Why did Apple distribute the old and buggy
BIND version 8 with their OS when version 9
was already out at the time they released?
I can almost understand about the old-line UNIX
houses who have thousands of customers stuck with
config files for the old version, but Apple didn't
have any of those.
Somebody please tell me that Macosix comes with
both versions, and that the default is BIND 9,
but they put 8 on there too for customers
upgrading from other systems who want to keep
the config files.
This could be really important if the carrier
lifetime really is long enough to get power out
of the cell without covering most of it with the
mesh of metal wires.
What the article didn't mention is that this
material could be the killer app for orbital
manufacturing. The value of the cells would
justify lofting the raw metals into space to
form into enormous panels in the open vacuum,
free of contaminants. Solar cells with 50%
efficiency would compete economically against
fossil fuels.
My advice is to skip high school, high school
curricula, and high school teachers. Go directly
to community college.
The teachers are better, the material is less
bowdlerized, and the other students have a better
attitude. Don't worry about "socialization" --
since the material is covered much more quickly
there's a lot more time left over for being with
people.
Don't those Washingtonians (or editors) know that
there's no such thing as the length of a coastline?
Coastlines are fractal: the closer you look,
the longer they get. It's one of the few really
fundamental mathematical discoveries of the last
century.
Assuming that Gcc doesn't target your platform
(otherwise you could just switch to Gcc) you
can get an excellent inlining preprocessor from
Comeau Computing (look it up on Google), at a
very reasonable price.
Their preprocessor happens also to be a complete
C++ compiler. You don't have to use the rest
of the C++ features. (You might, for example,
want to turn off exception handling.)
Any half-assed preprocessor that just folds
function bodies into line is likely to be much
worse than using macros. The worst possible
outcome is code that's in some weird private
language that only your weird private tools
understand. (Cf. Qt/KDE)
Remarkably, after all this time, he's still only partially clued. As might be expected when somebody was totally wrong and announces the fact, when he explains his new understanding there's little more reason to take him seriously than before.
From such little details as getting the names of the licenses wrong -- leaving the word GNU out of the title of his paper, and elaborating the LGPL as the "Library" GPL rather than its correct name, the Lesser GPL -- to totally missing the true competitive value of the GPL to businesses, as well as the very simple economic motivation for developers to participate, he still has a lot to learn.
If there's anything new or interesting here, I didn't find it. He's articulate, though, and evidently open to reason after he has been pummeled sufficiently, so he might even get it right on the third try. In any case he's no worse than ESR.
It's not just a good idea for engineers to ignore
patents. As I understand it, U.S. case law
effectively forbids you from reading patents
that affect your work.
Here's how it works: if you read a patent and
decide it doesn't apply, and then you get sued
and lose, your liability automatically triples
because you violated it flagrantly. If you
didn't read it, the violation was incidental.
Many big companies have policies forbidding
their engineering staff from reading patents,
for just that reason.
(Those of you who notice a similarity with
the Catholic notion of mortal and venal sins
may feel smug.)
The biggest change I'd like to see in most GNOME
program UIs is to eliminate the "Yes" and "No"
buttons in dialog boxes. These show up
everywhere, and you always have to study the
fine print to figure out which button means
what. If the buttons said something like "Keep"
and "Discard", or "Send" and "Keep Editing", it
would be immediately clear.
Likewise "OK" buttons: just
what am I okaying? A verb would be a much better
hint.
I was told that this was already required by the
UI guidelines, but if so it is certainly neither
prominent nor obeyed. I couldn't find any mention
of it there.
Among the programs most egregiously guilty
are Evolution and Gnumeric -- just hit the
go-away box in a newly-edited message or
worksheet.
We should have a class of UI violation
that automatically merits high severity in
bug reports. Uninformative button labels
should be in that list.
"Currently" semantically null
on
Buying Unix?
·
· Score: 1
Why is he "currently the sysadmin", and not just
"the sysadmin"? Is there a difference between
those?
I hereby pronounce a ban on the word "currently"
except where it really changes the meaning of the
sentence.
That coding standard has a phenomenal amount of bad advice. Some of it is outdated, some just
thoughtless. The omissions are as bad as the
mistakes. (Where is exception-handling policy?)
It's unfortunate, because there's lots of good advice there too, and an inexperienced programmer
can't tell which is which.
Unfortunately, the Happy Hacking keyboard, despite
its nice layout, is a membrane keyboard. For good
feel, you need individual keyswitches, and when I
asked PFU they said they would never offer a non-membrane version.
The nicest keyboards I know of in that line are
from Lexmark. Some laptops (e.g. Dell) have
keyboards with a very nice feel, and some
companies repackage laptop keyboards separately.
However, Dell laptop keyboards (which seem have
rubber-dome switches) are very, very unreliable.
In a way it's good that university students
experience monopolistic behavior directly in what
amounts to a laboratory environment. The arrogance
and rudeness that come naturally to monopolies
find full expression in universities.
There was no reason to cut him off at a time when
nobody would be around to restore his service;
that is just rude. There was no reason to cut
him off without sending him an e-mail, to give
him a chance to correct his usage first. These
are excellent examples of petty authority running
unchecked, as characteristic a feature of monopolies as of unrepresentative governments.
It's unfortunate that so many people (made
evident by the above postings) learn the wrong
lesson, and develop a toadying attitude toward
anyone who has managed to seize a little power.
The tendency to toadyism is an unfortunate
inheritance from ancestors who managed to
squeak out a little privilege at the expense of
general liberty.
The rule-of-thumb I know is that a refrigerator can
extract no more heat than three times its own
power rating. Add up the average power at peak
usage of all your equipment: (4KW?/rack * 3 racks)
and divide by three, then you need a 4KW?
refrigeration unit for ordinary circumstances.
This is just a hearing about a preliminary
injunction, nothing final. The questions
considered are not who's right or wrong, but
how much harm is being done leaving by leaving
matters alone until the case is over.
It's clear that allowing NuSphere to continue
shipping code they have been shipping for the
last seven months won't, by itself, do much more
harm, if any, so the GPL issue was left alone.
Trademarks are another matter -- the more and
longer they are abused, the greater the harm to
the owner.
When the case itself goes to court, the text of
the GPL will leave the judge little choice:
NuSphere's product really is a derived work, and
there is lots of case law about derived works,
even with software.
For some background, see my letter to LWN last year. (Scroll down
to the end. Incidentally, it appears I was
the first person to tell Monty about this feature
of the GPL.) Evidently it took this long to
establish that NuSphere just wouldn't figure
out where they stand without help from a judge.
Anybody who picks up this book should also read
"The Last Place on Earth". You will learn there,
in detail, why Scott's expedition was doomed from
the start. They would have died even in perfect weather.
Scott killed his crew in the worst way: he starved
them to death. More particularly, he killed them
with scurvy. Scurvy had been understood for a
century at the time of his expedition, so there
could be no excuse.
Even if he had brought fruit, they still would
have died, frozen. He didn't bother sealing his
fuel cans properly, so when he came back to them,
three quarters of the fuel was gone. The method
of sealing fuel cans for arctic conditions was
also well-known at the time, to anyone who cared
to know.
He brought horses to haul supply caches because
he couldn't be bothered to learn to handle dogs.
(They froze.)
He brought the first three snow tractors ever
built, and left behind the mechanic who could
have kept them working. He dropped one
of them through
the ice just from impatience. He marked his
supply caches poorly, so missed them on the way
back. He brought skis, but didn't even try them
until after he got there, and discarded them
barely tried. (Skis might have make it look
too easy.) That they died of scurvy was an
accidental choice; they might have died from any
number of idiocies.
Scott's failure was as much a British failure as a
personal one. British society at the time valued
pluck and endurance over everything, including
intelligence and care. Thorough preparation was
considered cheating; you had to plan on suffering
if you expected to be hailed as a hero.
Your men had to die to demonstrate suffering.
The British thought they were great because they
were good at suffering.
Scott remains a national disgrace; his
failure was an essentially British failure.
No mere weather report can change that.
It took Shackleton to teach the British a lesson
in true heroism. None of his men died for his
reputation.
... the way the economy operated (mercantilism) was quite different from the theory underlying more modern corporate power (capitalism). While reacting against monopoly has a long history in American and English thought, I would not place it among the central issues of the revolution. The revolution had more to do with the role of elites in relation to british authority.
I'm not very interested in labels; Modern
monopolists and monarchists are similarly
unappealing.
The "central issues" that drove the ultimate
outcome of the revolution -- and resulted in
the bulk of the Constitution -- were not
representative of what motivated most of its
participants. The delegates who negotiated it represented the interests of only a tiny fraction
of them.
The Bill of Rights better suggests the more
common concerns than the rest of the document.
By comparing the bias of the two fragments you
can deduce where the true "central concerns"
lay, further in the direction indicated by the
later fragment.
I added Marxism not to change the subject, but rather to add some complexity to your very simplistic argument.
I don't think the discussion benefits from
complexifying by crypto-religious political cant.
Whatever the academic arguments about trade
policy (which would stupefy us all by their
subtlety and erudition), it is a fact that trade
policy manipulation is (also) used by megacorporations to exercise political power.
Furthermore, the evidence shows that those
academic arguments which happen to reinforce
corporate preferences find more application (and
grant money).
It is your rant about globalization which I find indicative of oversimplistic thinking on the matter. I like globalization, and I see trade as the main way this will happen. Like it or not, I see free markets (avec corporations in all their glory) as the most reliable way we have come up with to improve the lot of the average person.
Trade liberalization is more often a convenient
excuse for eliminating inconvenient restrictions
on pollution and on harmful products. For example, anti-smoking public-health campaigns have
frequently had to be canceled just to prevent
retaliation by the U.S. on the "trade barriers"
excuse.
In evaluating claims of merit in trade barrier
reductions, it's essential to examine who wants
them and what they want them for. Barriers
against DDT, CFCs, and PCBs are all to the good.
Barriers against plutonium are essential to
continued life on Earth. Barriers to THC trade
are foolish but viciously defended by those
those most vocal about "free trade".
The median standard of living, worldwide and in
the U.S., has declined in recent decades, even
as the mean has risen. Trade liberalization, as
exercised, manifestly has not "improve[d] the lot
of the average person", despite all its apparent
potential to do so. The reasons are easy to see: those who design the changes bias them for their
masters' benefit, and the "average person" isn't
invited to participate.
History is long and postings are short,
so of course almost everything must be omitted
from any given posting.
The longer history of corporate monopolization in
the rest of the world is well-documented: the
government-granted East India, Dutch East Indies,
and Hudson Bay monopolies are known even to many Americans, despite the abysmal history education
available here. The American revolution was in
part a reaction to those -- recall the Boston Tea
Party in rebellion to a tax to help pay for the
East India company's military ventures.
It has been through collective agreement to abide
by the terms of the Constitution that we have had
some democratic representation, until quite recently. However, the Constitution allows for
itself to be overridden by treaties, so that has
lately been a favorite route to circumvent its
provisions (e.g. to override duly-legislated
pollution-control laws). Occasionally, more
direct means (such as packing the Supreme Court
with scofflaws) has been more convenient.
Trade unions were able to delay the
changes for some time, but have lost much of their power, and many of their achievements have been
reversed. They have shown themselves too easy to
subvert and corrupt.
Marxism has little to do with modern processes
of globalization, and has little to teach
opponents of it. The conflict is between citizens
and artificial legal constructs, not between
"classes". (I presume Marxism was mentioned mainly
to try to change the subject.)
Toadyism has been profitable throughout history.
The servants of corporate interests differ little
from servants of other forms of unrepresentative
authority. While they serve the enemy, they
mustn't be confused with the enemy. Toadies,
like lawyers, are replaceable.
Corporate power can be fought not by killing
corporate toadies, but only by enforcing laws that limit corporate power. Antitrust, campaign finance
reform, prison sentences for corporate criminals,
these are tools that could help.
However, we don't call them "robots". Instead of
metal parts, they use fleshy parts, and instead
of sharp claws, they enforce their will using
money and the laws it buys. In the U.S. it
traces back to 1883, when the Supreme Court
chose (without legislative authority) to extend
to corporations all the rights of a person.
In the '20s another court decreed that they
were not only persons, but "natural persons",
in response to laws passed after 1883 that
distinguished between the two. After that,
corporations got powerful enough to control the
Congress as well.
Globalization may be seen as an effort by these
corporations to free themselves of the remaining
pesky democratic institutions: treaties trump
the Constitution. That's what all the protests
are really about.
Think this through the next time you're stopped
waiting at a red light, with no cars visible in
any direction. How easy is it, really, to pull
the plug?
Here's what I sent to Bruce Schneier last
month, for his letters column.
If Microsoft's claimed change of policy about the security of their software is, in fact, a sham, we should see detectable consequences. As you noted in your news.com article, any actual change must result in a major slowdown in releases of new products and product features.
Before any such change (or lack of one) is evident, though, the first hint must be a change in their P.R. approach to discovered holes. Until now their spin has been that security holes just don't matter very much. They posted patches on their (indifferently maintained) site, but wouldn't do anything so expensive as recalling the faulty product from the distribution channel, or notifying affected customers, or offering refunds (never mind paying customers' expenses).
Now that security holes have been officially recognized, they can't be treated as merely cosmetic -- the equivalent of a Cracker Jack box with no toy -- but a real response is expensive. If the new security focus is a sham, expect to see more official denial. Most security holes will get only P.R. treatment, portrayed as "ordinary" bugs, or blamed on incompetent users, insufficient firewall protection, or "terrorist" hackers. There might be a quota, where no more than four holes per year may be treated as (expensively) real, while the rest are officially buried.
Their problem is that secure software isn't just software that has been audited for buffer overflows. Software is so complex that almost any fault can have mysterious consequences, any of which may (also) be a security hole. As the OpenBSD Project has explained for years, the only secure software is correct, reliable software. You don't get that by adding a security officer or auditor to each product team. It takes a complete overhaul of the software production process, and a complete turnaround in the attitudes of the entire engineering and engineering management staff. Without such a wholesale overhaul, the flow of bugs and (consequent) security holes will continue unabated, despite any management prohibition.
[...]
In the meantime, P.R. games are far cheaper, and arguably more effective. Is the problem really that Microsoft products are shabby and insecure, or that they are now perceived so? Everybody who would like to continue business-as-usual will say it's the latter. They will play up the effectiveness of MS's "responsiveness" to security holes, and pretend that "effective response" is a substitute for shipping reliable code to begin with. Reliable code, after all, doesn't generate fawning press, or indeed any press at all.
I saw a similar process in action, starkly, sixteen years ago. IBM and HP had both introduced their first PCs with internal 10-megabyte disk drives. The HPs cost a little more. IBM offered theirs with a "service contract" at about twice the price difference. Over the course of the next year *all* the IBM drives failed -- which, it turned out later, IBM had expected -- while HP's mostly survived. IBM got reams of favorable press about how good their service was, for replacing the drives on the spot (albeit only for customers who had bought the service contract!). IBM came away with a reputation for good customer service. HP got creamed.
In summary, if the new security policy is a sham, expect to see Microsoft engage in periodic, massively orchestrated "responses" to selected embarrassments, and to become much more reticent about the rest. Expect no change in their warranty disclaimers. Expect analyst reports proclaiming that MS products are now more secure than the competition. The effect will be a net decrease in the ability of their customers to maintain secure servers, yet if the P.R. campaign succeeds, most customers will perceive the "security problem" as solved, and continuing reports as stubbornly-persistent old news.
My ex-boss had one, in Palo Alto. (Our VP of Sales
was the son of the founder.) One of the great
things about electric cars (in some parts of
California anyway) is you can park them almost
anywhere, for as long as you want, and they won't
get ticketed.
My boss's name was Gumby, and his car was orange, so
we were careful never to call it Pokey.
Here's what I sent to Bruce Schneier, for his
letters column.
If Microsoft's claimed change of policy about the security of their
software is, in fact, a sham, we should see detectable consequences.
As you noted in your news.com article, any actual change must result
in a major slowdown in releases of new products and product features.
Before any such change (or lack of one) is evident, though, the first
hint must be a change in their P.R. approach to discovered holes.
Until now their spin has been that security holes just don't matter
very much. They posted patches on their (indifferently maintained)
site, but wouldn't do anything so expensive as recalling the faulty
product from the distribution channel, or notifying affected customers,
or offering refunds (never mind paying customers' expenses).
Now that security holes have been officially recognized, they can't
be treated as merely cosmetic -- the equivalent of a Cracker Jack box
with no toy -- but a real response is expensive. If the new security
focus is a sham, expect to see more official denial. Most security
holes will get only P.R. treatment, portrayed as "ordinary" bugs, or
blamed on incompetent users, insufficient firewall protection, or
"terrorist" hackers. There might be a quota, where no more than four
holes per year may be treated as (expensively) real, while the rest
are officially buried.
Their problem is that secure software isn't just software that has
been audited for buffer overflows. Software is so complex that almost
any fault can have mysterious consequences, any of which may (also)
be a security hole. As the OpenBSD Project has explained for years,
the only secure software is correct, reliable software. You don't
get that by adding a security officer or auditor to each product team.
It takes a complete overhaul of the software production process, and
a complete turnaround in the attitudes of the entire engineering and
engineering management staff. Without such a wholesale overhaul, the
flow of bugs and (consequent) security holes will continue unabated,
despite any management prohibition.
I sat next to a Microsoft coder (and sometime manager) on a flight
from Seattle recently. He explained that as long as a coder's bug
count was below some level, the bugs could be ignored, and the coder
could continue implementing new features. If the bug count crossed
the threshold, he would have to stop until it was brought back down
-- not to zero, just to the limit. This systematic tolerance for
faults of all kinds is why their software is so bad today, and it
won't change quickly. Nothing in the press release suggested that
they saw security as inextricably connected with reliability.
In the meantime, P.R. games are far cheaper, and arguably more
effective. Is the problem really that Microsoft products are shabby
and insecure, or that they are now perceived so? Everybody who would
like to continue business-as-usual will say it's the latter. They
will play up the effectiveness of MS's "responsiveness" to security
holes, and pretend that "effective response" is a substitute for
shipping reliable code to begin with. Reliable code, after all,
doesn't generate fawning press, or indeed any press at all.
I saw a similar process in action, starkly, sixteen years ago. IBM
and HP had both introduced their first PCs with internal 10-megabyte
disk drives. The HPs cost a little more. IBM offered theirs with
a "service contract" at about twice the price difference. Over the
course of the next year *all* the IBM drives failed -- which, it
turned out later, IBM had expected -- while HP's mostly survived.
IBM got reams of favorable press about how good their service was,
for replacing the drives on the spot (albeit only for customers who
had bought the service contract!). IBM came away with a reputation
for good customer service. HP got creamed.
In summary, if the new security policy is a sham, expect to see
Microsoft engage in periodic, massively orchestrated "responses"
to selected embarrassments, and to become much more reticent about
the rest. Expect no change in their warranty disclaimers. Expect
analyst reports proclaiming that MS products are now more secure
than the competition. The effect will be a net decrease in the
ability of their customers to maintain secure servers, yet if the
P.R. campaign succeeds, most customers will perceive the "security
problem" as solved, and continuing reports as stubbornly persistent
old news.
After the buildup comparing the list to Hilbert's,
I was disappointed to see how far from fundamental
many of the questions were. The elaborations
presuppose details of what are merely fashionable
postulates, rather than mysterious facts, about
the universe.
The questions seem directed more at justifying
big equipment expenditures than at taking on
analyses of the numerous physical anomalies we
already know about. Great advancements in the
last twelve decades -- electromagnetics, quantum
mechanics, the relativities -- arose from hard
thought about phenomena that were already
well-known, but contradicted received wisdom.
They generally have not come from further
measurements of already understood phenomena
but involving bigger numbers.
I'd much rather see a list of questions based on
well-known phenomena that contradict fashionable
theories, with the goal of replacing
the latter with something less arbitrary.
The Wallace & Gromit trilogy are the only videos
my two-year-old and I can both watch, and both
enjoy equally. She'll find new things to like
about them year after year.
How many things made today can you say that about?
(Not a rhetorical question: suggestions please!)
Slashdot Mirror
I can almost understand about the old-line UNIX houses who have thousands of customers stuck with config files for the old version, but Apple didn't have any of those.
Somebody please tell me that Macosix comes with both versions, and that the default is BIND 9, but they put 8 on there too for customers upgrading from other systems who want to keep the config files.
What the article didn't mention is that this material could be the killer app for orbital manufacturing. The value of the cells would justify lofting the raw metals into space to form into enormous panels in the open vacuum, free of contaminants. Solar cells with 50% efficiency would compete economically against fossil fuels.
The teachers are better, the material is less bowdlerized, and the other students have a better attitude. Don't worry about "socialization" -- since the material is covered much more quickly there's a lot more time left over for being with people.
2500 miles, my foot!
Their preprocessor happens also to be a complete C++ compiler. You don't have to use the rest of the C++ features. (You might, for example, want to turn off exception handling.)
Any half-assed preprocessor that just folds function bodies into line is likely to be much worse than using macros. The worst possible outcome is code that's in some weird private language that only your weird private tools understand. (Cf. Qt/KDE)
Remarkably, after all this time, he's still only partially clued. As might be expected when somebody was totally wrong and announces the fact, when he explains his new understanding there's little more reason to take him seriously than before.
From such little details as getting the names of the licenses wrong -- leaving the word GNU out of the title of his paper, and elaborating the LGPL as the "Library" GPL rather than its correct name, the Lesser GPL -- to totally missing the true competitive value of the GPL to businesses, as well as the very simple economic motivation for developers to participate, he still has a lot to learn.
If there's anything new or interesting here, I didn't find it. He's articulate, though, and evidently open to reason after he has been pummeled sufficiently, so he might even get it right on the third try. In any case he's no worse than ESR.
Here's how it works: if you read a patent and decide it doesn't apply, and then you get sued and lose, your liability automatically triples because you violated it flagrantly. If you didn't read it, the violation was incidental. Many big companies have policies forbidding their engineering staff from reading patents, for just that reason.
(Those of you who notice a similarity with the Catholic notion of mortal and venal sins may feel smug.)
Likewise "OK" buttons: just what am I okaying? A verb would be a much better hint.
I was told that this was already required by the UI guidelines, but if so it is certainly neither prominent nor obeyed. I couldn't find any mention of it there. Among the programs most egregiously guilty are Evolution and Gnumeric -- just hit the go-away box in a newly-edited message or worksheet.
We should have a class of UI violation that automatically merits high severity in bug reports. Uninformative button labels should be in that list.
I hereby pronounce a ban on the word "currently" except where it really changes the meaning of the sentence.
I have my own compendium of significant omissions at http://cantrip.org/coding-standard.html.
The nicest keyboards I know of in that line are from Lexmark. Some laptops (e.g. Dell) have keyboards with a very nice feel, and some companies repackage laptop keyboards separately. However, Dell laptop keyboards (which seem have rubber-dome switches) are very, very unreliable.
There was no reason to cut him off at a time when nobody would be around to restore his service; that is just rude. There was no reason to cut him off without sending him an e-mail, to give him a chance to correct his usage first. These are excellent examples of petty authority running unchecked, as characteristic a feature of monopolies as of unrepresentative governments.
It's unfortunate that so many people (made evident by the above postings) learn the wrong lesson, and develop a toadying attitude toward anyone who has managed to seize a little power. The tendency to toadyism is an unfortunate inheritance from ancestors who managed to squeak out a little privilege at the expense of general liberty.
The rule-of-thumb I know is that a refrigerator can extract no more heat than three times its own power rating. Add up the average power at peak usage of all your equipment: (4KW?/rack * 3 racks) and divide by three, then you need a 4KW? refrigeration unit for ordinary circumstances.
It's clear that allowing NuSphere to continue shipping code they have been shipping for the last seven months won't, by itself, do much more harm, if any, so the GPL issue was left alone.
Trademarks are another matter -- the more and longer they are abused, the greater the harm to the owner.
When the case itself goes to court, the text of the GPL will leave the judge little choice: NuSphere's product really is a derived work, and there is lots of case law about derived works, even with software.
For some background, see my letter to LWN last year. (Scroll down to the end. Incidentally, it appears I was the first person to tell Monty about this feature of the GPL.) Evidently it took this long to establish that NuSphere just wouldn't figure out where they stand without help from a judge.
Scott killed his crew in the worst way: he starved them to death. More particularly, he killed them with scurvy. Scurvy had been understood for a century at the time of his expedition, so there could be no excuse.
Even if he had brought fruit, they still would have died, frozen. He didn't bother sealing his fuel cans properly, so when he came back to them, three quarters of the fuel was gone. The method of sealing fuel cans for arctic conditions was also well-known at the time, to anyone who cared to know.
He brought horses to haul supply caches because he couldn't be bothered to learn to handle dogs. (They froze.) He brought the first three snow tractors ever built, and left behind the mechanic who could have kept them working. He dropped one of them through the ice just from impatience. He marked his supply caches poorly, so missed them on the way back. He brought skis, but didn't even try them until after he got there, and discarded them barely tried. (Skis might have make it look too easy.) That they died of scurvy was an accidental choice; they might have died from any number of idiocies.
Scott's failure was as much a British failure as a personal one. British society at the time valued pluck and endurance over everything, including intelligence and care. Thorough preparation was considered cheating; you had to plan on suffering if you expected to be hailed as a hero. Your men had to die to demonstrate suffering. The British thought they were great because they were good at suffering.
Scott remains a national disgrace; his failure was an essentially British failure. No mere weather report can change that. It took Shackleton to teach the British a lesson in true heroism. None of his men died for his reputation.
The "central issues" that drove the ultimate outcome of the revolution -- and resulted in the bulk of the Constitution -- were not representative of what motivated most of its participants. The delegates who negotiated it represented the interests of only a tiny fraction of them.
The Bill of Rights better suggests the more common concerns than the rest of the document. By comparing the bias of the two fragments you can deduce where the true "central concerns" lay, further in the direction indicated by the later fragment.
I don't think the discussion benefits from complexifying by crypto-religious political cant. Whatever the academic arguments about trade policy (which would stupefy us all by their subtlety and erudition), it is a fact that trade policy manipulation is (also) used by megacorporations to exercise political power. Furthermore, the evidence shows that those academic arguments which happen to reinforce corporate preferences find more application (and grant money). Trade liberalization is more often a convenient excuse for eliminating inconvenient restrictions on pollution and on harmful products. For example, anti-smoking public-health campaigns have frequently had to be canceled just to prevent retaliation by the U.S. on the "trade barriers" excuse.In evaluating claims of merit in trade barrier reductions, it's essential to examine who wants them and what they want them for. Barriers against DDT, CFCs, and PCBs are all to the good. Barriers against plutonium are essential to continued life on Earth. Barriers to THC trade are foolish but viciously defended by those those most vocal about "free trade".
The median standard of living, worldwide and in the U.S., has declined in recent decades, even as the mean has risen. Trade liberalization, as exercised, manifestly has not "improve[d] the lot of the average person", despite all its apparent potential to do so. The reasons are easy to see: those who design the changes bias them for their masters' benefit, and the "average person" isn't invited to participate.
The longer history of corporate monopolization in the rest of the world is well-documented: the government-granted East India, Dutch East Indies, and Hudson Bay monopolies are known even to many Americans, despite the abysmal history education available here. The American revolution was in part a reaction to those -- recall the Boston Tea Party in rebellion to a tax to help pay for the East India company's military ventures.
It has been through collective agreement to abide by the terms of the Constitution that we have had some democratic representation, until quite recently. However, the Constitution allows for itself to be overridden by treaties, so that has lately been a favorite route to circumvent its provisions (e.g. to override duly-legislated pollution-control laws). Occasionally, more direct means (such as packing the Supreme Court with scofflaws) has been more convenient.
Trade unions were able to delay the changes for some time, but have lost much of their power, and many of their achievements have been reversed. They have shown themselves too easy to subvert and corrupt.
Marxism has little to do with modern processes of globalization, and has little to teach opponents of it. The conflict is between citizens and artificial legal constructs, not between "classes". (I presume Marxism was mentioned mainly to try to change the subject.)
Toadyism has been profitable throughout history. The servants of corporate interests differ little from servants of other forms of unrepresentative authority. While they serve the enemy, they mustn't be confused with the enemy. Toadies, like lawyers, are replaceable.
Corporate power can be fought not by killing corporate toadies, but only by enforcing laws that limit corporate power. Antitrust, campaign finance reform, prison sentences for corporate criminals, these are tools that could help.
However, we don't call them "robots". Instead of metal parts, they use fleshy parts, and instead of sharp claws, they enforce their will using money and the laws it buys. In the U.S. it traces back to 1883, when the Supreme Court chose (without legislative authority) to extend to corporations all the rights of a person. In the '20s another court decreed that they were not only persons, but "natural persons", in response to laws passed after 1883 that distinguished between the two. After that, corporations got powerful enough to control the Congress as well.
Globalization may be seen as an effort by these corporations to free themselves of the remaining pesky democratic institutions: treaties trump the Constitution. That's what all the protests are really about.
Think this through the next time you're stopped waiting at a red light, with no cars visible in any direction. How easy is it, really, to pull the plug?
If Microsoft's claimed change of policy about the security of their software is, in fact, a sham, we should see detectable consequences. As you noted in your news.com article, any actual change must result in a major slowdown in releases of new products and product features.
Before any such change (or lack of one) is evident, though, the first hint must be a change in their P.R. approach to discovered holes. Until now their spin has been that security holes just don't matter very much. They posted patches on their (indifferently maintained) site, but wouldn't do anything so expensive as recalling the faulty product from the distribution channel, or notifying affected customers, or offering refunds (never mind paying customers' expenses).
Now that security holes have been officially recognized, they can't be treated as merely cosmetic -- the equivalent of a Cracker Jack box with no toy -- but a real response is expensive. If the new security focus is a sham, expect to see more official denial. Most security holes will get only P.R. treatment, portrayed as "ordinary" bugs, or blamed on incompetent users, insufficient firewall protection, or "terrorist" hackers. There might be a quota, where no more than four holes per year may be treated as (expensively) real, while the rest are officially buried.
Their problem is that secure software isn't just software that has been audited for buffer overflows. Software is so complex that almost any fault can have mysterious consequences, any of which may (also) be a security hole. As the OpenBSD Project has explained for years, the only secure software is correct, reliable software. You don't get that by adding a security officer or auditor to each product team. It takes a complete overhaul of the software production process, and a complete turnaround in the attitudes of the entire engineering and engineering management staff. Without such a wholesale overhaul, the flow of bugs and (consequent) security holes will continue unabated, despite any management prohibition.
[...]
In the meantime, P.R. games are far cheaper, and arguably more effective. Is the problem really that Microsoft products are shabby and insecure, or that they are now perceived so? Everybody who would like to continue business-as-usual will say it's the latter. They will play up the effectiveness of MS's "responsiveness" to security holes, and pretend that "effective response" is a substitute for shipping reliable code to begin with. Reliable code, after all, doesn't generate fawning press, or indeed any press at all.
I saw a similar process in action, starkly, sixteen years ago. IBM and HP had both introduced their first PCs with internal 10-megabyte disk drives. The HPs cost a little more. IBM offered theirs with a "service contract" at about twice the price difference. Over the course of the next year *all* the IBM drives failed -- which, it turned out later, IBM had expected -- while HP's mostly survived. IBM got reams of favorable press about how good their service was, for replacing the drives on the spot (albeit only for customers who had bought the service contract!). IBM came away with a reputation for good customer service. HP got creamed.
In summary, if the new security policy is a sham, expect to see Microsoft engage in periodic, massively orchestrated "responses" to selected embarrassments, and to become much more reticent about the rest. Expect no change in their warranty disclaimers. Expect analyst reports proclaiming that MS products are now more secure than the competition. The effect will be a net decrease in the ability of their customers to maintain secure servers, yet if the P.R. campaign succeeds, most customers will perceive the "security problem" as solved, and continuing reports as stubbornly-persistent old news.
My boss's name was Gumby, and his car was orange, so we were careful never to call it Pokey.
If Microsoft's claimed change of policy about the security of their software is, in fact, a sham, we should see detectable consequences. As you noted in your news.com article, any actual change must result in a major slowdown in releases of new products and product features.
Before any such change (or lack of one) is evident, though, the first hint must be a change in their P.R. approach to discovered holes. Until now their spin has been that security holes just don't matter very much. They posted patches on their (indifferently maintained) site, but wouldn't do anything so expensive as recalling the faulty product from the distribution channel, or notifying affected customers, or offering refunds (never mind paying customers' expenses).
Now that security holes have been officially recognized, they can't be treated as merely cosmetic -- the equivalent of a Cracker Jack box with no toy -- but a real response is expensive. If the new security focus is a sham, expect to see more official denial. Most security holes will get only P.R. treatment, portrayed as "ordinary" bugs, or blamed on incompetent users, insufficient firewall protection, or "terrorist" hackers. There might be a quota, where no more than four holes per year may be treated as (expensively) real, while the rest are officially buried.
Their problem is that secure software isn't just software that has been audited for buffer overflows. Software is so complex that almost any fault can have mysterious consequences, any of which may (also) be a security hole. As the OpenBSD Project has explained for years, the only secure software is correct, reliable software. You don't get that by adding a security officer or auditor to each product team. It takes a complete overhaul of the software production process, and a complete turnaround in the attitudes of the entire engineering and engineering management staff. Without such a wholesale overhaul, the flow of bugs and (consequent) security holes will continue unabated, despite any management prohibition.
I sat next to a Microsoft coder (and sometime manager) on a flight from Seattle recently. He explained that as long as a coder's bug count was below some level, the bugs could be ignored, and the coder could continue implementing new features. If the bug count crossed the threshold, he would have to stop until it was brought back down -- not to zero, just to the limit. This systematic tolerance for faults of all kinds is why their software is so bad today, and it won't change quickly. Nothing in the press release suggested that they saw security as inextricably connected with reliability.
In the meantime, P.R. games are far cheaper, and arguably more effective. Is the problem really that Microsoft products are shabby and insecure, or that they are now perceived so? Everybody who would like to continue business-as-usual will say it's the latter. They will play up the effectiveness of MS's "responsiveness" to security holes, and pretend that "effective response" is a substitute for shipping reliable code to begin with. Reliable code, after all, doesn't generate fawning press, or indeed any press at all.
I saw a similar process in action, starkly, sixteen years ago. IBM and HP had both introduced their first PCs with internal 10-megabyte disk drives. The HPs cost a little more. IBM offered theirs with a "service contract" at about twice the price difference. Over the course of the next year *all* the IBM drives failed -- which, it turned out later, IBM had expected -- while HP's mostly survived. IBM got reams of favorable press about how good their service was, for replacing the drives on the spot (albeit only for customers who had bought the service contract!). IBM came away with a reputation for good customer service. HP got creamed.
In summary, if the new security policy is a sham, expect to see Microsoft engage in periodic, massively orchestrated "responses" to selected embarrassments, and to become much more reticent about the rest. Expect no change in their warranty disclaimers. Expect analyst reports proclaiming that MS products are now more secure than the competition. The effect will be a net decrease in the ability of their customers to maintain secure servers, yet if the P.R. campaign succeeds, most customers will perceive the "security problem" as solved, and continuing reports as stubbornly persistent old news.
The questions seem directed more at justifying big equipment expenditures than at taking on analyses of the numerous physical anomalies we already know about. Great advancements in the last twelve decades -- electromagnetics, quantum mechanics, the relativities -- arose from hard thought about phenomena that were already well-known, but contradicted received wisdom. They generally have not come from further measurements of already understood phenomena but involving bigger numbers.
I'd much rather see a list of questions based on well-known phenomena that contradict fashionable theories, with the goal of replacing the latter with something less arbitrary.
How many things made today can you say that about? (Not a rhetorical question: suggestions please!)