. Furthermore, people can chose to stop participating at any time.
The effect is distributed, but it sucessfully denying service can't be guaranteed by the instigator: he is providing a tool that lets people access a particular web site repeatedly. There are lots of tools that do that: I have an automatically updating stock ticker on my Fedora Core 2 box, for example. Perhaps a lot of people chose to run a similar stock ticker. Heck, my Vonage locked VoIP ATA hits a .mil timeserver repeatedly (Vonage support personnel insist this is with permission, though why they can't provide their own time server I don't know -- it's not like the ATA should need a stratum 2 clock source).
Even the argument that a single user repeatedly hitting a web site is "theft of service" fails if the level of that single user's access is low enough to be, by itself, insignificant.
If anything, this is a DAOS, or distribute access of service protest mechanism. I would not be quick to call it an attack. A peaceful protest is probably the best analogy -- rather like people assembling outside a controversial place of business making it uncomfortable, but not impossible, for patrons to enter.
What's missing is only the local police showing up to disperse the crowd. Certainly a technical system could be designed where a court can authorise blanket "cease access to this site for this length of time" orders to major ISPs, if this were desired.
Of course, there may be a legal case to be made against the instigator of such distributed access, if it can be proven that there was malicious intent to disable the target site. I don't think that's the case here: there may be a tort case because the "backoff" mechanism failed, but that does not strike me as criminal.
Rather, it's a bunch of people coordinating their requests for information. At worst, it's civil disobedience (though not directed at government) or an organized, peaceful protest.
I had a similar idea a while back, where people supportive of a cause could voluntarily elect to permit their computers to engage in simultaneous activity coordinated from a single point. It's cool to see this.
Just thought I'd mention that the control processors for Chiaro's fully optical uber-routers (how many OC-192s?) run on FreeBSD.
"Certified by the telco" probably just means that it was deemed acceptable to connect to their network, i.e. that it would do no harm, not that the telco would guarnetee that it would work as you expect -- that would be between you and the manufacturer.
Does the telco in question sell or lease their own phones, or offer an operational (and not just interconnect) certification? If so, using anything else is likely at your own risk.
There should, at least, be minimum and maximum ringing levels (frequency, cadence, duration, and level) at which the ringer should ring, and specs for acceptable non-ringing signals.
I know that the equipment we provided stayed well within the specs documented by the telco in qustion -- "ring tap" was a problem we took seriously.
Of course, I have no way of knowing if those specs were "sloppy" or enforced on certification of third-party equipment, leading to your problem. If the problem you encountered were widespread, we certainly would have heard of it.
I suspect that your equipment was just outside the design parameters that were followed (that's always a risk when third-party stuff is involved). From your description of the fix, it sounds like it lacked a "snubbing network" around an electronic ringer that it should have had.
IIRC, on what is and is not a derivative work, he replied, "It depends."
This makes sense in a way, becuase the term "derivative work" is implied to be taken in the context of copyright law, and not some technical test to be met.
The automated tests were not designed to make the phone ring, unless it was way too sensitive.
Of course, that might have been the case, if you had a defective phone.
For all our apparant risk-taking and bravado, I think that technical people are ultra-conservative: we're just better at evaluating technical risks than most.
So, when someone counters with a "what if" that challenges a theory of a problem that we have, we give it disproportionate attention: anything possible and risky must be disproven before we can proceed.
The right thing to do, of course, is to take the counter-arguments to our theories in stride, and disprove them by carefully crafted experiment. That's the scientific method.
Alas, the world does not work that was: merely accepting the possibility that one's theory may have a flaw is an acceptance of defeat. Game over. You don't get to run that experiment. At least that's the way it is nine times out of ten.
Even daring to speak up against such odds is folly: leadership is born not of technical acumen but of those who have amassed sufficient power to discharge a challenge on the weakness of the slightest uncertainty instead of the merits of an objective test. It is also a precarious position: butressed more by luck than skill. I don't know if "leaders" sleep peacefully because they can shrug off uncertainties or because they are ignorantly oblivious of them.
The best one can do is to be truthful without angering the "gods" too much and to satisfy one's self with the somewhat smug knowledge that fire was tamed by an engineer willing to risk getting burned and not a manager afraid of a blister.
Honestly, it never came up.
Look, a resume proves you can "talk the talk".
An interview is your opportunity to prove that you can "walk the walk" as well.
No brainer: TCP/IP (already supported) over Ethernet or PPP (serial). I quoted 2-3 weeks to implement the application layer stuff over that.
Idiot insisted that "for an embedded system", TCP/IP was "too fat" of a footprint: replace it with a home grown solution: we "only" had 128 MB RAM, "after all".
My protests that anything I could do in three weeks would be unlikely to be "leaner" than an embedded TCP/IP implementation fell on deaf ears. I was asked to implement a TCP/IP look- alike in three weeks from scratch.
Well, it took six, (admitedly for a functional, but half-assed job) and I got shat on royally for "taking too long".
So, I too, have been in dev hell.
Giving my resignation to that asshole was a most pleasant experience. The $7k or so relo expense payback was not so much fun, but easily offset by the signing bonus for my next job.
My advise to those with idiots for managers is to keep your nose to the ground, and look for a better opportunity. Don't quit until you get something better lined up.
This guy was a real piece of work: two days after I started, he started sending me anti-American email (being a Canadian firm in Canada, this was fair game). Since my son is an American citizen, I was not amused.
About five years ago, I worked for a major test equipment manufacturer who was contracted to deliver a test system for POTS lines (which could eventually do ADSL prequalification) to a national telco in a major European country. The idea was to test every POTS line in the system (millions of them) every night to detect early signs of degradation so repair crews could be dispatched before dialtone was completely lost.
As you can imagine, this involved a distributed system of test heads in each central office, networked back to a central command and control site. The sysem worked well, but had one flaw: downloading new firmware to the test heads was fraught with problems, and often led to the test head "locking up", even though a backup copy of firmware was always present, along with a hardware watchdog timer (though it was possible to lock out the watchdog interrupt, particularly when reprogramming flash, so it was a less than perfect watchdog). In these situations, one had to dispatch a "truck roll" to the affected central office, and replace EPROMs by hand.
Needless to say, the customer was pissed. More worrying was that even if we fixed the software download problem (which we were unable to reproduce in the lab), was that we'd be paying for truck rolls all over the country. This was a not insignificant amount of money.
Management frittered away time, instead of authorizing a root cause analysis, by requesting tweaks to TCP/IP operating parameters, and testing to see if the problem was getting better or worse. This did not prove illuminating, time was wasted, and the customer was getting royally angry.
Finally, a small team of us were permitted to undertake a root cause analysis to find and fix the problem: the engineer responsible for the embedded flash file system, the telecom engineer on the control side, and I: responsible for the embedded O/S, and TCP/IP stack (inherited from the supplier of the embedded O/S). We wanted a month. We got two weeks. Remember, deploying experimental software to live COs requires so many layers of approval, it isn't funny, and we were worried that would be our biggest bottleneck.
Finally, the controller telecom engineer was able to reproduce the problem, by attempting to download software from our controllers to deployed equipment in a single central office (getting permission was a feat in itself -- while there was little danger of affecting telephone service, this was a live CO).
The problem was clear: the data network was slow (9600 b/s over an X.25 PVC, carrying PPP-encapsulated TCP/IP), resulting in the use of large MTUs to minimize packetizing overhead (latency wasn't an issue - throughput was). Because of the way the controller's TCP/IP stack worked, it misestimated the packet/ack round trip time: it used a one byte payload for the first packet, and full MTUs after that. The resulting packet ACK timeout and retransmissions exposed an inconsistency between controller and embedded TCP/IP stacks that caused the embedded system to lock up.
Great. Now, how to fix it?
The fix wasn't a big deal (I implemented a fix in the embedded TCP/IP code since we didn't have source to the controller TCP/IP stack), but deploying it was: remember we couldn't download the code sucessfully, and we didn't want to pay for a truck roll.
At this point, I proposed something daring: download a small patch, in as few packets as possible (we could send three full MTUs safely). which would patch the existing code in place, which would be good enough to reliably download a complete replacement.
The thought of "self-modifying code" freaked management out to no end: it went against every rule in the book. But all three of us stood our ground: the only other alternative was a truck roll to each central office in the country. Reluctantly, we were allowed to proceed with that fix.
At this point, we had about ten days left. I had managed to get approval to pipeline the dev and tes
Having logged out for years using Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, this was a tough habit to break (and my wife still oopses over this one frequently).
Granted, assigning temporary device ownership to non-root console logins was a nice modern touch, but not making it in harmony with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace was a real pain. I suppose one could argue that "drastic" console X session termination does not have to be clean, but I'd counter that if such termination logs one out of the console, the usual console logout functions should be at least attempted.
Everything old is new again!
I suppose one can have the intent to reside in Ontario permanently, but still move at some time in the distant future. But, then the argument hinges on what one's intent was. That's murky enough for me to set off alarm bells.
What reasonable person, could honestly "intend" to reside somewhere permanently? Someone knowing they have a limited number of days/months/years to live? Perhaps. I know that if I become unemployed I will certainly look far and wide for employment. Heck, I'm always on the lookout for a significantly better job (thought the present one leaves me quite satisfied). To boot, I have a history of moving internationally for employment, visa, and tax reasons. Any argument I might make about "permanent residency intent", could be easily ripped to shreds.
I'm fairly certain that strict interpretation of the OHIP application agreement against large numbers of people leaving Ontario won't happen, at least not in the near future -- it would be political suicide. But, like many Canadian laws, and required agreements, many may run afoul of this one, so it can be used selectively, like a club, against so-called "troublemakers": perhaps persons, like myself, who dare criticize a broken system. I see that as a sign of a desperate govenment aparatus, and quite revealing of the effectiveness, or rather ineffectiveness, of government policy: socialized medicine,as implemented in Canada, does not work.
So, I look at a strict interpretation of laws, and required agreements ("Sure, you can get an OHIP card! Agree to this!! Just sign!!!" Yeah, right), to see of one can reasonably live in a place that has them. I've come to the conclusion that it is impossible to survive as a law-abiding person in Canada.
If you've taken the time to read that rambling, abhorrent work, Mein Kamph (tr. "My Fight"), the author (the mention of who's name would lead to shouts of "Godwin's Law! You Lose!"), notes that most people are not downright evil, but rather generally corrupt: they'll speed, cheat on their taxes, and accept bribes, but are unlikely to rape, maim, or kill. Threatened exposure and punishment of such corruption is enough to "keep them in line". Just pass so many laws that just about everyone has to break some of them just to survive.
I do not wish to live in a society like that, and, to be fair, Canada certainly is not incinerating Jews by the millions. But, Canada IS slowly murdering taxpayers by preventing them from saving their own lives with resources they had earned. I don't blindly accept the notion that attrocity should be measured by a ruler marked in "millions killed per year", letting Canada slip under the radar that finally revealed the horrors of Nazi German rule. Attrocity should be measured by the degree of state interference in the lives of its citizens. The Canadian Health Care system is thus most definately abominably atrocious.
To point to its few successes is as sickening as to note that, despite selectively slaughering millions, Hitler had charisma and his pleasant moments. There, I said it. Godwin's law: you win. Hope you don't get sick in Canada.
The scary thing is... they vote! :-(
Oh, and yes, I promptly surrendered the OHIP card I was issued but never used, when we left Ontario.
Baloney! Can you provide a reference?
Check out the application forms.
Section D clearly has one sign under, among other things, "I confirm that: ()I make and intend to continue making my permanent and principle home in Ontario."
I inquired what "permanent" means in this context, because there is a subsequent "() I will be physically present in Ontario for at least 5 months (153 days) in the 12-month period immediately after this application." I was told, in no uncertain terms, that having any plans to ever possibly leave (as a software engineer, I work all over North America, for extend periods outside Canada), would be construed as non-permanent intent, and fraud on my part, if I signed the form.
I can understand a reasonable waiting period to obtain coverage, and even a reasonable residency requirement. But, I cannot accept a permanent residency requirement, or non-disclosure of the amounts to be repaid if residency is cut short. That smacks of tactics of the former Soviet Union and desparation on the part of the Ontario government.
There is also a section, where one is asked, "How long do you intend to live in Ontario? ()permanently ()temporarily"" reinforcing the requirement for permanent residency to obtain coverage.
You don't pay back your money for services if you leave, in fact, OHIP pays for up to 3 months of your coverage if you move to another province, just like most other provinces do.
OHIP provides for up to three months of coverage (at OHIP rates, rather useless in the U.S.), if you leave the province, yes, but this is intended for temporary leaves.
What's worse is that many employers (and certainly mine, for the year or so I was in Ontario), won't provide ANY benefits unless you subscribe to the government system (This is the law for suplemental health benefits: they must be suplemental and not replacements for covered services -- it is illegal for those eligible for healthcare coverage to pay for it. So-called "private" clinics have been tolerated, but a crack-down on them started recently, citing that they violate the Health Act."
In the end, I signed a version of the form, replacing "permanently" where appropriate, with "not less than 153 days", submitted it, and was granted an OHIP card. I made clear the modification I made, and that I would not make a false declaration. The clerk responded that "that's impossible -- the form is secure" so I did not press the matter. This enabled me to get employment benefits. My wife and son were not so lucky (though only I needed coverage to keep my job): my wife was refused on the grounds that she could not prove she lived with me -- she was asked for a bank account statement listing an Ontario address, but when she provided one issued by her U.S. bank, this was suddenly not acceptable. I was told my son would have to renounce his American citizenship (or I do so in his stead), to obtain coverage. My wife is Canadian by birth, and our son American by birth, and Canadian by blood. It was not worth the legal fees to file suit against the Ontario government.
Despite having OHIP coverage, I never used it, and chose to pay for services rendered to my wife and son in Canada.
We now live in the Seattle, WA area, and have excellent health insurance (my employer pays the US$1160 or so monthly premiums -- this is a non-taxable benefit, and typical in the U.S. (though the coverage is far better than most, with no copays)).
A side effect of the low taxes I pay here, is that I can contribute several hundred dollars a month to various charities that provide care to the destitute. I could never afford to do that in Canada.
Oh, and for this benefit, at least in Ontario, you have to agree to never leave the province or pay back whatever health services you ever received at whatever rate is dictated.
The elderly get short shrift here: since they generally don't pay significant taxes after their earning years, it makes little sense to provide care to them: they're a drain on the system, rather than a revenue source. This despite probably having paid most into the healthcare system via their income taxes.
I remember a decade ago that many radio talk shows covering "fixing" the Canadian healthcare crisis got lots of calls from senior citizens arguing against reform because they could not afford to pay for healthcare. Today these same seniors call in to complain that they'd been robbed and cheated by paying into a healthcare system that has left them unserved and destitute.
Ever see a mob (like, say, strikers on a picket line) outside a store preventing customers from entering? Or someone inundated with hate mail or a petition?
However, as of late, Republicans have lost all sense of small government and fiscal restraing, while moving dangerously toward a theocracy.
I'dve preferred a Democrat President just to move the Administration at odds with the House and Senate and provide some room for reflection (Stalemated governments do little good, but can't do much bad either).
Of course, I can't vote in U.S. elections (and would've voted Libertarian rather than for a perceived lesser of two evils if I could), so my opinion is rather moot.
Saw a comical map of U.S.A. and Canada with the post-election democratic States combined with Canada to form the "United States of Canada", and the (religeous right) republican areas labeled "Jesusland".
Typical Canadian attitide: "I'm being robbed blind, so I'll be damned if you aren't as well."
How long will it be before Canadians realize just how badly their government is robbing and murdering (taking tax $ for "healthcare" and then not providing it in life and death situations despite more having been paid in taxes that the cost to pay for lifesaving surgery required) them?
Canadian culture is all about identifying with an impoverished group unable to sustain it's desired goals in order to get a handout stolen from hardworking individuals.
I, at least, managed to leave -- temporarily anyway, and hopefully permanently. I will not stand by and be taxed to support an ongoing genocide of the productive: Americans (and others) get my charity freely, instead.