> would be plenty happy to leave it to the FBI if I had faith that they would > faithfully follow up on intel given to them by the CIA, but there is a big > disconnect there, which the previous administration was more than happy to > exacerbate (i.e., the Gorelick memo).
Not coming as a fan of the Clinton administration, but isn't the separation between the CIA and FBI intelligence gathering apparatus by design? They have completely different jurisdictions. Granted, information should be transferred when jurisdiction changes (terrorist suspect immigrates, CIA hands off data and responsibility to the FBI) but I don't see why the Pentagon, on behalf of the CIA, needs to start stepping on the FBI's executive duties if the problem is communication and not execution.
If it is indeed a follow-through issue, as you say, then the FBI should be restructured to compensate (I think this is going on as I speak). Dismissing them ineffective and subsequently using the armed services at home is the first step to combining the domestic and foreign investigation services into one. That kind of centralization is potentially dangerous to the freedom of US society, for the same reasons why the CIA was chartered ONLY for foreign intelligence and why we passed the Posse Comitatus Act in the first place.
> I agree that it's fine to be shooting spies. Put a fucking bullet right in > them. It's even better to be shooting terrorists.
How does one determine they are spies or terrorists? I am a bit relieved to hear that the more common practice is a military tribunal and not summary execution. How about giving a leg up to all those who might be summarily shot in error and making an arrest and tribunal mandatory (unless the officer is in mortal danger, of course...)
Unfortunately, gp is right. Bill Clinton signed legislation proposed by Bob Dole to effectively kill Posse Comitatus. This was done in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
At the behest of the US Attorney General, the army can be used against those deemed domestic enemies.
Actually, in mulling over this admittedly knee-jerk response, I was wrong about one thing - I do actually agree that pop culture is over-sexualized, I just don't think it has anything to do with Kinsey possibly being a quack - rather, it has to do with other sectors of society making all forms of sexuality taboo. Taboo leads to mystification and repression - then sexual energy finds other ways to manifest itself, mainly as sexualized pop culture, especially in what is probably an unnaturally high, silent-majority demand for pornography. But that's just my theory and I could be wrong and it could be all the fault of amoral researchers on self-interested perverted missions to misapply science to satisfy their own personal deviant sexual desires. I doubt it, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.
In any case, it'd be nice to have some science to repudiate or confirm the notion that pedophilia is rampant and correlates to the availability of child porn - and, in a broader sense, if openness about sexuality is harmful or is a predictable cause of sex crime.
> If you're refering to the late Alfred C. Kinsey of Indiana University
Obviously I wouldn't want to recommend a 50-year old study as ammo against legislation - no, actually I was referring to the institue at IU that is his namesake.
> The fact that the so-called 'father of the sexual revolution' has had just about > every statistical claim he ever made repudiated by other studies makes one think > about our over-sexualized society.
That's interesting (and good to know) that his studies have been scientifically challenged, but I fail to see how that has anything to do with whether or not there are any current pedophilia studies.
As for our society being "over-sexualized" - mmm, yeah, that sounds good. Is that like an upgrade to DSL? Let me know when it gets to the puritanical northeast. If anything, this country is mystified and fearful of sex, with the exception of LA, which is about as alien as any place in Utah.
Maybe he means when the Holy Roman Empire outlawed crossbows? I don't remember anything about the Roman Empire banning technology, but maybe it happened.
Chapter 5 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by adding to the end of section 501 the following: (g) Intentional Inducement of Infringement.-Whoever intentionally induces any violation identified in subsection (a) of this section shall be liable as an infringer. (l) In subsection (g), "intentionally induces" means intentionally aids, abets, induces, counsels, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability. (2) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish the doctrines of vicarious or contributory liability for copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright infringement.
See subsection 1 and the broad verbage. This won't get by, at least not without some serious surgery, because there are too many big companies (re: campaign contributors) who stand to lose from such a broad, sweeping change.
Also, beware of the supposed pretext - child pornography / pedophelia. Some people who are up in arms about these issues may see this bill as virtuous, when it's probably a pork barrel ruse. But I haven't seen any evidence that either thing is 1) correlated or 2) a serious, widespread threat warranting federal legislation. I've seen the same sensational coverage of abuses in the Catholic church, but that is a far cry from scientific studies. Surely Kinsey has done studies on this... but I can't find any clear web references. Maybe being armed with hard science about pedo could help fight the bill (and others using the same red herring).
I used to use the crank yankers/special ed skit for my mail alert. There's just something hilarious about playing a 2 minute, repetitive sound when you get mail.
It probably goes without saying that this provided the needed impetus to get around to installing bogofilter.
You could use the red alert klaxon from star trek - but I guess that might contrast too sharply with the stately ambiance of the grandfather clock sounds, eh?
Alice, instantaneously transfers information about the quantum state of a particle to a receiver called Bob. The uncertainty principle means that Alice cannot know the exact state of her particle. However, another feature of quantum mechanics called "entanglement" means that she can teleport the state to Bob.
Alice: Bob, now that our qubits are entangled, I don't know if mine's spin up down.
Bob: How 'bout I observe yours for you. How about there?
Alice: Nope.
Bob: Here?
Alice: Closer to this side of the gaussian, Bobby.
Bob: How about here?
Alice: OOOOOHHH! You collapsed my wave function DeBroglie!
Bob: Your qubit is now spin up, in case you were wondering... who's DeBroglie?
> 1,000 Euro will get you a name brand PC with monitor and MS operating system and > Office licenses.
But that does not include installation, administration and infrastructure costs.
> You have to really build up a lot of hatred for a vendor to consider paying > maybe 14,000,000 Euro over the top to oust said vendor
Certainly you're right, and some people hate MS, but from where I'm standing, most people just hate depending on one thing and paying out the nose for it when they KNOW there are better alternatives. Ask any avid linux user who admins both platforms - if he's worth his salt, he'll tell you that eliminating Microsoft at any cost is not practical or even desirable - but allowing better alternatives in, where they exist, is crucial to saving time, money and aggravation.
Also, you're not considering that those 14,000,000 extra Euro are seen as an investment for long term savings. Corporate licensing for MS is even worse then retail. At least you know in the short run what you're paying for and OTS application - the corporate licensing schemes have totally arbitrary terms (despite what is advertised on the MS site) and have you chasing your tail trying to figure out what you're entitled to. Forget explaining it to a CFO once you've got it nailed down. Then the whole paradigm changes with the next wave of releases. When using mostly free software, you have relative certainty in the form of more-or-less predictable labor and hardware costs - planning is much easier, a little less air needs to be added to the budget, and you have a better chance of staying within budget.
I'm personally counting on this to pressure MS and other big software vendors to either drop prices or increase quality, as well as provide me with the odd chance to roll out something that works instead of dealing with certain packages I know are not worth trying to support.
I think it's turned out OK in cases where MS has been forced to compete. IE was free and improved for a while (at least until they had a dominant lead, IE6+ has been a nightmare) and Exchange got better by version 5 in order to compete with Lotus on the groupware front and sendmail on the MTA front... meanwhile, MS cut server package deals that basically gave it away. Their OS has gotten a bit more stable, probably in response to the perception of Linux kernel as being rock-solid. Maybe MS Office or Citrix will get cheaper faced with the prospect of Linux desktops running centrally-managed open source office productivity software over X.
The way I understand it is that one of the major system of checks/balances in the German Federation is the fact that the states have a powerful federal legislative house - the "Bundesraat" - which is generally conservative, since they represent the "Bundeslaender," or states, which all have their own agendas and therefore tend to resist changes like this. This body is equal in power to the other house in that to pass a law both houses must have a 2/3 vote for it.
European companies buying for their European offices pay with (currently strong) Euro, so it's not neccessarily meaningful to convert it to USD. Also, consider that migration project budgets typically include hours and buffer - 2000 Euro per machine isn't that unreasonable, especially if you take for granted that it's worth it to escape the "MS tax."
Such an expert would need to be well-versed on the behavior of disk firmware and drivers as well as RAID, but based on some years of experience operating all sorts of arrays, I'd say that stripe set RAID recovery tends to be trickier than RAID-1, which has a pretty straight-forward theory behind it (bit mirroring). The more complicated your scheme, in general, the more things can go wrong.
Basically, if you care about up-front cost and insist on straight-forward reliability and performance, use RAID-1. If you care about economy (bang for buck) and you can accept a small margin for weird errors, use RAID-5.
In both cases you get the standard warning - have a file and directory level backup that's not part of the RAID (tape, another RAID, etc) - RAID makes your file systems more robust, but it doesn't save old copies of them.
If you mean a sense of morality, then sure I think spammers "have morals..." they just have poorly developed ethics.
the syllogism should have been:
all people have morals spammers are people spammers have morals...assuming you accept the precept that every person has a sense for right and wrong, varied by individual. Which you may not, in which case... um... never you mind.;)
Re:"vows to mend his ways by teaching others about
on
Spammer Apologizes
·
· Score: 1
Apology doesn't have to be a one-way street. Contrition is either met with mercy or it's not. This can profoundly affect how genuine it is over time. If someone tells you right off that your apology isn't worth dick, then why should they bother following through? If apologies under pressure don't mean anything, why do actions under pressure mean anything?
> For the record, I think he'll turn rotten as soon as the ruckus dies down. Shame > passes sooner than greed.
He's pretty young... I don't think he'll backslide. He just needs to reassert his ethics to keep himself out of trouble, and it sounds like he's at least got the rhetoric down.
Re:"vows to mend his ways by teaching others about
on
Spammer Apologizes
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Who's to say? It's hard to gauge sincerity from print.
I think it may just be a reality shift for a lot of these spammers. They all seem so indignant at first, when accused of being slimy Internet carpet-baggers. But on the other hand, people are always encouraged to seek fortune, and originally there were no rules, lots of money to be had, and old adages about opportunity knocking.
Once the money is rolling in, anyone would be tempted to rationalize their own business practice, even after being kicked off of relays, threatened with lawsuits, and having your iron pushed offshore. Once you're invested in something, it's hard to stop believing in it. That's why you see people go down kicking and screaming and come up contrite after a jury of peers schools them in the prevailing ethics.
Bottom line - not everyone is destined to be a repeat offender. Even if he toes the line for a while and doesn't buy it, maybe he'll educate consumers or discourage future spammers along the way, or maybe he'll start buying his own sermon.
The "legitimate uses" argument comes from hackers whose are only mildly interested in pirating (or are not at all). Concerns over pirating should not collaterally damage the hackers, and the reason is simple - pay-to-play business models for broadcast content are fundamentally weak, for reasons that are obvious. They rely on security mechanisms that amateur hackers are constantly testing at their own expense in time and money.
Pure pirates (people who buy black boxes from spammers) only benefit from these hacks in the short run, while directv benefits in the long run. The people in "the scene" get some free TV for a while, learn a bit of electronics, directv patches the holes, and then the challenge is renewed. It's just the way the imperfection in the business model plays out. If it weren't for the people who do it for hack value and a bit of free TV, it would be done ONLY by black market professional hackers who are driven by profit, and would not publish their methods in order to sell as many boxes as possible. Open hacking limits the window of opportunity for profitability of a more organized, professional piracy market.
Unless you want the equivalent of a "national endowment for broadcast infrastructure" then you might want to reconsider the legitimacy of the hacker/pirate role.
Phoebe is really far from Saturn. Also, there may be some gravitational slingshotting in the course (not sure how severe, since Phoebe's mass is small) so the path to saturn may not be a straight line in the geometric sense.
Not only that, it's a really eccentric, far-flung orbit. It's marginally more interesting than the "normal" satellites of Saturn, at least based on what we know about them, which is admittedly not much.
Slashdot Mirror
> would be plenty happy to leave it to the FBI if I had faith that they would
> faithfully follow up on intel given to them by the CIA, but there is a big
> disconnect there, which the previous administration was more than happy to
> exacerbate (i.e., the Gorelick memo).
Not coming as a fan of the Clinton administration, but isn't the separation between the CIA and FBI intelligence gathering apparatus by design? They have completely different jurisdictions. Granted, information should be transferred when jurisdiction changes (terrorist suspect immigrates, CIA hands off data and responsibility to the FBI) but I don't see why the Pentagon, on behalf of the CIA, needs to start stepping on the FBI's executive duties if the problem is communication and not execution.
If it is indeed a follow-through issue, as you say, then the FBI should be restructured to compensate (I think this is going on as I speak). Dismissing them ineffective and subsequently using the armed services at home is the first step to combining the domestic and foreign investigation services into one. That kind of centralization is potentially dangerous to the freedom of US society, for the same reasons why the CIA was chartered ONLY for foreign intelligence and why we passed the Posse Comitatus Act in the first place.
> I agree that it's fine to be shooting spies. Put a fucking bullet right in
> them. It's even better to be shooting terrorists.
How does one determine they are spies or terrorists? I am a bit relieved to hear that the more common practice is a military tribunal and not summary execution. How about giving a leg up to all those who might be summarily shot in error and making an arrest and tribunal mandatory (unless the officer is in mortal danger, of course...)
Unfortunately, gp is right. Bill Clinton signed legislation proposed by Bob Dole to effectively kill Posse Comitatus. This was done in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
At the behest of the US Attorney General, the army can be used against those deemed domestic enemies.
Actually, in mulling over this admittedly knee-jerk response, I was wrong about one thing - I do actually agree that pop culture is over-sexualized, I just don't think it has anything to do with Kinsey possibly being a quack - rather, it has to do with other sectors of society making all forms of sexuality taboo. Taboo leads to mystification and repression - then sexual energy finds other ways to manifest itself, mainly as sexualized pop culture, especially in what is probably an unnaturally high, silent-majority demand for pornography. But that's just my theory and I could be wrong and it could be all the fault of amoral researchers on self-interested perverted missions to misapply science to satisfy their own personal deviant sexual desires. I doubt it, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.
In any case, it'd be nice to have some science to repudiate or confirm the notion that pedophilia is rampant and correlates to the availability of child porn - and, in a broader sense, if openness about sexuality is harmful or is a predictable cause of sex crime.
> If you're refering to the late Alfred C. Kinsey of Indiana University
Obviously I wouldn't want to recommend a 50-year old study as ammo against legislation - no, actually I was referring to the institue at IU that is his namesake.
> The fact that the so-called 'father of the sexual revolution' has had just about
> every statistical claim he ever made repudiated by other studies makes one think
> about our over-sexualized society.
That's interesting (and good to know) that his studies have been scientifically challenged, but I fail to see how that has anything to do with whether or not there are any current pedophilia studies.
As for our society being "over-sexualized" - mmm, yeah, that sounds good. Is that like an upgrade to DSL? Let me know when it gets to the puritanical northeast. If anything, this country is mystified and fearful of sex, with the exception of LA, which is about as alien as any place in Utah.
Maybe he means when the Holy Roman Empire outlawed crossbows? I don't remember anything about the Roman Empire banning technology, but maybe it happened.
Chapter 5 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by adding to the end of
section 501 the following:
(g) Intentional Inducement of Infringement.-Whoever intentionally
induces any violation identified in subsection (a) of this section shall be
liable as an infringer.
(l) In subsection (g), "intentionally induces" means
intentionally aids, abets, induces, counsels, or procures,
and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable
person would find intent to induce infringement based
upon all relevant information about such acts then
reasonably available to the actor, including whether the
activity relies on infringement for its commercial
viability.
(2) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish the
doctrines of vicarious or contributory liability for
copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly
withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright
infringement.
See subsection 1 and the broad verbage. This won't get by, at least not without some serious surgery, because there are too many big companies (re: campaign contributors) who stand to lose from such a broad, sweeping change.
Also, beware of the supposed pretext - child pornography / pedophelia. Some people who are up in arms about these issues may see this bill as virtuous, when it's probably a pork barrel ruse. But I haven't seen any evidence that either thing is 1) correlated or 2) a serious, widespread threat warranting federal legislation. I've seen the same sensational coverage of abuses in the Catholic church, but that is a far cry from scientific studies. Surely Kinsey has done studies on this... but I can't find any clear web references. Maybe being armed with hard science about pedo could help fight the bill (and others using the same red herring).
> I can't run SFC any more
:)
Did you get married?
I used to use the crank yankers/special ed skit for my mail alert. There's just something hilarious about playing a 2 minute, repetitive sound when you get mail.
It probably goes without saying that this provided the needed impetus to get around to installing bogofilter.
You could use the red alert klaxon from star trek - but I guess that might contrast too sharply with the stately ambiance of the grandfather clock sounds, eh?
moudulating the pitch on the dropped/blocked port numbers? I bet it could sound like a windchime with the proper modulus.
Because Alice can't know the state of the information she's sending. If she does, then the superposition collapses.
It's not intuitive, but the "collapse of the wave function" metaphor fits observation.
Alice, instantaneously transfers information about the quantum state of a particle to a receiver called Bob. The uncertainty principle means that Alice cannot know the exact state of her particle. However, another feature of quantum mechanics called "entanglement" means that she can teleport the state to Bob.
Alice: Bob, now that our qubits are entangled, I don't know if mine's spin up down.
Bob: How 'bout I observe yours for you. How about there?
Alice: Nope.
Bob: Here?
Alice: Closer to this side of the gaussian, Bobby.
Bob: How about here?
Alice: OOOOOHHH! You collapsed my wave function DeBroglie!
Bob: Your qubit is now spin up, in case you were wondering... who's DeBroglie?
> 1,000 Euro will get you a name brand PC with monitor and MS operating system and > Office licenses.
But that does not include installation, administration and infrastructure costs.
> You have to really build up a lot of hatred for a vendor to consider paying
> maybe 14,000,000 Euro over the top to oust said vendor
Certainly you're right, and some people hate MS, but from where I'm standing, most people just hate depending on one thing and paying out the nose for it when they KNOW there are better alternatives. Ask any avid linux user who admins both platforms - if he's worth his salt, he'll tell you that eliminating Microsoft at any cost is not practical or even desirable - but allowing better alternatives in, where they exist, is crucial to saving time, money and aggravation.
Also, you're not considering that those 14,000,000 extra Euro are seen as an investment for long term savings. Corporate licensing for MS is even worse then retail. At least you know in the short run what you're paying for and OTS application - the corporate licensing schemes have totally arbitrary terms (despite what is advertised on the MS site) and have you chasing your tail trying to figure out what you're entitled to. Forget explaining it to a CFO once you've got it nailed down. Then the whole paradigm changes with the next wave of releases. When using mostly free software, you have relative certainty in the form of more-or-less predictable labor and hardware costs - planning is much easier, a little less air needs to be added to the budget, and you have a better chance of staying within budget.
I'm personally counting on this to pressure MS and other big software vendors to either drop prices or increase quality, as well as provide me with the odd chance to roll out something that works instead of dealing with certain packages I know are not worth trying to support.
I think it's turned out OK in cases where MS has been forced to compete. IE was free and improved for a while (at least until they had a dominant lead, IE6+ has been a nightmare) and Exchange got better by version 5 in order to compete with Lotus on the groupware front and sendmail on the MTA front... meanwhile, MS cut server package deals that basically gave it away. Their OS has gotten a bit more stable, probably in response to the perception of Linux kernel as being rock-solid. Maybe MS Office or Citrix will get cheaper faced with the prospect of Linux desktops running centrally-managed open source office productivity software over X.
I'm sure you're right. If they have 30 mil in budget, I'd guess they are thinking about 6 years ahead or so, at least.
Those guys are probably conservative in general.
The way I understand it is that one of the major system of checks/balances in the German Federation is the fact that the states have a powerful federal legislative house - the "Bundesraat" - which is generally conservative, since they represent the "Bundeslaender," or states, which all have their own agendas and therefore tend to resist changes like this. This body is equal in power to the other house in that to pass a law both houses must have a 2/3 vote for it.
I think it's "ne, bitte" oder "na bitte."
European companies buying for their European offices pay with (currently strong) Euro, so it's not neccessarily meaningful to convert it to USD. Also, consider that migration project budgets typically include hours and buffer - 2000 Euro per machine isn't that unreasonable, especially if you take for granted that it's worth it to escape the "MS tax."
Such an expert would need to be well-versed on the behavior of disk firmware and drivers as well as RAID, but based on some years of experience operating all sorts of arrays, I'd say that stripe set RAID recovery tends to be trickier than RAID-1, which has a pretty straight-forward theory behind it (bit mirroring). The more complicated your scheme, in general, the more things can go wrong.
Basically, if you care about up-front cost and insist on straight-forward reliability and performance, use RAID-1. If you care about economy (bang for buck) and you can accept a small margin for weird errors, use RAID-5.
In both cases you get the standard warning - have a file and directory level backup that's not part of the RAID (tape, another RAID, etc) - RAID makes your file systems more robust, but it doesn't save old copies of them.
If you mean a sense of morality, then sure I think spammers "have morals..." they just have poorly developed ethics.
...assuming you accept the precept that every person has a sense for right and wrong, varied by individual. Which you may not, in which case... um... never you mind. ;)
the syllogism should have been:
all people have morals
spammers are people
spammers have morals
Apology doesn't have to be a one-way street. Contrition is either met with mercy or it's not. This can profoundly affect how genuine it is over time. If someone tells you right off that your apology isn't worth dick, then why should they bother following through? If apologies under pressure don't mean anything, why do actions under pressure mean anything?
> For the record, I think he'll turn rotten as soon as the ruckus dies down. Shame > passes sooner than greed.
He's pretty young... I don't think he'll backslide. He just needs to reassert his ethics to keep himself out of trouble, and it sounds like he's at least got the rhetoric down.
Who's to say? It's hard to gauge sincerity from print.
I think it may just be a reality shift for a lot of these spammers. They all seem so indignant at first, when accused of being slimy Internet carpet-baggers. But on the other hand, people are always encouraged to seek fortune, and originally there were no rules, lots of money to be had, and old adages about opportunity knocking.
Once the money is rolling in, anyone would be tempted to rationalize their own business practice, even after being kicked off of relays, threatened with lawsuits, and having your iron pushed offshore. Once you're invested in something, it's hard to stop believing in it. That's why you see people go down kicking and screaming and come up contrite after a jury of peers schools them in the prevailing ethics.
Bottom line - not everyone is destined to be a repeat offender. Even if he toes the line for a while and doesn't buy it, maybe he'll educate consumers or discourage future spammers along the way, or maybe he'll start buying his own sermon.
The "legitimate uses" argument comes from hackers whose are only mildly interested in pirating (or are not at all). Concerns over pirating should not collaterally damage the hackers, and the reason is simple - pay-to-play business models for broadcast content are fundamentally weak, for reasons that are obvious. They rely on security mechanisms that amateur hackers are constantly testing at their own expense in time and money.
Pure pirates (people who buy black boxes from spammers) only benefit from these hacks in the short run, while directv benefits in the long run. The people in "the scene" get some free TV for a while, learn a bit of electronics, directv patches the holes, and then the challenge is renewed. It's just the way the imperfection in the business model plays out. If it weren't for the people who do it for hack value and a bit of free TV, it would be done ONLY by black market professional hackers who are driven by profit, and would not publish their methods in order to sell as many boxes as possible. Open hacking limits the window of opportunity for profitability of a more organized, professional piracy market.
Unless you want the equivalent of a "national endowment for broadcast infrastructure" then you might want to reconsider the legitimacy of the hacker/pirate role.
I though maybe John Bonham (deceased Zeppelin drummer) had been cloned or something.
Phoebe is really far from Saturn. Also, there may be some gravitational slingshotting in the course (not sure how severe, since Phoebe's mass is small) so the path to saturn may not be a straight line in the geometric sense.
Not only that, it's a really eccentric, far-flung orbit. It's marginally more interesting than the "normal" satellites of Saturn, at least based on what we know about them, which is admittedly not much.