"it's been in movies" is not exactly the most..trusted information source I've ever heard.
That said, the point does stand. OTOH, if you could ensure diversity in the corruption of the advisors (i.e. advisor one would want war because it's good for his defense contrator employer, advisor two would want no war at all because his employer thinks that war would drive their profit margin down, yadda yadda) you might actually get a balanced system.
I'm also not entirely sure how corrupt advisors would be any worse, in practical terms, than corrupt career politicians.
I'm not sure how "politicians have to be career politicians" logically follows "we can't elect any random dolt off the street"
Certainly, there's plenty of people in local politics who are *not* career politicians, but got elected to local positions and do very well in them (of course, there are also others who suck, but that's the issue we're working on here, right?). What if something similar were possible at a national level?
Also, why should the president have to have been an *officer* in one of the armed forces?
This actually strikes me as dangerous. For a number of reasons.
First, because it introduces an automatic class bias. Granted, the current conditions already do this, but I don't think that's an excuse for doing it more. Current conditions also impose gender and race bias, but I don't think most people will argue that adding more would be a good idea.
Second because serving in the armed forces (or even growing up as a military brat) teaches and enforces certain patterns of belief and behavior that aren't appropriate in the civilan world. Ultimately, the vast majority of the folks the president has responsibility for are civilans.
Third, because it gives the military a given position of power. The president is the commander in chief, always, but by mandating service for the president, the military will *always* have control in that office.
History has proven time and time again, you don't really want the military in control of your own country.
The only advantage I see for having the president be an officer is that he'll have the military experience (i.e. learned strategy, have some clue as to capabilities, etc) which could come in handy in terms of deploying military in a war. But the strategy is already handled by the admirals and generals (as it should be, I think). The president's job, in this respect, is in deciding whether or not to deploy the military in a given situation (which is something that does not require military experience, and which military experience may cause one to do too much -- when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail) and as a figurehead.
Libraries or librarians served with a search warrant issued under FISA rules may not disclose, under of penalty of law, the existence of the warrant or the fact that records were produced as a result of the warrant. A patron cannot be told that his or her records were given to the FBI or that he or she is the subject of an FBI investigation.
***
it's not the ALA silencing librarians, it's the patriot act.
Eh, either I'm utterly confused as to where you're going with this, or you answered your own argument.
Non-violent crime (and that's crime without *threat* of violence, not just without actual violence -- i.e. threatening you with a gun does not count as non-violent, even if I never shoot it -- even if it turns out later that it wasn't loaded) is (usually) punished less harshly. And for reason -- violence has impact. I'd argue that you causing even one or two of those tellers significant trauma is a far far greater ramification of your actions than the $300
Not to mention, there are probably customers that were in the bank as well.
Cracking the bank only traumatized the sysadmin. And having been in both situations, well, it's not even comparable.
You're right about white collar criminals, and I think *that* is fucked up, at the same time, cracking can't (at least in the vast majority of cases) be compared to violent crime.
Criminal A stole $500 from a single mother working as a waitress. Because of this, she had to go to the food bank and get emergency food stamps in order to feed her family that month and was unable to pay some other necessities.
Criminal B stole $1000 from a multimillion dollar company. Because of this they...lost a little money. In a multimillion dollar budget, $1000 is not even a significant digit.
By your logic Criminal B should be punished more, yet it's pretty clear Criminal A did more damage, both to his victim, her children, and to taxpayers (since his crime required that taxpayers pay extra to feed a few people -- as a taxpayer, this is one of those places I'm just as glad my money goes, but even so, resources are finite).
Is it really right that Criminal A gets off lighter in this case?
I don't know, I think the whole concept of punishment is flawed, but even assuming it isn't, that strikes me as not such a good idea.
Yeah, that by itself makes sense -- 'cos spooks are smart.
You don't survive as a spook, if your not.
Not necessarily because of actual risk, there are plenty of spook-type jobs (signal analysis, cryptography, etc) that leave you at your nice cushy desk. But they all require a certain amount of intelligence and ability to sort and apply data.
The same types of skills come in handy in designing computer systems and software. One might call them math, logic, abstract reasoning or non-verbal. If you can write relatively complex psuedocode, you probably have an idea of the skills I mean.
So yes, a large number of spooks *could* mean some sort of government conspiracy, and it *could* mean that google is trying to get some leverage in getting government contracts (that makes sense, and is also a very common business strategy), or it could just be because a lot of the people with the right set of abilities and skills happened to go through the intelligence community first -- maybe because all of the organizations in question offer scholarships, grants, college tuition reimbursement, steady employment with good starting pay (though those with greater experience and ability to sell themselves will get better pay in the civilian market) and a challenging job.
Esspecially if, as was the case 30 years ago, your choice was 'college and a desk job with the spooks' or the dodging bullets and napalm tour of viet nam. Or the life of an outlaw in canada.
The folks who made that choice are in their late 40s and early to mid 50s now, many of them were affected by various budget cuts (esspecially military) in the 90s. Some just have seen better financial opportunities in the civilian world.
But I don't see evidence of anything troublesome, yet.
(well, no more troublesome than the entire existance of the intelligence community, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.)
Not that I particularly agree with it, but driving is a privilege that can be revoked by the state more or less at it's whim.
Innocence is not.
Which is not to say that I don't think it won't be tried, but that the legal issues are significantly different and there is probably a prayer of the Supreme Court striking it down if someone is convicted solely because they refused to take the test.
But there is something to be said for the wisdom of designing and implementing an affordable and useful public transportation system.
No one's suggesting that the companies in question give out free CD sets of the data to any dork who requests it, just that they offer the data to public libraries for reasonable fees (or free if possible, but the article does allow for the possibility of having libraries pay fees).
Also, there is no mention in the bill of rights of a right to transport. There is mention of a right to legal representation, and given what I've seen of the lawyers they'll give you if you can't afford one, representing one's self (or doing one's own legal research for the court appointed lawyer), while generally considered not ideal ( whomever represents themselves has an idiot for a client is the way I've heard this put fairly often) may be the most intelligent and reasonable option in some cases, and the only one which gives the justice system a prayer of working the way it should.
Eh. Except that in context, what are the chances that whomever is checking IDs in the food court is going to remember that that dude (rather than one of the fifty people before or after him) is John Smith, according to his driver's license.
Not to mention, one assumes that you were already in the building. Do they figure that the food court is a particularly attractive target?
Not that I don't often find myself questioning the sanity of the folks in power, and not that I don't find the hold the religious right has on our government to be scary, but what about all the practical reasons (or at least potential reasons) for war?
The big one everybody is talking about is oil, but there's also the fact that getting the american people behind him in a war (and for this it doesn't matter if the war has any logical use at all, beyond this goal) distracts them. And distracted people don't notice when their rights are taken away and their money is too. Not as fast, at least. And in order to enforce the taking away of those rights money must be spent -- some to hire people, but more importantly to buy stuff. This helps businesses that produce stuff. Sometimes this helps businesses with significant clout, who then help the folks in the government who helped them get re-elected. Not to mention that any war effort means more money for defense contractors. And a populace who is backing a war effort is a lot less likely to complain when you raise their taxes.
One way to look at the situation is as a balancing act -- how to get the most value out of a resource (U.S. Citizens) without destroying it (or your power over it -- i.e. pissing people off enough that they revolt. people tend to do that when you take their rights, or their money, or what have you. Unless you distract them or give them an emotional reason to hand these things over, or at least accept their removal). I'm not saying that this is their reasoning, necessarily. It does make some things make sense. That doesn't prove it. I think most likely it is a part, but not the whole or even the majority, of the entire picture.
This is just one logical reason for picking wars that don't make sense if you're working from a 'greater good' paradigm. Or several other obvious paradigms. There are others. Lots of them. I don't know how many are actually in play, and how much each affects the situation. I don't know that anyone knows the entire story and I *include* military intelligence in that estimation:)
From what I have been able to observe (which is more than just talking heads on television) the folks who run this country -- elected and appointed, are just about as rational and intelligent as most Americans. There are days I feel this might be like saying that something is about as secure as an out-of-box windows install, but I don't think they are quite nuts enough to be consciously trying to create their end game. If they are, they are hiding it *very* well.
More likely the reasons have to do with who benefits -- and a lot of it is individual benefit. N people all doing what they think will get them ahead. There's probably a lot of other motivations going around as well.
As I've said, I don't know what's going on and I don't think anyone knows the whole of it. This is all just possibility. Possibility that fits the facts, as far as I know them, but not proven and probably won't be, not in the forseeable future. However, if one wants to have any hope at all of designing a useful strategy to change the situation, one needs to be working with accurate data, and assuming a wrong motivation is far more hazardous to developing that strategy than acknowledging that the motivation is unknown or largely so.
> "which they now know how to use safely and not > cause problems for the birdies anymore"
Color me skeptical. Got references?
BTW, I'm inclined to think that it's less 'burying' and more...well..
I can't comment on the social mileiu of Uganda, I've never been there and know a rather minimal amount of things about the country (I can find it on a map, that's pretty much it). I *do* know the social mileiu of the U.S. well, and I know that faith based campaigns (for anything) organized outside the faith (i.e. organized or blessed by the government) are *extremely* risky in terms of individual freedom and safety here. As a public health official (which I'm not, but putting myself 'in their shoes') I might well ignore, not mention or minimize (incidently, I *have* heard of faith based strategies used in many parts of Africa, as well as the U.S., so minimize might actually be a better word than bury as well, but it's an issue of degree) these strategies simply because they aren't a practical option for the U.S., not at the governmental level (which is not to say that individual churches and whatnot going out and spreading information about abstinance and avoiding IV drug use hasn't helped in this country, it has), not from a public health agency viewpoint.
Not true. I know it's the exception, but I became a unix admin out of high school, and I have friends who have done similar or better. A very small handful (and not me) have managed to pull six digits with only a high school education, mostly as systems analysts and programmers.
I wouldn't want to try it in this economy, though.
In a better economy, say, 1998 or so, I'd think it was downright realistic that a significant percentage of the kids in that sort of class/learning environment could go on to sysadmin, at sysadmin wages, straight out of high school.
The lack of degree *is* a major hit in a bad economy, though not the end of the world.
I've been adminning my friend's new windows box, after many years of avoiding it as much as possible, and one of the things I"ve noticed is how truely awful it is to try to use most of the software I've been loading up for him.
For the record, I'm picking on windows because it's what I've been dealing with of late. The vast majority of the software I use personally hasn't changed interface in years (i.e. Pine. Compare whatever version of pine was current in 1995 with most email readers available then, or the first versions of readers that came available since), is intended for use by folks who actually expect to put significant time and effort into learning and relearning software (sendmail, etc), is unix based (providing a well understood common paradigm) and is line based (making interface a *much* simpler problem). I know I"ve seen examples of the same problems with apps (esspecially user apps) under various forms of unix and macos, so don't get too smug about this.
That said, I do feel as if the problem is particularly bad in the windows world, but that might just be my own bigotry.
One example: My User (hrm, do I get to keep him as a pet?:) ) got a cable modem. Good thing for bandwidth, bad thing for security. He didn't have an up to date virus scanner anyway, so we went down to the store and settled on McCaffee's Internet security. This basically is three programs -- the anti-virus program (which I'm not going to complain about here), the firewall and the internet security program. The last two ended up causing me to have to reinstall windows three times, due to user error caused largely by really awful interface.
I should note that my user is a forty-something year old chem and photography geek. He's quite bright, and is on his way to becoming an expert user (I'm teaching him C and Perl, as well) so we're not talking about someone in need of a drool proof keyboard. He's had a few years experience with email and websurfing and word processing on windows and is quite comfortable with all that.
The *first* problem is that *both* the firewall and the internet security program do packet filtering independently of eachother. This means that if one can't get out there are twice as many places to check for misconfigurations. There are twice as many places for things to go wrong.
The second problem is that the difference between the dialouges that pop up when the firewall and internet security programs ask whether a particular connection should be accepted or denied are non-obvious. I (computer professional) caught the differences after about ten minutes. My user didn't catch them until after the third reinstall, when I pointed them out (and he'd problem seen several hours worth of them at that point).
The third problem is that the location for configuring the Internet Security packetfiltering is non-obvious. It requires checking alerts, then clicking on something that looks like a link. No one, user or admin, is going to think "I need to change packet filtering settings, I'll go check the alerts and click where it says click here."
The fourth problem is that the dialogs were not clear to my user. He coudln't tell which option would block and which would accept. He also coudln't tell whether or not he should check the box. I explained the concept to him, and he got that, but the dialog boxes are difficult to read (everything is in roughly the same sized font, it's small, black text-on-grey, so the contrast isn't so good,) and the text in them..well...
sometimes I find myself wondering if whomever is deciding what should be said in them starts with a weak understanding of the actual technical question ("A packet originating on x port for a destation of y ip/name, z port has been sent by application a. Should it be blocked? y/N") and then try to remap any word not found in your average elementary school dictionary to words that would be found in said dictionary. The ultimate result is something that I (as an admin) find vaguely comprehensible (I can usually figure out what they're tlaking about if I carefully parse out the message) and my user found incomprehensible until I went through and parsed it out for him.
The fifth was actually related to the cable modem install software, but bears mentioning. It installed two parts. The first part uninstalled from the start menu, the second, from the control panel. When the cable modem software failed init my user made the logical assumption that uninstalling and reinstalling might fix the problem (after going after the more obvious possibilities. I don't know that I would have done better.)
My user uninstalled the first, and followed the directions in the message at the end of the uninstall (you may now delete all files that uninstall didn't, essentially). The start-menu uninstall removed all shortcuts, start menu entries, etc. There were no obvious signs (other than the files) that there was a second part to uninstall. However, the second part removed several registry entries, and did something else (probably another reg entry, though I never did find it, hence having to reinstall windows three times) that, when it didn't happen, caused the cable modem software to not install at all.
Now, I understand that there is a major interface difference between software made for admins (i.e. ipchains or Cisco firewall rules) and users (mccaffee internet security). Certainly it would be inappropriate to expect your average user to write up a bunch of firewall rules. At the same time, just making the process involve 256+ colors and some windows rather than white-text-on-black and little words leads to software that *no one* can use. There's four design problems here, easily avoided if people think about their designs before coding and mentioned by far greater minds than me in other forums.
1. Avoid duplication of tasks if possible, if not, warn about them -- Nothing in the manual or help files made the problems obvious, to me or my user. There is no advantage of internet security's packet filtering over the firewalls. these apps were packaged together, on the same CD, for use together. There is *no* reason that I have been able to ascertain, for the duplicate filtering. Even if there is, it probably would have been wiser to put it in the firewall program. The same goes for the double uninstall problem (problem 5). It should be avoided when possible, warned about if not, and certainly should not have messages suggesting deleteing the very files that then make it impossible to uninstall the second part of the program.
2. Dialouges should be clear and easy to read. There's tons of information on how to format text so that it may be efficiently scanned and processed by humans.
2a. The actual words contained in dialog boxes need to make sense too. Maybe running them by actual users (pref in a realistic setting --i.e. as a dialog rather than flat printed text) and asking the users what they think they mean should become more common (i know that this happens a bit already, but apparently not enough)
2b. if the radio button says allow this time/block this time and the check box says "I recognize this program, don't ask me again", the dialog is *not* clear. Curiously, I found this more confusing than my user did. Probably it's a paradigm thing. My interperatation was that it wouldn't ask again, but it was unclear whether it would block or allow in the future (since the option was "this time")
2c. If you must have two programs that work together and do similar tasks, make damn sure the boxes look significantly different. A difference in the wording of radiobutton options isn't enough. Neither is the top bar if over half the words in the top bar are the same for both programs. Esspecially if the entire package is called the same thing as one of it's componants.
3. Just because it involves pictures doesn't make it intuitively obvious. Actually, I'm rather in agreement with RMS (at least, I think it was RMS) when he said "The only intutive interface is the nipple, after that it's all learned". But no one finds construction plans in basement bathrooms with signs on the door that say "Beware of the leopard" and putting a major configuration task under an administrative/review tasks and marking it with a hypertext link run about the same, in terms of intuitiveness. Construction plans hang out in the file rooms at your local courthouse and configuration tasks should all be in the same place, or at least accessible from there.
4. Folks with responsibility for software design really need to consider user interface more. This is *all* design problems.
5. Unless they are designing as well (rather than working off a spec designed by others) I'm not inclined to blame the software developers.
6. Part of the problem is lack of time. This is a societal issue. I don't know what to do about that.
The executive summary here is that software is useless if it is not useable, not necessarily by everybody, but certainly by your target audience.
If your target audience is not like you, research is needed (even if it is research may be needed, but certainly if it's not).
Thank you! I've been trying to convince a friend of mine that McDLTs actually did exist at one time!! Thanks to that link you posted I can now prove that I'm not *completely* nuts (delusions of hamburgers? *g*)
What does your pendulum say when the soldiers being killed are fourteen year old (or younger) boys pressed into service or drafted (or otherwise not *choosing* to be in the military)?
I think the more germane question is: when was the last time the U.S. had to go to war in order to actually protect our borders from invasion?
Arguably it was WWII. Highly Arguably. (Yes, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor -- but what was the likelihood that they would have been able to take us over?)
The biggest threats to our ability to make stupid jokes (and other forms of free speech) are internal, and this is at least as much of a function of our geography as of our military strength.
I think the idea is that they are trying to get away from the whole 'cannon fodder' stereotype -- where any individual soldier is merely one more target in a wall of human targets, and nothing more.
That, and trying to convince a generation that at least *thinks * they are individualistic that they really want to join up.
> that 's the kind of job you should be looking for, > one that pays the bills.
While I basically agree with you, I have to mention a caveat on the above point.
When you're young, if you have supportive parents, you have a chance that you're unlikely to ever have again in your life: you can go get a job purely for experience, and not stress about the pay.
When I was a teenager I worked for free, and then for less than minimum wage, for a computer store, doing standard computer tech work. This was cheaper than going to the local tech school, this was faster than doing so (esspecially as I wouldn't have been eligible to start for some time after that) and it gave me experience rather than book learning. Less than two years later that experience lead to jobs that definitely could pay the bills, and by the time I hit 20 I was making real money (Around my 20th birthday I received a raise -- to $50k/year This is the sort of money that does pay the bills)
That sort of job is an investment. If one doesn't have to support oneself yet, and one can find a position that offers a lot of experience and learning and is willing to work hard, for long hours, then go for it. It pays off later.
Slashdot Mirror
"it's been in movies" is not exactly the most..trusted information source I've ever heard.
That said, the point does stand. OTOH, if you could ensure diversity in the corruption of the advisors (i.e. advisor one would want war because it's good for his defense contrator employer, advisor two would want no war at all because his employer thinks that war would drive their profit margin down, yadda yadda) you might actually get a balanced system.
I'm also not entirely sure how corrupt advisors would be any worse, in practical terms, than corrupt career politicians.
I'm not sure how "politicians have to be career politicians" logically follows "we can't elect any random dolt off the street"
Certainly, there's plenty of people in local politics who are *not* career politicians, but got elected to local positions and do very well in them (of course, there are also others who suck, but that's the issue we're working on here, right?). What if something similar were possible at a national level?
Also, why should the president have to have been an *officer* in one of the armed forces?
This actually strikes me as dangerous. For a number of reasons.
First, because it introduces an automatic class bias. Granted, the current conditions already do this, but I don't think that's an excuse for doing it more. Current conditions also impose gender and race bias, but I don't think most people will argue that adding more would be a good idea.
Second because serving in the armed forces (or even growing up as a military brat) teaches and enforces certain patterns of belief and behavior that aren't appropriate in the civilan world. Ultimately, the vast majority of the folks the president has responsibility for are civilans.
Third, because it gives the military a given position of power. The president is the commander in chief, always, but by mandating service for the president, the military will *always* have control in that office.
History has proven time and time again, you don't really want the military in control of your own country.
The only advantage I see for having the president be an officer is that he'll have the military experience (i.e. learned strategy, have some clue as to capabilities, etc) which could come in handy in terms of deploying military in a war. But the strategy is already handled by the admirals and generals (as it should be, I think). The president's job, in this respect, is in deciding whether or not to deploy the military in a given situation (which is something that does not require military experience, and which military experience may cause one to do too much -- when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail) and as a figurehead.
That doesn't require military experience.
(from the original poster's link)
Libraries or librarians served with a search warrant issued under FISA rules may not disclose, under of penalty of law, the existence of the warrant or the fact that records were produced as a result of the warrant. A patron cannot be told that his or her records were given to the FBI or that he or she is the subject of an FBI investigation.
***
it's not the ALA silencing librarians, it's the patriot act.
Heh. As opposed to ivy league graduates who get us into war with people who denigrated their father's on water towers.
Eh, either I'm utterly confused as to where you're going with this, or you answered your own argument.
Non-violent crime (and that's crime without *threat* of violence, not just without actual violence -- i.e. threatening you with a gun does not count as non-violent, even if I never shoot it -- even if it turns out later that it wasn't loaded) is (usually) punished less harshly. And for reason -- violence has impact. I'd argue that you causing even one or two of those tellers significant trauma is a far far greater ramification of your actions than the $300
Not to mention, there are probably customers that were in the bank as well.
Cracking the bank only traumatized the sysadmin. And having been in both situations, well, it's not even comparable.
You're right about white collar criminals, and I think *that* is fucked up, at the same time, cracking can't (at least in the vast majority of cases) be compared to violent crime.
Didn't help much last time.
Except for this case...
Criminal A stole $500 from a single mother working as a waitress. Because of this, she had to go to the food bank and get emergency food stamps in order to feed her family that month and was unable to pay some other necessities.
Criminal B stole $1000 from a multimillion dollar company. Because of this they...lost a little money. In a multimillion dollar budget, $1000 is not even a significant digit.
By your logic Criminal B should be punished more, yet it's pretty clear Criminal A did more damage, both to his victim, her children, and to taxpayers (since his crime required that taxpayers pay extra to feed a few people -- as a taxpayer, this is one of those places I'm just as glad my money goes, but even so, resources are finite).
Is it really right that Criminal A gets off lighter in this case?
I don't know, I think the whole concept of punishment is flawed, but even assuming it isn't, that strikes me as not such a good idea.
Yeah, that by itself makes sense -- 'cos spooks are smart.
You don't survive as a spook, if your not.
Not necessarily because of actual risk, there are plenty of spook-type jobs (signal analysis, cryptography, etc) that leave you at your nice cushy desk. But they all require a certain amount of intelligence and ability to sort and apply data.
The same types of skills come in handy in designing computer systems and software. One might call them math, logic, abstract reasoning or non-verbal. If you can write relatively complex psuedocode, you probably have an idea of the skills I mean.
So yes, a large number of spooks *could* mean some sort of government conspiracy, and it *could* mean that google is trying to get some leverage in getting government contracts (that makes sense, and is also a very common business strategy), or it could just be because a lot of the people with the right set of abilities and skills happened to go through the intelligence community first -- maybe because all of the organizations in question offer scholarships, grants, college tuition reimbursement, steady employment with good starting pay (though those with greater experience and ability to sell themselves will get better pay in the civilian market) and a challenging job.
Esspecially if, as was the case 30 years ago, your choice was 'college and a desk job with the spooks' or the dodging bullets and napalm tour of viet nam. Or the life of an outlaw in canada.
The folks who made that choice are in their late 40s and early to mid 50s now, many of them were affected by various budget cuts (esspecially military) in the 90s. Some just have seen better financial opportunities in the civilian world.
But I don't see evidence of anything troublesome, yet.
(well, no more troublesome than the entire existance of the intelligence community, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.)
Not that I particularly agree with it, but driving is a privilege that can be revoked by the state more or less at it's whim.
Innocence is not.
Which is not to say that I don't think it won't be tried, but that the legal issues are significantly different and there is probably a prayer of the Supreme Court striking it down if someone is convicted solely because they refused to take the test.
Not a free car, no.
But there is something to be said for the wisdom of designing and implementing an affordable and useful public transportation system.
No one's suggesting that the companies in question give out free CD sets of the data to any dork who requests it, just that they offer the data to public libraries for reasonable fees (or free if possible, but the article does allow for the possibility of having libraries pay fees).
Also, there is no mention in the bill of rights of a right to transport. There is mention of a right to legal representation, and given what I've seen of the lawyers they'll give you if you can't afford one, representing one's self (or doing one's own legal research for the court appointed lawyer), while generally considered not ideal ( whomever represents themselves has an idiot for a client is the way I've heard this put fairly often) may be the most intelligent and reasonable option in some cases, and the only one which gives the justice system a prayer of working the way it should.
Eh. Except that in context, what are the chances that whomever is checking IDs in the food court is going to remember that that dude (rather than one of the fifty people before or after him) is John Smith, according to his driver's license.
Not to mention, one assumes that you were already in the building. Do they figure that the food court is a particularly attractive target?
Because busses in your city are never late or early, right?
If this is actually the case, please tell me which city you live in so that I may consider moving there *g*
Not that I don't often find myself questioning the sanity of the folks in power, and not that I don't find the hold the religious right has on our government to be scary, but what about all the practical reasons (or at least potential reasons) for war?
:)
The big one everybody is talking about is oil, but there's also the fact that getting the american people behind him in a war (and for this it doesn't matter if the war has any logical use at all, beyond this goal) distracts them. And distracted people don't notice when their rights are taken away and their money is too. Not as fast, at least. And in order to enforce the taking away of those rights money must be spent -- some to hire people, but more importantly to buy stuff. This helps businesses that produce stuff. Sometimes this helps businesses with significant clout, who then help the folks in the government who helped them get re-elected. Not to mention that any war effort means more money for defense contractors. And a populace who is backing a war effort is a lot less likely to complain when you raise their taxes.
One way to look at the situation is as a balancing act -- how to get the most value out of a resource (U.S. Citizens) without destroying it (or your power over it -- i.e. pissing people off enough that they revolt. people tend to do that when you take their rights, or their money, or what have you. Unless you distract them or give them an emotional reason to hand these things over, or at least accept their removal). I'm not saying that this is their reasoning, necessarily. It does make some things make sense. That doesn't prove it. I think most likely it is a part, but not the whole or even the majority, of the entire picture.
This is just one logical reason for picking wars that don't make sense if you're working from a 'greater good' paradigm. Or several other obvious paradigms. There are others. Lots of them. I don't know how many are actually in play, and how much each affects the situation. I don't know that anyone knows the entire story and I *include* military intelligence in that estimation
From what I have been able to observe (which is more than just talking heads on television) the folks who run this country -- elected and appointed, are just about as rational and intelligent as most Americans. There are days I feel this might be like saying that something is about as secure as an out-of-box windows install, but I don't think they are quite nuts enough to be consciously trying to create their end game. If they are, they are hiding it *very* well.
More likely the reasons have to do with who benefits -- and a lot of it is individual benefit. N people all doing what they think will get them ahead. There's probably a lot of other motivations going around as well.
As I've said, I don't know what's going on and I don't think anyone knows the whole of it. This is all just possibility. Possibility that fits the facts, as far as I know them, but not proven and probably won't be, not in the forseeable future. However, if one wants to have any hope at all of designing a useful strategy to change the situation, one needs to be working with accurate data, and assuming a wrong motivation is far more hazardous to developing that strategy than acknowledging that the motivation is unknown or largely so.
> "which they now know how to use safely and not
> cause problems for the birdies anymore"
Color me skeptical. Got references?
BTW, I'm inclined to think that it's less 'burying' and more...well..
I can't comment on the social mileiu of Uganda, I've never been there and know a rather minimal amount of things about the country (I can find it on a map, that's pretty much it). I *do* know the social mileiu of the U.S. well, and I know that faith based campaigns (for anything) organized outside the faith (i.e. organized or blessed by the government) are *extremely* risky in terms of individual freedom and safety here. As a public health official (which I'm not, but putting myself 'in their shoes') I might well ignore, not mention or minimize (incidently, I *have* heard of faith based strategies used in many parts of Africa, as well as the U.S., so minimize might actually be a better word than bury as well, but it's an issue of degree) these strategies simply because they aren't a practical option for the U.S., not at the governmental level (which is not to say that individual churches and whatnot going out and spreading information about abstinance and avoiding IV drug use hasn't helped in this country, it has), not from a public health agency viewpoint.
Not true. I know it's the exception, but I became a unix admin out of high school, and I have friends who have done similar or better. A very small handful (and not me) have managed to pull six digits with only a high school education, mostly as systems analysts and programmers.
I wouldn't want to try it in this economy, though.
In a better economy, say, 1998 or so, I'd think it was downright realistic that a significant percentage of the kids in that sort of class/learning environment could go on to sysadmin, at sysadmin wages, straight out of high school.
The lack of degree *is* a major hit in a bad economy, though not the end of the world.
eh. at 19 I was making 50k/year as a unix sysadmin
with a high school education
of course, the economy was better then.
Hear hear!
:) ) got a cable modem. Good thing for bandwidth, bad thing for security. He didn't have an up to date virus scanner anyway, so we went down to the store and settled on McCaffee's Internet security. This basically is three programs -- the anti-virus program (which I'm not going to complain about here), the firewall and the internet security program. The last two ended up causing me to have to reinstall windows three times, due to user error caused largely by really awful interface.
I've been adminning my friend's new windows box, after many years of avoiding it as much as possible, and one of the things I"ve noticed is how truely awful it is to try to use most of the software I've been loading up for him.
For the record, I'm picking on windows because it's what I've been dealing with of late. The vast majority of the software I use personally hasn't changed interface in years (i.e. Pine. Compare whatever version of pine was current in 1995 with most email readers available then, or the first versions of readers that came available since), is intended for use by folks who actually expect to put significant time and effort into learning and relearning software (sendmail, etc), is unix based (providing a well understood common paradigm) and is line based (making interface a *much* simpler problem). I know I"ve seen examples of the same problems with apps (esspecially user apps) under various forms of unix and macos, so don't get too smug about this.
That said, I do feel as if the problem is particularly bad in the windows world, but that might just be my own bigotry.
One example: My User (hrm, do I get to keep him as a pet?
I should note that my user is a forty-something year old chem and photography geek. He's quite bright, and is on his way to becoming an expert user (I'm teaching him C and Perl, as well) so we're not talking about someone in need of a drool proof keyboard. He's had a few years experience with email and websurfing and word processing on windows and is quite comfortable with all that.
The *first* problem is that *both* the firewall and the internet security program do packet filtering independently of eachother. This means that if one can't get out there are twice as many places to check for misconfigurations. There are twice as many places for things to go wrong.
The second problem is that the difference between the dialouges that pop up when the firewall and internet security programs ask whether a particular connection should be accepted or denied are non-obvious. I (computer professional) caught the differences after about ten minutes. My user didn't catch them until after the third reinstall, when I pointed them out (and he'd problem seen several hours worth of them at that point).
The third problem is that the location for configuring the Internet Security packetfiltering is non-obvious. It requires checking alerts, then clicking on something that looks like a link. No one, user or admin, is going to think "I need to change packet filtering settings, I'll go check the alerts and click where it says click here."
The fourth problem is that the dialogs were not clear to my user. He coudln't tell which option would block and which would accept. He also coudln't tell whether or not he should check the box. I explained the concept to him, and he got that, but the dialog boxes are difficult to read (everything is in roughly the same sized font, it's small, black text-on-grey, so the contrast isn't so good,) and the text in them..well...
sometimes I find myself wondering if whomever is deciding what should be said in them starts with a weak understanding of the actual technical question ("A packet originating on x port for a destation of y ip/name, z port has been sent by application a. Should it be blocked? y/N") and then try to remap any word not found in your average elementary school dictionary to words that would be found in said dictionary. The ultimate result is something that I (as an admin) find vaguely comprehensible (I can usually figure out what they're tlaking about if I carefully parse out the message) and my user found incomprehensible until I went through and parsed it out for him.
The fifth was actually related to the cable modem install software, but bears mentioning. It installed two parts. The first part uninstalled from the start menu, the second, from the control panel. When the cable modem software failed init my user made the logical assumption that uninstalling and reinstalling might fix the problem (after going after the more obvious possibilities. I don't know that I would have done better.)
My user uninstalled the first, and followed the directions in the message at the end of the uninstall (you may now delete all files that uninstall didn't, essentially). The start-menu uninstall removed all shortcuts, start menu entries, etc. There were no obvious signs (other than the files) that there was a second part to uninstall. However, the second part removed several registry entries, and did something else (probably another reg entry, though I never did find it, hence having to reinstall windows three times) that, when it didn't happen, caused the cable modem software to not install at all.
Now, I understand that there is a major interface difference between software made for admins (i.e. ipchains or Cisco firewall rules) and users (mccaffee internet security). Certainly it would be inappropriate to expect your average user to write up a bunch of firewall rules. At the same time, just making the process involve 256+ colors and some windows rather than white-text-on-black and little words leads to software that *no one* can use. There's four design problems here, easily avoided if people think about their designs before coding and mentioned by far greater minds than me in other forums.
1. Avoid duplication of tasks if possible, if not, warn about them -- Nothing in the manual or help files made the problems obvious, to me or my user.
There is no advantage of internet security's packet filtering over the firewalls. these apps were packaged together, on the same CD, for use together. There is *no* reason that I have been able to ascertain, for the duplicate filtering. Even if there is, it probably would have been wiser to put it in the firewall program. The same goes for the double uninstall problem (problem 5). It should be avoided when possible, warned about if not, and certainly should not have messages suggesting deleteing the very files that then make it impossible to uninstall the second part of the program.
2. Dialouges should be clear and easy to read. There's tons of information on how to format text so that it may be efficiently scanned and processed by humans.
2a. The actual words contained in dialog boxes need to make sense too. Maybe running them by actual users (pref in a realistic setting --i.e. as a dialog rather than flat printed text) and asking the users what they think they mean should become more common (i know that this happens a bit already, but apparently not enough)
2b. if the radio button says allow this time/block this time and the check box says "I recognize this program, don't ask me again", the dialog is *not* clear. Curiously, I found this more confusing than my user did. Probably it's a paradigm thing. My interperatation was that it wouldn't ask again, but it was unclear whether it would block or allow in the future (since the option was "this time")
2c. If you must have two programs that work together and do similar tasks, make damn sure the boxes look significantly different. A difference in the wording of radiobutton options isn't enough. Neither is the top bar if over half the words in the top bar are the same for both programs. Esspecially if the entire package is called the same thing as one of it's componants.
3. Just because it involves pictures doesn't make it intuitively obvious. Actually, I'm rather in agreement with RMS (at least, I think it was RMS) when he said "The only intutive interface is the nipple, after that it's all learned". But no one finds construction plans in basement bathrooms with signs on the door that say "Beware of the leopard" and putting a major configuration task under an administrative/review tasks and marking it with a hypertext link run about the same, in terms of intuitiveness. Construction plans hang out in the file rooms at your local courthouse and configuration tasks should all be in the same place, or at least accessible from there.
4. Folks with responsibility for software design really need to consider user interface more. This is *all* design problems.
5. Unless they are designing as well (rather than working off a spec designed by others) I'm not inclined to blame the software developers.
6. Part of the problem is lack of time. This is a societal issue. I don't know what to do about that.
The executive summary here is that software is useless if it is not useable, not necessarily by everybody, but certainly by your target audience.
If your target audience is not like you, research is needed (even if it is research may be needed, but certainly if it's not).
eh. This might have been a joke, in that case, just ignore this. Sometimes I have a hard time telling...
if not, that's because sdf.lonestar.org is down, which is the entire point of this bruhaha.
damn them, my primary email is through sdf too.
Thank you! I've been trying to convince a friend of mine that McDLTs actually did exist at one time!! Thanks to that link you posted I can now prove that I'm not *completely* nuts (delusions of hamburgers? *g*)
Or maybe it was just to keep smart asses like you from wasting their time *G*
There are options other than military service and being a bored, sullen, directionless loser. Honest ;)
What does your pendulum say when the soldiers being killed are fourteen year old (or younger) boys pressed into service or drafted (or otherwise not *choosing* to be in the military)?
I think the more germane question is: when was the last time the U.S. had to go to war in order to actually protect our borders from invasion?
Arguably it was WWII. Highly Arguably. (Yes, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor -- but what was the likelihood that they would have been able to take us over?)
The biggest threats to our ability to make stupid jokes (and other forms of free speech) are internal, and this is at least as much of a function of our geography as of our military strength.
I think the idea is that they are trying to get away from the whole 'cannon fodder' stereotype -- where any individual soldier is merely one more target in a wall of human targets, and nothing more.
That, and trying to convince a generation that at least *thinks * they are individualistic that they really want to join up.
> that 's the kind of job you should be looking for,
> one that pays the bills.
While I basically agree with you, I have to mention a caveat on the above point.
When you're young, if you have supportive parents, you have a chance that you're unlikely to ever have again in your life: you can go get a job purely for experience, and not stress about the pay.
When I was a teenager I worked for free, and then for less than minimum wage, for a computer store, doing standard computer tech work. This was cheaper than going to the local tech school, this was faster than doing so (esspecially as I wouldn't have been eligible to start for some time after that) and it gave me experience rather than book learning. Less than two years later that experience lead to jobs that definitely could pay the bills, and by the time I hit 20 I was making real money (Around my 20th birthday I received a raise -- to $50k/year This is the sort of money that does pay the bills)
That sort of job is an investment. If one doesn't have to support oneself yet, and one can find a position that offers a lot of experience and learning and is willing to work hard, for long hours, then go for it. It pays off later.
I'm not sure I'd say *unbiased*, but certainly /. is a heck of a lot more informative than MS themselves.