Damn, but I can't remember any of them, it's been over 10 years since I worked in a bookstore. I do remember that there were 2 or 3 publishers that we got most of our bibles from. They published bibles, Christian self-help, and Christian fiction. Yes, they were specialty publishers, but larger than most.
One minor fact that I always found interesting. When we did our physical inventory, and compared that with the inventory list on the computer we got a pretty good idea of what our "shrinkage" or loss was. Guess what section was hit the hardest? Bibles. The book itself says "Thou shalt not steal" (Well, if it's the KJV it does) so I know nobody would actually steal it. I guess they just walked out the door by themselves when we weren't looking.
What? Ellison is a blowhard. He has a knack for royally pissing people off. And he's often wrong. (but not always by a long shot.)
So you disagree and want to attack him. Fine. Attack away. Use any logical argument or fallacy (you actually can win arguments using fallacies, just not debates.) that you wish.
But before you use that particular argument against him, you should probably check into his connection with the B5 series...
Are you saying that because the world is not currently exactly like either of those novels, neither of them is an appropriate metaphor for anything right now?
Even if the U.S. government actively monitored every online activity that I take
What about monitoring your location (that's physical meat-world location) at all times? If you don't like it I hope you don't have a cell-phone.
And the path described by Kafka is not really privacy focused...the impotence of the common man in face of the "grey wall" Bingo! The Kafka metaphor isn't about privacy, it's about power, knowledge, and what the lack of them can do to you. Which is why it's probably more appropriate. We don't have a transparant society, or Web. People and companies are nowhere equal in power. Ever read some EULA's? "We dictate the terms. We can change the terms whenever we wish. We don't even have to notify you of the change, it's your responsibility to check back with us frequently. " I can easily see how that can lead to people violating EULA's without realizing it until the lawyers knock on their door. So yes, Kafka is a good metaphor here.
Said clone is raised uneducated. But given the best physical surroundings, good nutrition, medical care, and encouraged to keep physically fit. But out of the way, in some small country, on a well guarded estate.
Then in 20 years or so, the rich old person needs a kidney. Or a lung. Perhaps some bone marrow. How about a liver or heart?
Hmmm... I wonder where they'd find organs with no risk of rejection?
IIRC (and IANAL) you DO need a "Taxpayer Identification Number" if you want to work in the US. The Taxpayer Identification Number for citizens is usually the SSN.
Also, the guy that went there on his business trip called it "about 5 miles outside New Orleans." or something to that effect.
I grew up about 3 miles NE of 30x90. It's well within city limits, just far outside of downtown. And it's arguably the ugliest part of the city. That took balls, for the guy to go there not knowing what he'd find. I know how to get there without much trouble, I know Old Gentilly Rd. and Almonaster better than I should. You can find some strange stuff back there. (anything from fossils in the gravel lining the canal to industrial waste to packs of wild dogs to packs of wild humans)
Yeah, it wouldn't be a far trip from the Paris Rd. boat launch. Hmm... I'll be back home in a few months, my father still has his flatboat, trailer and hitch. Now all I need is to borrow a GPS and I'm set. They did say they'd post two visits to a confluence.
Don't pass unconstitutional laws and ignore the fact that they're unconstitutional.
IF it makes sense to restrict the sale and ownership of weapons (and you give some rather extreme but IMHO convincing arguments that some kind of restrictions are needed) then go ahead and change the constitution. There are provisions for doing that. There are precedents.
I know I'm a wacko nutcase because I still believe what I learned in Civics class is a good idea. The constitution should take precedence over laws. When the two conflict, the constitution wins. If that doesn't make sense, change the constitution.
But I know that this is the real world. Such things don't happen. In particular, the tenth ammendment doesn't really exist any more:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Yeah, when was the last time that was used effectively to stop the growth of the federal government?
I think it's kind of silly to assume that we need a document that says if you do "this" in windows , you do "this" in Linux.
Hmmm....so how do you propose to get Windows users over to Linux? Tell them to buy a distro, and RTFM?
That's a technically correct solution. But as advocacy it falls a little short of the mark. And it exemplifies the attitude that is holding Linux back from mainstream acceptance on the desktop.
Like it or not, getting Windows users to "see the light" is not a technical problem. It's a people problem.
Of course, I'm not being very helpful here, the whole point was to recommend some docs between "here's how you hit the keyboard" and "advanced linux system adminstration" but I can't think of any right now.
There's a lot of commercial interest right now in making intermediaries "smarter" so that they can process messages through them.
That's the exact opposite of what "e2e" is. "End to End" means that the intermediaries should be as dumb as possible. Push the intelligence to the edges of the network.
I'm already confused about how "End-to-End" is being used here. The only people I'm aware of who have a truly end to end solution are AT They are a portion of the backbone, they provide service down to smaller providers, and they are a cable-to-internet provider. THEY are end-to-end.
Yes you are confused. I must admit that when I first read part 1 of this topic that I interpreted "end to end" the same way. But that's not what it means. Details can be found here.
First make it work, then make it fast? I thought it went like this (in closed-source shops anyway)
First pass through: Make a product that does something. Anything. It doesn't matter if it's correct or if it's optimized. Marketing promised that it would be released before the next trade show. Manager promises that you'll get a chance to rewrite subsystems and optimize later.
Second pass through: Make the product stop blowing up when used in a way that none of the developers, designers, or test engineers ever thought of doing, but 30% of the users routinely do. (not that you'd ever let a designer or developer near an actual user during design or development, because only sales and marketing types are presentable enough to meet the client.) This involves revising about 1/3 of the basic architecture of the program. Manager says that because this is critical to the company's reputation, there is no time to make any other changes, no matter how needed they are.
Third pass: add the core features that belonged in the first release but which were left out for marketing driven bells & whistles. Do so without changing much of the underlying structure of the program. Some of the hacks put in in pass 2 are fragile and will break if you mess around with other parts of the program. Manager is strangely silent about future improvements or optimizations.
Fourth pass: fix the bugs from pass three. Manager quits, or gets promoted to big executive office where you never see him again. He's replaced by a clone with even more disgusting personal habits.
Step five: Developers get disgusted and quit. New developers spend so much time reading the cruft in the code that they don't have time to optimize anything.
So if you don't optimize right away, during the first pass, it never gets done.
And it's open source, so if you don't like the way it handles things, (it doesn't have a "deny/accept this session" option for cookies) you can extend it. Scratch that itch.
I had someone recently write me a derisory message, telling me to learn how to spell, because "colour" does not have a 'u' in it.
Sorry that you had to encounter that idiot. It was probably his first direct encounter with somebody from outside of the USA. It is entirely possible for somebody to grow up in the USA, never traveling that far from their birth place (perhaps 1500 km or so), and still encounter only other US-English speaking people.
Yes, you are correct. The net is still very US-centric. But it exactly through encounters such as yours that the borders can blur.
I'll admit that this is a hopelessly optimistic romanticized view of the Web, but I hope that you explained to that person that your spelling was correct, and that the person learned something from the encounter.
restore modules and registry entries, and/or change system dates
I suspect it'll be more like "Set up a DNS entry on your local network to spoof M$ so that when the software goes to Microsoft.com to check it's licensing it'll hit the "licensing server" cooked up by some script kiddie.
Let's face it. If you do set things up to keep using a subscription version of some.net software after it expires, they want to make damn sure that you've gone out of your way to do something that is probably a prosecutable offense under DMCA.
They're more like the old fashioned seal, made with sealing wax and a metal seal or signet ring.
The seal could have been stolen or borrowed. If somebody got something that you had sealed, they could use that as a mold to make a copy of your seal. Assuming, of course, that they had good skills with a carving knife and/or metalworking skills. But that's similar to the case where you need some crypto or cracking skills to make a copy of a digital signature.
Except that it's easier to sneak into somebody's computer and steal their private key than it is to unobtrusively remove a ring from their finger.
In general I don't like government regulation. But people do need to be protected.
If a company runs it's business in such a way that the employees are injured or die simply by performing their jobs, something is wrong. Probably criminally wrong. I'm not sure how to go about reconciling these two views. I'm fairly sure that I don't like OSHA's approach, however.
I used to work for a company that made PCBs. These were military boards and needed to be sprayed with a conformal coating. The chemicals in the conformal coating did NOT require masks according to OSHA regulations. But still, it was a spray can full of sticky stuff, and the ventilation, while also OSHA approved, wasn't the best. So the company decided, on it's own, that it would be nice if the workers had a mask to protect them from the stuff.
So far everything sounds nice. The company is going beyond OSHA requirements to keep it's workers safe and healthy.
So where's the problem? Well, OSHA didn't say that that particular chemical being applied in that particular facility required a mask. But if the company was going to require masks, there were some OSHA regulations concerning that. I forget all of the details, but the company would have been required to provide masks for ALL employees, not just those that wanted them. (there were two guys that often did the spraying, but about 20 that worked in the same area and could conceivably be required to spray the coating at some time.) The company would have had to provide individual storage for each mask, and there wasn't that much room. The company would have had to perform safety inspections of the masks, and fill out the appropriate OSHA paperwork to document the safety inspections for the masks. (Not a whole lot, only a few hours every quarter or so, perhaps a couple of day's payroll in a year.) And to top it off, the company had just given itself another liability if there did happen to be a problem with a mask or the paperwork.
In short, it cost so much to provide masks to the two people that they just said "If you want one, buy it yourself."
AFAIK, (and IANAL just so I meet my quota of acronyms) this really effects telecommuters. I recall some stories (sorry, no URLs, I think they were TV or radio) a while back about employers being responsible for working conditions period. Even for employees that work out of their homes.
Yet another reason for companies to fear telecommuting. In addition to the "Well if I can't see them how do I know that they're working." sentiment is the "If I allow them to telecommute, it could cost us lots of money" reality.
When voting using a "punch card" one is supposed to punch out a pre-perforated portion of the ballot, resulting in a hole. If the punch is incomplete, a small bit of cardboard remains partially attached. That is a chad.
Scantron is an optical scanning system. Scantron sheets are often used for multiple choice tests in American schools. The student darkens the appropriate rectangle. (To mark Question 4, answer "C" you would find the fourth row, third column which contains a rectangle marked "C", and completely darken the rectangle with a number 2 soft graphite pencil.)
Confusion? Somewhat. The company IS claiming implantable (well, eventually. Right now they claim wearable) GPS.
Here is an article that mentions both the rice-grain animal implants and the Digital Angel ( but you may want to visit the main site so they get their hit count up.)
Well, I guess you should have entitled your article "Management to produce world-changing genius." instead of "Managing Software Engineers"
Please understand this one point: I feel that the article does make some good points about how to manage the software development process in a cutthroat world of fast-paced competetion.
The article says "From a business point of view, long hours by programmers are a key to profitability." and "Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office." and "If you care about profits, you must either come up with a new training program for the person or figure out the best way to terminate his or her employment with your organization, and my favorites "It costs more than not having the beach house but a lot less than having employees go off on their own to have fun every weekend and not work." (I know that I personally hate it when people have fun on the weekend instead of working!)
To be fair, however, the article also says this: "...interview with Bill Gates: 'We hear you're brusque at times, that you won't hesitate to tell someone their idea is the stupidest thing you've ever heard. It's been called management by embarrassment challenging employees and even leaving some in tears.' Truly elite organizations can be far worse than Microsoft.". The article also says this:"Everyone else is a candidate to be turned into a good programmer as quickly as possible." although it is tempered by this: "beyond a certain point it is most effective for an organization to develop a strategy for creating good programmers internally"
So yes, I guess this article does touch upon methods to bring out the best in people. But that is simply a byproduct of the true goal. The true goal is to have the most productive workers possible so that you can make as much profit as possible. Which is OK, that's the point of a company. And it's true that the 35 year old that has changed the world has put in long hours. (Although of course the converse is not true.)
But please, don't tell me this article was intended to turn young people into Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman. It's more about how to become the next Bill Gates or Michael Dell or {insert name of your favorite Very Rich Person}.
This isn't about greatness, it's about money! Just go ahead and say that, don't hide behind slightly veiled ad-hominum attacks "are not intended to help people who just want to live a quiet comfortable life (I'm not an expert on this)." Just go ahead and say that the whole purpose of this article is to teach people to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible off of the work of others! There is room in the USA for unabashed capitalists. Just have the guts to admit it.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, but I can't remember any of them, it's been over 10 years since I worked in a bookstore. I do remember that there were 2 or 3 publishers that we got most of our bibles from. They published bibles, Christian self-help, and Christian fiction. Yes, they were specialty publishers, but larger than most.
One minor fact that I always found interesting. When we did our physical inventory, and compared that with the inventory list on the computer we got a pretty good idea of what our "shrinkage" or loss was. Guess what section was hit the hardest? Bibles. The book itself says "Thou shalt not steal" (Well, if it's the KJV it does) so I know nobody would actually steal it. I guess they just walked out the door by themselves when we weren't looking.
What? Ellison is a blowhard. He has a knack for royally pissing people off. And he's often wrong. (but not always by a long shot.)
So you disagree and want to attack him. Fine. Attack away. Use any logical argument or fallacy (you actually can win arguments using fallacies, just not debates.) that you wish.
But before you use that particular argument against him, you should probably check into his connection with the B5 series...
Tracking children and animals is just the tip of the iceberg.
Even if the U.S. government actively monitored every online activity that I take What about monitoring your location (that's physical meat-world location) at all times? If you don't like it I hope you don't have a cell-phone.
And the path described by Kafka is not really privacy focused...the impotence of the common man in face of the "grey wall" Bingo! The Kafka metaphor isn't about privacy, it's about power, knowledge, and what the lack of them can do to you. Which is why it's probably more appropriate. We don't have a transparant society, or Web. People and companies are nowhere equal in power. Ever read some EULA's? "We dictate the terms. We can change the terms whenever we wish. We don't even have to notify you of the change, it's your responsibility to check back with us frequently. " I can easily see how that can lead to people violating EULA's without realizing it until the lawyers knock on their door. So yes, Kafka is a good metaphor here.
I just don't see growing a person solely for the purpose of ripping their lungs, heart and liver out of them as being very moral.
Hence, this does raise ethical questions.
You may not agree with my particular comments about the questions. But they are still there.
Said clone is raised uneducated. But given the best physical surroundings, good nutrition, medical care, and encouraged to keep physically fit. But out of the way, in some small country, on a well guarded estate.
Then in 20 years or so, the rich old person needs a kidney. Or a lung. Perhaps some bone marrow. How about a liver or heart?
Hmmm... I wonder where they'd find organs with no risk of rejection?
No ethical problem?
IIRC (and IANAL) you DO need a "Taxpayer Identification Number" if you want to work in the US. The Taxpayer Identification Number for citizens is usually the SSN.
I grew up about 3 miles NE of 30x90. It's well within city limits, just far outside of downtown. And it's arguably the ugliest part of the city. That took balls, for the guy to go there not knowing what he'd find. I know how to get there without much trouble, I know Old Gentilly Rd. and Almonaster better than I should. You can find some strange stuff back there. (anything from fossils in the gravel lining the canal to industrial waste to packs of wild dogs to packs of wild humans)
Yeah, it wouldn't be a far trip from the Paris Rd. boat launch. Hmm... I'll be back home in a few months, my father still has his flatboat, trailer and hitch. Now all I need is to borrow a GPS and I'm set. They did say they'd post two visits to a confluence.
Don't pass unconstitutional laws and ignore the fact that they're unconstitutional.
IF it makes sense to restrict the sale and ownership of weapons (and you give some rather extreme but IMHO convincing arguments that some kind of restrictions are needed) then go ahead and change the constitution. There are provisions for doing that. There are precedents.
I know I'm a wacko nutcase because I still believe what I learned in Civics class is a good idea. The constitution should take precedence over laws. When the two conflict, the constitution wins. If that doesn't make sense, change the constitution.
But I know that this is the real world. Such things don't happen. In particular, the tenth ammendment doesn't really exist any more:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Yeah, when was the last time that was used effectively to stop the growth of the federal government?
No, it's not for all time.
Hmmm....so how do you propose to get Windows users over to Linux? Tell them to buy a distro, and RTFM?
That's a technically correct solution. But as advocacy it falls a little short of the mark. And it exemplifies the attitude that is holding Linux back from mainstream acceptance on the desktop.
Like it or not, getting Windows users to "see the light" is not a technical problem. It's a people problem.
Of course, I'm not being very helpful here, the whole point was to recommend some docs between "here's how you hit the keyboard" and "advanced linux system adminstration" but I can't think of any right now.
That's the exact opposite of what "e2e" is. "End to End" means that the intermediaries should be as dumb as possible. Push the intelligence to the edges of the network.
Yes you are confused. I must admit that when I first read part 1 of this topic that I interpreted "end to end" the same way. But that's not what it means. Details can be found here.
First pass through: Make a product that does something. Anything. It doesn't matter if it's correct or if it's optimized. Marketing promised that it would be released before the next trade show. Manager promises that you'll get a chance to rewrite subsystems and optimize later.
Second pass through: Make the product stop blowing up when used in a way that none of the developers, designers, or test engineers ever thought of doing, but 30% of the users routinely do. (not that you'd ever let a designer or developer near an actual user during design or development, because only sales and marketing types are presentable enough to meet the client.) This involves revising about 1/3 of the basic architecture of the program. Manager says that because this is critical to the company's reputation, there is no time to make any other changes, no matter how needed they are.
Third pass: add the core features that belonged in the first release but which were left out for marketing driven bells & whistles. Do so without changing much of the underlying structure of the program. Some of the hacks put in in pass 2 are fragile and will break if you mess around with other parts of the program. Manager is strangely silent about future improvements or optimizations.
Fourth pass: fix the bugs from pass three. Manager quits, or gets promoted to big executive office where you never see him again. He's replaced by a clone with even more disgusting personal habits.
Step five: Developers get disgusted and quit. New developers spend so much time reading the cruft in the code that they don't have time to optimize anything.
So if you don't optimize right away, during the first pass, it never gets done.
And it's open source, so if you don't like the way it handles things, (it doesn't have a "deny/accept this session" option for cookies) you can extend it. Scratch that itch.
Sorry that you had to encounter that idiot. It was probably his first direct encounter with somebody from outside of the USA. It is entirely possible for somebody to grow up in the USA, never traveling that far from their birth place (perhaps 1500 km or so), and still encounter only other US-English speaking people.
Yes, you are correct. The net is still very US-centric. But it exactly through encounters such as yours that the borders can blur.
I'll admit that this is a hopelessly optimistic romanticized view of the Web, but I hope that you explained to that person that your spelling was correct, and that the person learned something from the encounter.
I suspect it'll be more like "Set up a DNS entry on your local network to spoof M$ so that when the software goes to Microsoft.com to check it's licensing it'll hit the "licensing server" cooked up by some script kiddie.
Let's face it. If you do set things up to keep using a subscription version of some .net software after it expires, they want to make damn sure that you've gone out of your way to do something that is probably a prosecutable offense under DMCA.
The seal could have been stolen or borrowed. If somebody got something that you had sealed, they could use that as a mold to make a copy of your seal. Assuming, of course, that they had good skills with a carving knife and/or metalworking skills. But that's similar to the case where you need some crypto or cracking skills to make a copy of a digital signature.
Except that it's easier to sneak into somebody's computer and steal their private key than it is to unobtrusively remove a ring from their finger.
If a company runs it's business in such a way that the employees are injured or die simply by performing their jobs, something is wrong. Probably criminally wrong. I'm not sure how to go about reconciling these two views. I'm fairly sure that I don't like OSHA's approach, however.
I used to work for a company that made PCBs. These were military boards and needed to be sprayed with a conformal coating. The chemicals in the conformal coating did NOT require masks according to OSHA regulations. But still, it was a spray can full of sticky stuff, and the ventilation, while also OSHA approved, wasn't the best. So the company decided, on it's own, that it would be nice if the workers had a mask to protect them from the stuff.
So far everything sounds nice. The company is going beyond OSHA requirements to keep it's workers safe and healthy.
So where's the problem? Well, OSHA didn't say that that particular chemical being applied in that particular facility required a mask. But if the company was going to require masks, there were some OSHA regulations concerning that. I forget all of the details, but the company would have been required to provide masks for ALL employees, not just those that wanted them. (there were two guys that often did the spraying, but about 20 that worked in the same area and could conceivably be required to spray the coating at some time.) The company would have had to provide individual storage for each mask, and there wasn't that much room. The company would have had to perform safety inspections of the masks, and fill out the appropriate OSHA paperwork to document the safety inspections for the masks. (Not a whole lot, only a few hours every quarter or so, perhaps a couple of day's payroll in a year.) And to top it off, the company had just given itself another liability if there did happen to be a problem with a mask or the paperwork.
In short, it cost so much to provide masks to the two people that they just said "If you want one, buy it yourself."
Yet another reason for companies to fear telecommuting. In addition to the "Well if I can't see them how do I know that they're working." sentiment is the "If I allow them to telecommute, it could cost us lots of money" reality.
Scantron is an optical scanning system. Scantron sheets are often used for multiple choice tests in American schools. The student darkens the appropriate rectangle. (To mark Question 4, answer "C" you would find the fourth row, third column which contains a rectangle marked "C", and completely darken the rectangle with a number 2 soft graphite pencil.)
I wish! It took me an hour.
I didn't have to take time off from work, I went after work. So did lots of other people. Which is probably why it took an hour.
Here is an article that mentions both the rice-grain animal implants and the Digital Angel ( but you may want to visit the main site so they get their hit count up.)
Enjoy the paranoia!
Yes, I know they're using proven statistical methods to make the projections. But there is that tiny little margin of error...
Please understand this one point: I feel that the article does make some good points about how to manage the software development process in a cutthroat world of fast-paced competetion.
The article says "From a business point of view, long hours by programmers are a key to profitability." and "Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office." and "If you care about profits, you must either come up with a new training program for the person or figure out the best way to terminate his or her employment with your organization, and my favorites "It costs more than not having the beach house but a lot less than having employees go off on their own to have fun every weekend and not work." (I know that I personally hate it when people have fun on the weekend instead of working!)
To be fair, however, the article also says this: "...interview with Bill Gates: 'We hear you're brusque at times, that you won't hesitate to tell someone their idea is the stupidest thing you've ever heard. It's been called management by embarrassment challenging employees and even leaving some in tears.' Truly elite organizations can be far worse than Microsoft.". The article also says this:"Everyone else is a candidate to be turned into a good programmer as quickly as possible." although it is tempered by this: "beyond a certain point it is most effective for an organization to develop a strategy for creating good programmers internally"
So yes, I guess this article does touch upon methods to bring out the best in people. But that is simply a byproduct of the true goal. The true goal is to have the most productive workers possible so that you can make as much profit as possible. Which is OK, that's the point of a company. And it's true that the 35 year old that has changed the world has put in long hours. (Although of course the converse is not true.)
But please, don't tell me this article was intended to turn young people into Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman. It's more about how to become the next Bill Gates or Michael Dell or {insert name of your favorite Very Rich Person}.
This isn't about greatness, it's about money! Just go ahead and say that, don't hide behind slightly veiled ad-hominum attacks "are not intended to help people who just want to live a quiet comfortable life (I'm not an expert on this)." Just go ahead and say that the whole purpose of this article is to teach people to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible off of the work of others! There is room in the USA for unabashed capitalists. Just have the guts to admit it.