What you would do is take the results to an MD. Lots of tests involve measurements you make yourself at home. I usually bring my doctor a record of blood pressure readings.
But there's a big problem here. This device will be sold to people who are worried about potential problems and think that if they get enough data they can know exactly what their health state is. (There's already a thriving business in "preventive" full body MRIs that cater to such folks.) They might seem like a good idea, if you can afford it, but it's not. Everybody has anomalies in their body, and too much proactive diagnosis can lead to unnecessary procedures. In some cases these procedures are more dangerous than benign neglect.
There are certainly preventive procedures that make sense. (He says hypocritically, as he puts off the colonoscopy he should have had done a year ago.) But medicine is still very much a black art, and the Star Trek model of pointing a magic gadget at somebody and knowing exactly what's going on in their body is still a fantasy — and probably always will be. So gathering tons of data about potential problems you have no reason to suspect is worse than useless.
Interesting that you completely ignored my sockpuppet speculation.
As I said before, it's pointless to argue with somebody who's found a way to dismiss everything you say out of hand. If you really want to argue with me, give the other side some credit for actually having a brain. If you can't do that, your stupid games don't fool anybody.
I totally agree with the point you're trying to make, but I have to question your terminology. There is a business case for most of the projects you mention (rural phone service is an exception). It's not hard to show that if, for example, you build a railroad across a huge, undeveloped territory, the resulting development will make the railroad profitable. The problem is the difficulty of finding investors to risk huge sums of money on such a long term project. Only a government is in the position to take the long view on something like this.
The Internet is an especially interesting case. The private sector did see a business case early on for developing data networking infrastructure. But, being private, they went at it from many different directions, and the result was a lot of different incompatible technologies, and a lot of networks that didn't interconnect easily. The Internet has strengths and weaknesses that could only come from its origins as a government-funded research network. The big strength of the Internet is that everybody was able to adapt their own technology to work with it, making it simple to transfer data between any two nodes.
The big weakness of the Internet is that its original design assumed a high degree of mutual trust between users. Hence a mail protocol that originally let anybody send mail through any server (and still makes it too easy to send email anonymously, which is why spam is now 95% of all traffic) and a naming system that is easily screwed up, both by malice and negligence. These problems reflect priorities that commercial development wouldn't have neglected.
Usually thinking involves things like logic and evidence. If you were familiar with such concepts it might occur to you that the Syrian government is unlikely to change its policies just because we're being mean to their hackers.
This thread seems to be plagued by nitwits who think "you're stupid!" is an argument. Or is there more than one? I smell sock puppets. If so, you really need to get out more.
The very concept of a lifetime certification is lame. I used to be something of an expert on Unix system administration — there's even a widely book on the subject that acknowledges me as a source. But that was almost 30 years ago, I haven't kept up with the topic (especially networking), and even newbie Linux geeks know more about it than I do.
If I applied for a Unix or Linux sysadmin job, they'd ask me a few key questions and then laugh me out of the office. Any smart employer (which is, admittedly, not all of them) would do that. Which makes a "certification" good for little more than making them take a second look at your resume. Or for landing a job at some incompetently run company that deserves what they get.
I never defended the Syrian government. I've specifically said that I don't consider them good guys. Yet you keep accusing me of being their apologist. If you don't pay attention to what I say, why should I pay attention to what you say?
Dude, explain one thing to me: why should I care about anything you say? Every single word you've addressed to me has been premised on my total lack of intellectual ability and honesty. That's a self-fulfilling premise, since it allows you to interpret everything I say as nonsense, without any actual effort to assess its quality.
That makes talking to you pointless, which in turn makes listening to you pointless.
Now, if you can somehow find a way to address me that is void of sarcasm and shows that you have a least considered the possibility that I'm not a total dickhead, then we can have a conversation. Otherwise, the following sentence is the last one that will ever be addressed from me to you:
I don't exactly see private industry falling over themselves to get into space. (Not silly "space tourism" schemes, serious economically self-sustaining space travel.) And why should they? We're talking billions of dollars up front with no return for many, many years.
The choice isn't simply between unchecked government and unchecked business; both are recipes for disaster. True believers on both sides will often tell you otherwise, of course.
I'd love to debate the point with you, but I have to go join an employee sit-in over a gross violation of our rights: the company has switched to a cheaper brand of coffee!
I can understand not reading past the first sentence when the post you're responding to is some long diatribe. But this one was just a few sentences, and the sentences you didn't read made it pretty clear that I was not defending the law.
Court challenges aren't the only way to get rid of bad laws. Not even clear that there's any basis for a court challenge of this law. And even if there was, I don't think the CEO of GeekNet has any moral obligation to risk his company's existence and his own freedom just to challenge an export law.
Any comparison between the U.S. and Syrian governments is in your own head. I think I made it pretty clear which one I prefer. But the sins of one government don't become less important because another government is even worse.
I take it you don't much approve of the Damascus regime. Fair enough, but do remember that our Syrian friend doesn't lose any of his rights just because his own government doesn't respect them. Our own government is the bad guy here, and none the less bad because other governments are worse.
I don't think a bunch of hackers are going to take down the Chinese government, even ignoring the little detail that they have a few million of their own. What would make a difference is if western consumers stopped buying from them. Would you pay twice as much for your consumer goods to help bring about a more open China? Didn't think so.
You speak as if a repressive dicatorship is China's only alternative to chaos. And yet somehow other countries manage to find other alternatives.
You know, I've been hearing the "Harmony is good for everybody" party line a lot lately. "Harmony" is just nice way of saying, "always do what you're told." That might work in the short term, but in the long term it's a formula for an abusive, corrupt government and a society with no creative spark.
It's highly appropriate that we should hear from somebody on the ground in Syria. One of the points of this law is to gain leverage against the Syrian government, which Washington considers unfriendly. It's a stupid, shortsighted strategy, that doesn't really accomplish anything, except hurt innocent people.
On the other hand, it's a little inconsistent to call SourceForge "cowardly" for not standing up the government. (Note that the wording of any OS agreement they adhere to is irrelevant — no agreement to act illegally is valid.) Would you dare to flout Syrian law the same way? Not to judge your system of government, but you have to acknowledge the consequences would be pretty severe. U.S. law is less so, but they can still put SourceForge out of business and maybe put some of its people in jail.
Sometimes you do have to go to jail for what you believe in. But this isn't one of them.
This isn't about censorship, this is about denying countries we don't like access to our technology. That said, I agree that it's a stupid law that doesn't do anything at all useful.
IANAL, but I think it would be very hard for any company that does any kind of business in the U.S. if they flout U.S. law. So GeekNet (SF's parent company) would have to move every single U.S. employee over the border. (Which includes the staff of Slashdot. How about it, Rob, Pudge, you guys willing to do the Phillip Nolan act?) And there's still the problem of selling services to U.S. customers.
Come to think of it, since all this comes under the category of "export controls", it would probably be illegal to move the servers across the border. You'd have to start over from scratch, using only software that's legally available outside the U.S.
All in all, a lot of trouble to protect the rights of a few Libyan hackers.
I agree that the laws on this issue are stupid and cause pointless hardship. But SF is in no position to disobey them.
We will wait until the IPv4 addresses run out and then force businesses to start using IPv6 if they want to get on the internet. There will be a temporary boon for networking manufacturers as companies will have to change their equipment
And much wackiness will ensue when plans for new servers have to be put on hold until the infrastructure is upgraded. That kind of delay costs businesses a lot of money. Plus we'll have zero time to work out the kinks. What about all the people out there who just don't have IPv6 stacks on their machines? Or who do have IPv6 installed, but have never tried to access one of those new-fangled addresses — anybody really sure all that software actually works under real-world conditions?:
I've told this story a couple of times already on Slashdot, but one more won't hurt: when I was at Sun, I would occasionally raise the issue of IPv6 support on our service processors. I think some implementations have it, but none of the ones I documented did. The response I always got was that it won't be a priority for Sun until it's a priority for Sun's customers. And apparently it won't be a priority for them until we actually run out of addresses. Why does this all remind me of the Global Warming debate?
As a side curiosity, I wonder how many public IPv4 IPs are actually in use.
I've got one! Speakeasy, as part of being the Geek-Friendly ISP, gives one to every customer.
One entity that will never run out of IP addresses: the Department of Defense. They own what used to be 8 class A networks (now/8 network spaces). That's over 14 million IP addresses. Too bad I'm too old to join up.
Actually, I'm not even sure this counts as a rumor. I mean jeez, somebody's speculation about what somebody else didn't say?
Why is it that "we have been led to believe by an inside source" gets the same kind of headline for Apple as hard news about any other company? Rhetorical question: we all know it's because of the fanboy culture that surrounds all things Apple.
Apple has its good points (and its bad ones), but this endless "What did Bradgalina have for breakfast" tone really gets old.
The battery's sealed — apparently the lifetime of the battery exceeds that of the gadget itself.
That detail aside, I can't disagree with anything you've said. I was excited at first hearing about this, but then I noticed the thing has no way to save what you write. Without that feature, what's the point?
I noticed that there's a heavy emphasis on the greenness of the product. So this would seem to be yet another lame attempt to cash in on yuppie guilt over their big ecological footprints.
Slashdot Mirror
What you would do is take the results to an MD. Lots of tests involve measurements you make yourself at home. I usually bring my doctor a record of blood pressure readings.
But there's a big problem here. This device will be sold to people who are worried about potential problems and think that if they get enough data they can know exactly what their health state is. (There's already a thriving business in "preventive" full body MRIs that cater to such folks.) They might seem like a good idea, if you can afford it, but it's not. Everybody has anomalies in their body, and too much proactive diagnosis can lead to unnecessary procedures. In some cases these procedures are more dangerous than benign neglect.
There are certainly preventive procedures that make sense. (He says hypocritically, as he puts off the colonoscopy he should have had done a year ago.) But medicine is still very much a black art, and the Star Trek model of pointing a magic gadget at somebody and knowing exactly what's going on in their body is still a fantasy — and probably always will be. So gathering tons of data about potential problems you have no reason to suspect is worse than useless.
Whatever. Ignoring you now.
Interesting that you completely ignored my sockpuppet speculation.
As I said before, it's pointless to argue with somebody who's found a way to dismiss everything you say out of hand. If you really want to argue with me, give the other side some credit for actually having a brain. If you can't do that, your stupid games don't fool anybody.
Lamest sock puppet ever.
I totally agree with the point you're trying to make, but I have to question your terminology. There is a business case for most of the projects you mention (rural phone service is an exception). It's not hard to show that if, for example, you build a railroad across a huge, undeveloped territory, the resulting development will make the railroad profitable. The problem is the difficulty of finding investors to risk huge sums of money on such a long term project. Only a government is in the position to take the long view on something like this.
The Internet is an especially interesting case. The private sector did see a business case early on for developing data networking infrastructure. But, being private, they went at it from many different directions, and the result was a lot of different incompatible technologies, and a lot of networks that didn't interconnect easily. The Internet has strengths and weaknesses that could only come from its origins as a government-funded research network. The big strength of the Internet is that everybody was able to adapt their own technology to work with it, making it simple to transfer data between any two nodes.
The big weakness of the Internet is that its original design assumed a high degree of mutual trust between users. Hence a mail protocol that originally let anybody send mail through any server (and still makes it too easy to send email anonymously, which is why spam is now 95% of all traffic) and a naming system that is easily screwed up, both by malice and negligence. These problems reflect priorities that commercial development wouldn't have neglected.
Usually thinking involves things like logic and evidence. If you were familiar with such concepts it might occur to you that the Syrian government is unlikely to change its policies just because we're being mean to their hackers.
This thread seems to be plagued by nitwits who think "you're stupid!" is an argument. Or is there more than one? I smell sock puppets. If so, you really need to get out more.
The very concept of a lifetime certification is lame. I used to be something of an expert on Unix system administration — there's even a widely book on the subject that acknowledges me as a source. But that was almost 30 years ago, I haven't kept up with the topic (especially networking), and even newbie Linux geeks know more about it than I do.
If I applied for a Unix or Linux sysadmin job, they'd ask me a few key questions and then laugh me out of the office. Any smart employer (which is, admittedly, not all of them) would do that. Which makes a "certification" good for little more than making them take a second look at your resume. Or for landing a job at some incompetently run company that deserves what they get.
I never defended the Syrian government. I've specifically said that I don't consider them good guys. Yet you keep accusing me of being their apologist. If you don't pay attention to what I say, why should I pay attention to what you say?
Dude, explain one thing to me: why should I care about anything you say? Every single word you've addressed to me has been premised on my total lack of intellectual ability and honesty. That's a self-fulfilling premise, since it allows you to interpret everything I say as nonsense, without any actual effort to assess its quality.
That makes talking to you pointless, which in turn makes listening to you pointless.
Now, if you can somehow find a way to address me that is void of sarcasm and shows that you have a least considered the possibility that I'm not a total dickhead, then we can have a conversation. Otherwise, the following sentence is the last one that will ever be addressed from me to you:
You are, to use your own terminology, a dickhead.
Exactly how is government in the way?
I don't exactly see private industry falling over themselves to get into space. (Not silly "space tourism" schemes, serious economically self-sustaining space travel.) And why should they? We're talking billions of dollars up front with no return for many, many years.
Government can help private ventures by providing incentives. That's how the transcontinental railroad got built.
The choice isn't simply between unchecked government and unchecked business; both are recipes for disaster. True believers on both sides will often tell you otherwise, of course.
"Do you feel lucky, punk" is Dirty Harry's line. In this scenario, I think China's the one with .45 Magnum.
Oh, it's you again. Didn't I already explain how boring you are?
I'd love to debate the point with you, but I have to go join an employee sit-in over a gross violation of our rights: the company has switched to a cheaper brand of coffee!
I can understand not reading past the first sentence when the post you're responding to is some long diatribe. But this one was just a few sentences, and the sentences you didn't read made it pretty clear that I was not defending the law.
Court challenges aren't the only way to get rid of bad laws. Not even clear that there's any basis for a court challenge of this law. And even if there was, I don't think the CEO of GeekNet has any moral obligation to risk his company's existence and his own freedom just to challenge an export law.
Any comparison between the U.S. and Syrian governments is in your own head. I think I made it pretty clear which one I prefer. But the sins of one government don't become less important because another government is even worse.
How?
I take it you don't much approve of the Damascus regime. Fair enough, but do remember that our Syrian friend doesn't lose any of his rights just because his own government doesn't respect them. Our own government is the bad guy here, and none the less bad because other governments are worse.
I don't think a bunch of hackers are going to take down the Chinese government, even ignoring the little detail that they have a few million of their own. What would make a difference is if western consumers stopped buying from them. Would you pay twice as much for your consumer goods to help bring about a more open China? Didn't think so.
You speak as if a repressive dicatorship is China's only alternative to chaos. And yet somehow other countries manage to find other alternatives.
You know, I've been hearing the "Harmony is good for everybody" party line a lot lately. "Harmony" is just nice way of saying, "always do what you're told." That might work in the short term, but in the long term it's a formula for an abusive, corrupt government and a society with no creative spark.
It's highly appropriate that we should hear from somebody on the ground in Syria. One of the points of this law is to gain leverage against the Syrian government, which Washington considers unfriendly. It's a stupid, shortsighted strategy, that doesn't really accomplish anything, except hurt innocent people.
On the other hand, it's a little inconsistent to call SourceForge "cowardly" for not standing up the government. (Note that the wording of any OS agreement they adhere to is irrelevant — no agreement to act illegally is valid.) Would you dare to flout Syrian law the same way? Not to judge your system of government, but you have to acknowledge the consequences would be pretty severe. U.S. law is less so, but they can still put SourceForge out of business and maybe put some of its people in jail.
Sometimes you do have to go to jail for what you believe in. But this isn't one of them.
This isn't about censorship, this is about denying countries we don't like access to our technology. That said, I agree that it's a stupid law that doesn't do anything at all useful.
IANAL, but I think it would be very hard for any company that does any kind of business in the U.S. if they flout U.S. law. So GeekNet (SF's parent company) would have to move every single U.S. employee over the border. (Which includes the staff of Slashdot. How about it, Rob, Pudge, you guys willing to do the Phillip Nolan act?) And there's still the problem of selling services to U.S. customers.
Come to think of it, since all this comes under the category of "export controls", it would probably be illegal to move the servers across the border. You'd have to start over from scratch, using only software that's legally available outside the U.S.
All in all, a lot of trouble to protect the rights of a few Libyan hackers.
I agree that the laws on this issue are stupid and cause pointless hardship. But SF is in no position to disobey them.
We will wait until the IPv4 addresses run out and then force businesses to start using IPv6 if they want to get on the internet.
There will be a temporary boon for networking manufacturers as companies will have to change their equipment
And much wackiness will ensue when plans for new servers have to be put on hold until the infrastructure is upgraded. That kind of delay costs businesses a lot of money. Plus we'll have zero time to work out the kinks. What about all the people out there who just don't have IPv6 stacks on their machines? Or who do have IPv6 installed, but have never tried to access one of those new-fangled addresses — anybody really sure all that software actually works under real-world conditions?:
I've told this story a couple of times already on Slashdot, but one more won't hurt: when I was at Sun, I would occasionally raise the issue of IPv6 support on our service processors. I think some implementations have it, but none of the ones I documented did. The response I always got was that it won't be a priority for Sun until it's a priority for Sun's customers. And apparently it won't be a priority for them until we actually run out of addresses. Why does this all remind me of the Global Warming debate?
As a side curiosity, I wonder how many public IPv4 IPs are actually in use.
I've got one! Speakeasy, as part of being the Geek-Friendly ISP, gives one to every customer.
One entity that will never run out of IP addresses: the Department of Defense. They own what used to be 8 class A networks (now /8 network spaces). That's over 14 million IP addresses. Too bad I'm too old to join up.
Actually, I'm not even sure this counts as a rumor. I mean jeez, somebody's speculation about what somebody else didn't say?
Why is it that "we have been led to believe by an inside source" gets the same kind of headline for Apple as hard news about any other company? Rhetorical question: we all know it's because of the fanboy culture that surrounds all things Apple.
Apple has its good points (and its bad ones), but this endless "What did Bradgalina have for breakfast" tone really gets old.
The battery's sealed — apparently the lifetime of the battery exceeds that of the gadget itself.
That detail aside, I can't disagree with anything you've said. I was excited at first hearing about this, but then I noticed the thing has no way to save what you write. Without that feature, what's the point?
I noticed that there's a heavy emphasis on the greenness of the product. So this would seem to be yet another lame attempt to cash in on yuppie guilt over their big ecological footprints.