Someone in the car industry needs to stand up and say "There will be no networked computers in my vehicles."
That is unrealistic and defeatist. Many customers (including myself) very much want some of the capabilities that come with network access and there is no reason it cannot be done utilizing good security practices and appropriate separation of function. I want a built in GPS with weather and traffic data overlays. I want to be able to monitor my car's performance with something more sophisticated than a check engine light. I want my car to be able to fix problems or add features without visiting a dealer. Maybe you don't and that's fine but pretending that this will go away and that networks will not be used on cars is foolish.
HOWEVER, I work in the auto industry and have for much of my career. The biggest problem the auto makers are going to have is that they almost completely new to this sort of security and they have little to no security culture built around software development. This is not surprising but it is a problem. Unlike the PC industry which has had 30+ years of people attacking networks to learn from and culture built around dealing with them. Most of the security issues in the auto industry have revolved around physical security of the ignition system and doors. Network security is an entirely different animal and the auto makers are going to have to transform themselves to some degree into software companies.
Based on my experience I think they are going to get a lot of painful and very expensive lessons. They tend not to acknowledge problems until they become public and embarrassing and expensive. That will have to change. They very much should be looking carefully at what Tesla is doing because something like that is probably the model for the future. Not saying they need to copy Tesla but they should be taking notes and seeing what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately the auto makers are run by guys (and girls) who are relatively old and most of whom have NO concept of computer network security so I think they are going to move too slowly for a while.
Lots of people disagreed with him back then, most vocally anyone connected to Adobe, but he knew what the future held and boldly took that first step.
I remember quite a lot of Android advocates claiming that Android was better than iOS because it allowed Flash while iOS didn't. Flash games were quite a thing around that time and there was a lot of hand wringing over them being disallowed on Apple products. Of course blocking Flash was the right decision and nobody aside from some advertisers still seems to think it is a good technology. Curious how opinions change...
Here's the thing about space mining. Let's assume they figure out a way to gather and process whatever material they are mining into a commodity. I think it will be very difficult and won't happen within my lifetime most likely but let's just grant that we figure out the engineering. Let's further not worry about inflation or other economic issues for now. There is one HUGE problem with space mining that doesn't get enough attention.
Unless you are able to use that material in space you have to return it to Earth for it to be economically viable and it is very likely the economics of space mining would require at least some of this because Earth is where the money is. Returning materials to earth basically means dropping a rather large amount of mass down a gravity well. Effectively you are engaging in kinetic bombardment of the earth. It would be trivial to drop said mass on a population center and it might not happen by accident. Accident or not it would be catastrophic wherever it hits once the mass gets larger than a few tons. Precious metals could be dropped in smaller quantities and shielded but materials like iron would almost have to be dropped in very large amounts to make any economic sense.
Almost any large scale mining in space that returns large volumes of material to Earth would also mean creating a weapon of mass destruction. THAT is the biggest problem with space mining and I don't really see an easy solution to it.
Massachusetts ban on private ownership of stun-guns being considered by the Supreme Court, and it's unclear whether such ownership has constitutional protection.
Although logic rarely gets involved in discussions around the 2nd Amendment, I can't think of any logical reason why stun-guns should be treated any different than firearms. The 2nd amendment says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed but it doesn't specify only weapons that use gunpowder. The fact that stun-guns using electricity are of recent development is not a relevant consideration to my mind.
The petitioner is asking the court (PDF) to clarify that the Second Amendment covers non-lethal weapons used for self-defense.
There is really no such thing as a "non-lethal weapon". ANY weapon can be used to kill even if they are primarily designed to incapacitate. That said, prohibiting weapons which are generally less lethal while allowing ones that are designed primarily to kill is the height of stupid.
FF is a perfect example of a project going completely off the rails. I don't hear anyone saying good things about it anymore.
I use firefox as my primary browser and it continues to serve my needs better than any of the alternatives. It's available on linux unlike IE or Safari and for my needs at least it is less buggy than Chrome. Google can't seem to stop breaking things in Chrome and while they usually fix them it's annoying in the meantime. I see no meaningful speed or performance differences between the major browsers. Firefox seldom has site compatibility issues. While I won't argue that FF is without warts, it is to my mind the best available option at this time. That may change of course but I don't see anything better out there for my needs at present.
It started as an effort to be lighter and faster than the old Mozilla suite. I actually like the mail client...
At one time I did too. However it stagnated and I move on to other things. 12 years have passed since the project was started and the web has evolved substantially since then. Things have gotten more complex and so has the software to deal with them. This isn't 2002 and expecting the software to be the same is kind of silly.
Completely lost sight of what they'd been trying to do.
What they originally were trying to do is not as relevant today. Perhaps you want a stripped down browser with minimal frills. That's fine but most of the rest of us are concerned with other things. So long as it let's me view the bits of the web I want and gives me options to configure to my particular quirks without crashing or causing problems, I don't really care if it takes up extra space or has a few features I don't use.
The councilors from Munich's conservative CSU party have called the operating system installed on their laptops "cumbersome to use" and "of very limited use.
Translation: We don't want to be bothered learning anything new and it doesn't have solitaire on it.
"There are no programs for text editing, Skype, Office etc. installed and that prevents normal use,"
Translation: We have no idea what we are talking about, can't be bothered to ask any questions and only want to use what we are already familiar with.
Another complaint from councilors is that "the lack of user permissions makes them of limited use."
Translation: We want to be able to download whatever malware infested screensaver or porn we feel like.
"If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job — while protecting civil liberties — to make sure that evildoers aren't in our midst."
I will never vote for someone who uses the word "evildoer". The last guy to use it in office didn't work out so well...
And I don't give a shit that it is hard(er) for the US government to step on my throat. We have restrictions on the government because the government has proven time and again that it cannot be entirely trusted. If they have to work a little harder I don't care at all. The Bad Guys aren't going to use weak encryption (unless they are stupid) and there is no reasonable argument that can be made that I shouldn't have access to it either. Bad encryption is effectively the same as no encryption and no encryption is unacceptable when using modern technology.
He also indicated he felt the recent scaling back of the Patriot Act went too far. Bush says he hasn't seen any indication the bulk collection of phone metadata violated anyone's civil liberties.
Then he is just as much of an imbecile as his brother. Jeb clearly has the same moral deficits as George. Trump may be a clown but apparently Jeb is much more dangerous.
Actually, in this case yes, the government is allowed to do it - police cars already do it.
Police officers have to operate under fairly specific guidelines and we expect them to be monitoring to some degree. That doesn't mean the government should have carte-blanche to put tracking technology everywhere. A LOT of questions have to be satisfactorily answered before I'd even consider whether this application of the technology is acceptable. Who is paying for it? How do we ensure that it isn't used for other purposes? Who has access to the data? Under what conditions? How do we ensure the safety of citizens from false-positive results (even one is unacceptable)? How do we know this isn't yet another revenue generating scheme like red-light cameras? Is this really the least invasive and most effective measure available? Is the problem of sufficient scale to warrant an expensive and potentially (likely) invasive technology?
I have a LOT of questions about this and I very much doubt they will be answered to my satsifaction
The question is one of degree.
Yes it is and that question is in no danger of being answered.
Looking at the numbers from the San Jose police website, with over 7000 cars stolen a year, I really can't blame them for trying this.
I can. If that many cars are being stolen then they need to get busy on doing the things that will deal with the root of the problem. Even if a system like this worked it won't solve the problem. You need to look at other cities with less of a stolen car problem and figure out what they are doing differently. Areas with high crime rates rarely have the problem solved by having the government become more oppressive. It sounds like they if they have that many cars stolen that they have some form of organized crime involved. Might want to look into that.
If they are just scanning cars that are visible from the street and alleys, then I can't really argue that this system would be that invasive.
Only if you aren't really thinking about it. How is the data to be handled? What is in the data and who has access to it and under what conditions? What is to prevent it from being used for other purposes? How do you ensure that it never violates privacy rights? What assurances do I have that this is not going to turn into a revenue generating scheme? How is it going to be funded?
Just because I'm not in my house doesn't mean the government should be able to probe everything I'm doing without probable cause. And rest assured that there is no probable cause here for most people going about their daily business.
City councilman Johnny Khamis dismissed such criticism: "This is a public street. You're not expecting privacy on a public street."
I'm also not expecting the spanish inquisition...
Just because I don't have a legal expectation of privacy does not mean the government gets the right to give me a rectal exam every time I set foot outside my house. The real question is whether there is a compelling public interest in the government having and using this technology. They might claim it is to fight car theft but is the problem of such significant as to justify automated monitoring of the entire populace? I'm guessing probably not. We all know that the use of the technology would not stop with just car theft. Even if they were being forthright about that being the primary use I just don't see it not being abused for other purposes.
Later I did finally get the opportunity to fly in a 747, and you might say that cattle-class is cattle class no matter what airplane you're flying in, but I always enjoyed flying in a 747 more than other aircraft, probably just for the nostalgia factor.
Definitely nostalgia. I've flown in 747s and other than the fact that they are impressively large, they are no more pleasant to fly in that any other large plane I've been in, particularly if you are in the middle seat in the 5 seat row. I've flown one from Detroit to Tokyo a few times in a 747 and very much wish I'd sprung for the ticket upgrade. I say this as someone who genuinely loves airplanes too. I can sit at the end of a runway and I turn back into a 7 year old watching the planes take off and land. But honestly there is nothing special about the 747 by today's standards.
That said, I will always have a bit of a place in my heart for the 747 and will miss having the opportunity to fly in them.
They aren't going away for a while yet. I would be very surprised if some weren't still in service for passenger flights 10-15 years from now. Eventually we'll go to something else but it won't be tomorrow.
That's 2/3 of 1% of 1% of 1% of total passengers. (approx 5,700,000,000 according to the article).
Way to miss the point. Other than the single crash of Air France Flight 4590 at the end of its service life the Concorde had zero passenger deaths. That's almost 3 decades without a single fatality. Aviation is a safe way to travel, news at 11... Got any other pointless comparisons to make?
-At the time of the 747's creation AIRBUS was an upstart in the industry.
That was almost half a century ago. Referring to Airbus as an upstart at this point in time is just dumb. Calling it a "residual rivalry" is equally dumb since the companies are the two biggest and most intense rivals in the industry. It's almost a zero sum game between the two when it comes to getting sales since there are no other meaningful players in the large jet market at this time.
-Also at that time, there was debate within the industry as to which vehicle was the way forward: faster or larger.
And larger was the safe bet. We had built jets roughly the size of the 747 15 years before it hit the market. (see the B52 which was built in the early 1950s). The 747 was basically an incremental improvement on already proven technology. The Concorde was a much more risky bet on technology that had never been used in civil aviation.
The Concorde was an experiment really and it used technology that worked but probably wasn't sufficiently developed at the time. Had the engines been more efficient and able to supercruise the Concorde may have made more economic sense and had follow on aircraft. It served for nearly 30 years anyway so if it failed it didn't fail badly.
Look, I'm an American but the summary is a ludicrous troll.
Some Americans, referring to untested new technologies, call it Scarebus.
Maybe some people working for Boeing. I've never once heard anyone use that term in my life.
There is still residual rivalry with the upstart European Airbus.
"Residual rivalry"? Uhh, no. Try huge and ongoing rivalry between the two biggest players in the industry. This is Coke v Pepsi. Ali v Fraser. Ford v GM. The notion that the rivalry isn't still alive and well is simply absurd.
"Upstart"? A company with revenue of 60 Billion Euros is hardly an upstart. For comparison Boeing has revenues of about $90 Billion. It may have been an upstart many decades ago but upstart isn't a description that has fit for a very long time.
A comparison to the European Concorde is illuminating.
No it really isn't. It would be hard for it to be less illuminating. The Concorde was an experiment that didn't work out as well as hoped and likely was a bit ahead of its time. Had it worked out better we might very well have seen more supersonic aircraft. It was truly a first of its kind. The 747 was in many ways far more conservative and conventional - just a bigger and incrementally improved version of stuff we mostly already knew how to do. We'd already made aircraft that large (see the B52 which is about the same size and came 15 years earlier) and while the 747 was impressive it wasn't unprecedented. Ask anyone if they'd rather fly on the Concorde or a 747 and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find many takers for the 747.
Manufacturing is a bit different especially unskilled.
It is not different at all. Any given job requires a certain set of skills and within the locations where those skills are available it will tend to migrate towards the location with the lowest labor costs. If an area with lower labor costs develops a workforce with needed skills then the work will tend to move there like osmosis. Obviously it is easier to relocate work where less skill is required for the job but that is true in any industry and isn't unique to manufacturing.
Our general economic strategy as a nation is to shift those less skilled jobs out and replace them with higher level and more skilled positions.
Well since the alternative is to lower wages to compete, I don't really see that as a bad thing. Bear in mind that the same thing will happen to low wage countries in time. China has low wages now but they are rising steadily. Eventually China will have to do exactly the same thing as the US if they continue to grow their economy. We're already seeing some manufactured goods that previously were offshored to China coming back because the labor costs have risen so much that the savings has evaporated.
Tech is the fastest growing and one of the highest paid job sectors and requires substantial investment in terms of time and education on the part of the workers. These are the jobs those losing jobs in manufacturing are supposed to be able to learn skills for and take on as a career. There is nowhere to go from here.
I've been in manufacturing most of my working life. Manufacturing jobs require substantial investment in time and education just like tech jobs. What is happening in manufacturing in places like the US is very similar to what happened in the farm industry 100+ years ago. The number of jobs in that industry is shrinking as a percent of the workforce but those that remain are far more skilled and productive in general. Very much like farming there is this perception by people outside the industry that the skill and education levels required are low when in fact exactly the opposite is true for much of what we do. I routinely do multi-variate statistical analysis, work with PLCs, conduct spectroscopy, generate complicated process management tools, develop databases, do operations research, and more. Manufacturing is absolutely loaded with technology and to compete in the industry you need to be well educated and smart.
You largely misinterpret my words and you know that.
I didn't misinterpret them at all. I said exactly what I meant and I'm pretty sure you meant that everyone should be able to attend school without paying a cent directly. I disagree. Education is not free and I strongly think that people should have to contribute, particularly when they are adults. My tax dollars support the education of children in my community and state. That isn't free. I firmly believe that college students should incur some amount of direct liability for their education though I'm fine with it being subsidized.
Education is very similar. We invest in the education of the young people today. Therefore, there will be an economy when we are old.
How an education is funded is a separate issue from providing an education. There are multiple ways to accomplish that end. I think people don't value what they don't pay for directly so I think we will see better results if adult students are required to pay a reasonable amount of money out of their own pocket for their education. If it isn't worth it to them I see no reason why I should subsidize it out of my pocket.
VBA was a marketing masterstroke on Microsoft's part.
Yes it was. Particularly in the financial services sector. Those folks have tied themselves to that mast about as tightly as is possible.
If you've been using LibreOffice for five years, and if a significant fraction of your staff are non-programmers, then you're probably pretty much locked into that by now. There are only two ways to avoid it: either you only employ programmers (and make sure they have all the tools they want), or you lock down your system so that people can't write and save macros. Either way has its own costs, and isn't viable for everyone.
Nope - not locked in at all. We simply don't have a huge need for macros for what we do. (manufacturing) Any we do write are pretty basic and would be easily replicated in a new system. Most VBA code is basically people trying to stuff 10 pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag. We tend to use tools that are actually designed for the jobs we need them for. Basically we use spreadsheets as prototyping tools but if we have a very complicated spreadsheet we figure that probably is an indication we need a piece of software to do that task better - usually some sort of database.
My basic take on office suite macros is that they get used FAR more than is actually necessary or helpful. Sure sometimes they are the right solution but it's been a rare case where I couldn't find an adequate solution that didn't require them.
There are differences but they are not fundamental ones. The goal is to keep labor costs low. The mechanics of how this happens is secondary. Sending production to another country does add some logistical overhead but they wouldn't bother if it didn't result in a net gain on labor costs. Importing H1Bs or other cheap labor has different logistical hassles but they wouldn't bother if it didn't result in a net gain on labor costs. You're getting bogged down in worrying about the logistics but missing the big picture in the process.
University education should be free. And in some countries it is.
It is NEVER free. Someone somewhere is paying for it. There is no such thing as a free education. Furthermore people tend not to value things they don't have to pay anything for. I think students should have some financial skin in the game. I have no problem with the cost of an education being subsidized through taxes or donations or other funding but I don't think the cost to the student should be zero. Modest? Yes. Zero? No.
College level should be 100% free to citizens in the USA
It's not free. Someone has to pay for it and frankly the students should have some skin in the game. Students who don't have to pay for their tuition routinely put less effort into it. It's almost a cliche. I agree that college tuitions have gotten WAY out of hand but I don't think it should be free either. Providing a quality education does cost money and people don't tend to value things they don't have to pay for.
No the dean does not deserve $980,000 a year salary, he doesn't do shit. If you want to pay the coach well, base his salary on ticket sales for games.
I have no problem with colleges paying market rates for talent. If that is a big number then so be it. What I have a HUGE problem with however is colleges raising tuitions to pay for things that have little to do with educating students. Want to pay the big name coach so the college can be in the business of professional football? Fine - no tuition money goes to his salary and you have to enable the athletes who are effectively university employees to earn a market rate too. Want to pay the dean a huge salary? That's fine but no tuition money goes to him unless he's doing actual work regarding educating students. Research is explicitly not educational in most cases.
I also think state colleges should actually be funded adequately to keep tuition costs reasonable but the funding streams for that should be kept separate from funding streams for research or athletics or social outreach or other non-academic goals.
It means there's more demand for CHEAPER skilled workers than the native talent pool has.
There is ALWAYS demand for less expensive labor. Sometimes it isn't available. Sometimes companies engage in measures to reduce labor costs. Importing cheaper labor is fundamentally no different than offshoring the work. The basic goal is the same - to reduce labor costs. I run a manufacturing company and we do all our work domestically and pay as much as we can but our competition does a lot of their work in Central America or China so we really cannot compete on jobs with a high labor content unless there are special requirements like engineering help or just in time delivery. We simply cannot pay much more than we do and remain competitive.
Some companies are obviously engaged in some shady tactics to keep labor costs down. The tactics may be reprehensible but the fact that they are trying to contain labor costs should surprise no one. In a competitive market companies HAVE to try to do that. It's particularly galling though when the company has huge profit margins like Microsoft or Facebook does. A low margin manufacturing company might go out of business if they don't keep a tight lid on labor costs. A hugely profitable tech company has no such excuse.
I've heard stories from a technical director at a major American firm where they'd reject PHDs simply because they were worried they'd leave for higher paying jobs elsewhere.
It's not just PHDs. I have a pair of masters degrees and I've been told point-blank during interviews that they were afraid I would get bored and leave or seek higher paying work. It's incredibly short sighted but it happens pretty routinely.
Maybe, but it pales in comparison to cloud hosted collaboration suites. Which coincidentally, Office365 and Google Docs are.
And Google Docs pales in comparison to the functionality of the desktop versions. I use Google Docs routinely but it's just not a viable solution for substantial parts of what I do, particularly for spreadsheet work. If you want to collaborate on a very simple document or spreadsheet then it is fine. Someday maybe it will match the desktop software in features but it isn't there yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone in the car industry needs to stand up and say "There will be no networked computers in my vehicles."
That is unrealistic and defeatist. Many customers (including myself) very much want some of the capabilities that come with network access and there is no reason it cannot be done utilizing good security practices and appropriate separation of function. I want a built in GPS with weather and traffic data overlays. I want to be able to monitor my car's performance with something more sophisticated than a check engine light. I want my car to be able to fix problems or add features without visiting a dealer. Maybe you don't and that's fine but pretending that this will go away and that networks will not be used on cars is foolish.
HOWEVER, I work in the auto industry and have for much of my career. The biggest problem the auto makers are going to have is that they almost completely new to this sort of security and they have little to no security culture built around software development. This is not surprising but it is a problem. Unlike the PC industry which has had 30+ years of people attacking networks to learn from and culture built around dealing with them. Most of the security issues in the auto industry have revolved around physical security of the ignition system and doors. Network security is an entirely different animal and the auto makers are going to have to transform themselves to some degree into software companies.
Based on my experience I think they are going to get a lot of painful and very expensive lessons. They tend not to acknowledge problems until they become public and embarrassing and expensive. That will have to change. They very much should be looking carefully at what Tesla is doing because something like that is probably the model for the future. Not saying they need to copy Tesla but they should be taking notes and seeing what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately the auto makers are run by guys (and girls) who are relatively old and most of whom have NO concept of computer network security so I think they are going to move too slowly for a while.
A space elevator would solve that problem pretty quickly:
So would a star trek transporter. Care to keep the discussion to technology that isn't science fiction?
Lots of people disagreed with him back then, most vocally anyone connected to Adobe, but he knew what the future held and boldly took that first step.
I remember quite a lot of Android advocates claiming that Android was better than iOS because it allowed Flash while iOS didn't. Flash games were quite a thing around that time and there was a lot of hand wringing over them being disallowed on Apple products. Of course blocking Flash was the right decision and nobody aside from some advertisers still seems to think it is a good technology. Curious how opinions change...
Here's the thing about space mining. Let's assume they figure out a way to gather and process whatever material they are mining into a commodity. I think it will be very difficult and won't happen within my lifetime most likely but let's just grant that we figure out the engineering. Let's further not worry about inflation or other economic issues for now. There is one HUGE problem with space mining that doesn't get enough attention.
Unless you are able to use that material in space you have to return it to Earth for it to be economically viable and it is very likely the economics of space mining would require at least some of this because Earth is where the money is. Returning materials to earth basically means dropping a rather large amount of mass down a gravity well. Effectively you are engaging in kinetic bombardment of the earth. It would be trivial to drop said mass on a population center and it might not happen by accident. Accident or not it would be catastrophic wherever it hits once the mass gets larger than a few tons. Precious metals could be dropped in smaller quantities and shielded but materials like iron would almost have to be dropped in very large amounts to make any economic sense.
Almost any large scale mining in space that returns large volumes of material to Earth would also mean creating a weapon of mass destruction. THAT is the biggest problem with space mining and I don't really see an easy solution to it.
Massachusetts ban on private ownership of stun-guns being considered by the Supreme Court, and it's unclear whether such ownership has constitutional protection.
Although logic rarely gets involved in discussions around the 2nd Amendment, I can't think of any logical reason why stun-guns should be treated any different than firearms. The 2nd amendment says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed but it doesn't specify only weapons that use gunpowder. The fact that stun-guns using electricity are of recent development is not a relevant consideration to my mind.
The petitioner is asking the court (PDF) to clarify that the Second Amendment covers non-lethal weapons used for self-defense.
There is really no such thing as a "non-lethal weapon". ANY weapon can be used to kill even if they are primarily designed to incapacitate. That said, prohibiting weapons which are generally less lethal while allowing ones that are designed primarily to kill is the height of stupid.
FF is a perfect example of a project going completely off the rails. I don't hear anyone saying good things about it anymore.
I use firefox as my primary browser and it continues to serve my needs better than any of the alternatives. It's available on linux unlike IE or Safari and for my needs at least it is less buggy than Chrome. Google can't seem to stop breaking things in Chrome and while they usually fix them it's annoying in the meantime. I see no meaningful speed or performance differences between the major browsers. Firefox seldom has site compatibility issues. While I won't argue that FF is without warts, it is to my mind the best available option at this time. That may change of course but I don't see anything better out there for my needs at present.
It started as an effort to be lighter and faster than the old Mozilla suite. I actually like the mail client...
At one time I did too. However it stagnated and I move on to other things. 12 years have passed since the project was started and the web has evolved substantially since then. Things have gotten more complex and so has the software to deal with them. This isn't 2002 and expecting the software to be the same is kind of silly.
Completely lost sight of what they'd been trying to do.
What they originally were trying to do is not as relevant today. Perhaps you want a stripped down browser with minimal frills. That's fine but most of the rest of us are concerned with other things. So long as it let's me view the bits of the web I want and gives me options to configure to my particular quirks without crashing or causing problems, I don't really care if it takes up extra space or has a few features I don't use.
The councilors from Munich's conservative CSU party have called the operating system installed on their laptops "cumbersome to use" and "of very limited use.
Translation: We don't want to be bothered learning anything new and it doesn't have solitaire on it.
"There are no programs for text editing, Skype, Office etc. installed and that prevents normal use,"
Translation: We have no idea what we are talking about, can't be bothered to ask any questions and only want to use what we are already familiar with.
Another complaint from councilors is that "the lack of user permissions makes them of limited use."
Translation: We want to be able to download whatever malware infested screensaver or porn we feel like.
Which other candidates share this view?
Once they get into office it seems like most of them... They want whatever makes their life easiest and your civil rights can be damned.
"If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job — while protecting civil liberties — to make sure that evildoers aren't in our midst."
I will never vote for someone who uses the word "evildoer". The last guy to use it in office didn't work out so well...
And I don't give a shit that it is hard(er) for the US government to step on my throat. We have restrictions on the government because the government has proven time and again that it cannot be entirely trusted. If they have to work a little harder I don't care at all. The Bad Guys aren't going to use weak encryption (unless they are stupid) and there is no reasonable argument that can be made that I shouldn't have access to it either. Bad encryption is effectively the same as no encryption and no encryption is unacceptable when using modern technology.
He also indicated he felt the recent scaling back of the Patriot Act went too far. Bush says he hasn't seen any indication the bulk collection of phone metadata violated anyone's civil liberties.
Then he is just as much of an imbecile as his brother. Jeb clearly has the same moral deficits as George. Trump may be a clown but apparently Jeb is much more dangerous.
Actually, in this case yes, the government is allowed to do it - police cars already do it.
Police officers have to operate under fairly specific guidelines and we expect them to be monitoring to some degree. That doesn't mean the government should have carte-blanche to put tracking technology everywhere. A LOT of questions have to be satisfactorily answered before I'd even consider whether this application of the technology is acceptable. Who is paying for it? How do we ensure that it isn't used for other purposes? Who has access to the data? Under what conditions? How do we ensure the safety of citizens from false-positive results (even one is unacceptable)? How do we know this isn't yet another revenue generating scheme like red-light cameras? Is this really the least invasive and most effective measure available? Is the problem of sufficient scale to warrant an expensive and potentially (likely) invasive technology?
I have a LOT of questions about this and I very much doubt they will be answered to my satsifaction
The question is one of degree.
Yes it is and that question is in no danger of being answered.
Looking at the numbers from the San Jose police website, with over 7000 cars stolen a year, I really can't blame them for trying this.
I can. If that many cars are being stolen then they need to get busy on doing the things that will deal with the root of the problem. Even if a system like this worked it won't solve the problem. You need to look at other cities with less of a stolen car problem and figure out what they are doing differently. Areas with high crime rates rarely have the problem solved by having the government become more oppressive. It sounds like they if they have that many cars stolen that they have some form of organized crime involved. Might want to look into that.
If they are just scanning cars that are visible from the street and alleys, then I can't really argue that this system would be that invasive.
Only if you aren't really thinking about it. How is the data to be handled? What is in the data and who has access to it and under what conditions? What is to prevent it from being used for other purposes? How do you ensure that it never violates privacy rights? What assurances do I have that this is not going to turn into a revenue generating scheme? How is it going to be funded?
Just because I'm not in my house doesn't mean the government should be able to probe everything I'm doing without probable cause. And rest assured that there is no probable cause here for most people going about their daily business.
City councilman Johnny Khamis dismissed such criticism: "This is a public street. You're not expecting privacy on a public street."
I'm also not expecting the spanish inquisition...
Just because I don't have a legal expectation of privacy does not mean the government gets the right to give me a rectal exam every time I set foot outside my house. The real question is whether there is a compelling public interest in the government having and using this technology. They might claim it is to fight car theft but is the problem of such significant as to justify automated monitoring of the entire populace? I'm guessing probably not. We all know that the use of the technology would not stop with just car theft. Even if they were being forthright about that being the primary use I just don't see it not being abused for other purposes.
Later I did finally get the opportunity to fly in a 747, and you might say that cattle-class is cattle class no matter what airplane you're flying in, but I always enjoyed flying in a 747 more than other aircraft, probably just for the nostalgia factor.
Definitely nostalgia. I've flown in 747s and other than the fact that they are impressively large, they are no more pleasant to fly in that any other large plane I've been in, particularly if you are in the middle seat in the 5 seat row. I've flown one from Detroit to Tokyo a few times in a 747 and very much wish I'd sprung for the ticket upgrade. I say this as someone who genuinely loves airplanes too. I can sit at the end of a runway and I turn back into a 7 year old watching the planes take off and land. But honestly there is nothing special about the 747 by today's standards.
That said, I will always have a bit of a place in my heart for the 747 and will miss having the opportunity to fly in them.
They aren't going away for a while yet. I would be very surprised if some weren't still in service for passenger flights 10-15 years from now. Eventually we'll go to something else but it won't be tomorrow.
That's 2/3 of 1% of 1% of 1% of total passengers. (approx 5,700,000,000 according to the article).
Way to miss the point. Other than the single crash of Air France Flight 4590 at the end of its service life the Concorde had zero passenger deaths. That's almost 3 decades without a single fatality. Aviation is a safe way to travel, news at 11... Got any other pointless comparisons to make?
-At the time of the 747's creation AIRBUS was an upstart in the industry.
That was almost half a century ago. Referring to Airbus as an upstart at this point in time is just dumb. Calling it a "residual rivalry" is equally dumb since the companies are the two biggest and most intense rivals in the industry. It's almost a zero sum game between the two when it comes to getting sales since there are no other meaningful players in the large jet market at this time.
-Also at that time, there was debate within the industry as to which vehicle was the way forward: faster or larger.
And larger was the safe bet. We had built jets roughly the size of the 747 15 years before it hit the market. (see the B52 which was built in the early 1950s). The 747 was basically an incremental improvement on already proven technology. The Concorde was a much more risky bet on technology that had never been used in civil aviation.
The Concorde was an experiment really and it used technology that worked but probably wasn't sufficiently developed at the time. Had the engines been more efficient and able to supercruise the Concorde may have made more economic sense and had follow on aircraft. It served for nearly 30 years anyway so if it failed it didn't fail badly.
Not to mention the Concorde augured into a French bed and breakfast, turning everyone inside into well done human hamburger.
As if no 747s have ever crashed. Oh wait 3748 people have died on 747s since they entered service.
You really want to go on making pointless comparisons between completely different planes?
Look, I'm an American but the summary is a ludicrous troll.
Some Americans, referring to untested new technologies, call it Scarebus.
Maybe some people working for Boeing. I've never once heard anyone use that term in my life.
There is still residual rivalry with the upstart European Airbus.
"Residual rivalry"? Uhh, no. Try huge and ongoing rivalry between the two biggest players in the industry. This is Coke v Pepsi. Ali v Fraser. Ford v GM. The notion that the rivalry isn't still alive and well is simply absurd.
"Upstart"? A company with revenue of 60 Billion Euros is hardly an upstart. For comparison Boeing has revenues of about $90 Billion. It may have been an upstart many decades ago but upstart isn't a description that has fit for a very long time.
A comparison to the European Concorde is illuminating.
No it really isn't. It would be hard for it to be less illuminating. The Concorde was an experiment that didn't work out as well as hoped and likely was a bit ahead of its time. Had it worked out better we might very well have seen more supersonic aircraft. It was truly a first of its kind. The 747 was in many ways far more conservative and conventional - just a bigger and incrementally improved version of stuff we mostly already knew how to do. We'd already made aircraft that large (see the B52 which is about the same size and came 15 years earlier) and while the 747 was impressive it wasn't unprecedented. Ask anyone if they'd rather fly on the Concorde or a 747 and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find many takers for the 747.
Manufacturing is a bit different especially unskilled.
It is not different at all. Any given job requires a certain set of skills and within the locations where those skills are available it will tend to migrate towards the location with the lowest labor costs. If an area with lower labor costs develops a workforce with needed skills then the work will tend to move there like osmosis. Obviously it is easier to relocate work where less skill is required for the job but that is true in any industry and isn't unique to manufacturing.
Our general economic strategy as a nation is to shift those less skilled jobs out and replace them with higher level and more skilled positions.
Well since the alternative is to lower wages to compete, I don't really see that as a bad thing. Bear in mind that the same thing will happen to low wage countries in time. China has low wages now but they are rising steadily. Eventually China will have to do exactly the same thing as the US if they continue to grow their economy. We're already seeing some manufactured goods that previously were offshored to China coming back because the labor costs have risen so much that the savings has evaporated.
Tech is the fastest growing and one of the highest paid job sectors and requires substantial investment in terms of time and education on the part of the workers. These are the jobs those losing jobs in manufacturing are supposed to be able to learn skills for and take on as a career. There is nowhere to go from here.
I've been in manufacturing most of my working life. Manufacturing jobs require substantial investment in time and education just like tech jobs. What is happening in manufacturing in places like the US is very similar to what happened in the farm industry 100+ years ago. The number of jobs in that industry is shrinking as a percent of the workforce but those that remain are far more skilled and productive in general. Very much like farming there is this perception by people outside the industry that the skill and education levels required are low when in fact exactly the opposite is true for much of what we do. I routinely do multi-variate statistical analysis, work with PLCs, conduct spectroscopy, generate complicated process management tools, develop databases, do operations research, and more. Manufacturing is absolutely loaded with technology and to compete in the industry you need to be well educated and smart.
You largely misinterpret my words and you know that.
I didn't misinterpret them at all. I said exactly what I meant and I'm pretty sure you meant that everyone should be able to attend school without paying a cent directly. I disagree. Education is not free and I strongly think that people should have to contribute, particularly when they are adults. My tax dollars support the education of children in my community and state. That isn't free. I firmly believe that college students should incur some amount of direct liability for their education though I'm fine with it being subsidized.
Education is very similar. We invest in the education of the young people today. Therefore, there will be an economy when we are old.
How an education is funded is a separate issue from providing an education. There are multiple ways to accomplish that end. I think people don't value what they don't pay for directly so I think we will see better results if adult students are required to pay a reasonable amount of money out of their own pocket for their education. If it isn't worth it to them I see no reason why I should subsidize it out of my pocket.
VBA was a marketing masterstroke on Microsoft's part.
Yes it was. Particularly in the financial services sector. Those folks have tied themselves to that mast about as tightly as is possible.
If you've been using LibreOffice for five years, and if a significant fraction of your staff are non-programmers, then you're probably pretty much locked into that by now. There are only two ways to avoid it: either you only employ programmers (and make sure they have all the tools they want), or you lock down your system so that people can't write and save macros. Either way has its own costs, and isn't viable for everyone.
Nope - not locked in at all. We simply don't have a huge need for macros for what we do. (manufacturing) Any we do write are pretty basic and would be easily replicated in a new system. Most VBA code is basically people trying to stuff 10 pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag. We tend to use tools that are actually designed for the jobs we need them for. Basically we use spreadsheets as prototyping tools but if we have a very complicated spreadsheet we figure that probably is an indication we need a piece of software to do that task better - usually some sort of database.
My basic take on office suite macros is that they get used FAR more than is actually necessary or helpful. Sure sometimes they are the right solution but it's been a rare case where I couldn't find an adequate solution that didn't require them.
There is a fundamental difference.
There are differences but they are not fundamental ones. The goal is to keep labor costs low. The mechanics of how this happens is secondary. Sending production to another country does add some logistical overhead but they wouldn't bother if it didn't result in a net gain on labor costs. Importing H1Bs or other cheap labor has different logistical hassles but they wouldn't bother if it didn't result in a net gain on labor costs. You're getting bogged down in worrying about the logistics but missing the big picture in the process.
University education should be free. And in some countries it is.
It is NEVER free. Someone somewhere is paying for it. There is no such thing as a free education. Furthermore people tend not to value things they don't have to pay anything for. I think students should have some financial skin in the game. I have no problem with the cost of an education being subsidized through taxes or donations or other funding but I don't think the cost to the student should be zero. Modest? Yes. Zero? No.
College level should be 100% free to citizens in the USA
It's not free. Someone has to pay for it and frankly the students should have some skin in the game. Students who don't have to pay for their tuition routinely put less effort into it. It's almost a cliche. I agree that college tuitions have gotten WAY out of hand but I don't think it should be free either. Providing a quality education does cost money and people don't tend to value things they don't have to pay for.
No the dean does not deserve $980,000 a year salary, he doesn't do shit. If you want to pay the coach well, base his salary on ticket sales for games.
I have no problem with colleges paying market rates for talent. If that is a big number then so be it. What I have a HUGE problem with however is colleges raising tuitions to pay for things that have little to do with educating students. Want to pay the big name coach so the college can be in the business of professional football? Fine - no tuition money goes to his salary and you have to enable the athletes who are effectively university employees to earn a market rate too. Want to pay the dean a huge salary? That's fine but no tuition money goes to him unless he's doing actual work regarding educating students. Research is explicitly not educational in most cases.
I also think state colleges should actually be funded adequately to keep tuition costs reasonable but the funding streams for that should be kept separate from funding streams for research or athletics or social outreach or other non-academic goals.
It means there's more demand for CHEAPER skilled workers than the native talent pool has.
There is ALWAYS demand for less expensive labor. Sometimes it isn't available. Sometimes companies engage in measures to reduce labor costs. Importing cheaper labor is fundamentally no different than offshoring the work. The basic goal is the same - to reduce labor costs. I run a manufacturing company and we do all our work domestically and pay as much as we can but our competition does a lot of their work in Central America or China so we really cannot compete on jobs with a high labor content unless there are special requirements like engineering help or just in time delivery. We simply cannot pay much more than we do and remain competitive.
Some companies are obviously engaged in some shady tactics to keep labor costs down. The tactics may be reprehensible but the fact that they are trying to contain labor costs should surprise no one. In a competitive market companies HAVE to try to do that. It's particularly galling though when the company has huge profit margins like Microsoft or Facebook does. A low margin manufacturing company might go out of business if they don't keep a tight lid on labor costs. A hugely profitable tech company has no such excuse.
I've heard stories from a technical director at a major American firm where they'd reject PHDs simply because they were worried they'd leave for higher paying jobs elsewhere.
It's not just PHDs. I have a pair of masters degrees and I've been told point-blank during interviews that they were afraid I would get bored and leave or seek higher paying work. It's incredibly short sighted but it happens pretty routinely.
Maybe, but it pales in comparison to cloud hosted collaboration suites. Which coincidentally, Office365 and Google Docs are.
And Google Docs pales in comparison to the functionality of the desktop versions. I use Google Docs routinely but it's just not a viable solution for substantial parts of what I do, particularly for spreadsheet work. If you want to collaborate on a very simple document or spreadsheet then it is fine. Someday maybe it will match the desktop software in features but it isn't there yet.