This is a great idea. Dear Postal Service: Please stop sending junk mail to my mailbox and instead send email to my emailbox. My email address is null@nowhere.nodomain. Thanks!
"... you could be ASURED that you'd never have a plan stolen, since the government could always confirm that it was your original idea..."
First, the government confirming an idea was yours wouldn't stop theft; it would just provide evidence. Second, even with evidence, suing somebody who stole your plans is expensive, time-consuming, and only returns a fraction of the value of not having the plans stolen in the first place. Third, not all theft of business plans is illegal. If you can figure out what a competitor is up to through public information and jump the gun on them, that's generally legal. So having the government referee who thought up an idea first does nothing to protect the idea. You must keep it private.
"I'm suggesting that the means to protection is strength (i.e. self-defense training, etc.)..."
You have no business telling any person that they should limit the deterrents they will use because you think self-defense is sufficient. It is not sufficient; it won't stop every attack, and there is no reason a person who wants to protect themselves should not be allowed and encouraged to use privacy as one means of protection.
... and through a willingness to trust your protectors (i.e. police). If police were watching my house 24-7..."
The only reason the police ever watch any house 24-7 is because they want to get the people inside in, not because they want to protect it. Believing the police can protect people is a fantasy. The police at most deter crime and punish criminals; they do not prevent crime, and you cannot rely on them. In fact, police departments have argued in court, successfully, that they have no duty to protect people.
"... telemarketers..."
The things you suggest, playing with the telemarketers or hanging up, do not remedy the problem: The disturbance still occurs. Caller ID helps but does not completely remedy the problem.
"Privacy is essential for deception, little else."
Well, then don't keep your passwords private; you must be deceiving somebody. Publish all of yours accounts and passwords here, along with your credit card numbers, Social Security account number, and so on.
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't be concerned with people watching you."
False. You should be concerned with people watching you because they can harm your interests even if you are not doing anything wrong. Just for example, if somebody could see how you voted, they could harass you or bribe you. That's why voting booths have privacy curtains. Privacy is essential to democracy and freedom.
If you buy valuable objects (electronics, jewelry, whatever), you are doing nothing wrong. But if the wrong people get ahold of that information, you become a target for theft. How do you keep information like the addresses of people with valuable items out of the hands of criminals? You keep it out of the hands of companies that collect it. They almost never have your security at heart, and they often have lax security procedures. Privacy is essential for security.
How do you keep your competitor from learning your business plans? You keep the plans secret. You do not want information about what you are buying or whom you are meeting to get into your competitor's hands. How you keep them from learning that information? You keep it out of everybody's hands. Privacy is essential for business.
How do you protect yourself from sexual assault? You don't let strangers know your address. You don't let every peon employee who sees a pretty woman in a store find out where she lives. How do you keep strangers from getting her address? You don't let companies collect it. Privacy is essential for safety.
How do you keep telemarketers from bothering you? You don't let them have your phone number or information about your interests and purchasing patterns. (They may still call randomly, but this decreases targeted calls.) How do you keep them from getting that information? You don't let companies collect it. Privacy is essential for peace and quiet.
That list of reasons is bogus. It is written to favor employers, and pretty much all of the reasons can be turned around. More on that below, but, first, I'll discuss two components of the decision: ethics/etiquette and pragmatics.
I wouldn't advise seeking other jobs for the purpose of increasing your bargaining power. It may be ethical to your current employer, but it isn't nice. And it isn't ethical to the recruiters, who put in work (some of them, anyway) in the hope of getting paid. (You could maybe fix that by finding a recruiter who will work for you in exchange for payment from you instead of from employers.) However, these don't apply in your case, since the recruiter approached you unsolicited. If you do take the counter-offer, you might want to thank the recruiter by referring them to anybody you know who is interested in new opportunities, or vice-versa, or maybe even by offering them a fair payment.
As for pragmatics, it depends on your situation. If you are just in a situation where the employer needed you, but you could be replaced, then it might be better to go to the new job. But if you are a star and are professional, you could remain where you are with increased respect and power. Push came to shove, and the employer backed down, so you know where you stand. The decision between these two is up to your evaluation of the situation.
Back to the list. The list mentions loyalty several times. In most companies, there should be no loyalty of employees to the company, because there is none in return. Only if the company has demonstrated it will stick with the employees in hard times or entered into a binding contract to do so should employees be willing to have any loyalty to the company. Remember, a company is a business, not a person. Do not give a company the considerations you give to a human being.
The list says your employer will know you are unhappy and your "loyalty" is in question. In other words, your employer will know you have requirements and evaluate your own self-interest, like any other strong, responsible business person. The list says your employer will remember who is "loyal" at promotion time. In other words, your employer knows they have to compensate you fairly; they cannot rely on you to complacently sit in a low-paying job like most employees.
The list says your employer will cut you when times are tough. But your employer's counter-offer proved they need you, they know it, and they are willing to pay for it. You don't cut needed employees who are worth the money; you cut the unperforming wastes of money. If things get really tight, you ask the stars about pay cuts, which should be in exchange for future consideration when things get better.
The list says accepting a counteroffer means you were bought. No, it means your services were bought. That is what employees do; they sell their services for money. You don't go to work for a company for fun. It is a business deal; there is supposed to be money exchanged.
The list asks where the money for your raise comes from. It comes from the value you provide. The wage guidelines can be adjusted for good performers. The list says your company will look for somebody cheaper. Really good employees are hard to find, and it takes time to bring new ones up to speed. Replacing any employee is expensive; replacing a good one is stupid, unless the money is out of line. But it can't be out of line if that is what the market is offering, and how could they hire somebody good cheaper if that is what the market is offering?
The list says the circumstances that made you look still exist. But that doesn't apply in your case; the circumstance of low salary is changed. The list says, without attribution, there is a "high" probability of leaving or being let go soon. What makes us think that isn't true anytime?
The list says your co-worker relationship will change. If word gets out, your co-workers will know you are a valuable employee. It is nice to be respected, and it gives you power.
The list asks what kind of company has to be threatened with resignation to get what your worth. Most kinds. What kind of company wants to pay money they don't have to? Companies give low increases because most employees stay put even though they could get more elsewhere. It is a business deal.
How susceptible is such a train to sabotage? Would a one-foot diameter rock tossed into the center of the tracks derail the train? It's difficult enough securing airplanes when you only need to check the departure point. How do you secure hundreds or thousands of miles of rails?
Er, I'm not sure what you're getting at. For example, any set of points (in a space of more than two dimensions) that "lie in a straight line" are necessarily also in a plane and are in fact in infinitely many planes.
Shamir's secret sharing is easy to describe: Any polynomial of degree k-1 can be completely figured out from k points on it but not from k-1 points. So to share a secret among any number of people so that any k of them can figure out the secret and any k-1 of them cannot, you make up a polynomial whose value at x=0 is the secret and you tell each person the value of the polynomial at other points (at x=1, x=2,...).
For example, any 2 points define a line (a polynomial of degree 1). If you tell me where the line is at x=1 and x=2, I can figure out where the line is at x=0. But if you only tell me where the line is at x=1, I haven't got a clue where it is at x=0, because it could still be anywhere. If you gave a million people different values for x=1, x=2,... x=1000000, no one of them would know the value of the line at x=0, but any two of them could figure it out.
"Will we crash into the ground at the bottom of that hill?"
Yes, and a nice example of that is the Superman ride at Six Flags in Massachusetts. Spoiler warning! Stop reading if you want to be surprised on the ride.
There's one point on the Superman ride where you crest a hilll and plunge downward. You see the ground, and you're waiting for the track to bottom out, and the ground keeps coming, and you get concerned, and the ground keeps coming, and the train plunges straight into the ground!
There's a hidden tunnel there.
It was very well done, a complete surprise to first-time riders if they did not inspect the track before entering the ride. You don't see the tunnel coming up, and the entrance is hidden in mist so you don't even see it during the final approach. It's a real scare, and the amount of acceleration required for this effect is zero.
"The very factors you list as entertaining *require* a certain level of acceleration to be viable."
That is a non sequitur, because the fact that X requires Y does not mean that liking X implies liking Y. For example, I like eating, and I have to work to eat, but that does not mean I like working. Now, remember my claim is that people likely do not enjoy acceleration, not particularly anyway. So the fact that acceleration is required to get what they do enjoy does not show they enjoy acceleration.
Yes, you need acceleration to turn people upside-down, and you need acceleration to get people to the point where they can go into free fall or recover from it. But you do not need "G-forces", if the term means multiple gravities of acceleration. When a roller coaster is upside-down, it does not need multiple gravities to pin people in their seats. It only needs one gravity to counter the force of gravity plus some margin for safety. (And then the net force on the riders can be slight, less than the force due to gravity.)
"... if you take away more powerful G forces, you *do* by necessity reduce how thrilling the ride is."
There is no conservation of acceleration in the laws of physics. You do not need to compensate for free-fall in once place with high gravities in another. There is conservation of position in the end, if you want to return the riders to their starting point. However, that can be accomplished with free-fall in one place and mild acceleration of a longer duration in another place. In fact, the ride up to the first drop in traditional roller coasters is generally longer than the free fall that follows. You could even make the times closer by doing the ride up at two gravities (one from the Earth, one from mechanics). You wouldn't need to get anywhere near the six gravities mentioned in the article.
You want thrilling? Tell me which is more thrilling: Being at the top of a loop pressed firmly into your seat for a fraction of a second, too uncomfortable to pay attention to the experience, or being at the top of a loop for several times long and having the feeling that you're floating out of your seat a bit. The former happens at multiple gravities. The latter happens at, say, a half-gravity. The former is merely a quick visual whirlwind. The latter is visual and visceral.
"I have never understood why people think that passwords suffer from wear and tear."
Using a password does indeed weaken it. Every now and then, a user will accidentally type a password into a user name field, and that results in a log entry with the incorrect password in plaintext. Every now and then, some users will give their passwords to a coworker or relative to "borrow" their account. Some users will use the same password on multiple systems. When a cracker gets into a system, they are likely to record the password file and attack it, or to collect passwords via spoofing or whatnot.
So, the longer a password has been in use, the higher the probability it has been compromised. The password suffers from wear and tear. Changing passwords refreshes them. A cracker that formerly had access to the system would have to start from scratch (especially if all passwords are changed simultaneously). Also, that cuts the coworker off from access to other employees accounts. They might not have done anything with that access now, but, someday, maybe they'll be fired and would like to take some sort of revenge. Since you cut them off by a policy of regularly changing passwords, they can't do it that way.
"Why do they think people ride roller coasters to begin with?"
Like many things, the reason people think they do something is not necessarily the reason people do it. If a person gets on a roller coaster, enjoys it, and does it again, they may figure they like the G-forces they experienced. But a lot of people don't understand physics or the human body or their own mental processes, so their simple correlation of one part of the experience with the cause of the enjoyment is not necessarily indicative of a causal relationship.
Ask objectively, is it the G-forces people enjoy? Isolate the G-forces to see. Suppose you put somebody in a roller-coaster car mounted over some artificial gravity plating. You dial up the G-forces to two gravities, three, maybe even six. Then you ask the person if they're having fun. The answer will pretty much be no. At two gravities, maybe some people will be interested in what they are feeling, but it isn't really exciting. At higher gravities, they'll be uncomfortable. Even if you don't sustain six gravities but merely pulse the plating for fractions of a second, they'll still be uncomfortable. Above two gravities, there is really nothing new to the experience; it is just more of the same, and it is boring, if not painful.
Objectively, I think a claim that G-forces (really acceleration) are the source of enjoyment won't hold up. Here are some other candidates for the true sources of pleasure: The thrill of the appearance of danger. The unusual perspective of being upside down. The surprise of the unknown as acceleration and velocities change without warning and in unusual ways.
The appearance of danger is thrilling because evolution naturally produces a fascination with danger. Evolution causes an organism to be fascinated with danger because if your brain focuses intensely on danger, you are better able to avoid it. (You recognize it, you avoid it, you figure out what to do,...) Because avoiding danger is very important to survival, your brain is very attracted to focusing on danger. And it is not just focusing; there is also pleasure. The reason for the pleasure is to reward you for having learned something. You have done something good for your continued survival, so there is pleasure associated with it.
Being upside-down and experiencing unusual changes in acceleration and velocity may be entertaining simply because we are curious and enjoy being stimulated. Curiousity is also a feature of an organism making its way in a complicated world. It's pleasurable just as above, because learning enhances survival, although not as intense as apparent danger.
Personally, I enjoy free-fall more than high acceleration. It's a more unusual experience, and zero-gravity is qualitatively different from two-gravities. And, of course, the feeling of falling is highly correlated with great danger, so it produces some of the same intense mental focus on the experience.
So, no, G-forces are not the real reason people ride roller coasters. They may play a role, but there are plenty of other factors, and there are plenty of ways to use accelerations entertainingly without cranking up the acceleration to dangerous levels.
One purpose of comments is to explain the code to another engineer (including oneself in the future). Another purpose is to demonstrate the code works, whether an informal argument that the code does what it should or a mathematical proof. These two purposes have different needs.
For the former case, standard writing rules apply. Decide who the audience is. I often figure the audience is an engineer who knows the type of programming at hand, but doesn't know what is done by this particular code, and may or may not be familiar with the product, depending on circumstances. Knowing the audience tells you what assumptions to make and what has to be explained, either by prose or by giving directions to reference material.
Write complete, grammatically correct sentences. This goes a long way to making comments comprehensible. Sometimes a little phrase won't be understood because the reader can't fill in the unwritten parts, or because there's ambiguity in the wording. It is okay to use short phrases when describing objects being defined or declared (e.g., "number of links to this object" or "dollars owed this customer), but keep the context in mind. Introduce the compound object with sentences where appropriate.
"Dollars owed this customer" reminds me -- use units. Don't write "Money owed this customer" or "time since last update." Specify seconds or milliseconds, not time. Document how the object models whatever it is modeling. That may be a physical thing like time or a conceptual thing. E.g., if a pointer connects one object to another, document the relationship that represents. If a "debt" class contains a pointer to a "person," don't document it as "person associated with this class." Document the relationship -- this particular pointer may represent the debtor, the creditor, the escrow agent, or somebody else.
Give context. I have seen thousands of modules that just leap into code with no explanation of what they are. Even if the comments say what a function does, a reader might not really understand it until they know what it is used for. Document where the code fits into the bigger scheme and what it is used for. Give the reader context so the purpose of the function makes sense. Even if a complete mathematical description of a function is given, so that the reader can precisely predict its behavior in every situation, it might not make sense to the human mind until they have a mental image or model of it.
For the second purpose, demonstrating the code works, explain how the code implements an algorithm. It's not enough to explain what the steps are doing; you need to show how the total result comes out of the algorithm, unless it is something simple or familiar. E.g., a formal description of the long division taught in elementary school would generally be incomprehensible. "Find the largest digit d such that d times q is less than r[i]. Subtract d*q from r[i] to get r[i+1]. Append d to output..." Nobody seeing that for the first time would understand what it is doing, even if all the steps were clear. Even if you explained each step and explained the result, it won't be clear to some readers how the steps produce the result, so explain that.
Document alternatives that weren't chosen, and the reasons why. If you were tempted to implement algorithm X but found you had to do Y because some error might occur, record that information. Otherwise, somebody working on the code next year might see your longer code for Y and change it to X without realizing the problem.
This isn't intended to be a complete list, just what occurred to me at the moment.
"3. The people who didnt like Yahoo!'s actions have stopped using the service and either (a) gone without the service or (b) switched to the competition."
Unfortunately not true. When I learned what Yahoo had done, I sent certified return-receipt mail telling Yahoo I was terminating business with them and instructing Yahoo not to send me email. Yahoo has refused my instructions. Yahoo has since sent me three email messages. The first told me I had received email telling me about the changes. That was false. The second, received three days later, told me about the changes. In the third, Yahoo refused to delete my accounts.
I would delete my accounts myself, if I could. At first, I saw no link or method for deleting an account; I didn't know how until Yahoo sent that information. However, at least one of the "accounts" for me at Yahoo has a user name unknown to me. It got created in the process of buying something through Yahoo stores sometime in the past and isn't my regular account--but Yahoo still uses it to send me email and did not tell me what the user name of that account was when I complained about the unsolicited commercial email they sent pursuant to that account.
If it were true that people could choose whom they do business with, maybe there wouldn't be a problem here. But there is a problem. The problem is that corporations do what they please even if it is unlawful, and individuals have little power to remedy the situation. I want to choose not to do business with Yahoo, but Yahoo isn't allowing it. Maybe I will end up filing a small claims suit against Yahoo, and maybe they will finally stop using my property to transmit me email, but it shouldn't cost that much to get a company simply to terminate a relationship and leave a person alone.
The problem is that remedies for privacy violations are too weak to be effective.
Present the potential customer a list they can choose from like this:
Software for XYZ and copyrights, $5000.
Software for XYZ and non-exclusive license, $4000.
If they take the software with a non-exclusive license, you still own the copyright and are free to release it under GPL or whatever other terms you like.
I think there is a fourth viable business model. I click on a page with content, and a dialog box comes up: "The charge for this page is $.10. Choose an option: Pay via PayPal. Pay via Amazon. Add a new payment service. Do not view this page."
The third option connects to some (possible user selectable) directory of payment services, where the user can communicate with various services and register, thus adding the service to the dialog box in the future. That's how the first two options would have gotten there, or they would have been installed by the PC or system seller.
Clicking on the dialog box is all that is necessary to authorize payment. All other details have been dealt with previously in registration with the payment service, so web surfing is still fast.
Small payments would be economical once the infrastructure is there. Software should give the user additional control and convenience. For example, the user could authorize payment of the next 100 charges of $.10 or less at GameSpot, so their software wouldn't bother them with a dialog box for a while, but spending wouldn't get out of control without them being reminded.
Content providers would need to give the user some indication of what they would be receiving, to entice users to pay. E.g., GameSpot could show the first few paragraphs of a review, with a for-fee link to the whole review.
"they also had the technology to disable the vehicle -- stopping it in its tracks."
That is dangeorus. It could cause an accident involving innocent people in other vehicles. I hope they use it only when the police have the vehicle in sight and can control the disabling precisely. If they have to relay a message over the radio to a central location to get somebody there to send a signal back to the car, that's too much lag time. The situation could have changed from a safe time to disable the vehicle (traveling slowly, nobody nearby) to a fatal time (entering highway).
"Yeah yeah - but only if there is a royalty paid on the sale of the used books - there's not... which is the point."
The authors would get more money, and it does not need royalties on the sale of used books to make it happen. As I explained, the first sale price of each book increases. That increase gives more money to authors. The first buyer is paying more originally, but they make part of it up by reselling the book.
Here's an example. First, suppose some title is generally not resold. Maybe it sells for $20, and $15 goes to the printer and $5 goes to the author. (I know these aren't realistic royalty figures; the point is just to demonstrate the mechanism, not the quantities or all the parties involved.) The first buyer never resells the book and pays the entire $20. Second, consider a title that is resold frequently. Maybe it sells for $30, and $18 goes to the printer and $12 goes to the author. The first buyer resells the book for $15. Their net cost is $15, $5 less than the unresold book. The second buyer never resells the book and pays the entire $15.
Of course, half as many of the resold books will be sold. Suppose N copies of the first book are sold and N/2 copies of the second book are sold. In the first case, the printer gets N*$15. In the second case, the printer gets N/2*$18, or N*$9. They lose money. In the first case, the author gets N*$5. In the second case, the author gets N/2*$12, or N*$6. They gain money. In the first case, each purchaser pays $20. In the second case, each purchaser pays $15. They gain money.
Actually, since the net price has gone down, there will be more than N purchasers of the resold book (total, new and used), so the author will gain a little more, and the printer won't lose as much.
All titles of course will have a mix of resold and unresold copies. As a previous respondant wrote, some people like to keep books, for reference or for collecting, and some books get kept more than others. So the quantities involved will be the result of a mix, but the principles are the same, with different mixes for different books.
There are two components to a book's price: the intellectual property and the physical object. If you reduce the price of the physical object by sharing it, you liberate more money to pay for the intellectual property.
When the contents of a book are shared, by reselling used books, the net average price for each user is reduced. When price goes down, demand goes up. Thus there is more demand for the contents of books.
However, note that the price for the book contents is what went down, so demand for the contents is what increases. Fewer actual physical books are needed, because each book transports the contents to multiple users. So demand for books goes down, and the price goes up.
Thus, in the end, an actual book will cost more, but fewer will be sold. The income for publishers will decrease. But the intellectual property value has increased, and market forces should result in authors getting more money.
It is really a simple effect: When you make a process more efficient, both the supplier of the actual value and the consumer benefit, because they no longer have to pay for the inefficiency. It is only the supplier of the previously needed inefficiency that suffers.
After the previous story about Yahoo "resetting" (that is, altering without permission) user settings, I sent a return-receipt letter terminating all business with Yahoo, instructing Yahoo never to send me any email, and telling Yahoo they would be charged for sending email.
Yahoo responded by sending me email from "Customer Care"! Idiots. They don't care, and I'm not a customer now. How many neurons does it take to figure out that you don't respond to a letter saying not to send email by sending email?Why do corporations think they have a right to do anything they want, even with other people's property?
Unfortunately, one effect of better compression will be more bloat -- web pages with more graphics and more advertising. This is because with better compression, there is more information transmitted per byte, thus giving more value, so the decision about whether or not to include pictures tips in favor of more and bigger images. Thus the average size of a web page and all its components will increase.
If you think the images are valuable, as many web designers seem to for incomprehensible reasons, that is a good thing. But if you do not value lots of images, that is a bad thing. So, better compression harms those with slower links, those who detest advertising clutter, and those who seek concise information rather than flashy presentations.
(I am not opposed to better compression, just pointing out an unintended consequence.)
Whether Mann is a jackass or not is irrelevant. People have legal rights to be jackasses, and their legal rights are not impaired by being jackasses. Being a jackass does not grant security personnel license to commit battery or otherwise violate the laws that normally apply.
Security may have needed to examine Mann prior to allowing him to board, but that does not mean they had to pull devices off his body. They could have asked or required him to remove the devices. Pulling a device that is a attached to a person from a person is clearly not part of a normal search and hence cannot be deemed to have been consented to by the person as the result of prior implicit or explicit consent to a general search. Therefore separate permission is clearly required. In the absence of such permission, removing a device from the body of a person constitutes battery.
Coincidentally, last month I wrote to the Manchester, New Hampshire, airport authority and to the security company inquiring about the new sign saying FAA regulation requires laptops to be X-rayed. I asked what reason they had to believe this would not damage laptops and who would be liable if it did. Neither party has answered. Past studies may have shown components are unlikely to be affected by typical airport X-ray screening, but components keep shrinking, so who says the conclusion is still valid?
I doubt X-raying laptops is useful anyway. From what I was able to observe, the laptop shows up on the X-ray display as a black rectangle or a grey rectangle with black rectangles in it. It appears to be no evidence would be visible about the presence of blades (since sharpness is not visible in the cross-section) or what is behind the black rectangles.
The most obvious and American counterexample to that is the voting booth. It has a privacy curtain, and I bet you use it.
Honest people have things to hide from dishonest people. Hiding your vote protects you from being threatened or rewarded for your vote. Hiding your business plans prevents your competitor from beating you to the punch. Hiding your homework prevents other students from cheating. Hiding your phone number prevents some telemarketers from bothering you. Hiding your home address prevents customers from bothering you after business hours. Hiding an embarrassing (but ethical) hobby provides enjoyment of life while protecting from harassment. Hiding your religion protects you from persecution.
I don't know if a judge will enforce such an agreement, but, just in case, here's an embellishment: Make the generated address contain not only the IP address, but also the agreement. E.g., I_the_user_of_IP_address_aa.bb.cc.dd_promise_to_pa y_you_$100_for_reading_this_email@mydomain.com.
That simplifies the process of proving you offered them an agreement and so on.
Books for Geniuses. Short, concise introductions to technical subjects. E.g., C++ for Geniuses,.NET for Geniuses, and so on.
So many books in the stores these days are huge volumes, but the actual information content in them is low. They are fluff and/or repetitive and/or designed for novices. But there are a lot of people out there with a complete education in computer science and/or many years of experience in software engineering. When these people want to learn a new area, they do not need books for novices, and they do not need concepts explained to them.
Conversely, reference manuals often present material with no context and no introduction. They use terms and refer to entities that make no sense to somebody not working in that precise field.
What experienced engineers need is thin books that introduce a subject concisely. The concepts don't need to be explained; the author just needs to show how they come together in whatever the subject is. The book is a quick tutorial and a bit of a reference book with explanations.
I suspect some books are thick to make people think they are getting their money's worth. Or maybe just publishers think that. If thin books can't be sold at a profitable price, bundle them. Put several related subjects together, or sell them as a set.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a great idea. Dear Postal Service: Please stop sending junk mail to my mailbox and instead send email to my emailbox. My email address is null@nowhere.nodomain. Thanks!
I wasn't going to enter a response to this article, but I was afraid of receiving a cease and desist order if I remained silent.
"... you could be ASURED that you'd never have a plan stolen, since the government could always confirm that it was your original idea..."
First, the government confirming an idea was yours wouldn't stop theft; it would just provide evidence. Second, even with evidence, suing somebody who stole your plans is expensive, time-consuming, and only returns a fraction of the value of not having the plans stolen in the first place. Third, not all theft of business plans is illegal. If you can figure out what a competitor is up to through public information and jump the gun on them, that's generally legal. So having the government referee who thought up an idea first does nothing to protect the idea. You must keep it private.
"I'm suggesting that the means to protection is strength (i.e. self-defense training, etc.)..."
You have no business telling any person that they should limit the deterrents they will use because you think self-defense is sufficient. It is not sufficient; it won't stop every attack, and there is no reason a person who wants to protect themselves should not be allowed and encouraged to use privacy as one means of protection.
The only reason the police ever watch any house 24-7 is because they want to get the people inside in, not because they want to protect it. Believing the police can protect people is a fantasy. The police at most deter crime and punish criminals; they do not prevent crime, and you cannot rely on them. In fact, police departments have argued in court, successfully, that they have no duty to protect people.
"... telemarketers..."
The things you suggest, playing with the telemarketers or hanging up, do not remedy the problem: The disturbance still occurs. Caller ID helps but does not completely remedy the problem.
"Privacy is essential for deception, little else."
Well, then don't keep your passwords private; you must be deceiving somebody. Publish all of yours accounts and passwords here, along with your credit card numbers, Social Security account number, and so on.
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't be concerned with people watching you."
False. You should be concerned with people watching you because they can harm your interests even if you are not doing anything wrong. Just for example, if somebody could see how you voted, they could harass you or bribe you. That's why voting booths have privacy curtains. Privacy is essential to democracy and freedom.
If you buy valuable objects (electronics, jewelry, whatever), you are doing nothing wrong. But if the wrong people get ahold of that information, you become a target for theft. How do you keep information like the addresses of people with valuable items out of the hands of criminals? You keep it out of the hands of companies that collect it. They almost never have your security at heart, and they often have lax security procedures. Privacy is essential for security.
How do you keep your competitor from learning your business plans? You keep the plans secret. You do not want information about what you are buying or whom you are meeting to get into your competitor's hands. How you keep them from learning that information? You keep it out of everybody's hands. Privacy is essential for business.
How do you protect yourself from sexual assault? You don't let strangers know your address. You don't let every peon employee who sees a pretty woman in a store find out where she lives. How do you keep strangers from getting her address? You don't let companies collect it. Privacy is essential for safety.
How do you keep telemarketers from bothering you? You don't let them have your phone number or information about your interests and purchasing patterns. (They may still call randomly, but this decreases targeted calls.) How do you keep them from getting that information? You don't let companies collect it. Privacy is essential for peace and quiet.
That list of reasons is bogus. It is written to favor employers, and pretty much all of the reasons can be turned around. More on that below, but, first, I'll discuss two components of the decision: ethics/etiquette and pragmatics.
I wouldn't advise seeking other jobs for the purpose of increasing your bargaining power. It may be ethical to your current employer, but it isn't nice. And it isn't ethical to the recruiters, who put in work (some of them, anyway) in the hope of getting paid. (You could maybe fix that by finding a recruiter who will work for you in exchange for payment from you instead of from employers.) However, these don't apply in your case, since the recruiter approached you unsolicited. If you do take the counter-offer, you might want to thank the recruiter by referring them to anybody you know who is interested in new opportunities, or vice-versa, or maybe even by offering them a fair payment.
As for pragmatics, it depends on your situation. If you are just in a situation where the employer needed you, but you could be replaced, then it might be better to go to the new job. But if you are a star and are professional, you could remain where you are with increased respect and power. Push came to shove, and the employer backed down, so you know where you stand. The decision between these two is up to your evaluation of the situation.
Back to the list. The list mentions loyalty several times. In most companies, there should be no loyalty of employees to the company, because there is none in return. Only if the company has demonstrated it will stick with the employees in hard times or entered into a binding contract to do so should employees be willing to have any loyalty to the company. Remember, a company is a business, not a person. Do not give a company the considerations you give to a human being.
The list says your employer will know you are unhappy and your "loyalty" is in question. In other words, your employer will know you have requirements and evaluate your own self-interest, like any other strong, responsible business person. The list says your employer will remember who is "loyal" at promotion time. In other words, your employer knows they have to compensate you fairly; they cannot rely on you to complacently sit in a low-paying job like most employees.
The list says your employer will cut you when times are tough. But your employer's counter-offer proved they need you, they know it, and they are willing to pay for it. You don't cut needed employees who are worth the money; you cut the unperforming wastes of money. If things get really tight, you ask the stars about pay cuts, which should be in exchange for future consideration when things get better.
The list says accepting a counteroffer means you were bought. No, it means your services were bought. That is what employees do; they sell their services for money. You don't go to work for a company for fun. It is a business deal; there is supposed to be money exchanged.
The list asks where the money for your raise comes from. It comes from the value you provide. The wage guidelines can be adjusted for good performers. The list says your company will look for somebody cheaper. Really good employees are hard to find, and it takes time to bring new ones up to speed. Replacing any employee is expensive; replacing a good one is stupid, unless the money is out of line. But it can't be out of line if that is what the market is offering, and how could they hire somebody good cheaper if that is what the market is offering?
The list says the circumstances that made you look still exist. But that doesn't apply in your case; the circumstance of low salary is changed. The list says, without attribution, there is a "high" probability of leaving or being let go soon. What makes us think that isn't true anytime?
The list says your co-worker relationship will change. If word gets out, your co-workers will know you are a valuable employee. It is nice to be respected, and it gives you power.
The list asks what kind of company has to be threatened with resignation to get what your worth. Most kinds. What kind of company wants to pay money they don't have to? Companies give low increases because most employees stay put even though they could get more elsewhere. It is a business deal.
How susceptible is such a train to sabotage? Would a one-foot diameter rock tossed into the center of the tracks derail the train? It's difficult enough securing airplanes when you only need to check the departure point. How do you secure hundreds or thousands of miles of rails?
Er, I'm not sure what you're getting at. For example, any set of points (in a space of more than two dimensions) that "lie in a straight line" are necessarily also in a plane and are in fact in infinitely many planes.
Shamir's secret sharing is easy to describe: Any polynomial of degree k-1 can be completely figured out from k points on it but not from k-1 points. So to share a secret among any number of people so that any k of them can figure out the secret and any k-1 of them cannot, you make up a polynomial whose value at x=0 is the secret and you tell each person the value of the polynomial at other points (at x=1, x=2,...).
For example, any 2 points define a line (a polynomial of degree 1). If you tell me where the line is at x=1 and x=2, I can figure out where the line is at x=0. But if you only tell me where the line is at x=1, I haven't got a clue where it is at x=0, because it could still be anywhere. If you gave a million people different values for x=1, x=2,... x=1000000, no one of them would know the value of the line at x=0, but any two of them could figure it out.
"Will we crash into the ground at the bottom of that hill?"
Yes, and a nice example of that is the Superman ride at Six Flags in Massachusetts. Spoiler warning! Stop reading if you want to be surprised on the ride.
There's one point on the Superman ride where you crest a hilll and plunge downward. You see the ground, and you're waiting for the track to bottom out, and the ground keeps coming, and you get concerned, and the ground keeps coming, and the train plunges straight into the ground!
There's a hidden tunnel there.
It was very well done, a complete surprise to first-time riders if they did not inspect the track before entering the ride. You don't see the tunnel coming up, and the entrance is hidden in mist so you don't even see it during the final approach. It's a real scare, and the amount of acceleration required for this effect is zero.
"The very factors you list as entertaining *require* a certain level of acceleration to be viable."
That is a non sequitur, because the fact that X requires Y does not mean that liking X implies liking Y. For example, I like eating, and I have to work to eat, but that does not mean I like working. Now, remember my claim is that people likely do not enjoy acceleration, not particularly anyway. So the fact that acceleration is required to get what they do enjoy does not show they enjoy acceleration.
Yes, you need acceleration to turn people upside-down, and you need acceleration to get people to the point where they can go into free fall or recover from it. But you do not need "G-forces", if the term means multiple gravities of acceleration. When a roller coaster is upside-down, it does not need multiple gravities to pin people in their seats. It only needs one gravity to counter the force of gravity plus some margin for safety. (And then the net force on the riders can be slight, less than the force due to gravity.)
"... if you take away more powerful G forces, you *do* by necessity reduce how thrilling the ride is."
There is no conservation of acceleration in the laws of physics. You do not need to compensate for free-fall in once place with high gravities in another. There is conservation of position in the end, if you want to return the riders to their starting point. However, that can be accomplished with free-fall in one place and mild acceleration of a longer duration in another place. In fact, the ride up to the first drop in traditional roller coasters is generally longer than the free fall that follows. You could even make the times closer by doing the ride up at two gravities (one from the Earth, one from mechanics). You wouldn't need to get anywhere near the six gravities mentioned in the article.
You want thrilling? Tell me which is more thrilling: Being at the top of a loop pressed firmly into your seat for a fraction of a second, too uncomfortable to pay attention to the experience, or being at the top of a loop for several times long and having the feeling that you're floating out of your seat a bit. The former happens at multiple gravities. The latter happens at, say, a half-gravity. The former is merely a quick visual whirlwind. The latter is visual and visceral.
"I have never understood why people think that passwords suffer from wear and tear."
Using a password does indeed weaken it. Every now and then, a user will accidentally type a password into a user name field, and that results in a log entry with the incorrect password in plaintext. Every now and then, some users will give their passwords to a coworker or relative to "borrow" their account. Some users will use the same password on multiple systems. When a cracker gets into a system, they are likely to record the password file and attack it, or to collect passwords via spoofing or whatnot.
So, the longer a password has been in use, the higher the probability it has been compromised. The password suffers from wear and tear. Changing passwords refreshes them. A cracker that formerly had access to the system would have to start from scratch (especially if all passwords are changed simultaneously). Also, that cuts the coworker off from access to other employees accounts. They might not have done anything with that access now, but, someday, maybe they'll be fired and would like to take some sort of revenge. Since you cut them off by a policy of regularly changing passwords, they can't do it that way.
"Why do they think people ride roller coasters to begin with?"
Like many things, the reason people think they do something is not necessarily the reason people do it. If a person gets on a roller coaster, enjoys it, and does it again, they may figure they like the G-forces they experienced. But a lot of people don't understand physics or the human body or their own mental processes, so their simple correlation of one part of the experience with the cause of the enjoyment is not necessarily indicative of a causal relationship.
Ask objectively, is it the G-forces people enjoy? Isolate the G-forces to see. Suppose you put somebody in a roller-coaster car mounted over some artificial gravity plating. You dial up the G-forces to two gravities, three, maybe even six. Then you ask the person if they're having fun. The answer will pretty much be no. At two gravities, maybe some people will be interested in what they are feeling, but it isn't really exciting. At higher gravities, they'll be uncomfortable. Even if you don't sustain six gravities but merely pulse the plating for fractions of a second, they'll still be uncomfortable. Above two gravities, there is really nothing new to the experience; it is just more of the same, and it is boring, if not painful.
Objectively, I think a claim that G-forces (really acceleration) are the source of enjoyment won't hold up. Here are some other candidates for the true sources of pleasure: The thrill of the appearance of danger. The unusual perspective of being upside down. The surprise of the unknown as acceleration and velocities change without warning and in unusual ways.
The appearance of danger is thrilling because evolution naturally produces a fascination with danger. Evolution causes an organism to be fascinated with danger because if your brain focuses intensely on danger, you are better able to avoid it. (You recognize it, you avoid it, you figure out what to do,...) Because avoiding danger is very important to survival, your brain is very attracted to focusing on danger. And it is not just focusing; there is also pleasure. The reason for the pleasure is to reward you for having learned something. You have done something good for your continued survival, so there is pleasure associated with it.
Being upside-down and experiencing unusual changes in acceleration and velocity may be entertaining simply because we are curious and enjoy being stimulated. Curiousity is also a feature of an organism making its way in a complicated world. It's pleasurable just as above, because learning enhances survival, although not as intense as apparent danger.
Personally, I enjoy free-fall more than high acceleration. It's a more unusual experience, and zero-gravity is qualitatively different from two-gravities. And, of course, the feeling of falling is highly correlated with great danger, so it produces some of the same intense mental focus on the experience.
So, no, G-forces are not the real reason people ride roller coasters. They may play a role, but there are plenty of other factors, and there are plenty of ways to use accelerations entertainingly without cranking up the acceleration to dangerous levels.
One purpose of comments is to explain the code to another engineer (including oneself in the future). Another purpose is to demonstrate the code works, whether an informal argument that the code does what it should or a mathematical proof. These two purposes have different needs.
For the former case, standard writing rules apply. Decide who the audience is. I often figure the audience is an engineer who knows the type of programming at hand, but doesn't know what is done by this particular code, and may or may not be familiar with the product, depending on circumstances. Knowing the audience tells you what assumptions to make and what has to be explained, either by prose or by giving directions to reference material.
Write complete, grammatically correct sentences. This goes a long way to making comments comprehensible. Sometimes a little phrase won't be understood because the reader can't fill in the unwritten parts, or because there's ambiguity in the wording. It is okay to use short phrases when describing objects being defined or declared (e.g., "number of links to this object" or "dollars owed this customer), but keep the context in mind. Introduce the compound object with sentences where appropriate.
"Dollars owed this customer" reminds me -- use units. Don't write "Money owed this customer" or "time since last update." Specify seconds or milliseconds, not time. Document how the object models whatever it is modeling. That may be a physical thing like time or a conceptual thing. E.g., if a pointer connects one object to another, document the relationship that represents. If a "debt" class contains a pointer to a "person," don't document it as "person associated with this class." Document the relationship -- this particular pointer may represent the debtor, the creditor, the escrow agent, or somebody else.
Give context. I have seen thousands of modules that just leap into code with no explanation of what they are. Even if the comments say what a function does, a reader might not really understand it until they know what it is used for. Document where the code fits into the bigger scheme and what it is used for. Give the reader context so the purpose of the function makes sense. Even if a complete mathematical description of a function is given, so that the reader can precisely predict its behavior in every situation, it might not make sense to the human mind until they have a mental image or model of it.
For the second purpose, demonstrating the code works, explain how the code implements an algorithm. It's not enough to explain what the steps are doing; you need to show how the total result comes out of the algorithm, unless it is something simple or familiar. E.g., a formal description of the long division taught in elementary school would generally be incomprehensible. "Find the largest digit d such that d times q is less than r[i]. Subtract d*q from r[i] to get r[i+1]. Append d to output..." Nobody seeing that for the first time would understand what it is doing, even if all the steps were clear. Even if you explained each step and explained the result, it won't be clear to some readers how the steps produce the result, so explain that.
Document alternatives that weren't chosen, and the reasons why. If you were tempted to implement algorithm X but found you had to do Y because some error might occur, record that information. Otherwise, somebody working on the code next year might see your longer code for Y and change it to X without realizing the problem.
This isn't intended to be a complete list, just what occurred to me at the moment.
"3. The people who didnt like Yahoo!'s actions have stopped using the service and either (a) gone without the service or (b) switched to the competition."
Unfortunately not true. When I learned what Yahoo had done, I sent certified return-receipt mail telling Yahoo I was terminating business with them and instructing Yahoo not to send me email. Yahoo has refused my instructions. Yahoo has since sent me three email messages. The first told me I had received email telling me about the changes. That was false. The second, received three days later, told me about the changes. In the third, Yahoo refused to delete my accounts.
I would delete my accounts myself, if I could. At first, I saw no link or method for deleting an account; I didn't know how until Yahoo sent that information. However, at least one of the "accounts" for me at Yahoo has a user name unknown to me. It got created in the process of buying something through Yahoo stores sometime in the past and isn't my regular account--but Yahoo still uses it to send me email and did not tell me what the user name of that account was when I complained about the unsolicited commercial email they sent pursuant to that account.
If it were true that people could choose whom they do business with, maybe there wouldn't be a problem here. But there is a problem. The problem is that corporations do what they please even if it is unlawful, and individuals have little power to remedy the situation. I want to choose not to do business with Yahoo, but Yahoo isn't allowing it. Maybe I will end up filing a small claims suit against Yahoo, and maybe they will finally stop using my property to transmit me email, but it shouldn't cost that much to get a company simply to terminate a relationship and leave a person alone.
The problem is that remedies for privacy violations are too weak to be effective.
Present the potential customer a list they can choose from like this:
If they take the software with a non-exclusive license, you still own the copyright and are free to release it under GPL or whatever other terms you like.
I think there is a fourth viable business model. I click on a page with content, and a dialog box comes up: "The charge for this page is $.10. Choose an option: Pay via PayPal. Pay via Amazon. Add a new payment service. Do not view this page."
The third option connects to some (possible user selectable) directory of payment services, where the user can communicate with various services and register, thus adding the service to the dialog box in the future. That's how the first two options would have gotten there, or they would have been installed by the PC or system seller.
Clicking on the dialog box is all that is necessary to authorize payment. All other details have been dealt with previously in registration with the payment service, so web surfing is still fast.
Small payments would be economical once the infrastructure is there. Software should give the user additional control and convenience. For example, the user could authorize payment of the next 100 charges of $.10 or less at GameSpot, so their software wouldn't bother them with a dialog box for a while, but spending wouldn't get out of control without them being reminded.
Content providers would need to give the user some indication of what they would be receiving, to entice users to pay. E.g., GameSpot could show the first few paragraphs of a review, with a for-fee link to the whole review.
"they also had the technology to disable the vehicle -- stopping it in its tracks."
That is dangeorus. It could cause an accident involving innocent people in other vehicles. I hope they use it only when the police have the vehicle in sight and can control the disabling precisely. If they have to relay a message over the radio to a central location to get somebody there to send a signal back to the car, that's too much lag time. The situation could have changed from a safe time to disable the vehicle (traveling slowly, nobody nearby) to a fatal time (entering highway).
"Yeah yeah - but only if there is a royalty paid on the sale of the used books - there's not... which is the point."
The authors would get more money, and it does not need royalties on the sale of used books to make it happen. As I explained, the first sale price of each book increases. That increase gives more money to authors. The first buyer is paying more originally, but they make part of it up by reselling the book.
Here's an example. First, suppose some title is generally not resold. Maybe it sells for $20, and $15 goes to the printer and $5 goes to the author. (I know these aren't realistic royalty figures; the point is just to demonstrate the mechanism, not the quantities or all the parties involved.) The first buyer never resells the book and pays the entire $20. Second, consider a title that is resold frequently. Maybe it sells for $30, and $18 goes to the printer and $12 goes to the author. The first buyer resells the book for $15. Their net cost is $15, $5 less than the unresold book. The second buyer never resells the book and pays the entire $15.
Of course, half as many of the resold books will be sold. Suppose N copies of the first book are sold and N/2 copies of the second book are sold. In the first case, the printer gets N*$15. In the second case, the printer gets N/2*$18, or N*$9. They lose money. In the first case, the author gets N*$5. In the second case, the author gets N/2*$12, or N*$6. They gain money. In the first case, each purchaser pays $20. In the second case, each purchaser pays $15. They gain money.
Actually, since the net price has gone down, there will be more than N purchasers of the resold book (total, new and used), so the author will gain a little more, and the printer won't lose as much.
All titles of course will have a mix of resold and unresold copies. As a previous respondant wrote, some people like to keep books, for reference or for collecting, and some books get kept more than others. So the quantities involved will be the result of a mix, but the principles are the same, with different mixes for different books.
There are two components to a book's price: the intellectual property and the physical object. If you reduce the price of the physical object by sharing it, you liberate more money to pay for the intellectual property.
When the contents of a book are shared, by reselling used books, the net average price for each user is reduced. When price goes down, demand goes up. Thus there is more demand for the contents of books.
However, note that the price for the book contents is what went down, so demand for the contents is what increases. Fewer actual physical books are needed, because each book transports the contents to multiple users. So demand for books goes down, and the price goes up.
Thus, in the end, an actual book will cost more, but fewer will be sold. The income for publishers will decrease. But the intellectual property value has increased, and market forces should result in authors getting more money.
It is really a simple effect: When you make a process more efficient, both the supplier of the actual value and the consumer benefit, because they no longer have to pay for the inefficiency. It is only the supplier of the previously needed inefficiency that suffers.
After the previous story about Yahoo "resetting" (that is, altering without permission) user settings, I sent a return-receipt letter terminating all business with Yahoo, instructing Yahoo never to send me any email, and telling Yahoo they would be charged for sending email.
Yahoo responded by sending me email from "Customer Care"! Idiots. They don't care, and I'm not a customer now. How many neurons does it take to figure out that you don't respond to a letter saying not to send email by sending email?Why do corporations think they have a right to do anything they want, even with other people's property?
From Slashdot's article: "the House version requires customers to 'opt-out' of this information-sharing."
I would like to see users who don't opt-out taught a lesson, but sending them to jail seems a bit harsh.
Unfortunately, one effect of better compression will be more bloat -- web pages with more graphics and more advertising. This is because with better compression, there is more information transmitted per byte, thus giving more value, so the decision about whether or not to include pictures tips in favor of more and bigger images. Thus the average size of a web page and all its components will increase.
If you think the images are valuable, as many web designers seem to for incomprehensible reasons, that is a good thing. But if you do not value lots of images, that is a bad thing. So, better compression harms those with slower links, those who detest advertising clutter, and those who seek concise information rather than flashy presentations.
(I am not opposed to better compression, just pointing out an unintended consequence.)
Whether Mann is a jackass or not is irrelevant. People have legal rights to be jackasses, and their legal rights are not impaired by being jackasses. Being a jackass does not grant security personnel license to commit battery or otherwise violate the laws that normally apply.
Security may have needed to examine Mann prior to allowing him to board, but that does not mean they had to pull devices off his body. They could have asked or required him to remove the devices. Pulling a device that is a attached to a person from a person is clearly not part of a normal search and hence cannot be deemed to have been consented to by the person as the result of prior implicit or explicit consent to a general search. Therefore separate permission is clearly required. In the absence of such permission, removing a device from the body of a person constitutes battery.
Coincidentally, last month I wrote to the Manchester, New Hampshire, airport authority and to the security company inquiring about the new sign saying FAA regulation requires laptops to be X-rayed. I asked what reason they had to believe this would not damage laptops and who would be liable if it did. Neither party has answered. Past studies may have shown components are unlikely to be affected by typical airport X-ray screening, but components keep shrinking, so who says the conclusion is still valid?
I doubt X-raying laptops is useful anyway. From what I was able to observe, the laptop shows up on the X-ray display as a black rectangle or a grey rectangle with black rectangles in it. It appears to be no evidence would be visible about the presence of blades (since sharpness is not visible in the cross-section) or what is behind the black rectangles.
"Honest men have nothing to hide."
The most obvious and American counterexample to that is the voting booth. It has a privacy curtain, and I bet you use it.
Honest people have things to hide from dishonest people. Hiding your vote protects you from being threatened or rewarded for your vote. Hiding your business plans prevents your competitor from beating you to the punch. Hiding your homework prevents other students from cheating. Hiding your phone number prevents some telemarketers from bothering you. Hiding your home address prevents customers from bothering you after business hours. Hiding an embarrassing (but ethical) hobby provides enjoyment of life while protecting from harassment. Hiding your religion protects you from persecution.
I don't know if a judge will enforce such an agreement, but, just in case, here's an embellishment: Make the generated address contain not only the IP address, but also the agreement. E.g., I_the_user_of_IP_address_aa.bb.cc.dd_promise_to_pa y_you_$100_for_reading_this_email@mydomain.com.
That simplifies the process of proving you offered them an agreement and so on.
Books for Geniuses. Short, concise introductions to technical subjects. E.g., C++ for Geniuses, .NET for Geniuses, and so on.
So many books in the stores these days are huge volumes, but the actual information content in them is low. They are fluff and/or repetitive and/or designed for novices. But there are a lot of people out there with a complete education in computer science and/or many years of experience in software engineering. When these people want to learn a new area, they do not need books for novices, and they do not need concepts explained to them.
Conversely, reference manuals often present material with no context and no introduction. They use terms and refer to entities that make no sense to somebody not working in that precise field.
What experienced engineers need is thin books that introduce a subject concisely. The concepts don't need to be explained; the author just needs to show how they come together in whatever the subject is. The book is a quick tutorial and a bit of a reference book with explanations.
I suspect some books are thick to make people think they are getting their money's worth. Or maybe just publishers think that. If thin books can't be sold at a profitable price, bundle them. Put several related subjects together, or sell them as a set.