- No matter how smart you may think you are, there are others who are smarter
- In almost all cases, software provides a service to those who need to use the software for their job. So when the customer/user asks or suggests a change, resist the urge to say "Why would you need to do that?" Listen to their needs, take the advice in stride.
- Managers have their own goals and methods that often work against engineering quality (specifically cost, schedule and award fee). No matter how "right" you think you are, you will probably not change their motives or methods.
- Your career and time are valuable. Choose who you work for carefully and don't misplace your loyalty. (See previous point).
As someone who works in a very specialized market (aerospace), I would be concerned that if Autodesk or any other developer of specialized software were not able to dictate the terms of their licensing, including licensing the individual rather than having the license apply to the copy of the media itself, then many specialized markets would fail.
Why? Because there are limited sales opportunities to support the employee base required to develop and maintain the product. CAD programs are not like a copy of "The Hunt for Red October" largely because virtually anyone can use a copy of a movie, but only a few (by comparison) can utilize a CAD program. There are even more extreme cases in aerospace and helps to explain why there are so few successful COTS software providers in aerospace. But if Vernor's claim is upheld, even those companies would fail as a large organization (like NASA) would simply need to buy a fixed number copies and then pass them from mission to mission.
Second-hand software sales in specialized markets would kill those markets. Just my two cents.
I have a sneaking suspicion that you are right - this isn't about the gene itself, but how to isolate/observe, etc. That process could very well be an invention and it certainly cost R&D money to the original developer.
I guess the question comes down to whether patent protection for health related concerns should be exempted as some (not myself) consider health care a right (I consider it a need and responsibility to procure, but not a right that I expect others to provide for me.)
The plaintiffs are clearly attempting to use this case to overturn all health related patents (in the article) and in my opinion pull health related research from the private sector to the public sector. This would bolster the advocates of national health care and create another (unwritten) constitutional right.
Chicken and the Egg: Ad Revenue and Content
on
Are Newspapers Doomed?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The comment above points to ad revenue drying up as one cause for the demise of print news. While reduced ad revenue may cause newspapers to fold (pun intended), it is not the cause of the reduced circulation and therefore lower ad revenue.
Content is everything and as our society has become more politically polarized, the bias in American news media has become more and more obvious. This leads potential readers (like me) to simply not subscribe. Just as when I see movies with certain politically vocal stars, I simply avoid the box office. This is America and actors can be advocates and newspapers can be political advertisements, but choices have consequences and I sometimes wonder if these groups understand that you can't diss half of your audience without consequences.
I am a computer guy, but I hate to read long pieces on line. I would actually like to subscribe to a regional paper if I really did think that I was being offered unbiased news. So although I think that online media contributes to the demise, once again I do not think it is the cause.
The simplest cause for the demise of newspapers: content (or lack thereof).
I have always viewed this debate in the context of scientist vs. engineer. That is one who views data as "good and true" vs. "good enough". That's not a slam on engineers (I am one), but a reflection of the balance between the two. A scientist that never applies theory sits in an empty room. An engineer who build things with out science, sits in a cluttered room surrounded by useless objects.
I do find interesting though that the advent of "google data" may indicate a flip in order of the two disciplines. Historically (IMHO) science has led engineering. A theoretical breakthrough, provable by the scientific method, may take years to give birth to a practical application. Now, with enormous piles of data and the knowledge that "good enough" is often good enough, we may be creating useful objects that will take science many years to explain and model.
The biggest issue and omission in both of these pieces is that this "cloud" of data does not represent "truth" (as the scientist may seek), but rather a summation or averaging of the "perception of truth" as seen by the individual authors. The cloud, therefore, is only as useful as human's ability to divine truth without the scientific method.
I've had Slashdot as my home page for years and I love the technology stories. But I've had it up to here with the vitriolic, irrational, anti-American crap that readers post for stories like these.
This issue has been distorted from the beginning and so many Slashdot readers bought it hook line and sinker. My disgust for these posts have finally exceeded my desire to read about technology.
TTFN. Good luck with forming that Utopia that you are looking for... I'm going to find where the adults are going these days.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Building, launching and fly a spacecraft is complex and difficult. But ever since the mid 1990's the industry thinks that cutting costs (which inevitably means cutting late life cycle costs such as operations) can be overcome with automation and hand-waving. The launch vehicle gets the spacecraft off the ground, but then some silly operations error or engineering flaw not uncovered by operations results in a catastrophic failure (e.g. JPL/Mars English vs. Metric debacle). Back in the day - agencies fully funded operations personnel that shook out both procedural and engineering defects ahead of time. Just because an agency doesn't/can't pay for the same level of effort in today's fiscal environment does not mean that these types of defects magically disappear.
It used to be said that of "Better, faster, cheaper," you could only have two out of three. As time goes on, I wonder if these expectations are too high.
Space missions have cost overruns for sure, but in my experience those overruns come from unrealistically low bids from major vendors and the fact that these dinosaur companies build spacecraft in pretty much the same way as they always have. They used to run of of money about a year before launch and they still run out of money a year before launch. IMHO, the only way to reduce the frequency of catatrophic failure is for early life cycle vendors to becore more efficient so there are funds for operations to shake out the bugs before it gets up on orbit.
In the 1970's, comedian Don Novello (of Father Guido Sarducci fame) wrote a book called the "Lazlo Lettets" where he would write tongue in cheek letters to a wide variety of people and places like the President, Hotels, and of course NASA. His alter ego Lazlo Toth observered that if NASA were to scoop up martian soil and burn it to find life, that NASA would have more appropriately found life, but killed it so they wouldn't be able to actually prove that life still existed. I don't recall the content what NASA's response letter.
I love it when comedians get these things right ahead of time.
There are a lot of posts concerning NASA, management, the Military-Industrial complex. As someone who has watched the decay of spacecraft operations, I can confidently tell you that much of it has to do with contracting and paychecks.
Quick review: Spacecraft programs contain a number of stages, e.g. design, integration and test, launch, etc. The last stage is Operations. There used to be a day when all stages were properly funded and for Operations, this meant 24/7 console staffing, dynamic simulators, on-site engineers, spacecraft design manuals and lots of legitimate training.
But here's the problem. Prior to the mid 90s, NASA and other agencies used cost plus contracting, and the big contractors settled into a mode where the initial mission budget would be exhausted by about launch minus 1 or 2 years. This is when they would run back to the government organization and ask for more money and after some hand-wringing more money was allocated. Then all of a sudden - poof it's gone. Fixed cost contracting had arrived.
The problem, the big gorilla contractors only know one way to build a spacecraft and as no one likes to change, both contractors and NASA started coming up with inventive ways to defund Operation so they come in close to budget. Buzz-words like "automation" and "lights out operations" reduced console staffing to only the day shift. On-site engineers are never hired - instead "factory" design engineers are dug up IF there is a problem. Without on-site engineering, there's no need for good spacraft docs and simulators and no one to construct legitimate practice exercises. Combine this with upper management's desire to meet schedule, the already rounded corners are shaved even more.
Once formal Operations had evaporated, launch and early orbit was solely in the hands of design engineers, who are not Operations engineers. There's a different mindset between the two. There used to be a day when operation screw ups could be avoided and design flaws caught in advance through legitimate simulation, but that's gone now. Why? NO ONE PAYS FOR IT ANYMORE!
I agree with this completely - and I wonder why this isn't modded higher (hint hint).
There seems to be faulty logic that what we have now, paper based votes that are handled by humans behind closed doors, are always correct and infallible. Certainly voiding or invalidating votes after the fact is a quick and easy thing that virtually anyone with access to the ballots and the will can execute. And even though I would never suggest that any electronic form of voting is secure, I do beleive that it would be far more difficult to tamper with and involve a much larger consipiracy were any fraud to occur.
Everything is relative - and if electronic voting, faulty or not, reduces the total amount of fraud - this is good. And if fraud continues, then it may be easier to determine who is orchestrating the fraud as techniques and hardware would necessarily need to be distributed.
... News reports that state that either endpoint (phone number of cell phone, e.g.) are already on a list of suspected communications and goes active.
The Catch 22 to this is if a suspected line goes active you a) can't figure out who is on the other end until you "listen in" and b) since you don't know both parties (or even specifically one party) that by the time you went to FISA to get a warrant, the communication is over and action by the enemy may have already been taken.
I'm pretty sure that terrorist #1 is not talking to money guy #2 on a cell phone overseas saying "So how about those Yankees. Started out in the cellar, but they're on their way back up." It's far more reasonable to think that they are communicating a tactical directive that by its nature would need to be executed quickly to be effective.
BTW - polls are frequently contrived and weighted. Presidential approval ratings can capture both the opposition party (near 100% opposed) and some in his own party who don't like everything he is doing, e.g. immigration or spending. Same thing with "Right track/Wrong track"
The ninth amendment (Unenumerated Rights) is the very definition of obscurity. I find it amusing that other replies to this thread argue that since this war is not clearly defined and specfically set forth in the Constitution, then it somehow can be classified as a war. Yet here we have the underspecified ninth amendment being held up as the clear reason why we can't listen in on phone converstaions with one end on a cell phone or other device on a watch list.
Apparently, the ninth amendment was seldom referenced in Supreme Court cases until the start of the abortion movement in 1965 when it was used to slowly create the right to privacy that is backbone of Roe v. Wade. (The 'Unenumerated' right to privacy.)
So if we go down this road, just about anything can be a "retained by the people." Perhaps that is why the Supreme Court avoided it for so many years(?)
The problem in define this war/conflict is that it is not with a State government and therefore there are fewer "bright lines" that we can use to a) declare the war and b) know when it is over.
However, to sit around, throw up our hands and say "well, this can't be a war because we can't know when it's over." is silly and dangerous. 9/11 happened. Another will happen unless we take this seriously and acknowledge that in 1789 the authors of the Constitution could not have forseen this type of deadly "stateless" enemy.
Ok, so I realize that as a litigant, the EFF will have the position that the NSA wiretap program IS illegel, this is shaky on right from the start.
First, the President has rights and responsibilities under Article 2 that gives him broad powers in times of conflict and war. The NSA wiretap (as in the press) is on communications between suspected terrorists/affiliates OVERSEAS and someone in the US. This type survellance was common in WWII and used extensively.
Second, it could very well be that the FISA law itself is the unconstitutional component here. Just because a weak president (Carter) signs FISA in 1978 on the heels of Watergate doesn't mean the a) it is Constitutional and b) that a future president can't take that power back.
Third, although there is no privacy provision in the Constitution (although implied by the fourth ammendmant - search and seizure) even if we are to stipulate one, the affected parties would need to have an expectation of privacy. As the targets of the program are terrorist or their affiliates, no reasonable person could argue that an enemy combatant, using domestic communications of the enemy they wish to harm, would expect that no one would listen. This may be a benefit of a U.S. citizen, but not the enemy.
I had a similar experience with Quickbooks and their payroll service. It's bad enough that Intuit wants $200 a year to download some tax tables into Quickbooks (especially if you are your only employee), but the payroll service will not work if the version of Quickbooks is over 3 years old.
And just to annoy me more, I recently upgraded from Quickbooks 2002 to 2005 by purchasing a copy at Sam's Club, expecting a $100 rebate and I found out after the fact that Sams Club does not "participate" in the rebate program despite this phrase on intuits rebate web site.
Upgrader Rebates from ANY Retail store such as Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco, Fry's Electronics, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, etc.
I've already submitted a complaint to the BBB. Intuit has surpassed even Micro$oft in push upgrading, in my opinion.
Come on! I'm fed up with this election and posts like this just steam me. I come to this site to keep up with the ins and outs of the technical world. A posting like this is just going to turn me off. True believers cannot be reasoned with and reading these posts just make me hit the back button.
Re:I hope this crisis gets the middle class to ...
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Apparently "Anonymous Coward" has alot of pent up anger.
I'm a new small business owner. I dropped out of the work force two and a half years ago to re-engineer software that I had developed over my career, but as my own IP. I've run across many of the same things that this guy has seen. (So I guess I'm one of the "millions" who have given up as I don't hit the payroll radar and don't hit the unemployment radar and have no insurance. Oh no... help me!:)
But instead of getting angry and blaming "conservatives" let's remember a few things.
- One candidate has stressed changing the insurance and retirement structure to give individual small businesses a fair shake (Bush).
- No one administration is responsible for the inner workings of the bureaucracy. It is a huge machine that abhors change and protects its own paychecks. Since entrepeneurs cut against this philosophy, it's not surprising that there are problems.
- Which leads to the stance of the another candidate which is to largely maintain the status quo with marginal changes to the business tax code and attempt to "punish" corporation that export jobs (Kerry). This protects his biggest union constituancy (Government employees) and plays to fifty year old fears.
Bottom line - Each of us live in the world of microeconomics, but the country and the planet run s in the world of macroeconomics. To discuss free trade, job competition, the squeezing of the middle class without focusing on the macro problems is useless.
Personally, I feel that software patents should only be awarded if the source code is open. Not necessarily GPL'd, but open in that your competition may have a legitimate opportunity to view the design.
Seventy five years ago, if you devised a new engine for a car, your competition could buy one, rip it apart and copy your ideas. So patents made sense. But in closed source software design, the products are black boxes that frequently can be describe only on more general terms. So we get these patent applications for abstract functions.
IMHO, patents should only be awarded if a company is willing to open its source code to an extent. It can still be proprietary, but there must be the legitimate opportunity for someone else to be able to "look inside" to see how it works. If a company want to keep it's code closed, fine. But no patent.
I'm amused at the outraged postings of people shocked by the fact that Microsoft passes along settlement costs to the consumer through price increases rather than cutting into their profits. Look, they'll raise their prices first, and if demand drops off or they're afraid that their market share is shrinking, then they may lower their prices again.
Litigation resulting in cash penalities are the easiest for corporations like MS to handle. I believe that state and foreign governments sue not for whats "right" or "fair" but because its a backdoor method of taxing the public.
IMHO, the best solution to deal with MS was the original penalty of splitting the OS and Apps segments of MS into two separate entities. You can't pass that along to consumers. No wonder MS fought so hard to get that reversed.
BTW - Here's another little fact. Corporations don't pay taxes (technically) either. So before getting all huffy that MS is getting away with it again, take a good hard look at the runaway litigation in the world and ask yourself where all of the money is going!
Maybe I'm a little jaded, but my guess is that in about a year, when we're closer to the Longhorn release, Microsoft will claim that the heritage Win2000/NT4 core is "too compromised" because of this leak and officially discontinue support prior to its seven year life-cycle. Along then along with Win98, everyone will be compelled to migrate to their new products.
It seems to me that we may need a new emulator package to behave like a dumb car stereo. Perhaps it could be called the Multiple Audio Machine Emulator... Hmmm, that sounds familiar.:)
Sometimes distance isn't the problem. I live in Northern Virginia and can't get broadband access anywhere (yet). My cable provider is slated for winter 2000 and I live 14000 feet from the central office. Now that's within the theoretical limits, but I cannot get ONE provider to even attempt a lower rate SDSL/ADSL connection. My guess is that unless you're a slam dunk, you don't even get looked at. At one point, I found a third party provider (Phoenix) who contracted to 208Kbps SDSL, but later told me that only IDSL was available. I guess theory is fine as long as it doesn't create more work for the provider. Hmmm.
Slashdot Mirror
A few life lessons that may help...
- No matter how smart you may think you are, there are others who are smarter
- In almost all cases, software provides a service to those who need to use the software for their job. So when the customer/user asks or suggests a change, resist the urge to say "Why would you need to do that?" Listen to their needs, take the advice in stride.
- Managers have their own goals and methods that often work against engineering quality (specifically cost, schedule and award fee). No matter how "right" you think you are, you will probably not change their motives or methods.
- Your career and time are valuable. Choose who you work for carefully and don't misplace your loyalty. (See previous point).
As someone who works in a very specialized market (aerospace), I would be concerned that if Autodesk or any other developer of specialized software were not able to dictate the terms of their licensing, including licensing the individual rather than having the license apply to the copy of the media itself, then many specialized markets would fail.
Why? Because there are limited sales opportunities to support the employee base required to develop and maintain the product. CAD programs are not like a copy of "The Hunt for Red October" largely because virtually anyone can use a copy of a movie, but only a few (by comparison) can utilize a CAD program. There are even more extreme cases in aerospace and helps to explain why there are so few successful COTS software providers in aerospace. But if Vernor's claim is upheld, even those companies would fail as a large organization (like NASA) would simply need to buy a fixed number copies and then pass them from mission to mission.
Second-hand software sales in specialized markets would kill those markets. Just my two cents.
I have a sneaking suspicion that you are right - this isn't about the gene itself, but how to isolate/observe, etc. That process could very well be an invention and it certainly cost R&D money to the original developer.
I guess the question comes down to whether patent protection for health related concerns should be exempted as some (not myself) consider health care a right (I consider it a need and responsibility to procure, but not a right that I expect others to provide for me.)
The plaintiffs are clearly attempting to use this case to overturn all health related patents (in the article) and in my opinion pull health related research from the private sector to the public sector. This would bolster the advocates of national health care and create another (unwritten) constitutional right.
The comment above points to ad revenue drying up as one cause for the demise of print news. While reduced ad revenue may cause newspapers to fold (pun intended), it is not the cause of the reduced circulation and therefore lower ad revenue.
Content is everything and as our society has become more politically polarized, the bias in American news media has become more and more obvious. This leads potential readers (like me) to simply not subscribe. Just as when I see movies with certain politically vocal stars, I simply avoid the box office. This is America and actors can be advocates and newspapers can be political advertisements, but choices have consequences and I sometimes wonder if these groups understand that you can't diss half of your audience without consequences.
I am a computer guy, but I hate to read long pieces on line. I would actually like to subscribe to a regional paper if I really did think that I was being offered unbiased news. So although I think that online media contributes to the demise, once again I do not think it is the cause.
The simplest cause for the demise of newspapers: content (or lack thereof).
I have always viewed this debate in the context of scientist vs. engineer. That is one who views data as "good and true" vs. "good enough". That's not a slam on engineers (I am one), but a reflection of the balance between the two. A scientist that never applies theory sits in an empty room. An engineer who build things with out science, sits in a cluttered room surrounded by useless objects.
I do find interesting though that the advent of "google data" may indicate a flip in order of the two disciplines. Historically (IMHO) science has led engineering. A theoretical breakthrough, provable by the scientific method, may take years to give birth to a practical application. Now, with enormous piles of data and the knowledge that "good enough" is often good enough, we may be creating useful objects that will take science many years to explain and model.
The biggest issue and omission in both of these pieces is that this "cloud" of data does not represent "truth" (as the scientist may seek), but rather a summation or averaging of the "perception of truth" as seen by the individual authors. The cloud, therefore, is only as useful as human's ability to divine truth without the scientific method.
My two cents. :)
I've had Slashdot as my home page for years and I love the technology stories. But I've had it up to here with the vitriolic, irrational, anti-American crap that readers post for stories like these.
This issue has been distorted from the beginning and so many Slashdot readers bought it hook line and sinker. My disgust for these posts have finally exceeded my desire to read about technology.
TTFN. Good luck with forming that Utopia that you are looking for... I'm going to find where the adults are going these days.
P.S. Go ahead and mod me down. I don't care.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Building, launching and fly a spacecraft is complex and difficult. But ever since the mid 1990's the industry thinks that cutting costs (which inevitably means cutting late life cycle costs such as operations) can be overcome with automation and hand-waving. The launch vehicle gets the spacecraft off the ground, but then some silly operations error or engineering flaw not uncovered by operations results in a catastrophic failure (e.g. JPL/Mars English vs. Metric debacle). Back in the day - agencies fully funded operations personnel that shook out both procedural and engineering defects ahead of time. Just because an agency doesn't/can't pay for the same level of effort in today's fiscal environment does not mean that these types of defects magically disappear.
It used to be said that of "Better, faster, cheaper," you could only have two out of three. As time goes on, I wonder if these expectations are too high.
Space missions have cost overruns for sure, but in my experience those overruns come from unrealistically low bids from major vendors and the fact that these dinosaur companies build spacecraft in pretty much the same way as they always have. They used to run of of money about a year before launch and they still run out of money a year before launch. IMHO, the only way to reduce the frequency of catatrophic failure is for early life cycle vendors to becore more efficient so there are funds for operations to shake out the bugs before it gets up on orbit.
In the 1970's, comedian Don Novello (of Father Guido Sarducci fame) wrote a book called the "Lazlo Lettets" where he would write tongue in cheek letters to a wide variety of people and places like the President, Hotels, and of course NASA. His alter ego Lazlo Toth observered that if NASA were to scoop up martian soil and burn it to find life, that NASA would have more appropriately found life, but killed it so they wouldn't be able to actually prove that life still existed. I don't recall the content what NASA's response letter.
I love it when comedians get these things right ahead of time.
P.S. Another example at the Onion. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930 saw the new Fusion with six blades coming way back in Feb 2004!
There are a lot of posts concerning NASA, management, the Military-Industrial complex. As someone who has watched the decay of spacecraft operations, I can confidently tell you that much of it has to do with contracting and paychecks.
Quick review: Spacecraft programs contain a number of stages, e.g. design, integration and test, launch, etc. The last stage is Operations. There used to be a day when all stages were properly funded and for Operations, this meant 24/7 console staffing, dynamic simulators, on-site engineers, spacecraft design manuals and lots of legitimate training.
But here's the problem. Prior to the mid 90s, NASA and other agencies used cost plus contracting, and the big contractors settled into a mode where the initial mission budget would be exhausted by about launch minus 1 or 2 years. This is when they would run back to the government organization and ask for more money and after some hand-wringing more money was allocated. Then all of a sudden - poof it's gone. Fixed cost contracting had arrived.
The problem, the big gorilla contractors only know one way to build a spacecraft and as no one likes to change, both contractors and NASA started coming up with inventive ways to defund Operation so they come in close to budget. Buzz-words like "automation" and "lights out operations" reduced console staffing to only the day shift. On-site engineers are never hired - instead "factory" design engineers are dug up IF there is a problem. Without on-site engineering, there's no need for good spacraft docs and simulators and no one to construct legitimate practice exercises. Combine this with upper management's desire to meet schedule, the already rounded corners are shaved even more.
Once formal Operations had evaporated, launch and early orbit was solely in the hands of design engineers, who are not Operations engineers. There's a different mindset between the two. There used to be a day when operation screw ups could be avoided and design flaws caught in advance through legitimate simulation, but that's gone now. Why? NO ONE PAYS FOR IT ANYMORE!
I agree with this completely - and I wonder why this isn't modded higher (hint hint).
There seems to be faulty logic that what we have now, paper based votes that are handled by humans behind closed doors, are always correct and infallible. Certainly voiding or invalidating votes after the fact is a quick and easy thing that virtually anyone with access to the ballots and the will can execute. And even though I would never suggest that any electronic form of voting is secure, I do beleive that it would be far more difficult to tamper with and involve a much larger consipiracy were any fraud to occur.
Everything is relative - and if electronic voting, faulty or not, reduces the total amount of fraud - this is good. And if fraud continues, then it may be easier to determine who is orchestrating the fraud as techniques and hardware would necessarily need to be distributed.
Just my 2 cents.
Good point! I can't say what they were thinking. Now I'm guilty of assuming. :)
... News reports that state that either endpoint (phone number of cell phone, e.g.) are already on a list of suspected communications and goes active.
The Catch 22 to this is if a suspected line goes active you a) can't figure out who is on the other end until you "listen in" and b) since you don't know both parties (or even specifically one party) that by the time you went to FISA to get a warrant, the communication is over and action by the enemy may have already been taken.
I'm pretty sure that terrorist #1 is not talking to money guy #2 on a cell phone overseas saying "So how about those Yankees. Started out in the cellar, but they're on their way back up." It's far more reasonable to think that they are communicating a tactical directive that by its nature would need to be executed quickly to be effective.
BTW - polls are frequently contrived and weighted. Presidential approval ratings can capture both the opposition party (near 100% opposed) and some in his own party who don't like everything he is doing, e.g. immigration or spending. Same thing with "Right track/Wrong track"
The ninth amendment (Unenumerated Rights) is the very definition of obscurity. I find it amusing that other replies to this thread argue that since this war is not clearly defined and specfically set forth in the Constitution, then it somehow can be classified as a war. Yet here we have the underspecified ninth amendment being held up as the clear reason why we can't listen in on phone converstaions with one end on a cell phone or other device on a watch list.
Apparently, the ninth amendment was seldom referenced in Supreme Court cases until the start of the abortion movement in 1965 when it was used to slowly create the right to privacy that is backbone of Roe v. Wade. (The 'Unenumerated' right to privacy.)
So if we go down this road, just about anything can be a "retained by the people." Perhaps that is why the Supreme Court avoided it for so many years(?)
The problem in define this war/conflict is that it is not with a State government and therefore there are fewer "bright lines" that we can use to a) declare the war and b) know when it is over.
However, to sit around, throw up our hands and say "well, this can't be a war because we can't know when it's over." is silly and dangerous. 9/11 happened. Another will happen unless we take this seriously and acknowledge that in 1789 the authors of the Constitution could not have forseen this type of deadly "stateless" enemy.
Ok, so I realize that as a litigant, the EFF will have the position that the NSA wiretap program IS illegel, this is shaky on right from the start.
First, the President has rights and responsibilities under Article 2 that gives him broad powers in times of conflict and war. The NSA wiretap (as in the press) is on communications between suspected terrorists/affiliates OVERSEAS and someone in the US. This type survellance was common in WWII and used extensively.
Second, it could very well be that the FISA law itself is the unconstitutional component here. Just because a weak president (Carter) signs FISA in 1978 on the heels of Watergate doesn't mean the a) it is Constitutional and b) that a future president can't take that power back.
Third, although there is no privacy provision in the Constitution (although implied by the fourth ammendmant - search and seizure) even if we are to stipulate one, the affected parties would need to have an expectation of privacy. As the targets of the program are terrorist or their affiliates, no reasonable person could argue that an enemy combatant, using domestic communications of the enemy they wish to harm, would expect that no one would listen. This may be a benefit of a U.S. citizen, but not the enemy.
I had a similar experience with Quickbooks and their payroll service. It's bad enough that Intuit wants $200 a year to download some tax tables into Quickbooks (especially if you are your only employee), but the payroll service will not work if the version of Quickbooks is over 3 years old.
And just to annoy me more, I recently upgraded from Quickbooks 2002 to 2005 by purchasing a copy at Sam's Club, expecting a $100 rebate and I found out after the fact that Sams Club does not "participate" in the rebate program despite this phrase on intuits rebate web site.
Upgrader Rebates from ANY Retail store such as Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco, Fry's Electronics, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, etc.
I've already submitted a complaint to the BBB. Intuit has surpassed even Micro$oft in push upgrading, in my opinion.
Come on! I'm fed up with this election and posts like this just steam me. I come to this site to keep up with the ins and outs of the technical world. A posting like this is just going to turn me off. True believers cannot be reasoned with and reading these posts just make me hit the back button.
Apparently "Anonymous Coward" has alot of pent up anger.
... help me! :)
I'm a new small business owner. I dropped out of the work force two and a half years ago to re-engineer software that I had developed over my career, but as my own IP. I've run across many of the same things that this guy has seen. (So I guess I'm one of the "millions" who have given up as I don't hit the payroll radar and don't hit the unemployment radar and have no insurance. Oh no
But instead of getting angry and blaming "conservatives" let's remember a few things.
- One candidate has stressed changing the insurance and retirement structure to give individual small businesses a fair shake (Bush).
- No one administration is responsible for the inner workings of the bureaucracy. It is a huge machine that abhors change and protects its own paychecks. Since entrepeneurs cut against this philosophy, it's not surprising that there are problems.
- Which leads to the stance of the another candidate which is to largely maintain the status quo with marginal changes to the business tax code and attempt to "punish" corporation that export jobs (Kerry). This protects his biggest union constituancy (Government employees) and plays to fifty year old fears.
Bottom line - Each of us live in the world of microeconomics, but the country and the planet run s in the world of macroeconomics. To discuss free trade, job competition, the squeezing of the middle class without focusing on the macro problems is useless.
I like NASA. I like hubble. I also like candy, but I wouldn't pay face value for a 100 Grand candy bar!
Personally, I feel that software patents should only be awarded if the source code is open. Not necessarily GPL'd, but open in that your competition may have a legitimate opportunity to view the design.
Seventy five years ago, if you devised a new engine for a car, your competition could buy one, rip it apart and copy your ideas. So patents made sense. But in closed source software design, the products are black boxes that frequently can be describe only on more general terms. So we get these patent applications for abstract functions.
IMHO, patents should only be awarded if a company is willing to open its source code to an extent. It can still be proprietary, but there must be the legitimate opportunity for someone else to be able to "look inside" to see how it works. If a company want to keep it's code closed, fine. But no patent.
Just my two cents.
I'm amused at the outraged postings of people shocked by the fact that Microsoft passes along settlement costs to the consumer through price increases rather than cutting into their profits. Look, they'll raise their prices first, and if demand drops off or they're afraid that their market share is shrinking, then they may lower their prices again.
Litigation resulting in cash penalities are the easiest for corporations like MS to handle. I believe that state and foreign governments sue not for whats "right" or "fair" but because its a backdoor method of taxing the public.
IMHO, the best solution to deal with MS was the original penalty of splitting the OS and Apps segments of MS into two separate entities. You can't pass that along to consumers. No wonder MS fought so hard to get that reversed.
BTW - Here's another little fact. Corporations don't pay taxes (technically) either. So before getting all huffy that MS is getting away with it again, take a good hard look at the runaway litigation in the world and ask yourself where all of the money is going!
Maybe I'm a little jaded, but my guess is that in about a year, when we're closer to the Longhorn release, Microsoft will claim that the heritage Win2000/NT4 core is "too compromised" because of this leak and officially discontinue support prior to its seven year life-cycle. Along then along with Win98, everyone will be compelled to migrate to their new products.
:)
Just a thought...
It seems to me that we may need a new emulator package to behave like a dumb car stereo. Perhaps it could be called the Multiple Audio Machine Emulator ... Hmmm, that sounds familiar. :)
Sometimes distance isn't the problem. I live in Northern Virginia and can't get broadband access anywhere (yet). My cable provider is slated for winter 2000 and I live 14000 feet from the central office. Now that's within the theoretical limits, but I cannot get ONE provider to even attempt a lower rate SDSL/ADSL connection. My guess is that unless you're a slam dunk, you don't even get looked at. At one point, I found a third party provider (Phoenix) who contracted to 208Kbps SDSL, but later told me that only IDSL was available. I guess theory is fine as long as it doesn't create more work for the provider. Hmmm.