I'm really getting jaded with this whole IT thing. I'm seriously considering moving to a small town and doing something completely different. Maybe I'll be a mail man, or open my own auto shop.
I decided IT was for the birds, and that doing more hands-on electrical work was a much better idea. And then I got picked to troubleshoot PLC systems...
If you want to see some god-awful code, try working on fifteen year old monitoring system for a thirty year old generator.
In general, I was under the impression that the standard for criminal cases were weighted heavily to reject any technique, evidence, or device that had any appreciable chance of a false positive.
If a breathalyzer was a person, it would be required to be schooled and licensed in the appropriate field of study to be used as evidence at a trial. I might have an amateur interest in ballistics, but I'm not qualified to testify about it at a trial, regardless of the fact that I'm possibly more familiar with my particular firearm than the expert witness hired.
One should not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered
Needless to say that sending a cruise missile into mainland China to take out a hacker's house would be a very bad move for the US in the current climate.
Well, unless you thought the Fallout games were a training simulator.
I guess you've never seen a Life Cycle Management Framework before. How else would you deal with an item that takes years to design before production and could be in use for decades? It requires a HUGE amount of paperwork to track decisions and resources.
Exactly. The entire reason for the incredible amount of paperwork in every phase of a federal acquisition is to ensure that every decision has a person's name attached to it. If ten years later, an investigation determines that there was some impropriety in the specification/bidding/selection process, the GAO will want to know exactly who made the questionable decision.
The price for that kind of 'corruption detection' is a degree of lost efficiency.
Of course, no matter how well-constructed the rules are, someone will figure out a way to game the system. But if it's egregious enough, there'll be an outcry, and the system will be changed to prevent that from happening again.
I actually found a few courses I was interested in, but if the college is out of state, you are faced with out of state tuition. This can make the price hundreds of dollars more expensive per credit hour.
With the Internet, this is an artificial barrier, like DVD regions.
This is far from being an artificial barrier. A good portion of the in-state / out-of-state difference is contributions from the state's general fund towards the college. Why would taxpayers in Colorado want to contribute towards the education of a student in Virginia taking an online class 'at' a Colorado state school?
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
OK, show of hands: how many reading this support Amazon's continued practice of selling cock- and dog-fighting how-to materials?
While cockfighting is still legal in a few states, last time I checked, dogfighting is illegal in every state. So this would more apply to a question of whether or not 'Assassin's Guide' type books should be sold, not erotic literature.
The problem with the electronic voting vs. banking comparison is that bank account have your personal information all over them. Votes, however, do not. If you gave up secret voting, you could likely make a 'secure enough' voting system, since anyone could check their own vote in the system.
But for the attack to succeed, the SIPRNet computers either couldn't have had antivirus software installed or had antivirus definitions that were at least six months out of date.
Software (even patches) for a non-secure DOD computer requires a review before it can be installed or updated. I would imagine that the requirements for SIPRNET are more strict, certainly not less. It's likely that the review was not as high a priority as it should have been.
Just say 'correlation is not causation'. Much more succinct.
No, I'm sorry, but that's not correct. It's like correlating eating kumquats and death in traffic accidents. No.
If, say, Population A (which lives in an area with a 50/50 mix of foot & automobile traffic) eats a lot of kumquats, and Population B (which lives in an area with almost entirely foot traffic) eats virtually no kumquats, statistical analysis will determine there is a strong relationship (at least in these two populations) between kumquat eating & automobile caused deaths.
That relationship is correlation. That is, if you randomly select a person with out of the entire population who eats many kumquats, it is much more likely that their death will be caused by automobile accidents.
It is not, however, causation. That, and really nothing else, is what 'correlation is not causation' means.
Although paying for Xbox Live sucks, the advantage of the centralized servers is that as long as MS keeps it running, the games are still playable.
Which works great if you have friends that you suddenly want to play a specific game with. Random gamers is another matter, of course... How many people are trying to play Turok today?
2/ Lock all downloadable content to the individual console giving purchases a very limited lifetime.
While downloaded content is console-specific, MS does offer two ways to transfer the license to a new Xbox. If your console dies & is replaced in-warranty, they do it while it's in their hands. Otherwise, you can get all the licenses transferred by hooking up the new console to Xbox Live & going here.
I can sync up my iPod in Amarok or load an alternative firmware on it.
If the Zune was popular enough, I'm sure alternate software (and firmware modifications) would be available for it. The first day they were sold, each required the rather irritating default software to interface.
Which I understand from Apple's perspective... remember, they barely made money on iPods, they mostly sold them to make iTunes more popular. Still doesn't mean I like it, or that I'd buy one.
Slashdot Mirror
I decided IT was for the birds, and that doing more hands-on electrical work was a much better idea. And then I got picked to troubleshoot PLC systems...
If you want to see some god-awful code, try working on fifteen year old monitoring system for a thirty year old generator.
In general, I was under the impression that the standard for criminal cases were weighted heavily to reject any technique, evidence, or device that had any appreciable chance of a false positive.
If a breathalyzer was a person, it would be required to be schooled and licensed in the appropriate field of study to be used as evidence at a trial. I might have an amateur interest in ballistics, but I'm not qualified to testify about it at a trial, regardless of the fact that I'm possibly more familiar with my particular firearm than the expert witness hired.
-- Lyndon Johnson, former President of the U.S.
Well, unless you thought the Fallout games were a training simulator.
Exactly. The entire reason for the incredible amount of paperwork in every phase of a federal acquisition is to ensure that every decision has a person's name attached to it. If ten years later, an investigation determines that there was some impropriety in the specification/bidding/selection process, the GAO will want to know exactly who made the questionable decision.
The price for that kind of 'corruption detection' is a degree of lost efficiency.
Of course, no matter how well-constructed the rules are, someone will figure out a way to game the system. But if it's egregious enough, there'll be an outcry, and the system will be changed to prevent that from happening again.
This is far from being an artificial barrier. A good portion of the in-state / out-of-state difference is contributions from the state's general fund towards the college. Why would taxpayers in Colorado want to contribute towards the education of a student in Virginia taking an online class 'at' a Colorado state school?
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
While cockfighting is still legal in a few states, last time I checked, dogfighting is illegal in every state. So this would more apply to a question of whether or not 'Assassin's Guide' type books should be sold, not erotic literature.
The problem with the electronic voting vs. banking comparison is that bank account have your personal information all over them. Votes, however, do not. If you gave up secret voting, you could likely make a 'secure enough' voting system, since anyone could check their own vote in the system.
Apparently, you like 'b'?
Software (even patches) for a non-secure DOD computer requires a review before it can be installed or updated. I would imagine that the requirements for SIPRNET are more strict, certainly not less. It's likely that the review was not as high a priority as it should have been.
Heating elements aren't inductive loads.
Your essential argument is that humanity should be reduced to a social monoculture?
If, say, Population A (which lives in an area with a 50/50 mix of foot & automobile traffic) eats a lot of kumquats, and Population B (which lives in an area with almost entirely foot traffic) eats virtually no kumquats, statistical analysis will determine there is a strong relationship (at least in these two populations) between kumquat eating & automobile caused deaths.
That relationship is correlation. That is, if you randomly select a person with out of the entire population who eats many kumquats, it is much more likely that their death will be caused by automobile accidents.
It is not, however, causation. That, and really nothing else, is what 'correlation is not causation' means.
Are you suggesting there's something wrong with doing that?
I only clicked on the Randian's post to say this.
All you've done then is shifted the argument.
if Comcast owns 100% of your city.
Which works great if you have friends that you suddenly want to play a specific game with. Random gamers is another matter, of course... How many people are trying to play Turok today?
And then there's always Reason.
and strapped it to the back of your motorcycle & had a dead-man switch wired into an EKG strapped to your arm.
While downloaded content is console-specific, MS does offer two ways to transfer the license to a new Xbox. If your console dies & is replaced in-warranty, they do it while it's in their hands. Otherwise, you can get all the licenses transferred by hooking up the new console to Xbox Live & going here.
If the Zune was popular enough, I'm sure alternate software (and firmware modifications) would be available for it. The first day they were sold, each required the rather irritating default software to interface.
Which I understand from Apple's perspective... remember, they barely made money on iPods, they mostly sold them to make iTunes more popular. Still doesn't mean I like it, or that I'd buy one.
I mean, I love them as much as the next guy, but...