I was familiar with the project in question at the time when it was first talked about. I met a Microsoft researcher in that area at the time (he's currently in the Systems and Networking Research Group). I'm also familiar with directions in OS and language design, going back a couple of decades. I can tell you that even when this paper was first published, it wasn't saying anything new. As you say, it was a position paper, but my reaction was based on the tone of the/. article, which seemed to think the paper was saying something new and insightful, when it qualified as neither - even at the time of its release.
I'm not suggesting that Microsoft Research does nothing useful. Microsoft has used its money to hire a lot of good people. However, that doesn't necessarily translate to good commercial software products. Part of the problem is that researchers are interested in solving hard problems, but don't see them through to commercial release. As a result, you get a huge disconnect between what the researchers are doing and can do, and what the production programmers can do. The guy I met at Microsoft Research had just been hired, and in fact they were originally trying to hire him to work on software product development, but he wasn't interested.
When you get a position paper like the one being referred to here, though, that's basically a mutant child of marketing and research: at least some of the researchers have to work on something relevant to the company's bottom line, and Microsoft has to appear to be innovating in the OS area, hence you get papers like this one which say nothing and sound like a description of a Jetsons episode, with no substance whatsoever.
Listen, sonny, my name is Elijah Peckinpah, and I'm 116 years old this year. Born in 1885, I came to South Dakota on a wagon train when I was just a tot. We saw injuns alright. They would stalk the train, nights, we could hear their horses whinnying in the distance, and now and then, we'd see the whites of their eyes gleaming in the inky darkness. Made us powerful nervous, let me tell you.
It was early one morning, my mammy had just woken me, and the sun was shining into the back of the wagon, when we heard the whooping. I'll never forget that sound as long as I live. They came down on us like God's own vengeance, slashing with their machetes and raining burning arrows on our wagons. The camp was in chaos, half-dressed folk running every which way, guns firing, wagons burning. My mammy grabbed me and in all the chaos, ran free of the camp, and hid in a gully. When she came out, everyone was dead. We holed up in a nearby cave - more like a crack in the rocks - and when the sheriff's posse rode in from the next town, we was rescued.
'Course, that was a long time ago. Nowadays, I mostly sit around, trolling on/. and writing perl code. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. When I get bored, I go down to the injun casino near here - I figure one of these days, I'll win big on the slots, and that'll show those redskinned sons of jackals!!
So don't you be tellin me there ain't no injuns. I seen em, alright, I seen em...
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but/. doesn't often adhere to the AP Style Book!!
Here are a couple of sample sentences from today's front page:
"Having had to play through some real stinkers of games before, I applaud Maxis decision to kill the product, rather then try to release it on an unsuspecting public CT Cry!"
"The Internet is a peer-to-peer system where one peer can piss in the public pool. These ISPs are doing a good thing by keeping this crap off the net."
I look forward to your AP Style Book critique of the above!
"Yeah, this may be crazy, but it's worth looking into, isn't it?"
There is absolutely nothing being said in this paper that hasn't already been discussed countless times in universities and research labs around the country. This paper is little more than a vision statement along the lines of the phrase that Microsoft has used for much of its lifespan: "a computer on every desk and in every home". It doesn't say anything that people haven't already thought of.
What's more relevant and interesting about this paper is that there are probably no organizations on the planet capable of developing a system like this on their own. It's going to have to be collaborative. Despite the me-tooism of Microsoft researchers in acknowledging the directions being taken by others, the Microsoft coders in the trenches won't be capable of developing something like this to be stable, reliable, and secure.
This may mean it won't happen in the way envisioned in this paper. Microsoft will have to wait until someone comes along and figures out how to actually do something new, and viable - not just talk about it - just as Tim Berners Lee et al created the web. Then they'll try to embrace and extend it, if they can.
This proposal doesn't necessarily show ignorance it may in fact just show incredibly callous calculating cynical attempt to pass this ridiculous legislation.
You're absolutely correct. The elected officials who propose this sort of legislation are traitors to the United States Constitution and to the principles which make the U.S. a great country.
She voted against this resolution which gives G.W. Bush power to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those "he deterimines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks"
Once again, good for Barbara Lee. This resolution seems to give Bush a dangerous level of power to "resolve" this situation. Here's one obvious possible consequence: let's say Osama bin Laden is located and killed without a trial. After a bit of hand-washing, Bush can claim that we're all done and can go back to business as usual. Sure, it won't be as simple as that in real life, but the point is that Bush has been given the ability to claim victory without that victory being visible to the American people. If anything, this measure provides a way to provide a "satisfying", but ultimately useless, "resolution" to the problem.
It seems to me that at a time like this is exactly when we want institutions of justice to work as usual, rather than giving crusading cowboys of questionable intelligence and maturity
the power to do whatever the hell they feel like in response to such a serious attack.
Yeah, but the program still has to be run on the server to infect it, and this server allegedly became infected without any admins ever logging into it. Made me wonder if there isn't something going on with Exchange/MAPI, etc., but I haven't tried to research it yet.
This worm is spreading through email, even on systems that are 100% patched and running antivirus packages. The problem is the architecture of Outlook and Exchange. Microsoft has known about this for a long time, and has released nothing but quick fixes. I've testified as an expert witness in court cases before, and I would have no problem testifying as to Microsoft's negligence in the case of this particular virus, based on the evidence I have so far (although it's still early).
I don't have the details yet (I'm a developer, not an admin), but from what I can tell, the propagation of Nimda included a new mechanism through Exchange/Outlook. Patched servers weren't protection enough. I'm basing this on one site where all servers were patched, but their workstations, behind a firewall, were all infected. This in turn seems to have succeeded in infecting their (Exchange) mail server (although it may be that the server was infected through some other means that hasn't yet been patched.)
The good news is I may convince them to abandon Outlook/Exchange now.
As far as I am concerned, when you are at "War" you are at war with a country. What we are doing at the moment is "policing".
I was thinking about this the other day. The enemies we're dealing with, in theory, could be rounded up and put in handcuffs, no differently than any other criminals. The whole point of "war" is that large armies fight against other large armies - or even large armies fight against other small armies - but not that large armies fight against small groups of people scattered around the world. The fact that these particular criminals/terrorists are hard to locate and infiltrate can hardly be mitigated by throwing thousands of troops at the problem. I suppose you could argue it's a complex form of psychological warfare against groups like the Taliban. Or perhaps it's just about making "the average American" feel better.
I'll close with one of the "banned" songs, which is probably pretty appropriate - Pink Floyd's "Mother", from The Wall (interesting to note that the song "Another Brick in the Wall" was banned by the apartheid government of South Africa during rioting there in the '70s - great how America models itself after these shining role models):
Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb
Mother do you think they'll like this song
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls
Oooh, Mother should I build a wall
Mother should I run for president
Mother should I trust the government
Mother will they put me in the firing line
Oooh, Is it just a waste of time
Hush now baby, baby don't you cry
Mama's gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you
Mama's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly but she might let you sing
Mama will keep baby cozy and warm
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
Of course mam'll help build the wall
Mother do you think she's good enough
For me
Mother do you think she's dangerous
To me
Mother will she tear your little boy apart
Oooh, Mother will she break my heart
Hush now baby, baby don't you cry
Mama's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you
Mama won't let anyone dirty get through
Mama's gonna wait up till you come in
Mama will always find out where you've been
Mama's gonna keep baby healthy and clean
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
You'll always be a baby to me
Look calling somebody ignorant, because you don't agree with them is just plain arrogant and insulting.
It has nothing to do with not agreeing. It has to do with their/your complete disregard for relevant facts and nuances of individual situations. This either implies ignorance, or a political agenda.
Your simplistic boiling down of complex foreign policy decisions to one-sentence opinions can hardly be described as anything other than ignorant.
For you, maybe. Are you implying you'd prefer that the U.S. impose its values on the rest of the world? Be careful what you ask for.
US foreign policy doesn't really seem to give a damn about the people of the rest of the world, just maintaining the USA's financial, political and military strength.
Could you give me an example of a country that has a foreign policy more acceptable to you? Are you sure you're not applying a double standard to the United States?
America drove this war effort simply because of issues related to oil - it was in no way humanitarian.
You're demonstrating my point with such a simplistic and yes, ignorant characterization. Whatever else happened, Iraq invaded a sovereign nation. This hasn't happened very often, subsequent to WWII. You're asserting that America wouldn't have become involved were it not for oil interests, but that's not necessarily true. Why did it get involved in Kosovo, then? Why did it attempt to assist in Somalia? There are issues of global political stability, and yes, even humanitarian concerns, that factor into these decisions. Simply boiling it down into one concept, "oil interests", is the most primitive sort of propaganda - either you're using this as a technique to further your political agenda, or you've been duped by someone else doing the same.
I'm not arguing that U.S. foreign policy is primarily driven by humanitarian goals. However, that is often a factor, and if you'd ever followed any discussions of these issues in the U.S. Congress, you'd know that. Frankly, I'd be surprised to find you really know the facts behind any of these situations. That's why I'm calling you and those who argue from similar limited fact sets ignorant. Educate yourself, then discuss; otherwise, you deserve to be ignored, as you have been, and as you will be in future.
Yes, bring justice to the perpatrators, but also think about what else the US can do to change the views of a large number of the world's citizens that have intense loathing of the US.
The question is whether this is possible or practical. I am not an American citizen, although I have lived in the U.S. for a number of years. I follow the news quite closely and am as aware as anyone of the reasons behind America's foreign policy, current and historical. I've had many discussions with non-Americans about America's foreign policy, and the most common thread I see is ignorance. Criticism is often based on the most simplistic view of things: ignoring or being unaware of differences in circumstances between Rwanda and Kosovo, for example.
People often expect the U.S. to play a major role as arbiter and enforcer of human rights worldwide, and get upset when it does not do so; at the same time, they get upset when the U.S. defends its own interests or those of its allies. The U.S. has foreign policy goals which have been shaped by centuries of history dating back to the World Wars and even to the Revolutionary War. Its goals mostly make sense, when taken in context, and it has lived up to them quite admirably. However, this will never satisfy ignorant armchair politicians.
Perhaps the U.S. needs to mount a major propaganda campaign outside its borders, to explain and justify its foreign policy and other aspects of its impact on the rest of the world. But ironically, this goes against U.S. foreign policy: it doesn't actively interfere in other countries unless its vital national interests are at stake. Perhaps there is a national interest issue here, if anti-U.S. sentiment is truly running so high.
However, an important question is whether opinions which derive from sources such as European socialists, for example, really have any bearing whatsoever on the opinions of, say, the people of Palestine or right-wing Islamic groups, people who either have actually been the receiving end of U.S. military action, or feel that they are affected by it. The U.S. could market itself till the cows come home and change the mind of every soft-headed European socialist, and it probably wouldn't make a difference to the real problem.
The most successful direction for most Open Source companies seems to be to focus on consulting. Open source code can actually be a benefit in that area. However, a problem I think companies like VA Linux face in the consulting arena is the areas they consult in.
If a company's salespeople can go to corporations and give a credible pitch to provide solutions that will cut costs, support new business models and increased revenues, etc., consulting services are a relatively easy sell. I don't have any direct experience with VA Linux, but it seems to me that they faced an uphill battle in that area: "our consultants know Linux really well" isn't exactly on the top ten list of things IT managers and CxOs think they really need. (Nothing against Linux, but in itself, it's not a solution to any business problem except perhaps in the embedded market.)
I suspect consulting companies and open source will continue to coexist in future, but the focus will have to be around solving business problems, or there won't be any money in it and it won't survive commercially, except as a minor niche.
If you're talking about banning this technology outright, preventing its use even in cases of justified need or court order, that I think is going too far.
My post was written in response to someone who said: "who cares if they can track you? They're not really bothered about what kind of black-and-white 30x20 pr0n you're downloading, they're far more bothered about terrorist activity." I'm more concerned about attitudes like that than I am about any actual threat of cellphones being tracked with current technology.
Maybe you should bring up these issues at your next city council meeting.
If the problem were more immediate, I might, if I lived in a city. Our town council wouldn't know what to make of the subject. One member of our board of education recently proposed deferring computer purchases, because nanotechnology was soon going to make all the school system's computers obsolete.
People are generally morons when it comes to privacy though : "Duh I'd give up my freedoms to prevent this from happening!" Sure you would...today.
It seems to me that a whole lot of what goes wrong in politics is simply this short-sighted (a.k.a. kneejerk) thinking. The problem is that people who have an agenda can take advantage of this tendency, and it's much easier for them to do this to get what they want, than to actually try to explain or discuss issues in depth. The electorate is thus encouraged (trained!) to think this way.
But tomorrow when robots are jamming cameras up your ass
Per article XIV, section 5 of the Hatch/Lott privacy bill of 2003, it will be the patriotic duty of all Americans to submit to said camera-jamming. All in the interests of national security, of course - you do want national security, don't you? Of course you do. Now bend over, please...
Good point - if you make it easy for law enforcement to discover crimes (however petty) by arbitrary citizens, by checking on their activities for no good reason, you create easy pickings for law enforcement, distracting them from the real, more difficult, problems.
That message was written on the assumtion that people would complain about cellphone companies being able to track them. And the point was, who cares if they can track you? They're not really bothered about what kind of black-and-white 30x20 pr0n you're downloading, they're far more bothered about terrorist activity.
This is an attitude that can only come from someone who has studied very little history, and/or is too young to remember government abuses in the past.
The problem is that if you don't restrict and control the tools that governments have available to them, they will abuse them. It's human nature - if you were an FBI agent, wouldn't you use whatever tools you had at your disposal to track down bad guys? It's not far from there to doing what Sen. Joseph McCarthy was doing in the 1950s: tracking down people engaging in "un-American activities", the kind of term which of course is defined by whatever over-zealous government official is conducting such investigations.
There are countless cases of over-zealousness of prosecutors, police, and other officials, and to an extent, that's the way we want it - but that's exactly why there are laws and structures to keep these people in check, and to make sure they don't harrass people who are considered by law to be "innocent until proven guilty".
It might seem to make sense to give the government more leeway in this time of crisis, but even if it does make sense, any extra powers granted to them should be temporary, and only usable in pursuing terrorist activity. Otherwise, the terrorists will win in a much bigger way than they have already: they'll succeed in making the United States a place where the government abridges its citizens' freedoms, a place where many citizens may end up with good reasons to fear their government.
No problem; just cache the result if you lose the GPS signal
Sorry, but you're way off base here. Try walking around a major city center with a handheld GPS sometime. The cached location would probably show that the phone was somewhere else entirely - perhaps in the street approaching the WTC, or even at a suburban train station or bridge where the sky was less obstructed.
Others have defended Moore based on other statements he made on the subject. But I, too, noticed the statement "everyone does not need to be a programmer", and think it is unforgivable. The only thing that could mitigate it is an apology from Moore.
You've taken one sentence out of context. My message was saying that rebuilding another, possibly bigger and better, World Trade Center is a meaningless symbolic act, on par with the actions of tinpot semi-dictators in third-world countries (I used the example of Malaysia).
In the sentence you quoted, I was actually referring to the diminished freedoms that we are likely to experience in the aftermath of this disaster. Building big buildings while we diminish our freedoms makes it seem to me as though the terrorists have won: they are setting the agenda, changing our lives. The terrorists destroyed something more important than any building: they destroyed the sense that America was virtually impervious to major attacks from external sources. The aspect of my message dealing with safety deals with that: that, to me, is what is important to rebuild.
Slashdot Mirror
Would that be A Really Big Airplane Manufacturer, Based in Seattle But Apparently Moving to Chicago, Who's Laying A Lot Of People Off Next Year??
I'm not suggesting that Microsoft Research does nothing useful. Microsoft has used its money to hire a lot of good people. However, that doesn't necessarily translate to good commercial software products. Part of the problem is that researchers are interested in solving hard problems, but don't see them through to commercial release. As a result, you get a huge disconnect between what the researchers are doing and can do, and what the production programmers can do. The guy I met at Microsoft Research had just been hired, and in fact they were originally trying to hire him to work on software product development, but he wasn't interested.
When you get a position paper like the one being referred to here, though, that's basically a mutant child of marketing and research: at least some of the researchers have to work on something relevant to the company's bottom line, and Microsoft has to appear to be innovating in the OS area, hence you get papers like this one which say nothing and sound like a description of a Jetsons episode, with no substance whatsoever.
It was early one morning, my mammy had just woken me, and the sun was shining into the back of the wagon, when we heard the whooping. I'll never forget that sound as long as I live. They came down on us like God's own vengeance, slashing with their machetes and raining burning arrows on our wagons. The camp was in chaos, half-dressed folk running every which way, guns firing, wagons burning. My mammy grabbed me and in all the chaos, ran free of the camp, and hid in a gully. When she came out, everyone was dead. We holed up in a nearby cave - more like a crack in the rocks - and when the sheriff's posse rode in from the next town, we was rescued.
'Course, that was a long time ago. Nowadays, I mostly sit around, trolling on /. and writing perl code. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. When I get bored, I go down to the injun casino near here - I figure one of these days, I'll win big on the slots, and that'll show those redskinned sons of jackals!!
So don't you be tellin me there ain't no injuns. I seen em, alright, I seen em...
Here are a couple of sample sentences from today's front page:
I look forward to your AP Style Book critique of the above!
There is absolutely nothing being said in this paper that hasn't already been discussed countless times in universities and research labs around the country. This paper is little more than a vision statement along the lines of the phrase that Microsoft has used for much of its lifespan: "a computer on every desk and in every home". It doesn't say anything that people haven't already thought of.
What's more relevant and interesting about this paper is that there are probably no organizations on the planet capable of developing a system like this on their own. It's going to have to be collaborative. Despite the me-tooism of Microsoft researchers in acknowledging the directions being taken by others, the Microsoft coders in the trenches won't be capable of developing something like this to be stable, reliable, and secure.
This may mean it won't happen in the way envisioned in this paper. Microsoft will have to wait until someone comes along and figures out how to actually do something new, and viable - not just talk about it - just as Tim Berners Lee et al created the web. Then they'll try to embrace and extend it, if they can.
Except you know what Edison said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". Seems like you have some sweating to do!!
It doesn't make sense to joke about something that doesn't exist, and no-one is suggesting should exist... It's the joke that was impaired.
You're absolutely correct. The elected officials who propose this sort of legislation are traitors to the United States Constitution and to the principles which make the U.S. a great country.
Once again, good for Barbara Lee. This resolution seems to give Bush a dangerous level of power to "resolve" this situation. Here's one obvious possible consequence: let's say Osama bin Laden is located and killed without a trial. After a bit of hand-washing, Bush can claim that we're all done and can go back to business as usual. Sure, it won't be as simple as that in real life, but the point is that Bush has been given the ability to claim victory without that victory being visible to the American people. If anything, this measure provides a way to provide a "satisfying", but ultimately useless, "resolution" to the problem.
It seems to me that at a time like this is exactly when we want institutions of justice to work as usual, rather than giving crusading cowboys of questionable intelligence and maturity the power to do whatever the hell they feel like in response to such a serious attack.
We actually find it quite useful to get around some of the problems with Java embedded in web pages.
Yeah, but the program still has to be run on the server to infect it, and this server allegedly became infected without any admins ever logging into it. Made me wonder if there isn't something going on with Exchange/MAPI, etc., but I haven't tried to research it yet.
This worm is spreading through email, even on systems that are 100% patched and running antivirus packages. The problem is the architecture of Outlook and Exchange. Microsoft has known about this for a long time, and has released nothing but quick fixes. I've testified as an expert witness in court cases before, and I would have no problem testifying as to Microsoft's negligence in the case of this particular virus, based on the evidence I have so far (although it's still early).
The good news is I may convince them to abandon Outlook/Exchange now.
I was thinking about this the other day. The enemies we're dealing with, in theory, could be rounded up and put in handcuffs, no differently than any other criminals. The whole point of "war" is that large armies fight against other large armies - or even large armies fight against other small armies - but not that large armies fight against small groups of people scattered around the world. The fact that these particular criminals/terrorists are hard to locate and infiltrate can hardly be mitigated by throwing thousands of troops at the problem. I suppose you could argue it's a complex form of psychological warfare against groups like the Taliban. Or perhaps it's just about making "the average American" feel better.
I'll close with one of the "banned" songs, which is probably pretty appropriate - Pink Floyd's "Mother", from The Wall (interesting to note that the song "Another Brick in the Wall" was banned by the apartheid government of South Africa during rioting there in the '70s - great how America models itself after these shining role models):
Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb
Mother do you think they'll like this song
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls
Oooh, Mother should I build a wall
Mother should I run for president
Mother should I trust the government
Mother will they put me in the firing line
Oooh, Is it just a waste of time
Hush now baby, baby don't you cry
Mama's gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you
Mama's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly but she might let you sing
Mama will keep baby cozy and warm
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
Of course mam'll help build the wall
Mother do you think she's good enough
For me
Mother do you think she's dangerous
To me
Mother will she tear your little boy apart
Oooh, Mother will she break my heart
Hush now baby, baby don't you cry
Mama's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you
Mama won't let anyone dirty get through
Mama's gonna wait up till you come in
Mama will always find out where you've been
Mama's gonna keep baby healthy and clean
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
You'll always be a baby to me
Mother, did it need to be so high.
It has nothing to do with not agreeing. It has to do with their/your complete disregard for relevant facts and nuances of individual situations. This either implies ignorance, or a political agenda.
Your simplistic boiling down of complex foreign policy decisions to one-sentence opinions can hardly be described as anything other than ignorant.
For you, maybe. Are you implying you'd prefer that the U.S. impose its values on the rest of the world? Be careful what you ask for.
US foreign policy doesn't really seem to give a damn about the people of the rest of the world, just maintaining the USA's financial, political and military strength.
Could you give me an example of a country that has a foreign policy more acceptable to you? Are you sure you're not applying a double standard to the United States?
America drove this war effort simply because of issues related to oil - it was in no way humanitarian.
You're demonstrating my point with such a simplistic and yes, ignorant characterization. Whatever else happened, Iraq invaded a sovereign nation. This hasn't happened very often, subsequent to WWII. You're asserting that America wouldn't have become involved were it not for oil interests, but that's not necessarily true. Why did it get involved in Kosovo, then? Why did it attempt to assist in Somalia? There are issues of global political stability, and yes, even humanitarian concerns, that factor into these decisions. Simply boiling it down into one concept, "oil interests", is the most primitive sort of propaganda - either you're using this as a technique to further your political agenda, or you've been duped by someone else doing the same.
I'm not arguing that U.S. foreign policy is primarily driven by humanitarian goals. However, that is often a factor, and if you'd ever followed any discussions of these issues in the U.S. Congress, you'd know that. Frankly, I'd be surprised to find you really know the facts behind any of these situations. That's why I'm calling you and those who argue from similar limited fact sets ignorant. Educate yourself, then discuss; otherwise, you deserve to be ignored, as you have been, and as you will be in future.
The question is whether this is possible or practical. I am not an American citizen, although I have lived in the U.S. for a number of years. I follow the news quite closely and am as aware as anyone of the reasons behind America's foreign policy, current and historical. I've had many discussions with non-Americans about America's foreign policy, and the most common thread I see is ignorance. Criticism is often based on the most simplistic view of things: ignoring or being unaware of differences in circumstances between Rwanda and Kosovo, for example.
People often expect the U.S. to play a major role as arbiter and enforcer of human rights worldwide, and get upset when it does not do so; at the same time, they get upset when the U.S. defends its own interests or those of its allies. The U.S. has foreign policy goals which have been shaped by centuries of history dating back to the World Wars and even to the Revolutionary War. Its goals mostly make sense, when taken in context, and it has lived up to them quite admirably. However, this will never satisfy ignorant armchair politicians.
Perhaps the U.S. needs to mount a major propaganda campaign outside its borders, to explain and justify its foreign policy and other aspects of its impact on the rest of the world. But ironically, this goes against U.S. foreign policy: it doesn't actively interfere in other countries unless its vital national interests are at stake. Perhaps there is a national interest issue here, if anti-U.S. sentiment is truly running so high.
However, an important question is whether opinions which derive from sources such as European socialists, for example, really have any bearing whatsoever on the opinions of, say, the people of Palestine or right-wing Islamic groups, people who either have actually been the receiving end of U.S. military action, or feel that they are affected by it. The U.S. could market itself till the cows come home and change the mind of every soft-headed European socialist, and it probably wouldn't make a difference to the real problem.
If a company's salespeople can go to corporations and give a credible pitch to provide solutions that will cut costs, support new business models and increased revenues, etc., consulting services are a relatively easy sell. I don't have any direct experience with VA Linux, but it seems to me that they faced an uphill battle in that area: "our consultants know Linux really well" isn't exactly on the top ten list of things IT managers and CxOs think they really need. (Nothing against Linux, but in itself, it's not a solution to any business problem except perhaps in the embedded market.)
I suspect consulting companies and open source will continue to coexist in future, but the focus will have to be around solving business problems, or there won't be any money in it and it won't survive commercially, except as a minor niche.
My post was written in response to someone who said: "who cares if they can track you? They're not really bothered about what kind of black-and-white 30x20 pr0n you're downloading, they're far more bothered about terrorist activity." I'm more concerned about attitudes like that than I am about any actual threat of cellphones being tracked with current technology.
Maybe you should bring up these issues at your next city council meeting.
If the problem were more immediate, I might, if I lived in a city. Our town council wouldn't know what to make of the subject. One member of our board of education recently proposed deferring computer purchases, because nanotechnology was soon going to make all the school system's computers obsolete.
It seems to me that a whole lot of what goes wrong in politics is simply this short-sighted (a.k.a. kneejerk) thinking. The problem is that people who have an agenda can take advantage of this tendency, and it's much easier for them to do this to get what they want, than to actually try to explain or discuss issues in depth. The electorate is thus encouraged (trained!) to think this way.
But tomorrow when robots are jamming cameras up your ass
Per article XIV, section 5 of the Hatch/Lott privacy bill of 2003, it will be the patriotic duty of all Americans to submit to said camera-jamming. All in the interests of national security, of course - you do want national security, don't you? Of course you do. Now bend over, please...
This is an attitude that can only come from someone who has studied very little history, and/or is too young to remember government abuses in the past.
The problem is that if you don't restrict and control the tools that governments have available to them, they will abuse them. It's human nature - if you were an FBI agent, wouldn't you use whatever tools you had at your disposal to track down bad guys? It's not far from there to doing what Sen. Joseph McCarthy was doing in the 1950s: tracking down people engaging in "un-American activities", the kind of term which of course is defined by whatever over-zealous government official is conducting such investigations.
There are countless cases of over-zealousness of prosecutors, police, and other officials, and to an extent, that's the way we want it - but that's exactly why there are laws and structures to keep these people in check, and to make sure they don't harrass people who are considered by law to be "innocent until proven guilty".
It might seem to make sense to give the government more leeway in this time of crisis, but even if it does make sense, any extra powers granted to them should be temporary, and only usable in pursuing terrorist activity. Otherwise, the terrorists will win in a much bigger way than they have already: they'll succeed in making the United States a place where the government abridges its citizens' freedoms, a place where many citizens may end up with good reasons to fear their government.
Sorry, but you're way off base here. Try walking around a major city center with a handheld GPS sometime. The cached location would probably show that the phone was somewhere else entirely - perhaps in the street approaching the WTC, or even at a suburban train station or bridge where the sky was less obstructed.
Others have defended Moore based on other statements he made on the subject. But I, too, noticed the statement "everyone does not need to be a programmer", and think it is unforgivable. The only thing that could mitigate it is an apology from Moore.
In the sentence you quoted, I was actually referring to the diminished freedoms that we are likely to experience in the aftermath of this disaster. Building big buildings while we diminish our freedoms makes it seem to me as though the terrorists have won: they are setting the agenda, changing our lives. The terrorists destroyed something more important than any building: they destroyed the sense that America was virtually impervious to major attacks from external sources. The aspect of my message dealing with safety deals with that: that, to me, is what is important to rebuild.