I think the original quote for that was from Kristian Wilson of Nintendo in 1989:
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
I really like coding in object oriented languages. Right now I'm working on quite a major project in Python, and objectising everything is making it a lot more convenient. I'm using inheritance and polymorphism and so on, but it took me a while to figure out how that was useful in a scripting language where there isn't any strong typing.
I don't have anything against procedural languages, although I tend to write in objects more when they're available just because I'm more used to the technique. In general though, I think one of the most useful things that I get out of using objects besides all the polymorphism stuff is namespaces.
Classes are simply a really convenient way to package related things together without getting them messed up. I know this can be done without too much trouble without objects using packages or naming conventions, but classes are a much more general way to do it. Certainly it's one of the main reasons I prefer C++ over C, even for relatively simple programs, because C doen't have any natural way of assigning namespaces in a clean way that's guaranteed not to clash.
There are many non-malicious reasons for wanting to possess cracking tools, not the least of which is the ability to examine them and see how they work, as well as testing your own system. It's not necessarily malicious to make cracking tools, and it's not necessarily malicious to possess them.
Possession of child pornography on the other hand is illegal because making it is illegal. Possessing it encourages making it, and making it victimises children. (Although some argue that it doesn't.)
Depending on what you consider artistic, I'm not sure if it always qualifies as child porn, except for in the eyes of some more conservative groups. Showing naked children isn't necessarily the same as distributing photos of 5 year old girls being raped by grown men, or young boys being made to touch each others' private parts for example.
From what I've seen, that's mainly what is targeted by child pornography legislation. It doesn't mean they raid houses of naturist families for taking and showing people family photos.
To me this seems more like an absolute ban on firearms, except (IMHO) a lot sillier. Similar arguments would apply, though.
"Why would one have any more paranoia about The Taj having information," he said, "than if Sears or AT&T had that information?"
I'd rather that none of the above had that information. If it only gets used for what they say they're using it for, it's probably okay. The problem is that information doesn't go away - much of what's been collected about people within the last few years is likely to be around for a lifetime.
Lots can happen within a lifetime. (Compare today's world with something pre-WW2, for example.) Assuming various privacy laws and data correlation restrictions (or what's left of them) don't lighten up in the future, and that's very unlikely, there's still the danger of information leaks.
For example, what would happen if someone were to steal MGM Mirage's database and post it on the net? Immediately millions of people's names and addresses would be available next to their estimated personal income, and potentially "interesting" information such as when they're likely to go on holiday.
The thing that most consumers don't realise is that when you're letting a company collect information about you, you're not just trusting the company. You're also trusting every one of their employees, and probably employees of related companies that you have no control or knowledge about.
In this case you're trusting their data security setup - not to mention the software engineers who wrote the software they're using. You're trusting every one of thousands or more casino workers who have direct access to some very personal information, and you're trusting the person who hired them not to make one mistake with that many chances.
I'm not sure if there's an obvious way to stop this, because people will always be collecting data about other people and in the computer age it's going to get easier and easier to store, mine and correlate to make new information. I'd at least like to see the following:
Important computer organisations (eg. ACM) really pressing their codes of ethics' seriously. There must be lots of people in ACM at the moment, for example, who have pirated software and don't have a second thought about it. I know lots of society doesn't take it seriously, but if the ACM isn't going to take it seriously then I don't think section 1.5 should be in the code of ethics.
General ethical standards in computer employees really suck at the moment. Information management ethics needs to be a more serious part of the education system. There are lots of IT workers who have essentially sold out to their management. There are some lines that I simply won't cross without resigning to find a better job, and when we're approaching them I let my boss know what I will and won't do. Doctors have professional codes of ethics - they don't go selling inforamtion about their patients - and IT professionals should, too.
Standard and well recognised privacy policies in place for organisations to use. They would include things such as properly destroying collected personal data after a certain timeframe (very important) or when the company ceases to exist, not correlating it or using it for unspecified purposes, and so on.
If marketed properly so that ordinary consumers understand it, organisations could stamp an approval label on their service, and people could decide based on that whether they want to trust the organisation or not.
You could go and buy an expensive telescope, but unless you're really devoted to what you're doing you might find that you don't use it after a few months. You'll probably just find that it's bulky, heavy and awkward to carry around. Especially if you don't have anywhere convenient to set it up.
I'm currently the membership secretary of a local society. We have a deal with a local science shop to sign up new members as they buy telescopes. If we can't get these people and drag them in, they're usually no longer members after a year because they never really got involved enough in astronomy to understand how to find things and enjoy it properly.
They look through it a few times expecting to see a brilliant time-lapsed artificial-colour image out of a book or magazine, then get very dissappointed when it's just a faint, barely visible blur. To really appreciate seeing most things involves lots of time to sit down and observe something, learn what it looks like, and having looked long enough you'll slowly start to see new things.
You can almost never look at a galaxy and see a brilliant image in ten seconds. You have to look at lots of galaxies and understand how to look at them, and then they start to look like brilliant images - but albeit in a way that most people don't see.
It's also a bit offputting that it gets so cold at night and you usually have to be organised and know how to define what you're doing to survive out there for hours without getting bored and cold. There are only so many things you can find without knowing what to look for, and there's only so much that a book can teach.
I'd recommend first finding and joining a local astronomy club or society. Turn up to the meetings, get to know some people, and look through other people's telescopes. Going observing with other people is lots of fun. It's not just a social thing, you also get to learn from other people how to do and enjoy nearly everything. Then you get to show them things afterwards.
Arrange to borrow telescopes if and when you can so you can get a good idea of what sort of thing suits you best. It might sound boring at first, but I reccommend getting a small one to start with. There's heaps of things you can see with small telescopes when someone's there to show you how and where to look. Often there's more to see, because the things you look at are much more common an obvious.
Don't bother with a motor drive and expect to use it much. If you want to just key in positions and let the scope find stuff for you, you're missing out on lots of experience that is valuable for nearly everything else. Learn the constellations and star names, because they're the first part of using a star map to find your way around the sky.
As I'm writing this, I'm currently a graduate student working as one of two currently employed by the university who are qualified to mark assignments in what is a popular course. From this perspective, group projects are great, because I only have to mark 1/3 as many assignments. My experience with actually working in a group as a learning experience is the opposite, though.
To date I've been in groups from both points of views. In computer science groups, I've been a very strong member of the group, and in some cases I've been a very weak group member. In both situations, I've hated it.
In university, people traditionally get assessed individually. Whether working in groups or not, everyone's primary aim is to get good marks for themselves. This is completely opposite from what group work implies.
The real world has teams everywhere. Realistically, it takes years for a really good team to form, where everyone's strengths and weaknesses are used efficiently and people work together. In the real world though, people aren't paying to be fairly assessed. In contrast, they're paid to work with other people. And there's a reasonable chance that if they're dragging other people along, they can leave the job or at least will eventually get reassigned - without effectively losing anything.
In an student team though, you're effectively thrown into a group and given about a week to work out each other's strengths and weaknesses. Then you're required to fight to the death about the best way to get the job done instead of being told by a team leader of some sort who takes responsiility (since everyone's geared towards their own individual assessment). Once a path's chosen at the expense of everyone else's ideals, there's not much option to change it down the track.
When I've been a strong member in a group, the weak members are often just completely left behind. Right now I'm working in a group of four. Person 1 has been sick for the last five weeks (the entire project so far), person 2 has no clue whatsoever about how to do anything, and most of everything's been done by person 3 and myself.
I'll ignore the sick person for now. The second person is a very nice guy, but he's just not grasping the subject at all, for as much as he's trying. He's repeatedly asking how things work, and no matter how much I explain, he simply doesn't get it, and in the process anything that he does related to contributions is likely to drag the mark down or break everyone else's code if it's not completely overhauled and rewritten beyond his understanding before it's used. Effectively, he's a liability. The group mark gets unfairly distributed to him, and our marks get dragged down because of him.
Having said that, I can sympathise with him completely because I've been in the same sort of position with other subjects in other courses. A couple of times I've ended up in groups where the other members are completely ahead of me, or think about problems in completely different ways. It's a really awkward position to be in, knowing that you're piggybacking on what might be a good mark, and not being able to contribute anything useful.
In these situations, strong students don't benefit at all, because of the typical assessment system. They end up with a proportionally unfair workload, doing their bit and redoing other people's bit so their grade won't suffer. Weak students don't benefit either - they just end up in a sea of not having a clue. If anything they might end up doing the drudgery work like writeups. Even then, it's really hard to find useful drudgery work.
Usually, the only way groups can work effectively when people can actually learn from each other, is when they're evenly matched - and that's a very unusual situation.
When I'm in a weak-student position, I've benefitted a lot more from working with other relatively weak students who are working through and figuring out the same problems that I am. The mark might not be as good, but it's more representative for everyone concerned and I feel much better about it as well as understanding more.
Asking good students is perfectly okay within reason, but it's unrealistic to expect them to work as tutors for weak students at the expense of their own work. From a strong student perspective, it gets really tedious answering the types of questions all the time, and often it doesn't help anyway, because students aren't trained teachers.
With respect to the idea that being able to work in groups is a good thing, I have trouble understanding what use it is to teach this in an academic environment. That is unless or until the assessment system is completely overhauled.
There's almost nothing that can be learned in 12 weeks (give or take) of infighting about the best way to do something. This is easy enough to pick up in a real job, and in many respects I've found it much easier to do in a real job because everyone (me included) is prepared to tolerate other people's ideas when it won't mean the plummetting of a good grade. Such group dynamics exercises would be better left to psychology and sociology subjects.
It's (probably) not hard to demonstrate that most new ideas have come out of closed software, but I wonder if you're looking in the wrong place. It's not as if innovation didn't exist before closed software did.
Innovation takes two things: Someone to come up with an idea, and someone to implement it.
Absolutely anyone can come up with an idea. People don't come up with more ideas just because Microsoft or some other closed source business is paying them.. although it's fairly obvious that these companies will do their share of hiring innovative people. But there will be at least as many ideas coming out of other people.
One of the barriers is then whether these people will share their idea. If they're a Microsoft customer, they might send an idea to Microsoft. If they're an open source user they might mention it to the developmer. (If any.) You can bet that closed source companies also have marketing experts that collect information useful to working out what is wanted and what will sell. It doesn't mean this wouldn't happen (albeit at a different rate) if the product was free.
The other requirement is someone to implement it. In closed source if it looks like a good idea, it'll get done (sometimes), and usually fast. In open source, it might get done at some point if nobody forgets about it and then when someone can be found who wants to do it. This might be encouraged if the same feature is seen to be very useful elsewhere.
To sum up, open source may clone existing products, but closed source also clones existing ideas. Ideas, meanwhile, come from everyone. They just get implemented at different rates.
Innovation doesn't come from closed source or open source. It comes from people, and a good deal of those people aren't involved in the project concerned.
I'd blame bad management myself, at least in part. There's low quality workmanship in every profession, and the managers are the ones who aren't checking up.
When we bring in consultants around here they usually don't come straight out of the phone book. Instead, we ask around, asking people and friends in other businesses of their opinions about consultants.
If a consultant did a bad job or made bad reccommendations, word gets around and we won't hire them. Reputation is everything to some businesses, and they'll pay for reputation through the nose.
If you want to build up a reliable, well paying customer base, don't worry so much about what others are doing. Just do a good job, don't rip people off, maybe and see if you can get some of your customers to reccommend you - especially in writing that you can flash around in front of other customers.
Unless you want a drivers licence, that is. Photo ID on drivers licenses has been compulsory for a bit over a year now.
The photos are kept in a digital record in a database. I'm not sure whether it's held by the government or by a company contracted to the government. There are probably various privacy restrictions surrounding it, but I guess it comes down to how much you trust them.
The Authors Guild's argument is that authors don't get any compensation if someone purchases a used book; only the seller and Amazon.com make out on the transaction.
I can understand most slashdot computer/IT professionals and hobbyists not being aware of it, but I really did think that the Authors' Guild of all groups would be familiar with that massive, evil cartel of socialist spinoffs also known as publicly funded libraries.
Every day, millions of people visit the libraries of the world, reading and borrowing books without even paying a cent for them. Just think how much compensation the authors would miss out on through this cruel and unjustified practice. Libraries don't resell books once, they loan them out FOR FREE, and HUNDREDS OF TIMES. That's hundreds of people reading a book that has only ever been paid for once!
It's as if people think authors would rather have their work read than have their publishers make money from them... as if people think that literacy is more important than a few more cents for the author.
I think the flip-side to that argument is that while DVD producers should be allowed to create zones and only create players that match those zones, other people should not be restricted from reverse engineering their format and making zone-free players.
Otherwise in a competitive race between zoned and un-zoned media, distributors are naturally more likely to go with the zoned option because it helps them keep more direct control over their media.
I think the only way an alternative zone-free format could succeed in direct competition is if and when there's some obvious commercial advantage for distributors not to zone their information. Even then, the new format would have to offer more, and be well supported.
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Re:I have a question...
on
New Crypto-OS
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· Score: 2
What some people have said so far looks really good. I'd like to add my own bit. (I haven't given this before so it coupd probably be worded better.)
Let's say you trust the government, the police, the IRS and social services, etc etc. For sake of argument, let's say they're not corrupt in any way and will not misuse the information they hold about you in any way whatsoever.
Given that you trust them and through some magic it's been proven that collected information won't be misused or abused, and it will stop the child molesters and terrorists and make the world safer and more prosperous for everyone.. why shouldn't they be allowed to do this?
The simple answer in my mind is What About Tommorrow?
The problem with any sort of legislation is that it's much easier to put in place than it is to remove. What is there to guarantee that 30 years from now, corrupt people won't get into social services and run their own child pornographer's ring, for example? What is there to guarantee that a corrupt police officer - who isn't even born yet - won't abuse her privilege of having access to information about everyone?
Exactly what information can be collected and everything it might be used for is up to the imagination. The point is that once in place, legislation is very hard to tear down. It seems to me that the lawmakers are making it for today, assuming they know the system today, but without putting due consideration into what could potentially happen tommorrow.
There are lots of posts talking about how MBTI, the various descriptions and Jungian psychology in general are a lot like astrology, pigeonholing, etc. Psychology is not an objective science, and you have to take context into account whenever you're using it.
If you take it at face value then it mostly is, and a lot of people take take it at face value - employers included - which is why a lot of people will be disillusioned about it. There are some definitely incorrect perceptions though, so I'll try to outline some that I've noticed.
The linked site has the spelling wrong. It's actually spelt "myers-briggs", not "meyers-briggs". Actually I think they know because I saw this site about a year ago and they commented on it that they spelt it that way because myers-briggs.com was already taken.
The official myers-briggs test can ONLY be administered by a trained psychologist, for good reason. The main reason for this is already hilighted in several of the gripey comments posted in reply to this story. Either people misunderstand the results, people misunderstand the questions, people misunderstand the interpretation, or (most annoyingly) other people misunderstand all of the above. Even when it is administered properly you can bet people will start reading rubbish from the results at the first opportunity to get things wrong.
Most people probably got their first and (likely) only impression of MBTI from the Keirsey sorter (note the word "sorter"), or something like it. Keirsey is not a test and it's not supposed to be. It's a multi choice sorter intended to give people a pointer towards their likely personality type. It's not always correct though. This sorter is really the product of a guy who made it so he could sell more copies of his book. It's free and openly available for people to misunderstand, which is why it's so popular.
Type descriptions are absolutes. People have been complaining that they fit at least partly under every description, and this is no surprise. Personally though, I'm definitely much more similar to an INTP than an ESFJ... for whatever it's worth. It doesn't mean I can't or won't act like an ESFJ description under some circumstances. It also doesn't mean I can't be really good at a "typical ESFJ job", or the reverse... even though I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much as someone who relates closer.
MBTI is intended to describe how people act.. not why they act that way, or what's going on inside their head.
(easily most important): One of the most useful things about Jungian psychology is not to slot people into boxes, but to demonstrate that there are different types of people.
Before Myers and Briggs brought Jungian psychology out of the closet, the central view in psychology was that anyone could be wired into electrodes and people could be conditioned to any form wanted by electrocuting them. (or something metaphorically equivalent.)
Either can be argued depending on the context and circumstances. If nothing else, Jungian psychology has introduced an alternative viewpoint to be argued that people's personalities are hard-coded, and there are limits to how much you can be changed. (Consider this the next time you're accepted for the way you are outside of social norms instead of being thrown in a mental institution to be "cured".)
If the user has their browser set to accept cookies, and cookies get placed on their system, what is the problem with that? Seems like a case of people's ignorance, and instead of acknowledging that, they decide to sue someone instead.
Well personally I see it as a violation of trust. Cookies have other uses than just tracking just like there's more reasons to leave your door unlocked than to let strangers walk into your home.
For example, does the knowledge that I choose to read my email give anyone the right to send me lots of bulk, unsolicited email every day? Some people might argue yes, because I have the option of using filtering software or simply not reading it. I would argue no.
Can people steal my car because I left it unlocked? Can they place a hidden camera in my house because I left the window open?
If the answer is no, why should they have the right to put unsolicited cookies on my system because my browser is set up to allow it for other reasons? It goes beyond reasonable expectations of what the customer/victim is likely to want.
Reasonable expectations might be allowing someone to come onto your property so they can knock on your door. If they came onto your property to dump their garbage or knock your house over (even if you didn't have a security system to stop them), it would be far beyond reasonable expectations.
It's already been established that it's going to be an option to turn this on. Hopefully Microsoft will let others create their own signatures and any IT department with any intelligence will be able to sign whatever software they want to use, as well as trust whatever other organisation they want.
For the Microsoft signing part of it, I'm wondering what they'll need before they put their name on someone's software. Will they need to view the source code to make sure it's not malicious?
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the main problem with MSIE was that Microsoft were embedding it in a very popular OS, and making it very difficult for average people not to use it.
Netscape isn't doing that. They're offering their product, giving people an option to install it. Netscape's running an optional service oriented business and providing it for free, like a lot of stuff on the net, and it's no surprise that they've made the presentation very commercialised.
Put simply, people (and companies) are more likely to be using Netscape because they chose to than because anyone thrust it in their face as if there was no alternative.
The article spoke of passing around jokes and the like...this doesn't sound like a part of doing their job effectively.
I am surprised that 160 CIA employees would get together to use a secret chat room.
And you would do what? Slap chains around their ankles? If you didn't get riots you'd get some quite demoralised and less effective workers. They should be (and hopefully are) trying to work out what's wrong with the working conditions that caused people to do that -- not slapping punishments on everyone, demoralising them even further.
What I'm trying to say is that if 160 people are breaking the rules, obviously the rules aren't designed well enough to accomodate people effectively. When rules are made too inflexible to fit people, they'll get broken and so there's not much point in having them anyway. Show a bit of respect by allocating some freedom for people and they'll usually surprise you.
The CIA is a special case and there would be some specific things that couldn't do, but it's in everyone's best interests that the people working there are enjoying what they do. For example, if they don't want unchecked s/w running on their network, perhaps they need to create a seperate intranet where employees can run unchecked s/w.
One or two employees and I could understand an investigation like this.
CIA or not, if 160 employees decide to break the rules in this way, isn't it just a sign that their employers aren't providing them with the (legitimate) resources to do their job effectively?
They could restrict these people and not get the best out of them, or they could work out a compromise. Since a lot of people are going to be watching this and it'll be setting an example to big dumb executives everywhere, I hope a compromise is what happens.
Judge Abramson found that the district could use an inexpensive "write script" to produce a record without revealing confidential information, such as an individual student's name, user name or password, therefore the documents were not exempt.
While I don't agree with releasing this type of information individually or collated, this quote from the article at least goes part of the way. It implies that the court believes individual privacy (such as asking for someone's specific records) is a separate matter.
In short, the father wasn't asking to see anyone's specific access records and he didn't need to. Going by the documented judge's finding, this probably worked in his favour.
I use CSS. My only regret is that it's limited how much I can (safely) do with it because so far, genuine support for the actual standards is so crap and unpredictible. (This is mostly because Netscape 4 is hopelessly inadequate.)
Sorry this post is slightly biased towards NZ'rs, but then so is the story.
First, go here and find out who your local Member of Parliament is. Yes, even if you didn't vote, they still represent you. If you're not sure what electorate you're in, look at one of the maps. (North Island or South Island or Maori Electorates)
Next, go here and find the email address and postal address of your local MP. Write them a polite email or letter stressing why you think that this legislation is bad. Try to summarise the main, interesing points in the first paragraph or two and then break into more detail. Use a spellchecker and if possible get someone to proof-read it. Wait for a couple of hours, re-read it, and if it still looks okay then send it.
Writing a letter is better, but since many IT people haven't written a normal letter in several years, email is better than nothing. Remember, you don't need a stamp when you're sending a leter to someone on Parliament. Just address it to "[Name], c/- Parliament Buildings, Wellington" where [Name] is the name of the MP you're writing to.
If you don't get a response from your local MP within a couple of days, resend it and apologise - suggesting that it might have gotten lost in the mail. If you still don't get a response, phone (04)471-9999 and tell them that their email relaying might not be working. Whatever you do, don't let it rest if nobody answers and don't be impolite.
For the record, I don't think NASA can be completely blamed for the failed main antenna on Galileo.
Earlier this year I heard Bob Mitchell speaking about Galileo and Cassini - he's pretty much been at the top of both missions. One of the reasons that the main antenna failed to open was because it had to open in the first place, so it was a lot more complicated. (Ideally they would have built it fixed open, like Cassini is designed.)
It had to be redesigned and sent up with the antenna folded up so they could fit it in the space shuttle cargo bay. The reason it had to go up in the space shuttle was because of political interference where people wanted the shuttle to be used for some high profile missions to revive it a bit from the Challenger blowing up in 1986.
Cassini couldn't have the same problems because it was launched with the antenna open. Instead of the space shuttle, they just threw it on the back of one of these, which would have been preferable for Galileo aswell, since they can get much more effective propulsion to kick it off.
It's not unexpected, but I find it a bit disappointing that MAPS is setting up a fund for the public to donate to their legal fees. Not the fact that they're asking, but the fact that they need to in the first place.
Where are all the major ISP's and other commercial entities who make use of the service, when it needs defending? After all, the big ones are at least in part responsible for why MAPS is getting so much attention from the spammers. We saw in this story that some major providers (think AOL and Hotmail) have been making effective use of MAPS in the past. Is there a reason why they shouldn't give back to it?
What would be the legal implications against any big companes who donated money to the MAPS legal fund? Simply being able to get someone like Microsoft (please no flames for that) to say that they trust and support how MAPS works, and back it up financially, could make a major difference to the way it's perceived.
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Re: parallel nets, cacheing and AI organisation
on
The Gnutella Paradox
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· Score: 2
I thought of something similar right away. Why not have parallel Gnutella "rings" with a limited number of clients in each?
Possibly but it might end up with the same sort of problems that some ftp servers suffer from, where the most popular ones are just impossible to connect to. (The major ones are mirrored but people's home-maintained ones often aren't, and they're also slow meaning connections take longer.)
One thing that might help though is if the rings were interconnected, and clients were able to cache the files available on all the other clients in each ring. If there weren't specific rings, it might be all the clients within two hops, or something like that. Okay so it wouldn't be gnutella anymore, it would have to be a next generation protocol.
If anything, this could help cut down on the hammering that every gnutella client gets from incoming searches which are virtually all failures.
I also think it could be a good idea if clients were able to organise themselves into a tree or graph, based on the file categories and filenames that they have. If it was known in advance roughly where a certain file would be, the search could be limited to that part of the network.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the original quote for that was from Kristian Wilson of Nintendo in 1989:
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I really like coding in object oriented languages. Right now I'm working on quite a major project in Python, and objectising everything is making it a lot more convenient. I'm using inheritance and polymorphism and so on, but it took me a while to figure out how that was useful in a scripting language where there isn't any strong typing.
I don't have anything against procedural languages, although I tend to write in objects more when they're available just because I'm more used to the technique. In general though, I think one of the most useful things that I get out of using objects besides all the polymorphism stuff is namespaces.
Classes are simply a really convenient way to package related things together without getting them messed up. I know this can be done without too much trouble without objects using packages or naming conventions, but classes are a much more general way to do it. Certainly it's one of the main reasons I prefer C++ over C, even for relatively simple programs, because C doen't have any natural way of assigning namespaces in a clean way that's guaranteed not to clash.
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There are many non-malicious reasons for wanting to possess cracking tools, not the least of which is the ability to examine them and see how they work, as well as testing your own system. It's not necessarily malicious to make cracking tools, and it's not necessarily malicious to possess them.
Possession of child pornography on the other hand is illegal because making it is illegal. Possessing it encourages making it, and making it victimises children. (Although some argue that it doesn't.)
Depending on what you consider artistic, I'm not sure if it always qualifies as child porn, except for in the eyes of some more conservative groups. Showing naked children isn't necessarily the same as distributing photos of 5 year old girls being raped by grown men, or young boys being made to touch each others' private parts for example.
From what I've seen, that's mainly what is targeted by child pornography legislation. It doesn't mean they raid houses of naturist families for taking and showing people family photos.
To me this seems more like an absolute ban on firearms, except (IMHO) a lot sillier. Similar arguments would apply, though.
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I'd rather that none of the above had that information. If it only gets used for what they say they're using it for, it's probably okay. The problem is that information doesn't go away - much of what's been collected about people within the last few years is likely to be around for a lifetime.
Lots can happen within a lifetime. (Compare today's world with something pre-WW2, for example.) Assuming various privacy laws and data correlation restrictions (or what's left of them) don't lighten up in the future, and that's very unlikely, there's still the danger of information leaks.
For example, what would happen if someone were to steal MGM Mirage's database and post it on the net? Immediately millions of people's names and addresses would be available next to their estimated personal income, and potentially "interesting" information such as when they're likely to go on holiday.
The thing that most consumers don't realise is that when you're letting a company collect information about you, you're not just trusting the company. You're also trusting every one of their employees, and probably employees of related companies that you have no control or knowledge about.
In this case you're trusting their data security setup - not to mention the software engineers who wrote the software they're using. You're trusting every one of thousands or more casino workers who have direct access to some very personal information, and you're trusting the person who hired them not to make one mistake with that many chances.
I'm not sure if there's an obvious way to stop this, because people will always be collecting data about other people and in the computer age it's going to get easier and easier to store, mine and correlate to make new information. I'd at least like to see the following:
Important computer organisations (eg. ACM) really pressing their codes of ethics' seriously. There must be lots of people in ACM at the moment, for example, who have pirated software and don't have a second thought about it. I know lots of society doesn't take it seriously, but if the ACM isn't going to take it seriously then I don't think section 1.5 should be in the code of ethics.
General ethical standards in computer employees really suck at the moment. Information management ethics needs to be a more serious part of the education system. There are lots of IT workers who have essentially sold out to their management. There are some lines that I simply won't cross without resigning to find a better job, and when we're approaching them I let my boss know what I will and won't do. Doctors have professional codes of ethics - they don't go selling inforamtion about their patients - and IT professionals should, too.
Standard and well recognised privacy policies in place for organisations to use. They would include things such as properly destroying collected personal data after a certain timeframe (very important) or when the company ceases to exist, not correlating it or using it for unspecified purposes, and so on.
If marketed properly so that ordinary consumers understand it, organisations could stamp an approval label on their service, and people could decide based on that whether they want to trust the organisation or not.
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Have you considered putting a sig on the end stating that it's digitally signed? .. maybe why it's a good thing. (I do that sometimes.)
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You could go and buy an expensive telescope, but unless you're really devoted to what you're doing you might find that you don't use it after a few months. You'll probably just find that it's bulky, heavy and awkward to carry around. Especially if you don't have anywhere convenient to set it up.
I'm currently the membership secretary of a local society. We have a deal with a local science shop to sign up new members as they buy telescopes. If we can't get these people and drag them in, they're usually no longer members after a year because they never really got involved enough in astronomy to understand how to find things and enjoy it properly.
They look through it a few times expecting to see a brilliant time-lapsed artificial-colour image out of a book or magazine, then get very dissappointed when it's just a faint, barely visible blur. To really appreciate seeing most things involves lots of time to sit down and observe something, learn what it looks like, and having looked long enough you'll slowly start to see new things.
You can almost never look at a galaxy and see a brilliant image in ten seconds. You have to look at lots of galaxies and understand how to look at them, and then they start to look like brilliant images - but albeit in a way that most people don't see.
It's also a bit offputting that it gets so cold at night and you usually have to be organised and know how to define what you're doing to survive out there for hours without getting bored and cold. There are only so many things you can find without knowing what to look for, and there's only so much that a book can teach.
I'd recommend first finding and joining a local astronomy club or society. Turn up to the meetings, get to know some people, and look through other people's telescopes. Going observing with other people is lots of fun. It's not just a social thing, you also get to learn from other people how to do and enjoy nearly everything. Then you get to show them things afterwards.
Arrange to borrow telescopes if and when you can so you can get a good idea of what sort of thing suits you best. It might sound boring at first, but I reccommend getting a small one to start with. There's heaps of things you can see with small telescopes when someone's there to show you how and where to look. Often there's more to see, because the things you look at are much more common an obvious.
Don't bother with a motor drive and expect to use it much. If you want to just key in positions and let the scope find stuff for you, you're missing out on lots of experience that is valuable for nearly everything else. Learn the constellations and star names, because they're the first part of using a star map to find your way around the sky.
Have fun.
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As I'm writing this, I'm currently a graduate student working as one of two currently employed by the university who are qualified to mark assignments in what is a popular course. From this perspective, group projects are great, because I only have to mark 1/3 as many assignments. My experience with actually working in a group as a learning experience is the opposite, though.
To date I've been in groups from both points of views. In computer science groups, I've been a very strong member of the group, and in some cases I've been a very weak group member. In both situations, I've hated it.
In university, people traditionally get assessed individually. Whether working in groups or not, everyone's primary aim is to get good marks for themselves. This is completely opposite from what group work implies.
The real world has teams everywhere. Realistically, it takes years for a really good team to form, where everyone's strengths and weaknesses are used efficiently and people work together. In the real world though, people aren't paying to be fairly assessed. In contrast, they're paid to work with other people. And there's a reasonable chance that if they're dragging other people along, they can leave the job or at least will eventually get reassigned - without effectively losing anything.
In an student team though, you're effectively thrown into a group and given about a week to work out each other's strengths and weaknesses. Then you're required to fight to the death about the best way to get the job done instead of being told by a team leader of some sort who takes responsiility (since everyone's geared towards their own individual assessment). Once a path's chosen at the expense of everyone else's ideals, there's not much option to change it down the track.
When I've been a strong member in a group, the weak members are often just completely left behind. Right now I'm working in a group of four. Person 1 has been sick for the last five weeks (the entire project so far), person 2 has no clue whatsoever about how to do anything, and most of everything's been done by person 3 and myself.
I'll ignore the sick person for now. The second person is a very nice guy, but he's just not grasping the subject at all, for as much as he's trying. He's repeatedly asking how things work, and no matter how much I explain, he simply doesn't get it, and in the process anything that he does related to contributions is likely to drag the mark down or break everyone else's code if it's not completely overhauled and rewritten beyond his understanding before it's used. Effectively, he's a liability. The group mark gets unfairly distributed to him, and our marks get dragged down because of him.
Having said that, I can sympathise with him completely because I've been in the same sort of position with other subjects in other courses. A couple of times I've ended up in groups where the other members are completely ahead of me, or think about problems in completely different ways. It's a really awkward position to be in, knowing that you're piggybacking on what might be a good mark, and not being able to contribute anything useful.
In these situations, strong students don't benefit at all, because of the typical assessment system. They end up with a proportionally unfair workload, doing their bit and redoing other people's bit so their grade won't suffer. Weak students don't benefit either - they just end up in a sea of not having a clue. If anything they might end up doing the drudgery work like writeups. Even then, it's really hard to find useful drudgery work.
Usually, the only way groups can work effectively when people can actually learn from each other, is when they're evenly matched - and that's a very unusual situation.
When I'm in a weak-student position, I've benefitted a lot more from working with other relatively weak students who are working through and figuring out the same problems that I am. The mark might not be as good, but it's more representative for everyone concerned and I feel much better about it as well as understanding more.
Asking good students is perfectly okay within reason, but it's unrealistic to expect them to work as tutors for weak students at the expense of their own work. From a strong student perspective, it gets really tedious answering the types of questions all the time, and often it doesn't help anyway, because students aren't trained teachers.
With respect to the idea that being able to work in groups is a good thing, I have trouble understanding what use it is to teach this in an academic environment. That is unless or until the assessment system is completely overhauled.
There's almost nothing that can be learned in 12 weeks (give or take) of infighting about the best way to do something. This is easy enough to pick up in a real job, and in many respects I've found it much easier to do in a real job because everyone (me included) is prepared to tolerate other people's ideas when it won't mean the plummetting of a good grade. Such group dynamics exercises would be better left to psychology and sociology subjects.
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It's (probably) not hard to demonstrate that most new ideas have come out of closed software, but I wonder if you're looking in the wrong place. It's not as if innovation didn't exist before closed software did.
Innovation takes two things: Someone to come up with an idea, and someone to implement it.
Absolutely anyone can come up with an idea. People don't come up with more ideas just because Microsoft or some other closed source business is paying them.. although it's fairly obvious that these companies will do their share of hiring innovative people. But there will be at least as many ideas coming out of other people.
One of the barriers is then whether these people will share their idea. If they're a Microsoft customer, they might send an idea to Microsoft. If they're an open source user they might mention it to the developmer. (If any.) You can bet that closed source companies also have marketing experts that collect information useful to working out what is wanted and what will sell. It doesn't mean this wouldn't happen (albeit at a different rate) if the product was free.
The other requirement is someone to implement it. In closed source if it looks like a good idea, it'll get done (sometimes), and usually fast. In open source, it might get done at some point if nobody forgets about it and then when someone can be found who wants to do it. This might be encouraged if the same feature is seen to be very useful elsewhere.
To sum up, open source may clone existing products, but closed source also clones existing ideas. Ideas, meanwhile, come from everyone. They just get implemented at different rates.
Innovation doesn't come from closed source or open source. It comes from people, and a good deal of those people aren't involved in the project concerned.
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I'd blame bad management myself, at least in part. There's low quality workmanship in every profession, and the managers are the ones who aren't checking up.
When we bring in consultants around here they usually don't come straight out of the phone book. Instead, we ask around, asking people and friends in other businesses of their opinions about consultants.
If a consultant did a bad job or made bad reccommendations, word gets around and we won't hire them. Reputation is everything to some businesses, and they'll pay for reputation through the nose.
If you want to build up a reliable, well paying customer base, don't worry so much about what others are doing. Just do a good job, don't rip people off, maybe and see if you can get some of your customers to reccommend you - especially in writing that you can flash around in front of other customers.
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Unless you want a drivers licence, that is. Photo ID on drivers licenses has been compulsory for a bit over a year now.
The photos are kept in a digital record in a database. I'm not sure whether it's held by the government or by a company contracted to the government. There are probably various privacy restrictions surrounding it, but I guess it comes down to how much you trust them.
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I can understand most slashdot computer/IT professionals and hobbyists not being aware of it, but I really did think that the Authors' Guild of all groups would be familiar with that massive, evil cartel of socialist spinoffs also known as publicly funded libraries.
Every day, millions of people visit the libraries of the world, reading and borrowing books without even paying a cent for them. Just think how much compensation the authors would miss out on through this cruel and unjustified practice. Libraries don't resell books once, they loan them out FOR FREE, and HUNDREDS OF TIMES. That's hundreds of people reading a book that has only ever been paid for once!
It's as if people think authors would rather have their work read than have their publishers make money from them... as if people think that literacy is more important than a few more cents for the author.
Honestly, what is this world coming to?
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I think the flip-side to that argument is that while DVD producers should be allowed to create zones and only create players that match those zones, other people should not be restricted from reverse engineering their format and making zone-free players.
Otherwise in a competitive race between zoned and un-zoned media, distributors are naturally more likely to go with the zoned option because it helps them keep more direct control over their media.
I think the only way an alternative zone-free format could succeed in direct competition is if and when there's some obvious commercial advantage for distributors not to zone their information. Even then, the new format would have to offer more, and be well supported.
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What some people have said so far looks really good. I'd like to add my own bit. (I haven't given this before so it coupd probably be worded better.)
Let's say you trust the government, the police, the IRS and social services, etc etc. For sake of argument, let's say they're not corrupt in any way and will not misuse the information they hold about you in any way whatsoever.
Given that you trust them and through some magic it's been proven that collected information won't be misused or abused, and it will stop the child molesters and terrorists and make the world safer and more prosperous for everyone.. why shouldn't they be allowed to do this?
The simple answer in my mind is What About Tommorrow?
The problem with any sort of legislation is that it's much easier to put in place than it is to remove. What is there to guarantee that 30 years from now, corrupt people won't get into social services and run their own child pornographer's ring, for example? What is there to guarantee that a corrupt police officer - who isn't even born yet - won't abuse her privilege of having access to information about everyone?
Exactly what information can be collected and everything it might be used for is up to the imagination. The point is that once in place, legislation is very hard to tear down. It seems to me that the lawmakers are making it for today, assuming they know the system today, but without putting due consideration into what could potentially happen tommorrow.
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There are lots of posts talking about how MBTI, the various descriptions and Jungian psychology in general are a lot like astrology, pigeonholing, etc. Psychology is not an objective science, and you have to take context into account whenever you're using it.
If you take it at face value then it mostly is, and a lot of people take take it at face value - employers included - which is why a lot of people will be disillusioned about it. There are some definitely incorrect perceptions though, so I'll try to outline some that I've noticed.
The linked site has the spelling wrong. It's actually spelt "myers-briggs", not "meyers-briggs". Actually I think they know because I saw this site about a year ago and they commented on it that they spelt it that way because myers-briggs.com was already taken.
The official myers-briggs test can ONLY be administered by a trained psychologist, for good reason. The main reason for this is already hilighted in several of the gripey comments posted in reply to this story. Either people misunderstand the results, people misunderstand the questions, people misunderstand the interpretation, or (most annoyingly) other people misunderstand all of the above. Even when it is administered properly you can bet people will start reading rubbish from the results at the first opportunity to get things wrong.
Most people probably got their first and (likely) only impression of MBTI from the Keirsey sorter (note the word "sorter"), or something like it. Keirsey is not a test and it's not supposed to be. It's a multi choice sorter intended to give people a pointer towards their likely personality type. It's not always correct though. This sorter is really the product of a guy who made it so he could sell more copies of his book. It's free and openly available for people to misunderstand, which is why it's so popular.
Type descriptions are absolutes. People have been complaining that they fit at least partly under every description, and this is no surprise. Personally though, I'm definitely much more similar to an INTP than an ESFJ... for whatever it's worth. It doesn't mean I can't or won't act like an ESFJ description under some circumstances. It also doesn't mean I can't be really good at a "typical ESFJ job", or the reverse... even though I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much as someone who relates closer.
MBTI is intended to describe how people act.. not why they act that way, or what's going on inside their head.
(easily most important): One of the most useful things about Jungian psychology is not to slot people into boxes, but to demonstrate that there are different types of people.
Before Myers and Briggs brought Jungian psychology out of the closet, the central view in psychology was that anyone could be wired into electrodes and people could be conditioned to any form wanted by electrocuting them. (or something metaphorically equivalent.)
Either can be argued depending on the context and circumstances. If nothing else, Jungian psychology has introduced an alternative viewpoint to be argued that people's personalities are hard-coded, and there are limits to how much you can be changed. (Consider this the next time you're accepted for the way you are outside of social norms instead of being thrown in a mental institution to be "cured".)
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Well personally I see it as a violation of trust. Cookies have other uses than just tracking just like there's more reasons to leave your door unlocked than to let strangers walk into your home.
For example, does the knowledge that I choose to read my email give anyone the right to send me lots of bulk, unsolicited email every day? Some people might argue yes, because I have the option of using filtering software or simply not reading it. I would argue no.
Can people steal my car because I left it unlocked? Can they place a hidden camera in my house because I left the window open?
If the answer is no, why should they have the right to put unsolicited cookies on my system because my browser is set up to allow it for other reasons? It goes beyond reasonable expectations of what the customer/victim is likely to want.
Reasonable expectations might be allowing someone to come onto your property so they can knock on your door. If they came onto your property to dump their garbage or knock your house over (even if you didn't have a security system to stop them), it would be far beyond reasonable expectations.
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It's already been established that it's going to be an option to turn this on. Hopefully Microsoft will let others create their own signatures and any IT department with any intelligence will be able to sign whatever software they want to use, as well as trust whatever other organisation they want.
For the Microsoft signing part of it, I'm wondering what they'll need before they put their name on someone's software. Will they need to view the source code to make sure it's not malicious?
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Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the main problem with MSIE was that Microsoft were embedding it in a very popular OS, and making it very difficult for average people not to use it.
Netscape isn't doing that. They're offering their product, giving people an option to install it. Netscape's running an optional service oriented business and providing it for free, like a lot of stuff on the net, and it's no surprise that they've made the presentation very commercialised.
Put simply, people (and companies) are more likely to be using Netscape because they chose to than because anyone thrust it in their face as if there was no alternative.
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And you would do what? Slap chains around their ankles? If you didn't get riots you'd get some quite demoralised and less effective workers. They should be (and hopefully are) trying to work out what's wrong with the working conditions that caused people to do that -- not slapping punishments on everyone, demoralising them even further.
What I'm trying to say is that if 160 people are breaking the rules, obviously the rules aren't designed well enough to accomodate people effectively. When rules are made too inflexible to fit people, they'll get broken and so there's not much point in having them anyway. Show a bit of respect by allocating some freedom for people and they'll usually surprise you.
The CIA is a special case and there would be some specific things that couldn't do, but it's in everyone's best interests that the people working there are enjoying what they do. For example, if they don't want unchecked s/w running on their network, perhaps they need to create a seperate intranet where employees can run unchecked s/w.
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One or two employees and I could understand an investigation like this.
CIA or not, if 160 employees decide to break the rules in this way, isn't it just a sign that their employers aren't providing them with the (legitimate) resources to do their job effectively?
They could restrict these people and not get the best out of them, or they could work out a compromise. Since a lot of people are going to be watching this and it'll be setting an example to big dumb executives everywhere, I hope a compromise is what happens.
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While I don't agree with releasing this type of information individually or collated, this quote from the article at least goes part of the way. It implies that the court believes individual privacy (such as asking for someone's specific records) is a separate matter.
In short, the father wasn't asking to see anyone's specific access records and he didn't need to. Going by the documented judge's finding, this probably worked in his favour.
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I use CSS. My only regret is that it's limited how much I can (safely) do with it because so far, genuine support for the actual standards is so crap and unpredictible. (This is mostly because Netscape 4 is hopelessly inadequate.)
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Sorry this post is slightly biased towards NZ'rs, but then so is the story.
First, go here and find out who your local Member of Parliament is. Yes, even if you didn't vote, they still represent you. If you're not sure what electorate you're in, look at one of the maps. (North Island or South Island or Maori Electorates)
Next, go here and find the email address and postal address of your local MP. Write them a polite email or letter stressing why you think that this legislation is bad. Try to summarise the main, interesing points in the first paragraph or two and then break into more detail. Use a spellchecker and if possible get someone to proof-read it. Wait for a couple of hours, re-read it, and if it still looks okay then send it.
Writing a letter is better, but since many IT people haven't written a normal letter in several years, email is better than nothing. Remember, you don't need a stamp when you're sending a leter to someone on Parliament. Just address it to "[Name], c/- Parliament Buildings, Wellington" where [Name] is the name of the MP you're writing to.
If you don't get a response from your local MP within a couple of days, resend it and apologise - suggesting that it might have gotten lost in the mail. If you still don't get a response, phone (04)471-9999 and tell them that their email relaying might not be working. Whatever you do, don't let it rest if nobody answers and don't be impolite.
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For the record, I don't think NASA can be completely blamed for the failed main antenna on Galileo.
Earlier this year I heard Bob Mitchell speaking about Galileo and Cassini - he's pretty much been at the top of both missions. One of the reasons that the main antenna failed to open was because it had to open in the first place, so it was a lot more complicated. (Ideally they would have built it fixed open, like Cassini is designed.)
It had to be redesigned and sent up with the antenna folded up so they could fit it in the space shuttle cargo bay. The reason it had to go up in the space shuttle was because of political interference where people wanted the shuttle to be used for some high profile missions to revive it a bit from the Challenger blowing up in 1986.
Cassini couldn't have the same problems because it was launched with the antenna open. Instead of the space shuttle, they just threw it on the back of one of these, which would have been preferable for Galileo aswell, since they can get much more effective propulsion to kick it off.
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It's not unexpected, but I find it a bit disappointing that MAPS is setting up a fund for the public to donate to their legal fees. Not the fact that they're asking, but the fact that they need to in the first place.
Where are all the major ISP's and other commercial entities who make use of the service, when it needs defending? After all, the big ones are at least in part responsible for why MAPS is getting so much attention from the spammers. We saw in this story that some major providers (think AOL and Hotmail) have been making effective use of MAPS in the past. Is there a reason why they shouldn't give back to it?
What would be the legal implications against any big companes who donated money to the MAPS legal fund? Simply being able to get someone like Microsoft (please no flames for that) to say that they trust and support how MAPS works, and back it up financially, could make a major difference to the way it's perceived.
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Possibly but it might end up with the same sort of problems that some ftp servers suffer from, where the most popular ones are just impossible to connect to. (The major ones are mirrored but people's home-maintained ones often aren't, and they're also slow meaning connections take longer.)
One thing that might help though is if the rings were interconnected, and clients were able to cache the files available on all the other clients in each ring. If there weren't specific rings, it might be all the clients within two hops, or something like that. Okay so it wouldn't be gnutella anymore, it would have to be a next generation protocol.
If anything, this could help cut down on the hammering that every gnutella client gets from incoming searches which are virtually all failures.
I also think it could be a good idea if clients were able to organise themselves into a tree or graph, based on the file categories and filenames that they have. If it was known in advance roughly where a certain file would be, the search could be limited to that part of the network.
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