Sure, I think we all feel that way after reading this story. But the error could also lie with the Agency. If they are constantly asking for changes and new additions, what can the programmers do.
It seems to me that the idea of doing software as a project is purely fiction. Everybody knows that software has bugs, everybody knows that new features are needed as the landscape changes, and everybody knows that software can be made better. So why do people insist on this flawed idea of a project?
I've come to realize that properly specifying software in advance is unrealistic. People have a tough time thinking through what they actually need a system to do - nobody really knows what they want until they realize that what you have is not it. Then, they'll gladly whine about what's missing.
At my small, ASP software company, we don't sell software, we sell its utility. We manage information for school districts, and take all the work out. We do backups, upgrades, maintenance, etc. so the school district can get back to what they do best - teach.
We do upgrades very rapid-fire - often releasing more than once per week. We have a big, huge list of stuff we'd like to do, and as we move forward, we develop whatever's the next most important thing on the list. The list comes primarily from customer whines. We charge hourly rates for development, and basically refuse to bid by the job.
This lets us be VERY flexible as we learn more about the actual needs of the districts we work with - often changing specifications as development is happening. We don't focus on making things "bug free". We focus on fixing bugs rapidly, particularly when they cause a problem for the end user. This lets us get to what's actually needed by the customer FAST. And they LOVE IT!!!
An interesting side-effect of this methodology is that "feature creep" basically disappears - unnecessary features get pushed off because, even if they're cool, they're not what's "needed next" and so get filtered out.
When a change is needed, there's a simple evaluation of "is this important enough to do next?", and this evaluation filters out the crap ideas. Thus, problems like feature creep, bloat, and design by committee, effectively disappear as problems.
It's weird; the American culture values business skills more than any other (except maybe acting skills and legal skills), but these skills aren't even mentioned in public school.
That's just the law of supply and demand. With demand outstrips supply, prices rise. When supply outstrips demand, prices plummet.
Since the US educational system has ensured that those with effective business and leadership skills are in short supply, their salaries are higher.
I think you'd do very well to be a technology-savvy businessman. That's the niche I fill as the CTO of a small software company, and it's compensated me very well.
Your points are interesting. But they have already been largely mitigated!
1) Your points on overlapping windows is interesting. But KDE already addresses that. When I open a new window in KDE, it opens the new window over the area of greatest unused space. Overlapping continues, but as unobstructively as possible. Contrast that with Windows' means of opening windows about 1/4" below and to the right of the previously opened window, which almost assuredly wastes as much screen real estate as is possible.
2) Can't comment on shortcut keys and internationalization, other than to state that most programs let you customize this.
3) Multitudes of widgets with overlapping functionality. Care to elaborate?
4) "Jumpyness" is more natural! When you flip pages in a book, you go from one page straight to the next. It doesn't "slide", you flip it and that's it. How is page up/down any different?
There are NO mitigating circumstances for rape. You ARE blaming the victim. Women are perfectly entitled to go to a wild party alone. They're perfectly entitled to dress how they like. They're even entitled to get drunk. That someone can't control his desires does not make it in any way her fault.
It's law in the state of California that the pedestrian ALWAYS gets the right of way on a public highway. I agree with this law - people are much more sensitive to collisions than cars. But, if somebody struts across Interstate 5 without paying attention to the cars, I won't be surprised if they get hit, and I won't necessarily blame the driver.
You're confusing legality with cause. If I am a sexy 20-something blonde female in a scanty party outfit, and I walk a dark street in the bad end of town at 2:00 AM, and get mugged, the mugger is guilty of a crime, and should be prosecuted. But in this scenario, I'm guilty of personal endangerment.
Don't confuse "right" with reality. One is an ideal society will ever chase, and the other is practicality that, if ignored, can cause immense personal pain.
You sir are a bad parent. I don't care what you say or what you do other than the above, but you're not only making your kids want to bully others (yes you are, if I hit person Y we both get punished. Why not hit person Y when I WANT them punished?).
How does teaching children to not be victims make them any more likely to be aggressive? Somehow, they've all grown up peaceful and very intellectual. (My twin 17 Y.O. are in their 2nd year of college) My theory is that by learning to stand up to the injustices of the world, they don't harbor unexpressed anger, and can then focus on the better parts of life.
My dad always used to say "stand up for yourself, kick the shit out of that bully" and I did. I leveled 7 guys in 1 fight and they never picked on me again. Didn't stop another person comming along and doing it though, only time it stopped is when my brother's friends (read : Rugby team 5 years older) found out and kicked the shit out of the new kids. And the reason I got bullied wasn't for my disability (I have shit legs) or my geeky nature, it was just because I was a person in the right place at the right time (read : Playground). But will that stop the next bully or should I always answer with my fists? Some times it's better to take a kick to the groin and learn from it than to "stick up for yourself". Something your kids are going to struggle to accept.
There's a big difference between "kick the shit out of the bully" and "don't be a victim". One is an aggressive act, another is a demand for respect. They do not equate.
Also may I ask you what you would tell your daughter if she got raped? Would you go "wow you have a vagina! So your fault!" or would you sit down, eat your humble pie and learn that SHIT HAPPENS PREPARED OR NOT?
From my original post:
I counsel my kids that it's usually their fault when they are the victims.
Emphasis on usually.
Rapes happen. But there are almost always mitigating circumstances. Victim is at a wild party. Victim is drunk, with strangers. Victim is alone and in an isolated/vulnerable location. Victim is involved with unusual sexual activity, or has provoked an obviously aggressive party. Et cetera. Rare is the rape that's truly random.
Counseling my children to avoid these types of scenarios isn't bad parenting; it's good sense, and something that you would do well to consider.
As a father of 5 children, I counsel my kids that it's usually their fault when they are the victims. They are responsible for themselves and their own well being, and they are the ones who suffer when they don't ensure this.
Yes, bad people do mean things, and you can't stop that. But you can do many things to ensure that the bad people don't do those mean things to you. Whether by locking your bike, (so it's not stolen) avoiding dangerous situations, or by demanding respect early in a relationship.
There's a kid who lives nearby (whom I'll call Ray) who is a classic victim. It seems like, no matter what, things just don't work out for this kid. It's sad, really. But recently, this he has been hanging out at our house, and we've been counseling the him to stand up for himself. He really had no idea how much of his bad situations he had personally been contributing to, and the result is that, even though we aren't his parents, he's really bonded with us.
When a child is victimized, if the authority does nothing to teach the victim how to handle the situation from a position of strength, it reinforces their position of weakness. They are given the message that they need to be coddled by the authorities against the bad bullies, and I think that's just wrong. This then prevents the situation from actually improving long term, and when it gets bad enough, the victim pops and mows down a schoolyard with an AK-47.
Bullies should be punished, and frequently, so should the victims.
When fights break out among our kids, we punish both parties equally. While the aggressor gets punished for "taking things to the next level", the victim is punished for allowing it to happen to him/her. They can develop means to encourage aggressors to leave them the !@## alone, and they do.
Forget "fair". Life isn't fair, and law is just a set of consequences that only take effect when you get caught. Teaching towards not being in the victim role helps people avoid the pain of being taken advantage of, and being hurt by the very authorities put there to protect them.
For the record, actual fights are very rare in our household. Our children are usually described by others as unusual in how close, polite, and considerate they are towards each other. Said children range from age 9 to age 17.
But happy-go-lucky progress just doesn't cut it for security efforts. BIND is open source as well, but its security track record has been awful, especially by comparsion of the simplicity of a DNS server versus web servers (or any other kind of application)
Perhaps a bit ironic that you mention BIND. It's been quite a while since there's been a big security problem in BIND, and is currently the driving force in the largest security update to the DNS protocol in, like, decades - DNSSEC.
Yes, the BIND sources were pretty clumsy and took a while to "get it right". Despite that, it's also always been very stable, and despite the security flaws, has done a good job keeping the vast majority of the Internet together. And, AFAIK, BIND is standing on some pretty solid ground right about now...
Using a float to represent monetary amounts and expecting them to be free of rounding errors is as stupid as using integers to store zip codes and wondering where the leading zeros went from all the addresses in New England.
Hrrmm, well...
That would explain our lack of customer response in New England...
As technologies mature, they become infrastructure for other technologies, and slowly disappear from view.
I remember a time, not so very long ago, when the very idea of a cellular phone was just electrifying. I watched the James Bond shows where he had a phone in his car with envy!
Now, I have a cheap, reliable cell phone at my hip (pretty much) 24x7, and it's casual. I'm annoyed more often than not getting calls when I'm trying to get something done.
The current emphasis on computing as a communications and data storage/retrieval engine is a consequence of the still fairly recent availability of the Internet. Sure, it was available in most areas in 1995, but you don't generally consider a 28.8 Kbps MODEM as "mature". DSL service is now hitting solidly in most areas, and represents the minimum degree of technology that could be used for reliable information storage and retrieval.
So, the excitement is based around the new things that this technology makes possible.
Give it 10-20 years, and the pendulum will swing back the other way, EG: "Now that we've been collecting all this wonderful data, how do we put it all together to show us what to do next?".
Ok, so I replied with a joke a few minutes ago... but I think this warrants more intelligent discussion.
As a vendor of a web-based, access-restricted product, keyloggers are a real issue. I've been considering setting up client-side SSL certificates in order to restrict access to only machines that have been "set up" in order to deal with the problem of keyloggers. Are there better solutions?
Does this bank have something that's: A) Easy to use, B) doesn't require painful machine-by-machine setup, and C) significantly improves security?
Ok, so we have a keylogger on the victim's machine, ostensibly to lift the login name and password. Then, we have an "attacker" who tries 9 times to type it in?
Is it just me, or are we dealing with a fundamentally stupid attacker?
If I use a keylogger to lift a login/pw, it shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 attempts to get it right.... perhaps I'm just a smarter attacker than most?
People ask why I never call anyone from my mobile phone, and instead go find a landline instead... it's because I want to be able to hear and be heard. Why do you think most of the civilized world switched from wireless television to cable?
Ehh.... I went from "rabbit-ears" T.V. to satellite Dish/DVR. Both are forms of wireless signal delivery. The DVR is set up to use cables, but the actual TV signal is broadcast to my TV via a wireless signal repeater, and the remote control is also wireless!
The only reason why Cellular kinda sucks is because the current signal allocation by the FCC is very inefficient, leaving giant swaths of unused bandwidth "in between" existing channel allocations. Requiring more accurate signal filtering could easily 10x the amount of signal that can be carried in a frequency range. Switching to a technology (such as Ultra Wide Band) that makes better use of the available bandwidth would cause even more prominent exponential increases in signal quality and bandwidth.
When somebody "gets one over" on you, there are a bazillion ways to fight back. This is a funny, insightful, and comprehensive explanation of just how many options you really have.
It's amazing what you can do with a $0.99 bottle of super-glue! (Hint - a drop or two in each keyhole of his car door locks can be very entertaining)
An international treaty is considered law here, but that does not mean it is immune from constitutional questions. This treaty must be balanced with the bill of rights, so there is obviously lots of litigation in the future if it is actually enforced...
Somehow Macs do this and manage to be sexy at the same time. That said, I have a PC at work and home. I'd buy a Mac for home except that Macs are sadly lacking in the one field in which I work (video game development).
Never seemed to stop ID Software. Perhaps you need to take a look at the toolkits you are using?
Good. Now if only my local government would listen to me and stop wasting millions of dollars on MS licenses. (Their "compatibility" issue boils down to being compatible with the printer -- they always print out their stuff on letterhead and mail it through the post!)
Remember, that Linux is as "free" if your time is. If your time has value, then Linux can get quite expensive. That's how come RedHat can make a decent amount of bank selling a "free" product!
However, if your time has little financial value, that will tend to tilt the scales so that Linux becomes more cost-effective.
Look at it this way:
Setting up a printer the Windows Way (tm): 1) Buy whatever printer. 2) Unpack printer printer 3) Plug in printer. (computer asks for driver disk) 4) Insert driver disk, click ok. 5) Click ok a few more times. May select "no" on loading yet another dumb, free image editor. 6) Done.
Setting up a printer the Linux Way: 1) Before buying printer, check Linux compatability at linuxprinting.org. 2) Try to find one of the half-dozen printers you think you'll like by calling all local vendors. 3) When you find one, go to the store, and check the revision numbers to make sure you know what you're buying. 4) Buy the printer, bring it home. 5) Unpack printer printer 6) Plug in printer. Nothing noticable happens. 7) Download the CUPS driver you found in step 1. 8) Pray to god that all the revs match, and that you have all the deps met for CUPS and the printer driver. If not, spend half a day sorting this out. 9) Print your sample page, and pray to god it works. 6) Done.
The Linux way is more time intensive. If you are paying your staff $35/hour (not atypical for qualified clerical staff) then spending that extra 2 or 3 hours of time just may not be worth it, especially if you consider the time it takes to train people to do steps 1-6 for Linux printing! In that case, it might pay to shell out $500 for Windows and related software!
When $500 represents 2 days of paid staff time, it's a small investment when compared to the annual cost of that employee. But, when it represents 1 month of paid staff time, it's a very different equation!
Why don't you just secure your network and you don't have to worry about it.
In my life, I've identified a few key words that are highly accurate in ferreting out people who waste time. One of these is "paradigm". Those who wax poetic about "paradigm" are typically those who haven't bothered to figure out how things work, and are trying to convince you to do whatever it is that they think might work.
Big waste - RUN!
I've come to discover that "just" is a key word. It positively identifies those who have no idea what they're talking about. The most rediculous, inane, and useless activities I've ever seen all started with the word "just" in the job description. Like:
"Solar power is feasible - just bring down the cost of manufacturing"...
or,
"Sex is no big deal - just get a girlfriend"... (big one for many who peruse these boards)
or,
"The software works great - we just need to change a few basic assumptions..."
So, watch that word, "just". It usually fortells major catastrophe and certainly unrealistic expectations!
Remember back in the DOS days? I do. My first HD was 40 megs. I was ALWAYS backing up to floppies. Not out of fear the drive would die, but because I was always having to move things on and off the HD to because of the limited space.
I find that my usage patterns adapt to the amount of disk space available, which remains fairly constant, regardless of the size of the media. I remember with alternating loathe and fondness, the 10 MB drive in my first 80286, and the efforts I went through to zip archive all my programs, and have them unpack dynamically on demand just before run, run the program, then re-zip them all.
To this day, I find that my disks are all about 70% full, all the time, no matter the size. As the usage climbs into the 90% range, I "discover" all kinds of ways to conserve space - stream my MP3 collection from a network source rather than keep a copy on each of my computers, move infreqently accessed stuff to a "backpack" USB drive, (effectively, a variation on the ancient solution using PKZip) or delete old copies of stuff I no longer need, such as MPEG files of movies I don't care about. (Do I really need to keep that once-watched, long forgotten episode of Firefly?)
It's true that the amount of attention I have to put out to keep that percentage in line has dropped, to where I don't adjust my space usage more often then every few months - but the overall pattern remains the same.
Add to that the color depth of the human eye. Granted, not 16 M colors, but still pretty high.
I would argue that the color depth of the human eye is much better than 16 M colors. Particularly when one color "fades" into another, I routinely see "color lines" where two very similar colors match up. 16 M colors is sufficient is where there's alot of contrasting colors and/or complex patterns. Heck, make the picture sufficiently contrasted/complex and 256 colors can do a decent job!
What's hard is the the realization that we don't "see" the world as a flat image, two images, or even a stereoscopic image. We "see" the world as a set of abstract concepts. We don't see a flat surface with a rough texture, we see a wall. We don't see a strangely shaped, brightly colored object that moves quickly, we see a "car". When driving, the specifics of other cars are seldom even noticed, let alone considered.
This is so much so that even when faced with two, substantially different items of the same type (EG: a barn) used for driving directions, we often have trouble discerning which barn to turn at!
So the first thing we'll have to do in decoding human sight is to separate the act of seeing from the act of decoding/interpreting. Then, I think we'll be getting somewhere.
For an astonishing, broad view of what I'm talking about, I'd recommend reading Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin. Written by a functional autistic, the author makes clear (for the first time, for me) many of the differences between animal and human perception.
It's a broad, sweeping work that kept me up for almost 48 hours straight - I just couldn't put it down!
Actually, the Linux kernel project DON'T have a choice. It is and will be GPL2. To switch to GPL3 would require getting the agreement of a very large number of people, living and dead...or just totally out of contact. This isn't going to happen.
But that's just not true.
See, the GPL would, on the surface, require that everybody who has contributed to the kernel to ok the license change. And, if any one of those contributors died, that would seem to be impossible.
But there are other ways under most laws. Most areas establish various publishers (EG: Newspapers) as "publishers of record". These are newspapers that reach a sufficicient percentage of the population that advertisements and the like in such are considered to be a matter of "public record".
This is a big deal.
When a newspaper or similar is a "publisher of record" then they are able to sell advertisements that are legally binding, such as notices of suit.
If you wanted to sue an individual known to live in an area, but you aren't sure where, you merely have to publish notice of suit in a "publisher of record" for that area.
If nobody shows at the court date, well, you've won, and nobody can say otherwise, because you published the date in a publisher of record within the jurisdiction involved.
To change the license, the current maintainers merely need to publish their intentions in a "publisher of record" for the scope involved (the world) and satisfactorially handle all negative feedback. AFAIK, this simply means that they publish their intentions for license change for a "reasonable period of time" on their website, and then make the change. (IANAL, etc) When they do, they change the license by default.
They may have to pick a publication (such as the NY Times) with a significant global readership. Whatever - the lawyers can decide. But it's still entirely possible.
You should visit some public high schools in poor areas some day. Hard work won't change that drugs are rampant, gangs rule the hallways, and you can't get a real education.
I sure have. That's why I'm a proud and vocal advocate for alternative education. I've made a career of it, and I enjoy the altruism that my career affords!
Maybe you should go talk to real people that are poor. Two parents working two full time minimum wage jobs have trouble supporting a family. It may open your eyes that even though hard work can often result in success, for those in impovershied areas, or for those who are born with disadvantages or into a disadvantageous situation, hard work is necessary for survival, and that is often barely achieved.
There will *always* be those who don't make it. No amount of wealth or economic success can change that. What's important is to provide the "hooks" necessary so that the very poor can become the very rich if they set their minds to it.
You're the one that needs to get real and realize that not everyone is born with a bevy of opportunities, and it's not easy to succeed, even with hard work.
What you describe is the ideal, not the reality. Not everybody can be rich/successful. But the developed world has probably gotten closer to this ideal than at any other time in human history. Don't underestimate this achievement - not only is this the best time in human history in this regard, but if we don't preserve this civilization through it's many challenges, we may never again do so.
The thing is, in that P2P fantasy world where everyone shares their connection and gives back to the community and there are no evil corporations charging us monthly fees, major latency would be the norm and the internet would become much more regionalised than it is now. Online gaming, for example, would all but die, surviving only in tightnit local groups.
The march of technology makes the cost of providing N bandwidth drop every year, following a near exponential curve. Following this trend, it's easy to see how the cost of providing bandwidth drops to the point where individuals can afford to provide quality connections that now cost thousands.
Perhaps you don't remember the day when a 128k connection cost $1,000 per month or more? Now, such bandwidth is available for under $20/month in many contexts.
That P4 under your desk probably has more comptational power than existed worldwide in 1980. Certainly true for 1970. Yet, you can replace the Mobo and chip for less than a day's wages.
Why is it unrealistic to think that long-range, cheap, P2P broadband isn't possible, yet alone likely, in just a few more decades?
BTW, "improved color vision" is relative. Birds have receptors for four colors rather than three. Early mammals lost two of the four, which is why your dog is "color blind". Our lineage re-gained a third, though not the same as either of the two that our ancestors had lost. There was an article about this in Scientific American a month or two back.
Not only that, but a small percentage of women are quadrichromatic - they see an additional color that the rest of us do not.
Slashdot Mirror
Who else read "Oopsware" instead of "Opsware"?
Sure, I think we all feel that way after reading this story. But the error could also lie with the Agency. If they are constantly asking for changes and new additions, what can the programmers do.
It seems to me that the idea of doing software as a project is purely fiction. Everybody knows that software has bugs, everybody knows that new features are needed as the landscape changes, and everybody knows that software can be made better. So why do people insist on this flawed idea of a project?
I've come to realize that properly specifying software in advance is unrealistic. People have a tough time thinking through what they actually need a system to do - nobody really knows what they want until they realize that what you have is not it. Then, they'll gladly whine about what's missing.
So I've come to embrace Agile software development as my strategy.
At my small, ASP software company, we don't sell software, we sell its utility. We manage information for school districts, and take all the work out. We do backups, upgrades, maintenance, etc. so the school district can get back to what they do best - teach.
We do upgrades very rapid-fire - often releasing more than once per week. We have a big, huge list of stuff we'd like to do, and as we move forward, we develop whatever's the next most important thing on the list. The list comes primarily from customer whines. We charge hourly rates for development, and basically refuse to bid by the job.
This lets us be VERY flexible as we learn more about the actual needs of the districts we work with - often changing specifications as development is happening. We don't focus on making things "bug free". We focus on fixing bugs rapidly, particularly when they cause a problem for the end user. This lets us get to what's actually needed by the customer FAST. And they LOVE IT!!!
An interesting side-effect of this methodology is that "feature creep" basically disappears - unnecessary features get pushed off because, even if they're cool, they're not what's "needed next" and so get filtered out.
When a change is needed, there's a simple evaluation of "is this important enough to do next?", and this evaluation filters out the crap ideas. Thus, problems like feature creep, bloat, and design by committee, effectively disappear as problems.
It's weird; the American culture values business skills more than any other (except maybe acting skills and legal skills), but these skills aren't even mentioned in public school.
That's just the law of supply and demand. With demand outstrips supply, prices rise. When supply outstrips demand, prices plummet.
Since the US educational system has ensured that those with effective business and leadership skills are in short supply, their salaries are higher.
I think you'd do very well to be a technology-savvy businessman. That's the niche I fill as the CTO of a small software company, and it's compensated me very well.
Your points are interesting. But they have already been largely mitigated!
1) Your points on overlapping windows is interesting. But KDE already addresses that. When I open a new window in KDE, it opens the new window over the area of greatest unused space. Overlapping continues, but as unobstructively as possible. Contrast that with Windows' means of opening windows about 1/4" below and to the right of the previously opened window, which almost assuredly wastes as much screen real estate as is possible.
2) Can't comment on shortcut keys and internationalization, other than to state that most programs let you customize this.
3) Multitudes of widgets with overlapping functionality. Care to elaborate?
4) "Jumpyness" is more natural! When you flip pages in a book, you go from one page straight to the next. It doesn't "slide", you flip it and that's it. How is page up/down any different?
There are NO mitigating circumstances for rape. You ARE blaming the victim. Women are perfectly entitled to go to a wild party alone. They're perfectly entitled to dress how they like. They're even entitled to get drunk. That someone can't control his desires does not make it in any way her fault.
It's law in the state of California that the pedestrian ALWAYS gets the right of way on a public highway. I agree with this law - people are much more sensitive to collisions than cars. But, if somebody struts across Interstate 5 without paying attention to the cars, I won't be surprised if they get hit, and I won't necessarily blame the driver.
You're confusing legality with cause. If I am a sexy 20-something blonde female in a scanty party outfit, and I walk a dark street in the bad end of town at 2:00 AM, and get mugged, the mugger is guilty of a crime, and should be prosecuted. But in this scenario, I'm guilty of personal endangerment.
Don't confuse "right" with reality. One is an ideal society will ever chase, and the other is practicality that, if ignored, can cause immense personal pain.
How does teaching children to not be victims make them any more likely to be aggressive? Somehow, they've all grown up peaceful and very intellectual. (My twin 17 Y.O. are in their 2nd year of college) My theory is that by learning to stand up to the injustices of the world, they don't harbor unexpressed anger, and can then focus on the better parts of life.
There's a big difference between "kick the shit out of the bully" and "don't be a victim". One is an aggressive act, another is a demand for respect. They do not equate.
From my original post:
Emphasis on usually.Rapes happen. But there are almost always mitigating circumstances. Victim is at a wild party. Victim is drunk, with strangers. Victim is alone and in an isolated/vulnerable location. Victim is involved with unusual sexual activity, or has provoked an obviously aggressive party. Et cetera. Rare is the rape that's truly random.
Counseling my children to avoid these types of scenarios isn't bad parenting; it's good sense, and something that you would do well to consider.
As a father of 5 children, I counsel my kids that it's usually their fault when they are the victims. They are responsible for themselves and their own well being, and they are the ones who suffer when they don't ensure this.
Yes, bad people do mean things, and you can't stop that. But you can do many things to ensure that the bad people don't do those mean things to you. Whether by locking your bike, (so it's not stolen) avoiding dangerous situations, or by demanding respect early in a relationship.
There's a kid who lives nearby (whom I'll call Ray) who is a classic victim. It seems like, no matter what, things just don't work out for this kid. It's sad, really. But recently, this he has been hanging out at our house, and we've been counseling the him to stand up for himself. He really had no idea how much of his bad situations he had personally been contributing to, and the result is that, even though we aren't his parents, he's really bonded with us.
When a child is victimized, if the authority does nothing to teach the victim how to handle the situation from a position of strength, it reinforces their position of weakness. They are given the message that they need to be coddled by the authorities against the bad bullies, and I think that's just wrong. This then prevents the situation from actually improving long term, and when it gets bad enough, the victim pops and mows down a schoolyard with an AK-47.
Bullies should be punished, and frequently, so should the victims.
When fights break out among our kids, we punish both parties equally. While the aggressor gets punished for "taking things to the next level", the victim is punished for allowing it to happen to him/her. They can develop means to encourage aggressors to leave them the !@## alone, and they do.
Forget "fair". Life isn't fair, and law is just a set of consequences that only take effect when you get caught. Teaching towards not being in the victim role helps people avoid the pain of being taken advantage of, and being hurt by the very authorities put there to protect them.
For the record, actual fights are very rare in our household. Our children are usually described by others as unusual in how close, polite, and considerate they are towards each other. Said children range from age 9 to age 17.
But happy-go-lucky progress just doesn't cut it for security efforts. BIND is open source as well, but its security track record has been awful, especially by comparsion of the simplicity of a DNS server versus web servers (or any other kind of application)
Perhaps a bit ironic that you mention BIND. It's been quite a while since there's been a big security problem in BIND, and is currently the driving force in the largest security update to the DNS protocol in, like, decades - DNSSEC.
Yes, the BIND sources were pretty clumsy and took a while to "get it right". Despite that, it's also always been very stable, and despite the security flaws, has done a good job keeping the vast majority of the Internet together. And, AFAIK, BIND is standing on some pretty solid ground right about now...
Using a float to represent monetary amounts and expecting them to be free of rounding errors is as stupid as using integers to store zip codes and wondering where the leading zeros went from all the addresses in New England.
Hrrmm, well...
That would explain our lack of customer response in New England...
As technologies mature, they become infrastructure for other technologies, and slowly disappear from view.
I remember a time, not so very long ago, when the very idea of a cellular phone was just electrifying. I watched the James Bond shows where he had a phone in his car with envy!
Now, I have a cheap, reliable cell phone at my hip (pretty much) 24x7, and it's casual. I'm annoyed more often than not getting calls when I'm trying to get something done.
The current emphasis on computing as a communications and data storage/retrieval engine is a consequence of the still fairly recent availability of the Internet. Sure, it was available in most areas in 1995, but you don't generally consider a 28.8 Kbps MODEM as "mature". DSL service is now hitting solidly in most areas, and represents the minimum degree of technology that could be used for reliable information storage and retrieval.
So, the excitement is based around the new things that this technology makes possible.
Give it 10-20 years, and the pendulum will swing back the other way, EG: "Now that we've been collecting all this wonderful data, how do we put it all together to show us what to do next?".
Ok, so I replied with a joke a few minutes ago... but I think this warrants more intelligent discussion.
As a vendor of a web-based, access-restricted product, keyloggers are a real issue. I've been considering setting up client-side SSL certificates in order to restrict access to only machines that have been "set up" in order to deal with the problem of keyloggers. Are there better solutions?
Does this bank have something that's: A) Easy to use, B) doesn't require painful machine-by-machine setup, and C) significantly improves security?
If so, I just might be interested!
Ok, so we have a keylogger on the victim's machine, ostensibly to lift the login name and password. Then, we have an "attacker" who tries 9 times to type it in?
Is it just me, or are we dealing with a fundamentally stupid attacker?
If I use a keylogger to lift a login/pw, it shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 attempts to get it right.... perhaps I'm just a smarter attacker than most?
Well, well. I'm not that afraid of kiddies who lack the clue to run diff.
diff?
Wow! What a cool tool! Now I know where to get started!
People ask why I never call anyone from my mobile phone, and instead go find a landline instead... it's because I want to be able to hear and be heard. Why do you think most of the civilized world switched from wireless television to cable?
Ehh.... I went from "rabbit-ears" T.V. to satellite Dish/DVR. Both are forms of wireless signal delivery. The DVR is set up to use cables, but the actual TV signal is broadcast to my TV via a wireless signal repeater, and the remote control is also wireless!
The only reason why Cellular kinda sucks is because the current signal allocation by the FCC is very inefficient, leaving giant swaths of unused bandwidth "in between" existing channel allocations. Requiring more accurate signal filtering could easily 10x the amount of signal that can be carried in a frequency range. Switching to a technology (such as Ultra Wide Band) that makes better use of the available bandwidth would cause even more prominent exponential increases in signal quality and bandwidth.
Yeah, but once you are off the damned lawn, then what?
I'd suggest that taking a look at a book that takes the subject seriously.
When somebody "gets one over" on you, there are a bazillion ways to fight back. This is a funny, insightful, and comprehensive explanation of just how many options you really have.
It's amazing what you can do with a $0.99 bottle of super-glue! (Hint - a drop or two in each keyhole of his car door locks can be very entertaining)
An international treaty is considered law here, but that does not mean it is immune from constitutional questions. This treaty must be balanced with the bill of rights, so there is obviously lots of litigation in the future if it is actually enforced ...
Did you forget the most important part?!?!
IANAL
Because it's obvious you aren't.
Somehow Macs do this and manage to be sexy at the same time. That said, I have a PC at work and home. I'd buy a Mac for home except that Macs are sadly lacking in the one field in which I work (video game development).
Never seemed to stop ID Software. Perhaps you need to take a look at the toolkits you are using?
Good. Now if only my local government would listen to me and stop wasting millions of dollars on MS licenses. (Their "compatibility" issue boils down to being compatible with the printer -- they always print out their stuff on letterhead and mail it through the post!)
Remember, that Linux is as "free" if your time is. If your time has value, then Linux can get quite expensive. That's how come RedHat can make a decent amount of bank selling a "free" product!
However, if your time has little financial value, that will tend to tilt the scales so that Linux becomes more cost-effective.
Look at it this way:
Setting up a printer the Windows Way (tm):
1) Buy whatever printer.
2) Unpack printer printer
3) Plug in printer. (computer asks for driver disk)
4) Insert driver disk, click ok.
5) Click ok a few more times. May select "no" on loading yet another dumb, free image editor.
6) Done.
Setting up a printer the Linux Way:
1) Before buying printer, check Linux compatability at linuxprinting.org.
2) Try to find one of the half-dozen printers you think you'll like by calling all local vendors.
3) When you find one, go to the store, and check the revision numbers to make sure you know what you're buying.
4) Buy the printer, bring it home.
5) Unpack printer printer
6) Plug in printer. Nothing noticable happens.
7) Download the CUPS driver you found in step 1.
8) Pray to god that all the revs match, and that you have all the deps met for CUPS and the printer driver. If not, spend half a day sorting this out.
9) Print your sample page, and pray to god it works.
6) Done.
The Linux way is more time intensive. If you are paying your staff $35/hour (not atypical for qualified clerical staff) then spending that extra 2 or 3 hours of time just may not be worth it, especially if you consider the time it takes to train people to do steps 1-6 for Linux printing! In that case, it might pay to shell out $500 for Windows and related software!
When $500 represents 2 days of paid staff time, it's a small investment when compared to the annual cost of that employee. But, when it represents 1 month of paid staff time, it's a very different equation!
Why don't you just secure your network and you don't have to worry about it.
In my life, I've identified a few key words that are highly accurate in ferreting out people who waste time. One of these is "paradigm". Those who wax poetic about "paradigm" are typically those who haven't bothered to figure out how things work, and are trying to convince you to do whatever it is that they think might work.
Big waste - RUN!
I've come to discover that "just" is a key word. It positively identifies those who have no idea what they're talking about. The most rediculous, inane, and useless activities I've ever seen all started with the word "just" in the job description. Like:
"Solar power is feasible - just bring down the cost of manufacturing"...
or,
"Sex is no big deal - just get a girlfriend"... (big one for many who peruse these boards)
or,
"The software works great - we just need to change a few basic assumptions..."
So, watch that word, "just". It usually fortells major catastrophe and certainly unrealistic expectations!
Remember back in the DOS days? I do. My first HD was 40 megs. I was ALWAYS backing up to floppies. Not out of fear the drive would die, but because I was always having to move things on and off the HD to because of the limited space.
I find that my usage patterns adapt to the amount of disk space available, which remains fairly constant, regardless of the size of the media. I remember with alternating loathe and fondness, the 10 MB drive in my first 80286, and the efforts I went through to zip archive all my programs, and have them unpack dynamically on demand just before run, run the program, then re-zip them all.
To this day, I find that my disks are all about 70% full, all the time, no matter the size. As the usage climbs into the 90% range, I "discover" all kinds of ways to conserve space - stream my MP3 collection from a network source rather than keep a copy on each of my computers, move infreqently accessed stuff to a "backpack" USB drive, (effectively, a variation on the ancient solution using PKZip) or delete old copies of stuff I no longer need, such as MPEG files of movies I don't care about. (Do I really need to keep that once-watched, long forgotten episode of Firefly?)
It's true that the amount of attention I have to put out to keep that percentage in line has dropped, to where I don't adjust my space usage more often then every few months - but the overall pattern remains the same.
Add to that the color depth of the human eye. Granted, not 16 M colors, but still pretty high.
I would argue that the color depth of the human eye is much better than 16 M colors. Particularly when one color "fades" into another, I routinely see "color lines" where two very similar colors match up. 16 M colors is sufficient is where there's alot of contrasting colors and/or complex patterns. Heck, make the picture sufficiently contrasted/complex and 256 colors can do a decent job!
What's hard is the the realization that we don't "see" the world as a flat image, two images, or even a stereoscopic image. We "see" the world as a set of abstract concepts. We don't see a flat surface with a rough texture, we see a wall. We don't see a strangely shaped, brightly colored object that moves quickly, we see a "car". When driving, the specifics of other cars are seldom even noticed, let alone considered.
This is so much so that even when faced with two, substantially different items of the same type (EG: a barn) used for driving directions, we often have trouble discerning which barn to turn at!
So the first thing we'll have to do in decoding human sight is to separate the act of seeing from the act of decoding/interpreting. Then, I think we'll be getting somewhere.
For an astonishing, broad view of what I'm talking about, I'd recommend reading Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin. Written by a functional autistic, the author makes clear (for the first time, for me) many of the differences between animal and human perception.
It's a broad, sweeping work that kept me up for almost 48 hours straight - I just couldn't put it down!
Actually, the Linux kernel project DON'T have a choice. It is and will be GPL2. To switch to GPL3 would require getting the agreement of a very large number of people, living and dead...or just totally out of contact. This isn't going to happen.
But that's just not true.
See, the GPL would, on the surface, require that everybody who has contributed to the kernel to ok the license change. And, if any one of those contributors died, that would seem to be impossible.
But there are other ways under most laws. Most areas establish various publishers (EG: Newspapers) as "publishers of record". These are newspapers that reach a sufficicient percentage of the population that advertisements and the like in such are considered to be a matter of "public record".
This is a big deal.
When a newspaper or similar is a "publisher of record" then they are able to sell advertisements that are legally binding, such as notices of suit.
If you wanted to sue an individual known to live in an area, but you aren't sure where, you merely have to publish notice of suit in a "publisher of record" for that area.
If nobody shows at the court date, well, you've won, and nobody can say otherwise, because you published the date in a publisher of record within the jurisdiction involved.
To change the license, the current maintainers merely need to publish their intentions in a "publisher of record" for the scope involved (the world) and satisfactorially handle all negative feedback. AFAIK, this simply means that they publish their intentions for license change for a "reasonable period of time" on their website, and then make the change. (IANAL, etc) When they do, they change the license by default.
They may have to pick a publication (such as the NY Times) with a significant global readership. Whatever - the lawyers can decide. But it's still entirely possible.
You should visit some public high schools in poor areas some day. Hard work won't change that drugs are rampant, gangs rule the hallways, and you can't get a real education.
I sure have. That's why I'm a proud and vocal advocate for alternative education. I've made a career of it, and I enjoy the altruism that my career affords!
Maybe you should go talk to real people that are poor. Two parents working two full time minimum wage jobs have trouble supporting a family. It may open your eyes that even though hard work can often result in success, for those in impovershied areas, or for those who are born with disadvantages or into a disadvantageous situation, hard work is necessary for survival, and that is often barely achieved.
There will *always* be those who don't make it. No amount of wealth or economic success can change that. What's important is to provide the "hooks" necessary so that the very poor can become the very rich if they set their minds to it.
You're the one that needs to get real and realize that not everyone is born with a bevy of opportunities, and it's not easy to succeed, even with hard work.
What you describe is the ideal, not the reality. Not everybody can be rich/successful. But the developed world has probably gotten closer to this ideal than at any other time in human history. Don't underestimate this achievement - not only is this the best time in human history in this regard, but if we don't preserve this civilization through it's many challenges, we may never again do so.
The thing is, in that P2P fantasy world where everyone shares their connection and gives back to the community and there are no evil corporations charging us monthly fees, major latency would be the norm and the internet would become much more regionalised than it is now. Online gaming, for example, would all but die, surviving only in tightnit local groups.
The march of technology makes the cost of providing N bandwidth drop every year, following a near exponential curve. Following this trend, it's easy to see how the cost of providing bandwidth drops to the point where individuals can afford to provide quality connections that now cost thousands.
Perhaps you don't remember the day when a 128k connection cost $1,000 per month or more? Now, such bandwidth is available for under $20/month in many contexts.
That P4 under your desk probably has more comptational power than existed worldwide in 1980. Certainly true for 1970. Yet, you can replace the Mobo and chip for less than a day's wages.
Why is it unrealistic to think that long-range, cheap, P2P broadband isn't possible, yet alone likely, in just a few more decades?
BTW, "improved color vision" is relative. Birds have receptors for four colors rather than three. Early mammals lost two of the four, which is why your dog is "color blind". Our lineage re-gained a third, though not the same as either of the two that our ancestors had lost. There was an article about this in Scientific American a month or two back.
Not only that, but a small percentage of women are quadrichromatic - they see an additional color that the rest of us do not.