Yes, Obama's drug use was largely ignored -- because it was over 20 years ago. McCain's membership in the Keating Five was also largely ignroed -- because it was over 20 years ago. (This despite the parallelism to the current problems in the financial sector.)
The press reported on the problems and in-fighting in McCain's Campaign. Obama had no such in-fighting to report.
The press reported on the open hostility toward Obama at McCain rallies. Obama's rallies had no such open hostility. Further, the media refrained from harping on McCain's "categorical" pride in the people who attended his rallies when said people made news.
Obama happened to have rallies with tens of thousands of people. That happens to be positive news.
McCain happened to have rallies with tens of thousands of empty seats. That happens to be negative news.
What I'd like to see is a look only at how the candidates positions were covered.
Were the press more hostile to McCain's proposed tax structure than Obama's? All I recall is that there were both found to be lacking in the deficit-management department.
Were the press more hostile to McCain's health proposals than Obama's? I recall seeing that a $5000 credit won't replace the $12000 that's spent by employers for a typical family of four and that mandating full employer coverage of health premiums would result in either less hiring or lower wages. Both are reasonable critiques.
I don't recall a bias for either candidate's positions on any subject.
McCain and his people did, however, do a lot of things wrong during the campaign. Obama and his people did very little wrong, and what was screwed up was covered (however, it was also corrected quickly by the campaign, and thus became non-news quickly). For example: When Biden appeared to claim that the official position of the Obama campaign was against coal power (and the statements he made on the rope line still appear to be making that claim), the campaign quickly corrected the postion and Biden himself corrected it at every turn. On the other hand, when Palin "went rogue" by going off-script, McCain's people magnified the problem by bitching about her to the press -- repeatedly. The wardrobe question was a dead horse quickly, and Palin making an unprompted clarification that the clothing did not belong to her was mild, appropriate (since the attacks were against her personally), and did nothing to make that non-issue stick. The attacks by McCain's advisers making known that the person they were fielding as their VP candidate had a script and that they, the McCain advisors, believed that they were the ones to tell Palin what to say and what not to say created a very real negative news story..
The issue with "CD" is that it is trademarked by Philips and can only be used with their permission. They've refused to give that permission to anything that doesn't strictly meet the format standard. Not sure what issues would arise with "DVD" or "DVD-Video".
I make a point to try to find Philips products when I need something for just that reason.
See, the problem with your theory is that the scientists who disagree with the concensus on global warming only speak publicly. They don't publish in referreed journals. They are only given account in the popular press -- they don't have the data to be given account by their peers. It's easy to say "my study and hundreds of others say Gore's a nutcase" when none of those studies have been subjected to the critique of one's peers.
Newton also went out of his way to destroy the reputation of Leibniz in order to have the world believe that he alone discovered calculus. A regulated copyright systen is designed to prevent the need to resort to character assassination or duels to protect your work. Today either the courts would uphold Newton's claim or, if they were paying attention, rule that Leibniz' work was independent of Newton's, in either way putting the issue to rest.
Nah. This is more like and OLD pocket PC trapped to your wrist. Haven't seen stats like that above $300 in quite a while. They probably bought a bunch of surplus HP 315s, like mine, who's screen stopped accepting touch imput in less than a year. Not that I'm bitter.
Because the world doesn't actually work like that. It's as simple as that. Economics is not about claiming how the world SHOULD work and pretending that it does. It's about recognizing how the world DOES work and trying to optimize our decisions and policies to fit that moving target. Specifically, there are things the consumer cannot be expected to know about or fully understand the implications of. As a good example: India, which has virtually no idodine left in its farmland, and thus in its food products, mandated iodized salt (iodine being absolutely critical to proper mental development in children). The powerful and ancient salt industry in India protested that this was changing the way they had operated for thousands of years, and that consumers should be allowed to choose their own salt. The government caved. So now, there is traditional salt and slightly more expensive iodized salt. The general population has no idea what the benefit of iodized salt is, and buys the cheaper stuff, and India has a veritable epidemic of under and mal-developed mental capacity in their current generation of children as a result. There are things the market fscks up royally, and adherance to either tradition or the great myth of the free market is not to be preferred to the health of a population or the security of a nation's infrastructure.
That, and as has been noted, hiding root kits is, by its very nature, something that people are not intended to be able to base their buying decisions on. It's like claiming that the market should correct for false advertisement.
Tying free speech to privacy appears to be a relatively recent idea NOT because there is no historical connection between freedoms and privacy, but becuase it's only recently that privacy is something that can be infringed upon by the state even without the willing involvement of a party to the private conversation. The right to carry on a private conversation is not an enumerated right in a document such as the US Constitution because 220 years ago no one could have conceived that it could be infringed upon. Step 20 feet away from other people and whisper, and the conversation is private. Take further arrangements, and the conversation is secret. Free speech, however, is broader than just private speech, and can be infringed upon. Ever since there have been governments, they have been able to restrict or punish public speech (Socrates, anyone?). Thus, modern democracies have taken steps to prevent theirs from doing so. That doesn't mean that the right not to be heard by those you choose not to be heard by was not and should not be considered to be just as fundamental, or that it was considered (or should now be considered) a "priviledge" any more than the right to the privacy of your thoughts (also closely tied to the freedom of public speech) should be considered a priviledge.
Lies, Damned lies and Statistics
on
Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Java book sales from one publisher are "off 4%" while book sales of some random new technology are "up 68%". Yeh. It's a new technology. Pick something that had its first book hit the shelves around Christmas last year and you'll see it's sales shoot up well over 1000% last year to this.
What worries me is that I teach at a community college. One of my colleagues subscribes to Business Week and takes them quite seriously. I'd rather not have to get into a curriculum battle over this. Business week just needs to STFU about technology in industry, because people who have limited contact with it (either by not interacting with the technology or not interacting with industry) will often take their ill-informed articles as Truth. (Incidentally, I left industry 4 years ago and am close friends with others still in various sectors. Even after only 4 years, I'm very suspicious of my own first thoughts on the way industry is going, and I always get first-hand input.
We want to avoid sunrise at noon? At the current rate, that will be in about 32000 years. I think sometime between now and then we could do a somewhat larger shift.
In the mean time (pun intended), I seem to recall from other stories that the US proposal was to stop having a leap second every year and a half or so and have something like a leap minute every century.
As far as precision measurements go: How does adding a second to your clock in the middle of a precision measurement help the supposed measurement?
This article was written by a hiring manager. He has no reason to have your long-term interests in mind. What he wants is highly trained drones that can be replaced or outsourced by other highly trained drones when the fads his company follows have changed. He wants people he can dispose of rather than train on his company's systems.
Getting an education is about preparing you for life, either in general or in a particular field. It is not about preparing you to service the temporary interests of the current state of a rapidly changing field. A vocational program teaches you how to work, right now, and does a pretty poor job of that as well (no amount of group class projects prepares you for a real job). A Computer Science program -- one that is true to its name -- teaches you a field, and in doing so gives you the knowledge you need to learn anything you may need to learn in that field.
So, I suppose if what you truly are looking for is a job immediately after graduating, maybe you should listen to a hiring manager's wish-list. If, however, you would like to also have a job in 3-4 years then you should keep in mind that if Mr. Zambonini (and his counterparts all over the world) are being at all realistic, they don't expect to be paying you in 3 to 4 years. Either you'll be a Computer Scientist who's outgrown their company or you'll be a formerly skilled programmer who was more easily replaced than trained when the next big thing hit Business Week.
"as those who responded to the incorrect note unwittingly sent their feedback to everyone else on the recipient list."
That should be:
"as those who responded to the incorrect note witlessly sent their feedback to everyone else on the recipient list."
Etymologically they're the same thing. Somehow "unwittingly" has somehow come to mean "unintentionally" rather than "done without wit" where "wit" means "intellectual ability". The more literal meaning of the word, which is retained in "witlessly", is far more appropriate. They didn't all click the wrong button. Many clicked exactly the button they intended to, knowing full well what the button means. They were just witless to do so.
As long as you're using it to access documents in Microsoft's formats, the license doesn't appear to have any restrictions whatsoever. The only restrictions in the license are related to using Microsoft's schema to develop some other document format. I see no problem with that.
I paid a grand for a video card. Imagine 128 from... um... Number Nine. The 128 was the word size, not the memory size. Memory was 4MB.
While a remarkably stupid move on my part, at the time (probably 1994 or 1995), not a lot was hapenning with video cards, and this was still one of the best ones available 3 years later.
Course, I spent a grand on a scanner once, and close to that early adopting a CD-R drive. And $1200 on a dual PPro board (with only one chip at the time of purchace).
Most of my debt is interest on my computer purchaces from 8-10 years ago.
That said, it is even LESS justifiable today to spend a grand on any single part of a system. I spent $1000 on a scanner because the $500 one I got first gave me slight image doubling.
Sure. And I can order the 2.6GHz Opteron that tests out about the same there for $850 (It's the 252 in the test system). Best price I can find for an Itanium 2 1.5GHz is $6500. Yes, that's the CPU price.
So, yeh, as long as you don't mind spending 7 times as much, you can get the FPU performance out of Intel.
When is the last time Intel met a release schedule?
When is the last time Intel failed to abandon at least a fourth of their in-development product line?
Intel anouncing a dozen different dual-core processors for a range of machines is a joke, and frankly isn't even very good hype. Even if I believed it, I wouldn't be impressed. You don't NEED 12 different lines. Make 5 and make them right: 1) Super low power notebook; 2) performance notebook; 3) main-stream desktop; 4) enthusiast-gamer desktop; 5) Hardcore teraflops. (Oh wait... this is Intel. Better skip that last one. They're not exactly known for putting their effort into general-purpose FPUs.)
I teach CS at a community college, and I have to say that I am horrified at the response of academia to the need for security professionals. Jump on Monster sometime and search on "Computer Security". 90% of the jobs out there require at least 2-5 years beyond a BS, and a quarter require closer to 10. Security, done right, is very difficult work, and not something that can be simply taught to people in an academic setting. At least in the poster's case it's a four year program, and not one of the plethora of "here's how you set up this router" 2-year degrees popping up all over the place.
You're not going to find that security related job (without an extreme amount of luck), because you don't know security. In my opinion, any claims by your school that they are teaching you security in such a way that you will be qualified to work in it are fraud. The problem is, if you're being short-changed the rest of a general CS curriculum, they're not going to send you out qualified for anything else either.
the issue is creating long term viability for Open Source desktop software, which requires being able to develop and run that software, having a user base that large enough to be sustainable and satisfying that user base.
the whole point of the blog was that Windows, in specific, is not such a place in the mid-to-long term.
So let me get this straight. We want Open Source desktop software to succeed with a large user base, and to achieve this we should make sure that the software can only run on around 5% of the destops out there. Good plan.
Microsoft competes effectively on their own platform because *most* of what they provide for the desktop user they provide for no additional charge -- just like OSS has no additional charge. They can do this because they make good money in the desktop market on two products: Windows and Office. They make this good money because people are tied into those two products for two reasons: compatability and familiarity.
So, the key to winning market share against Microsoft is simple. You have to attack the applications, not the OS. People stay with the OS primarily for the applications, and at least some of the applications they need are only available on Windows. So long as Open Source OSes are such small players in the desktop market, the profit-driven desktop applications will continue to be released only for Windows, furthering users' tie-in to the Windows platform. Since we can't expect that closed-source applications will be ported to open source OSes, we have to provide people open-source alternatives where they are -- on Windows.
This is even more important in the mid-to-long term, because anything that weakens Office weakens Microsoft as a whole. Less money from Office means less money for OS improvements, for "free" desktop apps, and for MS's efforts to take over the server market and make their own proprietary systems the defacto standard.
Ok, bigger than a bottle rocket, launched from off to the left at a low tradjectory over the bay, exploding as it approached the ground. Shutter happened to release right when the firework exploded.
From a security standpoint, the word "Trusted" refers any entity (computer or not) which is able to violate the security policy, and thus is "trusted" not to do so. "Trustworthy" refers to entities which are reasonably believed to be sufficiently unlikely to violate the security policy, and thus are worthy of being trusted.
Given this particular definition, "trusted" is exactly the right thing to call this sort of hardware, although perhaps "blindly trusted computing" would be better.
Why on earth should we assume that someone who can break security has the slightest knowledge of how to fix security? I can break regular glass with a rock, but have no clue how to make shatter-proof glass.
Keeping to computer security: Say a particular system has 5000 current, undiscovered ways of being broken into (or just broken). Breaking into it requires finding one of them. But you have to find 2500 of them just to have a 50% chance of finding the one the hack.. err... cracker finds. If a typical passibly decent hacker can find 5 holes, he'd have over a 95% chance of finding one of the ones the security team, that found 2500, missed.
Yes, I wouldn't hire a computer criminal because of his ethical problems. I also wouldn't hire him because if he actually thinks that breaking into a system makes him qualified to work securing systems, he clearly knows nothing about securing systems.
Re:Server upgrades _do_ matter
on
IT Myths
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· Score: 1
We used a 4-processor, 2GB Sun box for an application server which, after a while, simply had too many applications running on it. Upgrade to an 8-processor 4GB box was a snap with almost zero downtime (good for a production box accessed 24/7) had everything running smooth as silk.
I really hate to think what replacing the box would have entailed, especially since we no longer knew who maintained some of the legacy applications running on it.
The idea that server upgrades are never done is complete horseshit.
Can be a fine line. For instance: "MacGabhain spent most of the 1990s smoking ragweed and cohabitating with a llama." would almost certainly be found to be libel if said outside of a pretty clear comic sense (or, of course, by me). "Stephen Galton is a poopy-head!" would not be, as it contains no factual claims. Not sure of the content of what he's asking Yahoo! for. Entirely not sure of why he thinks he can make a class out of this.
I've never gotten through passport control in London in less than an hour -- probably an hour and a half.
What is it with this theory that fingerprints are only taken from criminals? I have no problem with Brit passport control knowing who I am, exactly how long I'll be there and where I'll be staying. If they want me to put my hand on a scanner, whoop-d-do. I've done it before, and will probably do it again (although don't have to in my current job). I frankly wish more countries would do this, so criminals wouldn't have free reign of most of the world.
I'd be much more concerned about your own country's nearly comprehensive network of police-monitored video cameras in public. In the US, you have to submit to a quick, electronic print scan to verify that you haven't been banned from entering the country. In Britain, your local police can know where you stop for lunch every day if they wish.
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I deny that Obama was given better treatment.
Yes, Obama's drug use was largely ignored -- because it was over 20 years ago.
McCain's membership in the Keating Five was also largely ignroed -- because it was over 20 years ago. (This despite the parallelism to the current problems in the financial sector.)
The press reported on the problems and in-fighting in McCain's Campaign. Obama had no such in-fighting to report.
The press reported on the open hostility toward Obama at McCain rallies. Obama's rallies had no such open hostility. Further, the media refrained from harping on McCain's "categorical" pride in the people who attended his rallies when said people made news.
Obama happened to have rallies with tens of thousands of people. That happens to be positive news.
McCain happened to have rallies with tens of thousands of empty seats. That happens to be negative news.
What I'd like to see is a look only at how the candidates positions were covered.
Were the press more hostile to McCain's proposed tax structure than Obama's? All I recall is that there were both found to be lacking in the deficit-management department.
Were the press more hostile to McCain's health proposals than Obama's? I recall seeing that a $5000 credit won't replace the $12000 that's spent by employers for a typical family of four and that mandating full employer coverage of health premiums would result in either less hiring or lower wages. Both are reasonable critiques.
I don't recall a bias for either candidate's positions on any subject.
McCain and his people did, however, do a lot of things wrong during the campaign. Obama and his people did very little wrong, and what was screwed up was covered (however, it was also corrected quickly by the campaign, and thus became non-news quickly).
For example: When Biden appeared to claim that the official position of the Obama campaign was against coal power (and the statements he made on the rope line still appear to be making that claim), the campaign quickly corrected the postion and Biden himself corrected it at every turn.
On the other hand, when Palin "went rogue" by going off-script, McCain's people magnified the problem by bitching about her to the press -- repeatedly. The wardrobe question was a dead horse quickly, and Palin making an unprompted clarification that the clothing did not belong to her was mild, appropriate (since the attacks were against her personally), and did nothing to make that non-issue stick. The attacks by McCain's advisers making known that the person they were fielding as their VP candidate had a script and that they, the McCain advisors, believed that they were the ones to tell Palin what to say and what not to say created a very real negative news story..
The issue with "CD" is that it is trademarked by Philips and can only be used with their permission. They've refused to give that permission to anything that doesn't strictly meet the format standard. Not sure what issues would arise with "DVD" or "DVD-Video".
I make a point to try to find Philips products when I need something for just that reason.
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Science, 3 December 2004
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5 702/1686
Newton also went out of his way to destroy the reputation of Leibniz in order to have the world believe that he alone discovered calculus. A regulated copyright systen is designed to prevent the need to resort to character assassination or duels to protect your work. Today either the courts would uphold Newton's claim or, if they were paying attention, rule that Leibniz' work was independent of Newton's, in either way putting the issue to rest.
Nah. This is more like and OLD pocket PC trapped to your wrist. Haven't seen stats like that above $300 in quite a while. They probably bought a bunch of surplus HP 315s, like mine, who's screen stopped accepting touch imput in less than a year. Not that I'm bitter.
Because the world doesn't actually work like that. It's as simple as that. Economics is not about claiming how the world SHOULD work and pretending that it does. It's about recognizing how the world DOES work and trying to optimize our decisions and policies to fit that moving target.
Specifically, there are things the consumer cannot be expected to know about or fully understand the implications of. As a good example: India, which has virtually no idodine left in its farmland, and thus in its food products, mandated iodized salt (iodine being absolutely critical to proper mental development in children). The powerful and ancient salt industry in India protested that this was changing the way they had operated for thousands of years, and that consumers should be allowed to choose their own salt. The government caved. So now, there is traditional salt and slightly more expensive iodized salt. The general population has no idea what the benefit of iodized salt is, and buys the cheaper stuff, and India has a veritable epidemic of under and mal-developed mental capacity in their current generation of children as a result. There are things the market fscks up royally, and adherance to either tradition or the great myth of the free market is not to be preferred to the health of a population or the security of a nation's infrastructure.
That, and as has been noted, hiding root kits is, by its very nature, something that people are not intended to be able to base their buying decisions on. It's like claiming that the market should correct for false advertisement.
Tying free speech to privacy appears to be a relatively recent idea NOT because there is no historical connection between freedoms and privacy, but becuase it's only recently that privacy is something that can be infringed upon by the state even without the willing involvement of a party to the private conversation.
The right to carry on a private conversation is not an enumerated right in a document such as the US Constitution because 220 years ago no one could have conceived that it could be infringed upon. Step 20 feet away from other people and whisper, and the conversation is private. Take further arrangements, and the conversation is secret.
Free speech, however, is broader than just private speech, and can be infringed upon. Ever since there have been governments, they have been able to restrict or punish public speech (Socrates, anyone?). Thus, modern democracies have taken steps to prevent theirs from doing so.
That doesn't mean that the right not to be heard by those you choose not to be heard by was not and should not be considered to be just as fundamental, or that it was considered (or should now be considered) a "priviledge" any more than the right to the privacy of your thoughts (also closely tied to the freedom of public speech) should be considered a priviledge.
What worries me is that I teach at a community college. One of my colleagues subscribes to Business Week and takes them quite seriously. I'd rather not have to get into a curriculum battle over this. Business week just needs to STFU about technology in industry, because people who have limited contact with it (either by not interacting with the technology or not interacting with industry) will often take their ill-informed articles as Truth. (Incidentally, I left industry 4 years ago and am close friends with others still in various sectors. Even after only 4 years, I'm very suspicious of my own first thoughts on the way industry is going, and I always get first-hand input.
In the mean time (pun intended), I seem to recall from other stories that the US proposal was to stop having a leap second every year and a half or so and have something like a leap minute every century.
As far as precision measurements go: How does adding a second to your clock in the middle of a precision measurement help the supposed measurement?
It's whatever Gonzalez and Mueller don't happen to get off on. So pretty much anything other than gay bondage porn is being targetted.
Getting an education is about preparing you for life, either in general or in a particular field. It is not about preparing you to service the temporary interests of the current state of a rapidly changing field. A vocational program teaches you how to work, right now, and does a pretty poor job of that as well (no amount of group class projects prepares you for a real job). A Computer Science program -- one that is true to its name -- teaches you a field, and in doing so gives you the knowledge you need to learn anything you may need to learn in that field.
So, I suppose if what you truly are looking for is a job immediately after graduating, maybe you should listen to a hiring manager's wish-list. If, however, you would like to also have a job in 3-4 years then you should keep in mind that if Mr. Zambonini (and his counterparts all over the world) are being at all realistic, they don't expect to be paying you in 3 to 4 years. Either you'll be a Computer Scientist who's outgrown their company or you'll be a formerly skilled programmer who was more easily replaced than trained when the next big thing hit Business Week.
That should be:
"as those who responded to the incorrect note witlessly sent their feedback to everyone else on the recipient list."
Etymologically they're the same thing. Somehow "unwittingly" has somehow come to mean "unintentionally" rather than "done without wit" where "wit" means "intellectual ability". The more literal meaning of the word, which is retained in "witlessly", is far more appropriate. They didn't all click the wrong button. Many clicked exactly the button they intended to, knowing full well what the button means. They were just witless to do so.
As long as you're using it to access documents in Microsoft's formats, the license doesn't appear to have any restrictions whatsoever. The only restrictions in the license are related to using Microsoft's schema to develop some other document format. I see no problem with that.
I paid a grand for a video card. Imagine 128 from... um... Number Nine. The 128 was the word size, not the memory size. Memory was 4MB.
While a remarkably stupid move on my part, at the time (probably 1994 or 1995), not a lot was hapenning with video cards, and this was still one of the best ones available 3 years later.
Course, I spent a grand on a scanner once, and close to that early adopting a CD-R drive. And $1200 on a dual PPro board (with only one chip at the time of purchace).
Most of my debt is interest on my computer purchaces from 8-10 years ago.
That said, it is even LESS justifiable today to spend a grand on any single part of a system. I spent $1000 on a scanner because the $500 one I got first gave me slight image doubling.
So, yeh, as long as you don't mind spending 7 times as much, you can get the FPU performance out of Intel.
When is the last time Intel failed to abandon at least a fourth of their in-development product line?
Intel anouncing a dozen different dual-core processors for a range of machines is a joke, and frankly isn't even very good hype. Even if I believed it, I wouldn't be impressed. You don't NEED 12 different lines. Make 5 and make them right: 1) Super low power notebook; 2) performance notebook; 3) main-stream desktop; 4) enthusiast-gamer desktop; 5) Hardcore teraflops. (Oh wait... this is Intel. Better skip that last one. They're not exactly known for putting their effort into general-purpose FPUs.)
3 * 7 + 1 is prime?
I teach CS at a community college, and I have to say that I am horrified at the response of academia to the need for security professionals. Jump on Monster sometime and search on "Computer Security". 90% of the jobs out there require at least 2-5 years beyond a BS, and a quarter require closer to 10. Security, done right, is very difficult work, and not something that can be simply taught to people in an academic setting. At least in the poster's case it's a four year program, and not one of the plethora of "here's how you set up this router" 2-year degrees popping up all over the place.
You're not going to find that security related job (without an extreme amount of luck), because you don't know security. In my opinion, any claims by your school that they are teaching you security in such a way that you will be qualified to work in it are fraud. The problem is, if you're being short-changed the rest of a general CS curriculum, they're not going to send you out qualified for anything else either.
the whole point of the blog was that Windows, in specific, is not such a place in the mid-to-long term.
So let me get this straight. We want Open Source desktop software to succeed with a large user base, and to achieve this we should make sure that the software can only run on around 5% of the destops out there. Good plan.
Microsoft competes effectively on their own platform because *most* of what they provide for the desktop user they provide for no additional charge -- just like OSS has no additional charge. They can do this because they make good money in the desktop market on two products: Windows and Office. They make this good money because people are tied into those two products for two reasons: compatability and familiarity.
So, the key to winning market share against Microsoft is simple. You have to attack the applications, not the OS. People stay with the OS primarily for the applications, and at least some of the applications they need are only available on Windows. So long as Open Source OSes are such small players in the desktop market, the profit-driven desktop applications will continue to be released only for Windows, furthering users' tie-in to the Windows platform. Since we can't expect that closed-source applications will be ported to open source OSes, we have to provide people open-source alternatives where they are -- on Windows.
This is even more important in the mid-to-long term, because anything that weakens Office weakens Microsoft as a whole. Less money from Office means less money for OS improvements, for "free" desktop apps, and for MS's efforts to take over the server market and make their own proprietary systems the defacto standard.
Ok, bigger than a bottle rocket, launched from off to the left at a low tradjectory over the bay, exploding as it approached the ground. Shutter happened to release right when the firework exploded.
Given this particular definition, "trusted" is exactly the right thing to call this sort of hardware, although perhaps "blindly trusted computing" would be better.
Why on earth should we assume that someone who can break security has the slightest knowledge of how to fix security? I can break regular glass with a rock, but have no clue how to make shatter-proof glass.
Keeping to computer security: Say a particular system has 5000 current, undiscovered ways of being broken into (or just broken). Breaking into it requires finding one of them. But you have to find 2500 of them just to have a 50% chance of finding the one the hack.. err... cracker finds. If a typical passibly decent hacker can find 5 holes, he'd have over a 95% chance of finding one of the ones the security team, that found 2500, missed.
Yes, I wouldn't hire a computer criminal because of his ethical problems. I also wouldn't hire him because if he actually thinks that breaking into a system makes him qualified to work securing systems, he clearly knows nothing about securing systems.
I really hate to think what replacing the box would have entailed, especially since we no longer knew who maintained some of the legacy applications running on it.
The idea that server upgrades are never done is complete horseshit.
Can be a fine line. For instance:
"MacGabhain spent most of the 1990s smoking ragweed and cohabitating with a llama." would almost certainly be found to be libel if said outside of a pretty clear comic sense (or, of course, by me).
"Stephen Galton is a poopy-head!" would not be, as it contains no factual claims. Not sure of the content of what he's asking Yahoo! for. Entirely not sure of why he thinks he can make a class out of this.
What is it with this theory that fingerprints are only taken from criminals? I have no problem with Brit passport control knowing who I am, exactly how long I'll be there and where I'll be staying. If they want me to put my hand on a scanner, whoop-d-do. I've done it before, and will probably do it again (although don't have to in my current job). I frankly wish more countries would do this, so criminals wouldn't have free reign of most of the world.
I'd be much more concerned about your own country's nearly comprehensive network of police-monitored video cameras in public. In the US, you have to submit to a quick, electronic print scan to verify that you haven't been banned from entering the country. In Britain, your local police can know where you stop for lunch every day if they wish.