Since France wishes to set the encourage censorship, I say the only real solution is to censor France completely. (I know this is a childish rant, but bear with me)
Before French citizens can access anything on the internet, they must first be licensed by their government and then the site they are going to visit must also approve of a French visitor coming to see the site's content.
I truly understand the very logical reasoning behind France's objection to auctioning off Hate paraphenalia, but I feel a bit more secure knowing it is occuring in the open where this behavior can be noted and used as an example than hidden. Because you know that moment it is outlawed at least three sites will pop up (members.tripod.com/naziauction) to fill the demand. What's worse is these sites will operate without the watchful eye of ADL or other HateWatch groups.
Welcome to the global economy France. You either play along or become extinct.
I hate to put a definitive statement out that I can't weasel away from when I am proven wrong, but I don't see this flying very far. My company loathes contractual obligations that go beyond three years. The idea of being tied to a piece of software would scare the living daylights out of our management.
Who I see this working for is the giant Borgesque corporations who don't want to worry about rolling out upgrades. These type of corporations don't live and die by their IT budget like middle and small sized companies do, so they just add the 'subscription fee' to their budget and life goes on.
But seeing that steady income really won't amount to too much compared to the middle-sized company market, I see this as a service that gets tucked away somewhere and is barely used (sort of like leasing a phone from the phone company, you can do it, but why would you?)
I don't care one way or the other, as I am an avid wordpad user. If I need nifty features, I can pop into Kinko's with my.txt file and do the whiz-bang on it and print. Otherwise, it isn't a big deal.
I've used StarOffice for a bit, but I really didn't like it. Just a bit too cumbersome, but I like the concept.
If users could vote, we'd have the most bloated software known to mankind. A majority of the users will always want the Swiss Army knife over the large set of quality tools.
This ties in to the dilemma between developers and marketers. Marketers don't understand why your Word Processor shouldn't also be your email client, so when a user suggests it, the Marketers run back to the developers with this brilliant new idea. At least in current models, the developers have a chance to nix the idea. In a model where the user dictates completely . . . we have programs that crash constently. Oh wait. . . we do already.
I've never worked in a Code Shop so I cannot speak to the methodology. I am not advocating pure assembly line mentality. I was only stating that the assembly line is the Authoritarian's idea of an ideal.
Marx even commented, similar to your comment, that a worker caught in the assembly line mentality soon becomes disconnected from the actually work being done. If it is the worker's job to code the drivers for the HP printer set and that is all the worker does, the first few will be perfect, the last few will suck.
Automobile manufacturers realized this and now cross-train their workers to do several jobs. The ideal for the best built product is to have one craftsman work on it from start to finish. But rarely can the price of the product match the cost of making it. The solution in those cases is to create teams. The team methodology of development, I believe, is the best model for software creation.
The team can divide the labor within the team as it sees fit, but the directive of action comes from outside the team. This goes to your Effective argument. Within the military, this effictiveness can be seen with A-Team's (not the show, but the covert behind enemy line squads). They are given a mission and then they decide how to accomplish it.
It isn't democracy in the pure sense, but makes sure the overall goals are being accomplished while giving the maximum freedom to the worker. Whether or not the team has a 'leader' is up to the team, but at the end of the day, the work needs to be done.
This isn't anything new (look up anarcho-sydicalism), there are cooperatives now and ususally they outperform corporations, and their employees are a hell of a lot happier.
Could you offer some examples of these cooperatives that are outperforming other corporations? I look at the Fortune 500 and feel pretty confident none of them are cooperative work environments.
As a 'right-sized' business, as discussed in the latest issue of the Utne Reader, maybe a cooperative will work. But I don't think it would ever be considered an unqualified success. The 'democracy' of the marketplace is supposed to come in through the stock market. Which, we all know has nothing to do with democracy but the aforementioned plutocracy.
The American bashing, I believe, is unwarranted. Americans are idealistic about their(our) government because it does work and has brought us from a piss-poor ragatag collection of seperate interests to _the_ dominant world power. Now, all this may crumble (history tells us all empires fall) but what has brought us to this point is our idealism that we have a superior form of government, and political philosophers tend to agree that liberal democracies are the best way to run governments as it does strip out the tyranny of the few and the tyranny of the masses.
There seems to be a fascinating turn in literature. I recall a play that is currently being done at FermiLab about two physicists falling in love using the Uncertainty Principle to help tell the story.
IMO, science is making a final transition in the mind of society from vocation to art. This book looks as though it would appease a wide variety of readers.
The only reason democracy is around is to avoid a government that is tyrannical, but democracy doesn't make the trains run on time. Democracy is woofully inefficient, relying upon a method of gathering the will of the majority and translating that will into action.
In a business, efficiency saves money, produces more, and earns more. While the end result is a dehumanizing assembly line which is the most efficient method, it also is the most authoritarian with each worker given a specific duty.
Most corporations do include an element of democracy. It is called market surveys. Taking the governance philosophy of democracy and applying it to business is a recipe for a very flat bland business. That is one of the effects of democracy, it chops off the extremes. This is good when the extremes are the hyper-negative, but bad when the other extreme is genius.
Some real considerations that should be made are in internal authority structures. We are locked into a hierarchical-pyramid authority structure. I'd like to see some experiments in other models.
I've never understood this. With the amount of information that flows through Slashdot, with the number of changes that occur within the Tech world, I don't see a problem with dealing with the same article multiple times over so long as sufficient time has passed between reposts (i.e. at least 4 months).
Rehashing articles in light of new information is normally a good thing. Perhaps it should be considered a different category though, so those people who only want the newest and coolest can block it.
This is a well thought out and reasoned commentary and if I had a mod point, I'd certainly give it to this post.
You are absolutely right -- the problem comes from the style of game and how you know if you are doing well. Ultima Online begged for cheaters. Only a few cave-dweller types have the time to play the many-many hours to be considered good. But cheating creates that shortcut.
The real way to eliminate cheating is to make cheating pointless. You'll still get people who will do it, but if the effort to do it doesn't reap great benefit, who would do it except the few who are doing it just to see if they can (which, IMO, is a good enough reason).
The ways to make cheating pointless is turn the goals away from kill for reward to more intangibles. Instead of randomly spawning rare items, why not randomly spawning rare quests - but a lot of them.
Also, start the characters out powerful. This almost immediately takes away that feeling of having to become faster, stronger, smarter and lets the player focus on puzzles and interaction. I personally hate spending the first five hours of a game scared of everything and everyone.
There are other sociological reasons why people cheat, but developing stories that undercut kill/reward behavior and encourages interaction would be a prime starting point.
You raise some very good points. The childcare issue being prime. Many people I work with beg, borrow, and steal to leave just five minutes early to be able to pick their child up on time. If they are late they have to pay something like $5/minute.
Flex time, even a modicum of flex time (come in between 8:00 and 9:00 and work 8 hours with or without lunch) would save these folks a lot of money.
or even worse, such as in my case. I never take real vacation so I have weeks upon weeks stored up. Thus anytime I have a personal errand 'updating my driver's licences, dentist appointment) anything everyone else usually does with half a day off, I take the full day. Flex Time would eliminate my doing that. I only do it because I hate having to track hours on my timesheet.
I'll post as me and support your statement, while I won't agree with the spurious statistic, I'll restate it as most of the problems a user encounters is user error. I've been on both sides of this issue, working a IS help desk and needing service support.
A vast majority of my calls are regarding an error caused by the user. But, I see it as part of my job as to help the user clear up the error and not do it again in the future.
I've made calls into service support because I was *certain* they were screwing up. I even had a list of things they should probably check. When the Tier One support started walking me through the steps to diagnose the problem I was thinking, 'schmuck, I need to get to a real tech', until the T1 guy in his checklist had me check my DNS where I had transposed numbers. I was the idiot. Now, I applaud the service I got because they were set up to help me locate and fix the errors I caused.
All companies that service customers need to realize this and not dump it back in the customers lap. When I do something stupid to my car, my mechanic doesn't shake his head and say 'it is something you did, it isn't my responsibility'.
It seems to me it is becoming more and more common for tech writers to proclaim the death of one thing or another, even when it isn't true. Content, the web, desktop computers, and mp3's have all at one time or another said to have died, yet as far as I can tell, all are still doing quite well.
P2P has just scratched the surface. To say it is dead before it even gets out of the starting gate is a level of eagerness that surpasses morbidity.
There are constraining factors on p2p, but these will actually fade away as more people get broadband. Sharing will become more prevalent when it is made easy and has an obvious level of security (like Napster, where you choose which folder other's get access to). Also, as soon as it is decided what can and cannot be shared, that will open things up. I know I get a bit leary when I see people downloading my Juice Newton tunes, wondering if it is actually Juice's lawyers gearing up to sue me.
P2P may not be the next killer app, but it will become a mainstay of the internet like ftp. So let's stop paying attention to doomsayers who are just trying to be seen as prophets of the internet through Kassandra-like proclamations.
I fully agree with this sentiment. My company has had a laptop stolen from an exec who was working out of our parent company's office. He left it on a desk to go to lunch and, surprise, it was gone when he came back. After he alerted us to this fact, we spent days going around on 'why' it shouldn't have been stolen (e.g. it's our parent company, you'd expect some level of security) but the final conclusion was it wouldn't have been stolen if he would have taken some simple precautions.
Likewise, the laptop had some sensitive information on it. The police and others feel it wasn't a theft to get the info, but a theft to get the laptop. But, the idiot, hadn't ever bothered to back up the information to the network when he was in the office. His 'defense' was he was never told to do it. If he were a 22-year-old man on his first job, that may fly, but he has been an executive in the industry for several years and clearly should know better.
That is when we hit him with the statistics of harddrive failure on laptops. The bottom line is someone like him shouldn't be using equipment like this.
Another executive had left his palm pilot on the roof of his car. He lost all his contact data because he never bothered to sync it.
The best way to prevent sensitive data from falling in the wrong hands is to make sure it can't be accessed by anyone who doesn't need it, and everyone in the company has gone through adequate training. This last one is a key. Some people just don't know how to secure data, let alone apply encryption to it. Sadly most executives don't feel the need to learn.
The stated purpose of this first application of the engine is for a car running in the city. From the bbc article, it looks as if it may be used to replace the SABTA fleet of mini-buses that used to (I'm not sure if they still do) shuttle people from Soweto to Johannesburg.
I'm sure for other applications, i.e. pulling trailers, long commutes, and rural driving other car designs would be developed with an appropriate shift in effectiveness of the engine. I can't imagine these things replacing all gas engines, but as one who lives in Chicago, I would love to get rid of all the gas burners that are used just to drive around downtown.
In trying to prevent a wrong, we cannot be guilty of perpetrating and equal or greater wrong. I support any legal effort to prosecute those who victimize others in any fashion.
But this process is not aided by passing blanket laws that infringe on freedom of speech.
AOL is one of the largest vehicles for child porn, maybe under the Napster prosecutorial line of legal action, AOL should be shut down completely.
When I was young, my parents would take me to the polling place with them. My aunt was an election judge and I loved being in the community center with all our neighbors. Usually two or three older men, 'grandpa age', would be sitting on the steps outside smoking talking about the election.
Of course this was in rural Montana where a weird sort of conservative Democratic belief system exists so I grew up with some very odd concepts on the duties of the government. But what really came out of these experiences, whether it was a Presidential election or school bond levy, was the sense of duty, patriotism, and self-satisfaction that came from participation in the process of citizens voting.
I was so enamored by this process that I went on to get a degree in Political Science and a degree in Philosophy. What came from my education is an amazingly simple yet powerful concept called legitimacy. Every governmental structure, from the most horrific fascist institution to the most benign club, derives its power from the consent of the people. This consent can be coerced or tricked out of the people (think 'Divine Right of Kings' or propaganda) but without the support of the people, the government is really just a few people claiming they have the right to make laws.
The United States derives its legitimacy primarily through the fact no significantly sized group has come to question the basic framework of the government since the Civil War. And why should anyone? Our system of government is grounded in very sound philosophical and political principles. Except one thing. George Washington in his farewell address, realized that the one thing that would prevent the government from working effectively is factions and parties. Yet, everyone ignored his warnings, and we have now been effectively brainwashed in believing we need a party structure to have our government.
Party's have prevented many 'good' candidates from being elected. Some states allow a voter to push on button that will select all the candidates of one political party or the other. I am not going to blame political parties for our present condition, but by the mere fact that all my political beliefs are spread between the two major parties makes me feel alienated from the process. How can I sign up to be a Republican and help map several issues that I strongly support within the Republican platform when I will then also be supporting with my donations, planks that I find morally and personally offensive? The same holds true for the Democrats.
So I am caught, trying to choose the person over the party, applying contributions (this is the first year I contributed money to a campaign - Bradley's...money well spent - not) to the person I think will do the best job, yet, even on that level as an individual, I am ineffective.
And oddly enough, as a single 29-year-old white male living in Chicago with a centrist-right leaning political viewpoint, neither candidate wants my vote. Let me rephrase that, both candidates expect my vote, but won't alter their positions to get it. All of this makes me feel like if I do vote, I am legitimizing a system that I increasingly find hollow. The people I want to be able to choose between can't make it through the primary system (Tsongas in 92, Bradley and McCain in 2000) even if I would have actively campaigned because the primaries are done state by state and without party money backing them, if a candidate loses in one or two of the first states, the level of donations decrease to a point that to continue running would be budgetary suicide. Thus, a small percentage of the population who votes in the primaries actual decide who the Presidential candidates will be. This is just another way in which political parties actually strip options and choice away from the voters.
Obviously, I can go on for a long time on this subject. I even can present, once again my call for a national primary to pinpoint the top four candidates and a public-funded run off election using one of the alternate vote tally systems that guarantees a clear MAJORITY, not plurality support for one candidate, but it is moot. These changes cannot even be considered within Congress as it would require a Continental Congress III to make this alterations, and even I, as disgruntled as I am with the system, do not want to open our Constitution up to the crack pot fundamentalists and hippie hyper-socialists.
So I use my one vote to cast a vote against the system by a. not voting (1992) b)voting for a third party (1994-Perot) and c)voting for the person least likely to support prayer in school, least likely to support a pro-lifer judge on the Supreme Court, most likely to support constructive internationalism through current political structures (G7, IMF, World Bank, UN, NATO), likely to apply some common sense to the concept of the rights of gun owners, and who has a chance to actually win (2000-Gore) while voting for Republicans for Congress to keep him in check.
I say it is time for a Continental Congress part 3, with the only thing on the table able to be discussed is the electoral system. Our system has served us well for 200+ years, but it is time to take another critical look at it and let it be adapted to our current situation. The reason we only want the electoral system on the table is we don't want the Continental Congress being hijacked by extremists.
Contradictions Bush makes that people don't catch on to, or simply don't care.
I made an earlier statement that I am voting to keep Bush out of the Oval Office. I wonder how many people are voting to keep Gore out of the oval office. Is there anyone who truly stands behind one of these candidates and would make a high stakes gamble in regarding either of them?
Who would tie their very life to whether or not either of these candidates will be considered a 'Great President' as decided in four years by a public opinion poll?
Can the ballot box be Slashdotted?
on
Should You Vote?
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Too bad the international flavor of Slashdot coupled with the obvious diversity here prevents us from slashdotting the ballot box.
I am one of the people who actively fights against the concept of civic republicanism (has nothing to do with the party), essentially the idea it is the citizen's duty to vote and participate in the governmental process. What this viewpoint fails to take into consideration is our system doesn't allow a way for the citizen to alter the actual process. When turnout to vote falls below 50% of the eligible voters, that is a clear sign that most of the people want a change in the process.
I am one of those people who has consistently voted for third parties or chosen not to vote. But this year there happens to be two very large considerations. One - the Supreme Court may be losing up to 3 judges that will have to be replaced. While I'm not keen on 'legislation from the bench' I am very very interested in making sure abortion does not become illegal. It is more important for us to work on the social factors that create teen pregnancy than take away this very important medical procedure. I'll let the politicians pound out the details of parental consent and such, that isn't that important in the long run. But securing abortion as a legal medical operation is tremendously important.
The second important issue for me happens to be foreign policy. I understand that most American's couldn't care less about foreign policy unless there is a war. The American President, especially in this post-cold war era, needs to be able to perform Shuttle Diplomacy, going from one group to another to bring two opposing sides together on key issues. This requires a sharp mind and cannot be left to a skilled advisor in many cases because it is the power of the POTUS that makes these things happen. I cannot see Bush, a man who can cause an international incident in a debate, being able to carry out the subtle and delicate work of shuttle diplomacy. This is one area, that of all the candidates, I think Gore will be quite successful -- more successful than Reagan or Clinton. Reagan barely carried out shuttle diplomacy, abandoning Nixon's lead on the matter, perferring to be a cold warrior, but when he did do it, it was impressive.
Since this is more about keeping Bush out of the oval office than putting Gore in, my vote has to be strategically used to do the most damage to Bush, meaning I have to vote for Gore and give up my pursuit of supporting a third party. Besides, this year was a horrible election year for 3rd parties.
And what of Bush's missing year of military service?
Let's face it, we are stuck with a bunch of losers. And those people who want to support Nader, you'd better tack a real close look at his Tech Policies and how he wishes to handle foreign affairs.
I'm voting Gore and voting for the most curmudgeony Senator I can and the most liberal representative I can to make sure if either Bush or Gore get elected, they'll face a Congress that won't put up with any of their tripe.
What good will this be when it accidently bounces into a crevasse? I appreciate the bounding mode of transportation, and once again we can look to the insect world on the best ways to accomplish this, but if there isn't any control then what is the purpose? Movement for the sake of motion is wasteful. Movement to get to a specific different area (over that rock, 20 feet to the right, etc.) is meaningful.
Slashdot Mirror
Before French citizens can access anything on the internet, they must first be licensed by their government and then the site they are going to visit must also approve of a French visitor coming to see the site's content.
I truly understand the very logical reasoning behind France's objection to auctioning off Hate paraphenalia, but I feel a bit more secure knowing it is occuring in the open where this behavior can be noted and used as an example than hidden. Because you know that moment it is outlawed at least three sites will pop up (members.tripod.com/naziauction) to fill the demand. What's worse is these sites will operate without the watchful eye of ADL or other HateWatch groups.
Welcome to the global economy France. You either play along or become extinct.
Who I see this working for is the giant Borgesque corporations who don't want to worry about rolling out upgrades. These type of corporations don't live and die by their IT budget like middle and small sized companies do, so they just add the 'subscription fee' to their budget and life goes on.
But seeing that steady income really won't amount to too much compared to the middle-sized company market, I see this as a service that gets tucked away somewhere and is barely used (sort of like leasing a phone from the phone company, you can do it, but why would you?)
I don't care one way or the other, as I am an avid wordpad user. If I need nifty features, I can pop into Kinko's with my .txt file and do the whiz-bang on it and print. Otherwise, it isn't a big deal.
I've used StarOffice for a bit, but I really didn't like it. Just a bit too cumbersome, but I like the concept.
This ties in to the dilemma between developers and marketers. Marketers don't understand why your Word Processor shouldn't also be your email client, so when a user suggests it, the Marketers run back to the developers with this brilliant new idea. At least in current models, the developers have a chance to nix the idea. In a model where the user dictates completely . . . we have programs that crash constently. Oh wait. . . we do already.
Marx even commented, similar to your comment, that a worker caught in the assembly line mentality soon becomes disconnected from the actually work being done. If it is the worker's job to code the drivers for the HP printer set and that is all the worker does, the first few will be perfect, the last few will suck.
Automobile manufacturers realized this and now cross-train their workers to do several jobs. The ideal for the best built product is to have one craftsman work on it from start to finish. But rarely can the price of the product match the cost of making it. The solution in those cases is to create teams. The team methodology of development, I believe, is the best model for software creation.
The team can divide the labor within the team as it sees fit, but the directive of action comes from outside the team. This goes to your Effective argument. Within the military, this effictiveness can be seen with A-Team's (not the show, but the covert behind enemy line squads). They are given a mission and then they decide how to accomplish it.
It isn't democracy in the pure sense, but makes sure the overall goals are being accomplished while giving the maximum freedom to the worker. Whether or not the team has a 'leader' is up to the team, but at the end of the day, the work needs to be done.
As a 'right-sized' business, as discussed in the latest issue of the Utne Reader, maybe a cooperative will work. But I don't think it would ever be considered an unqualified success. The 'democracy' of the marketplace is supposed to come in through the stock market. Which, we all know has nothing to do with democracy but the aforementioned plutocracy.
The American bashing, I believe, is unwarranted. Americans are idealistic about their(our) government because it does work and has brought us from a piss-poor ragatag collection of seperate interests to _the_ dominant world power. Now, all this may crumble (history tells us all empires fall) but what has brought us to this point is our idealism that we have a superior form of government, and political philosophers tend to agree that liberal democracies are the best way to run governments as it does strip out the tyranny of the few and the tyranny of the masses.
IMO, science is making a final transition in the mind of society from vocation to art. This book looks as though it would appease a wide variety of readers.
In a business, efficiency saves money, produces more, and earns more. While the end result is a dehumanizing assembly line which is the most efficient method, it also is the most authoritarian with each worker given a specific duty.
Most corporations do include an element of democracy. It is called market surveys. Taking the governance philosophy of democracy and applying it to business is a recipe for a very flat bland business. That is one of the effects of democracy, it chops off the extremes. This is good when the extremes are the hyper-negative, but bad when the other extreme is genius.
Some real considerations that should be made are in internal authority structures. We are locked into a hierarchical-pyramid authority structure. I'd like to see some experiments in other models.
Rehashing articles in light of new information is normally a good thing. Perhaps it should be considered a different category though, so those people who only want the newest and coolest can block it.
This is a well thought out and reasoned commentary and if I had a mod point, I'd certainly give it to this post. You are absolutely right -- the problem comes from the style of game and how you know if you are doing well. Ultima Online begged for cheaters. Only a few cave-dweller types have the time to play the many-many hours to be considered good. But cheating creates that shortcut. The real way to eliminate cheating is to make cheating pointless. You'll still get people who will do it, but if the effort to do it doesn't reap great benefit, who would do it except the few who are doing it just to see if they can (which, IMO, is a good enough reason). The ways to make cheating pointless is turn the goals away from kill for reward to more intangibles. Instead of randomly spawning rare items, why not randomly spawning rare quests - but a lot of them. Also, start the characters out powerful. This almost immediately takes away that feeling of having to become faster, stronger, smarter and lets the player focus on puzzles and interaction. I personally hate spending the first five hours of a game scared of everything and everyone. There are other sociological reasons why people cheat, but developing stories that undercut kill/reward behavior and encourages interaction would be a prime starting point.
You raise some very good points. The childcare issue being prime. Many people I work with beg, borrow, and steal to leave just five minutes early to be able to pick their child up on time. If they are late they have to pay something like $5/minute. Flex time, even a modicum of flex time (come in between 8:00 and 9:00 and work 8 hours with or without lunch) would save these folks a lot of money.
or even worse, such as in my case. I never take real vacation so I have weeks upon weeks stored up. Thus anytime I have a personal errand 'updating my driver's licences, dentist appointment) anything everyone else usually does with half a day off, I take the full day. Flex Time would eliminate my doing that. I only do it because I hate having to track hours on my timesheet.
A vast majority of my calls are regarding an error caused by the user. But, I see it as part of my job as to help the user clear up the error and not do it again in the future.
I've made calls into service support because I was *certain* they were screwing up. I even had a list of things they should probably check. When the Tier One support started walking me through the steps to diagnose the problem I was thinking, 'schmuck, I need to get to a real tech', until the T1 guy in his checklist had me check my DNS where I had transposed numbers. I was the idiot. Now, I applaud the service I got because they were set up to help me locate and fix the errors I caused.
All companies that service customers need to realize this and not dump it back in the customers lap. When I do something stupid to my car, my mechanic doesn't shake his head and say 'it is something you did, it isn't my responsibility'.
P2P has just scratched the surface. To say it is dead before it even gets out of the starting gate is a level of eagerness that surpasses morbidity.
There are constraining factors on p2p, but these will actually fade away as more people get broadband. Sharing will become more prevalent when it is made easy and has an obvious level of security (like Napster, where you choose which folder other's get access to). Also, as soon as it is decided what can and cannot be shared, that will open things up. I know I get a bit leary when I see people downloading my Juice Newton tunes, wondering if it is actually Juice's lawyers gearing up to sue me.
P2P may not be the next killer app, but it will become a mainstay of the internet like ftp. So let's stop paying attention to doomsayers who are just trying to be seen as prophets of the internet through Kassandra-like proclamations.
My point in saying that is it would *almost* be excusable for a new employee to do something like that, to make stupid assumptions about security.
I fully agree with this sentiment. My company has had a laptop stolen from an exec who was working out of our parent company's office. He left it on a desk to go to lunch and, surprise, it was gone when he came back. After he alerted us to this fact, we spent days going around on 'why' it shouldn't have been stolen (e.g. it's our parent company, you'd expect some level of security) but the final conclusion was it wouldn't have been stolen if he would have taken some simple precautions.
Likewise, the laptop had some sensitive information on it. The police and others feel it wasn't a theft to get the info, but a theft to get the laptop. But, the idiot, hadn't ever bothered to back up the information to the network when he was in the office. His 'defense' was he was never told to do it. If he were a 22-year-old man on his first job, that may fly, but he has been an executive in the industry for several years and clearly should know better.
That is when we hit him with the statistics of harddrive failure on laptops. The bottom line is someone like him shouldn't be using equipment like this.
Another executive had left his palm pilot on the roof of his car. He lost all his contact data because he never bothered to sync it.
The best way to prevent sensitive data from falling in the wrong hands is to make sure it can't be accessed by anyone who doesn't need it, and everyone in the company has gone through adequate training. This last one is a key. Some people just don't know how to secure data, let alone apply encryption to it. Sadly most executives don't feel the need to learn.
The stated purpose of this first application of the engine is for a car running in the city. From the bbc article, it looks as if it may be used to replace the SABTA fleet of mini-buses that used to (I'm not sure if they still do) shuttle people from Soweto to Johannesburg. I'm sure for other applications, i.e. pulling trailers, long commutes, and rural driving other car designs would be developed with an appropriate shift in effectiveness of the engine. I can't imagine these things replacing all gas engines, but as one who lives in Chicago, I would love to get rid of all the gas burners that are used just to drive around downtown.
Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
But this process is not aided by passing blanket laws that infringe on freedom of speech.
AOL is one of the largest vehicles for child porn, maybe under the Napster prosecutorial line of legal action, AOL should be shut down completely.
Of course this was in rural Montana where a weird sort of conservative Democratic belief system exists so I grew up with some very odd concepts on the duties of the government. But what really came out of these experiences, whether it was a Presidential election or school bond levy, was the sense of duty, patriotism, and self-satisfaction that came from participation in the process of citizens voting.
I was so enamored by this process that I went on to get a degree in Political Science and a degree in Philosophy. What came from my education is an amazingly simple yet powerful concept called legitimacy. Every governmental structure, from the most horrific fascist institution to the most benign club, derives its power from the consent of the people. This consent can be coerced or tricked out of the people (think 'Divine Right of Kings' or propaganda) but without the support of the people, the government is really just a few people claiming they have the right to make laws.
The United States derives its legitimacy primarily through the fact no significantly sized group has come to question the basic framework of the government since the Civil War. And why should anyone? Our system of government is grounded in very sound philosophical and political principles. Except one thing. George Washington in his farewell address, realized that the one thing that would prevent the government from working effectively is factions and parties. Yet, everyone ignored his warnings, and we have now been effectively brainwashed in believing we need a party structure to have our government.
Party's have prevented many 'good' candidates from being elected. Some states allow a voter to push on button that will select all the candidates of one political party or the other. I am not going to blame political parties for our present condition, but by the mere fact that all my political beliefs are spread between the two major parties makes me feel alienated from the process. How can I sign up to be a Republican and help map several issues that I strongly support within the Republican platform when I will then also be supporting with my donations, planks that I find morally and personally offensive? The same holds true for the Democrats.
So I am caught, trying to choose the person over the party, applying contributions (this is the first year I contributed money to a campaign - Bradley's...money well spent - not) to the person I think will do the best job, yet, even on that level as an individual, I am ineffective.
And oddly enough, as a single 29-year-old white male living in Chicago with a centrist-right leaning political viewpoint, neither candidate wants my vote. Let me rephrase that, both candidates expect my vote, but won't alter their positions to get it. All of this makes me feel like if I do vote, I am legitimizing a system that I increasingly find hollow. The people I want to be able to choose between can't make it through the primary system (Tsongas in 92, Bradley and McCain in 2000) even if I would have actively campaigned because the primaries are done state by state and without party money backing them, if a candidate loses in one or two of the first states, the level of donations decrease to a point that to continue running would be budgetary suicide. Thus, a small percentage of the population who votes in the primaries actual decide who the Presidential candidates will be. This is just another way in which political parties actually strip options and choice away from the voters.
Obviously, I can go on for a long time on this subject. I even can present, once again my call for a national primary to pinpoint the top four candidates and a public-funded run off election using one of the alternate vote tally systems that guarantees a clear MAJORITY, not plurality support for one candidate, but it is moot. These changes cannot even be considered within Congress as it would require a Continental Congress III to make this alterations, and even I, as disgruntled as I am with the system, do not want to open our Constitution up to the crack pot fundamentalists and hippie hyper-socialists.
So I use my one vote to cast a vote against the system by a. not voting (1992) b)voting for a third party (1994-Perot) and c)voting for the person least likely to support prayer in school, least likely to support a pro-lifer judge on the Supreme Court, most likely to support constructive internationalism through current political structures (G7, IMF, World Bank, UN, NATO), likely to apply some common sense to the concept of the rights of gun owners, and who has a chance to actually win (2000-Gore) while voting for Republicans for Congress to keep him in check.
I say it is time for a Continental Congress part 3, with the only thing on the table able to be discussed is the electoral system. Our system has served us well for 200+ years, but it is time to take another critical look at it and let it be adapted to our current situation. The reason we only want the electoral system on the table is we don't want the Continental Congress being hijacked by extremists.
I made an earlier statement that I am voting to keep Bush out of the Oval Office. I wonder how many people are voting to keep Gore out of the oval office. Is there anyone who truly stands behind one of these candidates and would make a high stakes gamble in regarding either of them?
Who would tie their very life to whether or not either of these candidates will be considered a 'Great President' as decided in four years by a public opinion poll?
Too bad the international flavor of Slashdot coupled with the obvious diversity here prevents us from slashdotting the ballot box.
I am one of those people who has consistently voted for third parties or chosen not to vote. But this year there happens to be two very large considerations. One - the Supreme Court may be losing up to 3 judges that will have to be replaced. While I'm not keen on 'legislation from the bench' I am very very interested in making sure abortion does not become illegal. It is more important for us to work on the social factors that create teen pregnancy than take away this very important medical procedure. I'll let the politicians pound out the details of parental consent and such, that isn't that important in the long run. But securing abortion as a legal medical operation is tremendously important.
The second important issue for me happens to be foreign policy. I understand that most American's couldn't care less about foreign policy unless there is a war. The American President, especially in this post-cold war era, needs to be able to perform Shuttle Diplomacy, going from one group to another to bring two opposing sides together on key issues. This requires a sharp mind and cannot be left to a skilled advisor in many cases because it is the power of the POTUS that makes these things happen. I cannot see Bush, a man who can cause an international incident in a debate, being able to carry out the subtle and delicate work of shuttle diplomacy. This is one area, that of all the candidates, I think Gore will be quite successful -- more successful than Reagan or Clinton. Reagan barely carried out shuttle diplomacy, abandoning Nixon's lead on the matter, perferring to be a cold warrior, but when he did do it, it was impressive.
Since this is more about keeping Bush out of the oval office than putting Gore in, my vote has to be strategically used to do the most damage to Bush, meaning I have to vote for Gore and give up my pursuit of supporting a third party. Besides, this year was a horrible election year for 3rd parties.
Let's face it, we are stuck with a bunch of losers. And those people who want to support Nader, you'd better tack a real close look at his Tech Policies and how he wishes to handle foreign affairs.
I'm voting Gore and voting for the most curmudgeony Senator I can and the most liberal representative I can to make sure if either Bush or Gore get elected, they'll face a Congress that won't put up with any of their tripe.
What good will this be when it accidently bounces into a crevasse? I appreciate the bounding mode of transportation, and once again we can look to the insect world on the best ways to accomplish this, but if there isn't any control then what is the purpose? Movement for the sake of motion is wasteful. Movement to get to a specific different area (over that rock, 20 feet to the right, etc.) is meaningful.