The problem is the dependancies. You want ther kernel code, yes? The kernel code allows you to make xconfig, this requires X, This requires X client libraries and an X server. xconfig uses TCL/Tk so that lot gets dragged in. Of course, the base install gives you the control panel and linuxconf which pulls in python, perl gets pulled in with the kernel source. And so on and so forth with dozens of obscure and pointless packages. A minimal install designed only to support wu.ftpd is now 540Mb. There are days when I get fed up and just build the filesystem by hand again.(Just like the days when men were real men, women were real women and small furry dreatures from alpha centauri were real small furry creatures from alpa centauri!)
This is certainly not without precedent, the uk.com domain is owned just like any other.com domain but provides subdomains to other companies in much the same way that Nominet do with the official.co.uk domains
In the UK, the bet is deemed to be placed at the servers location, specifically the server that does the financial transaction. However, the US govt. has, in the past, felt that it is perfectly entitled to pressurise foreign governments. the Totalbet servers are in London, but we are still not allowed to accept US bets.
What do I know about this, wel I run the servers for a British betting site Totalbet and US law poses a significant problem to us even though Totalbet is in the UK, registered in the UK, and owned by well established UK companies like The Tote and SportingLife. Thankfully similar laws against betting are unlikely to happen in the UK since the government here aren't likely to pass laws against themselves. Yes, you did interpret that correctly, the UK Government own a betting organistaion, one of the publicly owned industries. Whilst other betting organistaions are free to ignore the US laws, unless the US govt. gets stroppy and starts demanding extradition and suchlike, we have to stay squeaky clean. When we start accepting foreign cards, probably later this year, and start running foreign markets I will have to start blocking the US at my routers which is a complete PITA. It seems to me that the US govt. has not yet learned from the fiasco that was prohibition. The genuine betting organisations do have a genuine concern about people getting addicted to gambling. If the company in it for the long run, this is a Very Bad Thing. The banks are also paranoid about it which is why we only accept debit cards at the moment (so you can only spend money you actually have, and not run up debts). It seems to me that US citizens will just try to get around any blocking or laws which means I will have to spend time trying to stop them, spending some of my cunning trying to stop otherwise perfectly legitimate customers, when I should be making the site better. (If you are in the UK, look out for Totalbet on interactive digital TV and WAP) I suspect that the anti internet gambling laws in the US will go the same way the prohibition did, being repealed, eventually. Someone in the US really needs to bring balance to the force, preferably without emulating Al Capone in the process.
Note: I speak only for myself, not Totalbet, The Tote, SportingLife or anyone else.
The WWII analogy was in referance to the hate leading to worse crimes than the hated. While you could possibly draw parallels between Rommell and Vader, that was not my intention. The Harris controversy was to illustrate the point that Brin's concept of justifed hatred is a thin line, "If you look too long into the abyss, someday the abyss will look into you.". You should do what is right because it is right, not because of hate or anger. I could well have used the example of McCarthy and the hatred of communism that he and his established, leading to opression in the US rivalling that in the USSR. Or perhaps an example closer to home, the history of hatred in Ireland has led to similar things, unionist versus republican. The hate feeds off itself, one side hates the other, and in so doing justifies its actions as revenge and intensifies the hate in those they hate. It is a viscious circle. Another example of hate reinforcing itself could be found in the Balkan republics. In the end hate only leads to suffering, of those who hate and those who are hated untill in the end, the distinction becomes blurred and the only way out is to let go of the hate. Who is to say who is right and wrong, save perhaps to say that we are all wrong to hate. Fear, anger, hatred, these are all of the dark side. There are no exceptions, think only of justice, not revenge.
WRT the supposed inherent right to rule, Leia and Luke earned their role in the rebellion. It should be noted perhaps that Leia doesn't run the rebellion, Mon-Mothma does. Later, in the books, Mon-Mothma steps down and Leia is ELECTED president, she in turn steps down to be replaced by Borsk Fe'lya. Luke's only permanent command is Rougue squadron. He is head of the Jedi academy, but only because others choose to follow him.
As for the "Elites" acting on a whim, the lesson is rather that you should follow your conscience, something that is lacking in modern times. As for accountability, during the rebellion all the charactors are accountable to the leaders of the rebellion, in the New Republic, everybody is accountable to the senate. Even the jedi are accountable. This was true in the old Republic as well. The actions of the Jedi had to be accounted for to the Jedi Council, who were in turn accountable to the (elected)President.
Darth Vader was never forgiven, by anyone. Not by Luke, certainly never by Leia. Brin points out the amount of havoc that Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin have caused but the potential for things to have turned out worse is immense. If Yoda had not trained the Skywalkers, there would have been no-one to stand aginst the Emperor at all. Palpatine and Darth Maul would have had complete rule over the galaxy. Yoda's training Anakin gave him the inner strength to return to tha light at the end. If it had only been Palpatine trainiing him, then there would have been no light side in him. As Obi-Wan pointed out, may things that seem untrue, just depend on your point of view. If Brin thinks that the world is black and white, he should think again. Not only is the world shades of grey, but that shade changes depending on the light you look at them in.
Star Wars makes no claim that leadership is inherited. The force may be inherited, but in the Star Wars universe, there are force strong individuals are born to families otherwise without any trace of the force. Secondly, over the timespan that we have to study, there were two force strong President, out of the five that we know about, in a saga specifically about the force. There are also very few force strong individuals in positions of power in other institutions across the galaxy.
The last, about justified human emotions turning people evil. We see this in everyday life, incidents across the world have led to a greater concern for the safety of children, a perfectly justified emotion, the hatred of evil. But this emotion has led to programs like WAVE America that was discussed recentlt on slashdot. Brin's "Perfectly justifiable emotions" are among the seven "deadly" sins. In our fight agains the Nazis, we produced Bomber Harris and argument still rages to this day as to whether he was better or worse than the enemy we were fighting. For those of you who don't know him, Bomber Harris led the British bomber command during the second world war. The phrase "Kill them all, let God sort them out" is attributed to him. This was in reference to German civillians and how he could know that he was killing only the guilty with his large scale bombing raids. One lesson that we should learn from that war is that hatred breeds evil, Germany learned to hate and created the Nazis. While hate seems justifiable, it inevitably leads to someone or some people becoming worse than those they hate.
In response to your last point, Vader was not forgiven, ever, by anyone.
Does that make me an 31337 hacker then... Come off it, it is quicker to change your threshold to -2 than it is to use the form based threshold changer...
Cuba may be in a poor state, but in many ways, it is more free than the US. "Land of the Free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!" No STR, I think most people will get that. Governments are using technology to tighten it's grip on the population, and big business is using its money to blur the distinction between business and government. Already we don't have the right to challenge the government, if we make a mistake, we are penalised but if the government makes a mistake then they are not. A case in point is the UK tax office. Y2K non-compliance is not an acceptable excuse for late tax returns. However when the tax office had problems, they were free to take as long as they pleased and your only recourse when you discovered the mistakes in your tax (and there were a substantial number of those) your only recourse was to query the decision. Big businesses see these protections for the government and wish them applied to themselves. We need to establish that government is for the people, not for the money and as a society "We've got to take the power back!" (No STR either)
Time to rake throught the sheet music I think, now I've got them on my mind...
s/hacker/cracker/ As he points out, his "program is publicly known" and "people have a chance of identifying it locally when it is installed on their server by searching for binary patterns, as the FBI proved." and "the real problem is the insecurity of the huge amount of servers". I look after a number of web sites, some e-commerce. IMHO these tools should be announced, because I get to test my systems and harden them against them. I get to tune system parameters to minimise the effect of DoS attacks, and secure systems against compromise. Security by obscurity is no security. Keeping these programs in the underground just increaces the risk.
Since most books, films etc. are published in the US, they naturally arrive in the shops there first. It seems that a lot of Americans forget that it takes some time to get them to other countries. It is available from the UK first because it is published here. The only other author I can name off the top of my head for whom this is also true is Terry Pratchett. Don't complain, you get most things before I do.
The European courts have many flaws, but they do seem to act speedily and concientiously ( I wish the same could be said of the rest of the EU government). They have beenknown to rule aginst Microsoft in the past and , I would say, they are likely to do so in this case. The American Courts are not likely to force a change on Microsoft's product line, but instead try to force compettition on an organisational level. The European courts would be less likely (even if they had that option) to break up microsoft, but to outlaw certain predatory tactics. Remember that the European courts are generally used to rule on Human Rights issues in law and deed and have the ability to righteously smite those who put profit over morality. Not to say they can't screw up, especially since it is usually up to the EU governments to implement the rulings, but I happen to quite like them. YMMV.
ISO9000 done correctly is usefull, done badly it is worthless. Far too many managers think that ISO9000 is all about labeling things and having lots of documents - it is nothing of the sort.
Take a bug tracking system, can you:
Say with certainty that if a bug has been reported than you can find the report?
Know whether the bug has been fixed or not?
Know who fixed it (or is supposedto) and when and what they did to fix it?
Say which versions contain the bugfix and which do not?
If you can answer yes to each of those questions then your bug tracking system is fundamentally ISO9000 compliant.
Imagine that you are developing some software, do you know:
What is to be implemented?
Who is supposed to be implementing each feature?
What the design is?
What changes each person has made?
If you can answer yes to each, then your development is fundamantally ISO9000 compliant.
Quality has become a management fad, but at its heart, it isn't. It is about being organised, taking pride in your work and having a professional attitude.
If you build a system, is it a black hole that your sucessor will curse you for or is it well documented and well run, something your sucessor will thank you for.
ISO9000 tries to codify a professional attitude. If you have done chemistry, you will be familiar with the report format, Title, Aim, Introduction, Materials, Method, Results, Interpretation, Conclusion. It is simple, but it ensures that you say all you need to say and don't waffle. The idea is that you should be able to give the report to another chemist and they should be able to follow what you did, why you did it and be able to replicate the experiment without any surprises. The same holds true for other quality methdologies, your documentation should answer all the questions that a skilled professional might have.
ISO9000 as it was intended is very good, but ISO9000 as management fad is as bad as any other management fad.
Re:I really don't believe in this whole Zen concep
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
You will, practice and give it time. I've fired up a new disk, closed my eyes for a moment to think about disk layout and opened them to find I've logged in as root and started fdisk on the appropriate device. Similarly with many other things outside of computers. You have got to be comfortable with yourself and what you are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is the dependancies. You want ther kernel code, yes? The kernel code allows you to make xconfig, this requires X, This requires X client libraries and an X server. xconfig uses TCL/Tk so that lot gets dragged in. Of course, the base install gives you the control panel and linuxconf which pulls in python, perl gets pulled in with the kernel source. And so on and so forth with dozens of obscure and pointless packages. A minimal install designed only to support wu.ftpd is now 540Mb. There are days when I get fed up and just build the filesystem by hand again.(Just like the days when men were real men, women were real women and small furry dreatures from alpha centauri were real small furry creatures from alpa centauri!)
This is certainly not without precedent, the uk.com domain is owned just like any other .com domain but provides subdomains to other companies in much the same way that Nominet do with the official .co.uk domains
In the UK, the bet is deemed to be placed at the servers location, specifically the server that does the financial transaction. However, the US govt. has, in the past, felt that it is perfectly entitled to pressurise foreign governments. the Totalbet servers are in London, but we are still not allowed to accept US bets.
What do I know about this, wel I run the servers for a British betting site Totalbet and US law poses a significant problem to us even though Totalbet is in the UK, registered in the UK, and owned by well established UK companies like The Tote and SportingLife. Thankfully similar laws against betting are unlikely to happen in the UK since the government here aren't likely to pass laws against themselves. Yes, you did interpret that correctly, the UK Government own a betting organistaion, one of the publicly owned industries. Whilst other betting organistaions are free to ignore the US laws, unless the US govt. gets stroppy and starts demanding extradition and suchlike, we have to stay squeaky clean. When we start accepting foreign cards, probably later this year, and start running foreign markets I will have to start blocking the US at my routers which is a complete PITA. It seems to me that the US govt. has not yet learned from the fiasco that was prohibition. The genuine betting organisations do have a genuine concern about people getting addicted to gambling. If the company in it for the long run, this is a Very Bad Thing. The banks are also paranoid about it which is why we only accept debit cards at the moment (so you can only spend money you actually have, and not run up debts). It seems to me that US citizens will just try to get around any blocking or laws which means I will have to spend time trying to stop them, spending some of my cunning trying to stop otherwise perfectly legitimate customers, when I should be making the site better. (If you are in the UK, look out for Totalbet on interactive digital TV and WAP) I suspect that the anti internet gambling laws in the US will go the same way the prohibition did, being repealed, eventually. Someone in the US really needs to bring balance to the force, preferably without emulating Al Capone in the process.
Note: I speak only for myself, not Totalbet, The Tote, SportingLife or anyone else.
The WWII analogy was in referance to the hate leading to worse crimes than the hated. While you could possibly draw parallels between Rommell and Vader, that was not my intention. The Harris controversy was to illustrate the point that Brin's concept of justifed hatred is a thin line, "If you look too long into the abyss, someday the abyss will look into you.". You should do what is right because it is right, not because of hate or anger. I could well have used the example of McCarthy and the hatred of communism that he and his established, leading to opression in the US rivalling that in the USSR. Or perhaps an example closer to home, the history of hatred in Ireland has led to similar things, unionist versus republican. The hate feeds off itself, one side hates the other, and in so doing justifies its actions as revenge and intensifies the hate in those they hate. It is a viscious circle. Another example of hate reinforcing itself could be found in the Balkan republics. In the end hate only leads to suffering, of those who hate and those who are hated untill in the end, the distinction becomes blurred and the only way out is to let go of the hate. Who is to say who is right and wrong, save perhaps to say that we are all wrong to hate.
Fear, anger, hatred, these are all of the dark side. There are no exceptions, think only of justice, not revenge.
WRT the supposed inherent right to rule, Leia and Luke earned their role in the rebellion. It should be noted perhaps that Leia doesn't run the rebellion, Mon-Mothma does. Later, in the books, Mon-Mothma steps down and Leia is ELECTED president, she in turn steps down to be replaced by Borsk Fe'lya. Luke's only permanent command is Rougue squadron. He is head of the Jedi academy, but only because others choose to follow him.
As for the "Elites" acting on a whim, the lesson is rather that you should follow your conscience, something that is lacking in modern times. As for accountability, during the rebellion all the charactors are accountable to the leaders of the rebellion, in the New Republic, everybody is accountable to the senate. Even the jedi are accountable. This was true in the old Republic as well. The actions of the Jedi had to be accounted for to the Jedi Council, who were in turn accountable to the (elected)President.
Darth Vader was never forgiven, by anyone. Not by Luke, certainly never by Leia. Brin points out the amount of havoc that Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin have caused but the potential for things to have turned out worse is immense. If Yoda had not trained the Skywalkers, there would have been no-one to stand aginst the Emperor at all. Palpatine and Darth Maul would have had complete rule over the galaxy. Yoda's training Anakin gave him the inner strength to return to tha light at the end. If it had only been Palpatine trainiing him, then there would have been no light side in him. As Obi-Wan pointed out, may things that seem untrue, just depend on your point of view. If Brin thinks that the world is black and white, he should think again. Not only is the world shades of grey, but that shade changes depending on the light you look at them in.
Star Wars makes no claim that leadership is inherited. The force may be inherited, but in the Star Wars universe, there are force strong individuals are born to families otherwise without any trace of the force. Secondly, over the timespan that we have to study, there were two force strong President, out of the five that we know about, in a saga specifically about the force. There are also very few force strong individuals in positions of power in other institutions across the galaxy.
The last, about justified human emotions turning people evil. We see this in everyday life, incidents across the world have led to a greater concern for the safety of children, a perfectly justified emotion, the hatred of evil. But this emotion has led to programs like WAVE America that was discussed recentlt on slashdot. Brin's "Perfectly justifiable emotions" are among the seven "deadly" sins. In our fight agains the Nazis, we produced Bomber Harris and argument still rages to this day as to whether he was better or worse than the enemy we were fighting. For those of you who don't know him, Bomber Harris led the British bomber command during the second world war. The phrase "Kill them all, let God sort them out" is attributed to him. This was in reference to German civillians and how he could know that he was killing only the guilty with his large scale bombing raids. One lesson that we should learn from that war is that hatred breeds evil, Germany learned to hate and created the Nazis. While hate seems justifiable, it inevitably leads to someone or some people becoming worse than those they hate.
In response to your last point, Vader was not forgiven, ever, by anyone.
Does that make me an 31337 hacker then... Come off it, it is quicker to change your threshold to -2 than it is to use the form based threshold changer...
Cuba may be in a poor state, but in many ways, it is more free than the US.
"Land of the Free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!"
No STR, I think most people will get that. Governments are using technology to tighten it's grip on the population, and big business is using its money to blur the distinction between business and government. Already we don't have the right to challenge the government, if we make a mistake, we are penalised but if the government makes a mistake then they are not. A case in point is the UK tax office. Y2K non-compliance is not an acceptable excuse for late tax returns. However when the tax office had problems, they were free to take as long as they pleased and your only recourse when you discovered the mistakes in your tax (and there were a substantial number of those) your only recourse was to query the decision.
Big businesses see these protections for the government and wish them applied to themselves.
We need to establish that government is for the people, not for the money and as a society "We've got to take the power back!" (No STR either)
Time to rake throught the sheet music I think, now I've got them on my mind...
s/hacker/cracker/
As he points out, his "program is publicly known" and "people have a chance of identifying it locally when it is installed on their server by searching for binary patterns, as the FBI proved." and "the real problem is the insecurity of the huge amount of servers". I look after a number of web sites, some e-commerce. IMHO these tools should be announced, because I get to test my systems and harden them against them. I get to tune system parameters to minimise the effect of DoS attacks, and secure systems against compromise. Security by obscurity is no security. Keeping these programs in the underground just increaces the risk.
Since most books, films etc. are published in the US, they naturally arrive in the shops there first. It seems that a lot of Americans forget that it takes some time to get them to other countries. It is available from the UK first because it is published here. The only other author I can name off the top of my head for whom this is also true is Terry Pratchett. Don't complain, you get most things before I do.
The European courts have many flaws, but they do seem to act speedily and concientiously ( I wish the same could be said of the rest of the EU government). They have beenknown to rule aginst Microsoft in the past and , I would say, they are likely to do so in this case. The American Courts are not likely to force a change on Microsoft's product line, but instead try to force compettition on an organisational level. The European courts would be less likely (even if they had that option) to break up microsoft, but to outlaw certain predatory tactics. Remember that the European courts are generally used to rule on Human Rights issues in law and deed and have the ability to righteously smite those who put profit over morality. Not to say they can't screw up, especially since it is usually up to the EU governments to implement the rulings, but I happen to quite like them. YMMV.
ISO9000 done correctly is usefull, done badly it is worthless. Far too many managers think that ISO9000 is all about labeling things and having lots of documents - it is nothing of the sort.
Take a bug tracking system, can you:
Say with certainty that if a bug has been reported than you can find the report?
Know whether the bug has been fixed or not?
Know who fixed it (or is supposedto) and when and what they did to fix it?
Say which versions contain the bugfix and which do not?
If you can answer yes to each of those questions then your bug tracking system is fundamentally ISO9000 compliant.
Imagine that you are developing some software, do you know:
What is to be implemented?
Who is supposed to be implementing each feature?
What the design is?
What changes each person has made?
If you can answer yes to each, then your development is fundamantally ISO9000 compliant.
Quality has become a management fad, but at its heart, it isn't. It is about being organised, taking pride in your work and having a professional attitude.
If you build a system, is it a black hole that your sucessor will curse you for or is it well documented and well run, something your sucessor will thank you for.
ISO9000 tries to codify a professional attitude. If you have done chemistry, you will be familiar with the report format, Title, Aim, Introduction, Materials, Method, Results, Interpretation, Conclusion. It is simple, but it ensures that you say all you need to say and don't waffle. The idea is that you should be able to give the report to another chemist and they should be able to follow what you did, why you did it and be able to replicate the experiment without any surprises. The same holds true for other quality methdologies, your documentation should answer all the questions that a skilled professional might have.
ISO9000 as it was intended is very good, but ISO9000 as management fad is as bad as any other management fad.
You will, practice and give it time. I've fired up a new disk, closed my eyes for a moment to think about disk layout and opened them to find I've logged in as root and started fdisk on the appropriate device. Similarly with many other things outside of computers. You have got to be comfortable with yourself and what you are doing.