Sorry if this seems offtopic, but it needs to be said: Sorry, but it seems to me that nobody has any intention whatsoever of putting the man on trial... Mob rules?
No, it ain't off-topic. It's really hard to say what justice is in a time like this. I can think of a few folks from the past decade that get the same room in hell:
Augusto Pinochet, totured, etc., thousands of his own citizens: Living out the rest of his life, not put on trial because doctors say it would be too hard on him.
Slobodan Milosevic et all, used war and genocide for political gain: On trial or have warrants out for their arrest. May get life in prison for killing thousands.
Saddam Hussain, used chemical weapons against his own citizens, invaded a neighboring country: Still in power, probably using oil money for millitary purposes.
Hitler, killed millons of Jews, responsible for WW2: committed suicide (accomplises were put on trial - executed?)
9/11 terrorists: Died with their victims.
Do people that do horrible things get punished in this life? It seems 10% get punished, 10% get imprisoned, and 80% retire with a pension. If you were the U.S. soldier from NYC, looking at Bin Laden waving the white flag, would you fire?
What would have happen if, on 9/12, Bin Laden would have shown up in France, demanding to have a trial in a country that didn't have the death penalty? Would we have bombed France?
So far, I concider the U.S. action to be justifiable. Bin Laden is a clear and present danger to the world, and I have no doubt he would have gotten the same treatment as Milosevic (whatever that turns out to be) if he had turned himself in, or if the Taliban had turned him in. Hell, we might have had U.N. inspectors running around Afghanistan like they did in Iraq, with about the same effect. Instead, they decided to fight, and the rules of war are very different. By the way, we seem to be following all those rules, with very little civilian casualities (even less than were killed on 9/11).
It's times like these that an afterlife with heaven and hell are so attractive - at least everyone gets what they deserve. However, I have a hard time believing in the afterlife, and it's even harder when the idea gives so much comfort to the terrorists. My personal philosophy has been to believe in God and heaven and hell, but act as if the only justice is the justice we make on earth.
That doesn't answer your question, does it? In short, yeah, the average joe and maybe the not-so-average jane wants these guys dead, by whatever means necessary. Some even wanted to nuke the whole place. I have been plesantly suprised by an administration that instead seems to understand the importance of a limited war, international support, and building the nation of Afghanistan from the rubble. I don't have a lot of faith in G.W., but he seems to be wise enough to listen to the right people. When I listen to his speeches, I worry about mob rule. When I see the actual deeds, it looks a lot like measured justice, and I'm pretty happen.
Yeah, I'm truly upset over what happened to Dmitry. From what I read of his talk, he was presenting research facts. From what I read of his arrest, he was arrested because his company sells software that is used to break U.S. law. It sounds like the same tactics used when Al Capone was put in jail for tax evasion. It's even worse because, even though these kinds of sacrifices are necessary to overturn a bad law, Dmitry didn't really have a chance to decide that he wanted to help American democracy get it's act together.
There are two ways to fight bad laws. The first way is to have elected representatives repeal the laws. Not damn likely, when the people that like the laws are the same ones who are paying for campaign ads.
The second is civil disobedience. I'm proud of any scientist who is willing to go against this law. It would be even more effective if the IEEE or other professional groups spoke out against the law. It would be even more effective if those groups told it's members to break those laws openly and publicly, and millions did it, and millions of tech workers were put in prison for it. However, I doubt tech workers (or even Slashdot readers) have that kind of code of ethics. I know I'd have trouble doing that, especially since I'd have no guarantees others were doing the same.
I laughed when a friend told me she was taking an "ethics for engineers" class. How ridiculous - what ethical questions do engineers have? Then I read the textbook, and realized that there's a big hole in CS and engineering education. For instance, I had no idea that, as long as certain criteria are met, a whistle blower that exposes fraud in a government contract is entitled to a portion of any settlement or judgement against his or her employer. I also learned how long a fraud conviction takes, and the personal cost involved, and had to think about what I would do in a similar situation.
I'm proud of these scientists. It sucks, but I hope they go to jail or get fined, and the wheels of justice move swiftly. Yes, I support the EFF. I gave them a chunk of G.W.'s tax rebate, and as soon as I get my damn hat, I'll probably give again.
Most TV is bad, but some shows may get the work/relationship thing right. I think Ally McBeal (and anything by that guy) is pure fantasy crap. Friends doesn't seem real to me (Three Beautiful Girls! Three Beautiful Guys! New York City with only white people!). Drew Carey seems closer (everyone has different jobs, but goes to the same bar). ER even seems pretty good (when everyone works long shifts and gets off at the same time, I can see people gathering for dinner, but that's it).
However, I'm not sure if you should take the tactic of "work people aren't potential friends". Sure, there can be problems at work (promotion competition, office politics, too many friendly favors), but the benefits are many. 70% or more or the problems at work are lack of communication between employees. I've worked for weeks on problems that would have been solved in an hour over beers with another co-worker. It's ranged from little things like not knowing about a useful global variable or obscure Unix command to finding out an impossible problem I was working on wasn't even a line item in the contract. Even better is when the guy who left for another company thinks of you for a position in his new company. Horizontal promotion is a lot easier when you have friends in the new company.
Of course, this is mostly theoretical. I spend a month at a time with the guys from work, because we spend a month at a time at the customer's office in another state. We eat together every night, share stories while the backups run, talk politics, religion, technology, and hobbies. And, when we get back to the home office, we never go for a beer. Lunch maybe, but no weekend time.
One more note: it's sad how this nation (the U.S.) finds locking up scientists for publishing their research acceptable.
Who has been locked up for this? Oh wait, no one has. Yeah, someone else was locked up because their company was selling a product based on breaking a US law, but no one has been arrested for this.
You can say "CORPORATE POLICE STATE!" all you want, but the fact is, this particular law is awful, one guy has been sent to jail, and there's been at least one court case so far which has affirmed that corporate interests do not outweigh free speech. Like every other horrible anti-speech law that has been passed in the last few years, it will die a slow death. People will be prosecuted under it, sure, but that's the only way to start the chain of events that leads to the Supreme Court striking the ugly thing down.
This isn't goverment thugs defending their interests. This is government employees doing their jobs, and scientists taking a moral stance, and the American legal system taking it's slow, painful path to justice, same as it ever was.
Yeah, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms which have been tried from time to time. Support the EFF, dammit!
Do you know what warcrimes were done in Afghanistan by US troops, if any? I don't, since this information is held from me. Number of innocent casualties? same. Proof of Bin Laden's guilt? withheld too. The US is just as guilty as China or Saudi-Arabia in this one.. all do censorship, all present their government's opinion as authoritive.
Ah, but in the U.S., I can look at contraversial religious websites, websites that criticize Islam (and my own religion) , porn [do you really need a link?], and pretty much anything I want. Even when someone says I can't look at some information, I can look at it, and they can take me to court, and see if a judge thinks their concerns are more important then free speech.
I'm getting sick of these sophmoric statements of "the U.S. is just as bad as [x]", where x is the criminal of the day. Part of my discomfort is because I recently had the same frame of mind, and I hate seeing others make the same mistakes.
Why would we know of U.S. warcrimes in Afghanistan? The Taliban kicked all the foriegn journalists out. Sure, we don't see all the evidence against Bin Laden, but few dispute that his organization trained Islamic radicals, and was probably behind other terrorist acts as well as Sep. 11. I would be angry if we were putting him on trial without enumerating evidence, but first we need to imprison him based on the evidence we have.
Yeah, the U.S. government used propaganda and spin control and even lies, just like every other government on earth. But we also have a free and active press, which is always trying to catch the government lying. Sure, the big media is all corporate controlled and puts the rich white man spin on everything, but there's plenty of other news outlets, and almost every large city I've been in has a newspaper whose sole reason for existance seems to be to criticize the big media paper in town. Afghanistan? No free press. Saudi Arabia? No real free press.
This is a country where three little letters seperate propaganda from porn from anti-propaganda, and there's nothing George W., Time Warner/AOL, or Microsoft can do to stop it. And when they try, we can eventually beat 'em in court.
OK, maybe software engineering != construction engineering. But maybe there is a correlation between the history of bridge building and the history of software engineering?
To be honest , I don't know much about the history of bridge building. When I think of the history of bridge building, I think of different kinds of bridges, including:
a big log over a stream
two big logs over a stream
two big logs over a stream, with other logs lashed on
cut wood bridge, maybe treated wood, maybe covered (why do those New England bridges have a roof?)
Rope and wood bridges from Indiana Jones movies
Stone bridges from England (or even ancient Rome?)
Modern highway bridges (concrete, supports, standards for the road leading to the bridge, etc.)
Modern suspension bridges (Golden Gate)
Drawbridges
Those cool bridge-on-wheels the army uses.
etc.
I don't know what the progression is, how people went from a log over a river to a suspension bridge, or the tech needed to cut wood and make strong rope, or how stone bridges were constructed. I imagine some folks specialized in bridge construction, studying previous designs and learning from contemporary practitioners.
I do know that it took hundreds to thousands of years to get to the point where there was a science of bridge building, where the strengths and weaknesses of designs and materials were known, written down, and taught. There was also a point where you had to go to a formal school to learn bridge building, and that the government had to certify you as a bridge builder in order for you to design bridges that the public would use.
We're in the early stages of engineering software. In some places, there's a amateur engineer culture, where some people have an affinity for the stuff, and allowed to do their own thing. In other places, there's a "hire the expert" mentality, where outside masters are brought in to do the design work, and locals are used as cheap labor. In still other places, there's a guild mentality, where educating the next generation and producing a quality product are emphasized. I know of few, if any, places where a modern engineering mentality is maintained, where practitioners are certified to have a certain level of competency, where standards are required, where products are reviewed and analyzed scientifically, where mistakes are published and lessons learned in an institutional manner. Bridge builder all know about Tacoma Narrows, and plan accordingly. Software engineers still write un-commented code in non-portable ways, and expensive "disasters" happen daily.
Sure, software engineering != civil engineering. But is that due to intractable differences between the two disciplines, or because civil engineering is mature and responsible, while software engineering worships the local experts and laughs at professional rigor?
I agree wholeheartedly - once you've memorized Ctrl-W closes the application, then the keyboard is much faster than the mouse. Especially when you have to close 15 browser windows...
Until you move over to the Windows world, where it's Alt-F4. Just as fast, but there's that little internal lookup function, where you have to think "wait, I'm in a MS program, it's not Ctrl-W, it's Alt-F4". Now, once that info's availible, then it's easy to close the other windows (Alt-Tab, Alt-F4, repeat), but the first 500 times you do it, you have to remember what you are doing. And then, when you switch to another system, you have to remember what the command is there. I'd be appalled if there was a little counter that counted how much time I wasted typing "ls" at an MS-DOS command prompt, or DIR at a bash prompt.
Keyboard shortcuts are damn fast, once you've gone beyond memorization to the point where they are second nature. My problem is, I try to learn emacs, but when I need code done fast, it's still faster for me to type it in Textpad on an MS machine, then use WS-FTP to ftp it to the Unix machine. For a long time, the only commands I used in emacs was Mark, Move to end of file, Delete marked area, Insert Files (my Windows edited file), Close app. I couldn't even memorize all of those - thank goodness for the mouse menus in X-emacs.
When I have a good month-long project where I type in and edit code all day, I'll learn emacs, and I might agree with you. Until then, I'll stick with a light, powerful, mouse-driven program like Textpad, and memorize a few commands like the shortcut to bring up the Search and Replace dialog.
I don't have a link handy, but a while ago I read a very interesting essay where the author made the observation that the government doesn't have to legislate or force standards in order to affect a change. The government is such a large purchaser of computers and software that they could simply use their huge purchasing power to influence the market in the direction of open standards if they wanted to. If the government refused to buy into proprietary standards, many companies would support open standards rather than loose a customer that size.
I agree, but I don't think "the government" is in a position to do this. There's no Secretary of IT that mandates what the Executive branch uses. For the most part, I assume there's a big "money pot", high-up employees get whatever toy they want, be it IBM, Dell, Apple, Sony, or Nintendo. (BTW - anyone else watch West Wing for the computers? Dell one week, Thinkpads the next, and I'm pretty sure I saw an iMac once...)
Ditto for other branches - I can't imagine that there's a central IT org that can mandate what congressmen work on, or what field offices use. How do they network? Simple networks based around huge steel purchases from the 70's, or the government's intranet, the Internet.
Even the millitary isn't too standardized. I've seen some rugidized laptops provided by, I think, Compaq, in huge metal cases. I imagine that heat generation is a problem, so these are probably kept in the low-power range. Vendors have to make sure their stuff works on the laptops, but that's it.
I've done some military contract work, and one of the fundamentals is that the military owns the applications and the code, unless the applications are of-the-shelf equipment. If you are a big enough company, then you can claim that a peice of software is of-the-shelf, but they may look at you crooked and try to determine if you'll be around 20 years from now, when it breaks. It appears that Microsoft meets that criteria, since we've never had the military blink when we've based a small project on top of MS Windows or MS Office.
That's the rub - government development is not ongoing, but instead in quantum leaps. They are more likely to develop a standard application, verify it works, then sit on it for 5-20 years until it no longer meets requirements, then start the process of budgetting for an upgrade, taking bids, etc., which can last years. Can open-source work in an environment where there is 20 years between patches, where it has to be right when you deliver it to the customer?
It's not impossible, of course. I've seen the military force some interesting things on contractors, such as Ada. But I don't expect them to do it this year, this presidency, or even by the next president. This is a category where commerical businesses will have to lead.
Um, er, no. That's the Ninth Circuit, the Sixth Circuit covers Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio. The U.S. Courts website provides a map [uscourts.gov]. It is indeed liberal. It used to get reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court a lot.
However, the Ninth circuit is also the home turf of the movie industry. I suspect a number of judges know which side their bread is buttered on. The same is probably true of the Sixth Judicial District of the California state court system.
Thanks for the correction and clarification, as well as pointing out the resource - I hope a moderator is watching, so that folks will get the correct facts.
Oddly enough, this is not being marketed at people who can build a superior solution, in the same way that the Ford Festiva was not marketed at automotive engineers who owned a machine shop that they used to design and build their own engines...
Sorry, my subtlety detector is in the shop... Are you ragging on the Ford Festiva? I'm a proud owner of one, that my family gave me back in college (for free!). Amoung the many features:
Great gas mileage (30+ some weeks)
Self-changing oil (Self-draining, just add a quart or two a month!)
Simple radio system (No CD or tape player)
User-provided cronometer (the backlighting for the stereo's LCD display is out)
Ample trunk space (For my laptop and the 12-pack of oil)
Simplified air conditioning (no cooling, only heating)
Multi-terrain capability (roads and sidewalks!)
Daily excercise (no power steering, so your arms get a workout.)
Seats 5 uncomfortably (I'm the only one that rides in it these days...)
I'm sure there are other benefits. It has a few annoyances, but still runs. I can afford a better car, but I can't bring myself to change until this one dies. The thing simply lasts forever without needing maintainace work, so I'll probably have it for another 5-10 years.
I'm seeing a lot of interesting cases being cited in this ruling. Some have been mentioned already, and a few others have caught my eye (Religious Technology Center v Lerma (E.D.Va. 1995) 897 F.Supp. 260, 263. - Isn't the RTC the Scientology group?) Is there an online resource for a summary of these rulings, or is this a situtation where you need paralegals and a wall of books?
Sixth Circuit (West Coast, + maybe Hawaii) is known as the most liberal of the appeals courts. This means that the ruling is truly the best case for the free speech arguement, but doesn't neccesarily mean that it would survive a Supreme Court review.
I assume that the ruling, if the Supreme Court doesn't hear it, will stand, but that another circuit court may interpret differently, in which case it will eventually go to the Supreme Court. Looks like it's time to donate to the EFF, so that they will have the funds to argue the case at the next level.
You can download a Z-machine interpreter for PalmOS from here [ifarchive.org], and play all the Infocom and newer fiction, including more than half of the 2001 competition entries, anywhere. It's a treat.
You, sir, are pure evil. How am I going to get any work done today if I can play all the classics of my youth on my Visor until the batteries run out?
Two years ago, for my job, I helped develop an application that has to be updated on a periodic basis. The application is installed on various sites across the country, and updates are on CD-ROM. Although I could install the new files in a few seconds, I found that it took pages to explain the process to a technician.
My solution was a set of batch files that ran when the CD was inserted. The "installation program" was interactive, including a menu with several options. The program did things like selectively copy files, changed permissions from read-only to read write (files copied from a CD were read-only by default), verify network shares and copy files to other computers, and even updated DLLs if necessary (reboot required). It took about a week to develop, but simplified the instructions a great deal (Close program on all PCs, Insert CD, Select 2, Reboot all PCs when done).
Is MS-DOS really gone, or do they have the same kind of MS-DOS emulation that WinNT has? And, if it is gone, does anyone know of a free scripting language that would perform like DOS Batch files? I'd hate to think if there was a hardware failure I'd have to buy an installation software suite, or convince the customer to install a nationwide secure network...
Yes, I've seen this before. In a university environment I used to work in, we tried to lock down the registry...we had to make so many exceptions for various application that required full registry access to run (scary), that by the end of the semester we gave up on locking down and went back to rebuilding the systems nightly (which introduced a whole group of other messes...)
Just out of curiosity, what applications need full registry access?
I'm not really a Windows developer, so I'm not familiar with programatically changing the registry. But I have manually changed the registry to allow automatic login, and you may even be able to auto-login into the admin's account (BTW, the PCs I did this for were not on the network, and needed to boot straight to the desktop). Now, you need to know the desired password for the auto-login to work, but there may still be a security issue with a program that is allowed to read and write any keys in the registry.
Does Windows allow full registry access by default, or does it make some restrictions?
I just tried to meta-moderate, but it told me there were no comments to meta-moderate.
I wait a few seconds, then it can only deliver 2 comments to meta-mod!
If this gets modded down (or, can't think why, up), then the next meta-modder will see it! Real-time metamoderation!
Any AC's want to comment how this signals the doom of Slashdot / OSDN / VA Linux?
Me:I'll wait until the verdict to see if I should go XP, 2000, or ME.
You:That, my friend, is the problem. If you wait, by the time you buy your next PC it will come with XP preinstalled. You'll use it whether you like it or not.
Ahh, but I may be planning to build my next system rather then buy it from a dealer. I'm hoping that, for the next few months at least, you'll be able to purchase the OEM version of Win2K from a hard drive seller. Or, if XP is REALLY annoying, I may even be willing to buy a non-OEM copy of Win2K.
Seriously, I have almost always bought a new computer based on a new operating system. I think this is a common experience. I've never upgraded a Windows operating system, except for my first college computer, when Win95 came out a few months after I purchased it - and Gateway gave me a free upgrade coupon for that one.
Why? Well, like most home PC users, I don't upgrade the hardware much. I buy a system that's more than I need at the time, and when I start feeling the pinch, there's no clear upgrade path to the next system. For instance, I could use a GeForce2/3, a video card with DVD-out (and a DVD player that supports that), Firewire, a 3x to 5x processor increase (350 Mhz to somewhere in the high 1000's), and maybe get the memory up to half a gig. But there's no good upgrade path - that's a motherboard change (to one w/ AGP and that supports a faster processor), and it means discarding my current DVD drive, and possible other hard drives. I might as well buy a new, integrated system. And while I'm at it, I might as well get the latest operating system. I wanted to buy a new PC around the time Black and White came out, but I decided to wait and see if XP would be worth the wait.
Which puts me in a bind. Like others say, there's not much differance between XP and 2000, except for some (downloadable) bells and whistles, and that AWFUL authentication scheme. I'll wait until the verdict to see if I should go XP, 2000, or ME. Unlike some ZDNet columnists, I'm pretty happy with Win98SE...
If it wasn't for the funky licsensing, I'd jump right on, and have my PC delivered tommorrow. I'm afraid a million others are making the same choice, and we might see a boom in PC sales by Christmas, maybe not.
Companies don't hire enough smart people to admin their network. They think that the guy who knows how install Windows would be a good candidate for admining the network.
Most companies and people that run them don't understand what it takes to properly setup and maintain a network.
OK, I'll assume you're the smart guy. Where do you find this basic info? It seems too concrete and vendor specific for a CS class. Having spent a summer interning with MIS students, all I can figure is they learn a little programming and a lot of beer drinking.
I have my own Linux router (not LRP, just a 586 with Debian and IP-Chains), and I've had a hell of a time finding any decent information. The HOW-TOs are useful, but always seem to have holes, or say "this section to be added later" for the things I actually need. There is no online documentation, and Google searches always find something close, but not what I'm looking for.
This isn't something I do for work, so I have no "mentor" to ask questions of. We're a small company, and our admin knows a bit more than I do. I'm having trouble finding a book (I have O'Reilly's Bulding Internet Firewalls on order). I've found no repository of sample IPCHAINS scripts, or even an "official" way to add them to a Debian system.
How do you go from clueless to "smart"? Why is it, when it comes to security, the Slashdot advice is always "Get a person with a clue as security admin" and never "Here's a clue, here's where to get a clue"?
I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Katz on this one point - the Onion did an excellent job, and did something that almost no other media could do - use humor to explore the deeper truths beneath the terrorist attacks. If you haven't read their coverage, go read it now. If anyone from the Onion is reading, can you back-order that particular issue, maybe with profits going to a good cause?
Seriously, this is what the net is good at - it's so new, a site like the Onion can get away with finding the humor in the attack. SNL would have had a hard time doing it, Bill Maher is in a lot of shit for doing what he does, and newspapers still think Mallard Fillmore belongs in the comics section.
On a more personal note, the repeated clip of planes crashing into buildings, the footage of New Yorker's reacting, the climbing death tolls, the speeches of pundits and politicians - none of this moved me on an emotional level, except to push me into further shock. But, when I read this article from that Onion issue, it moved me to tears.
The people of Afghanistan aren't *ready* for Democracy (or even a Republic). It simply isn't right for their society.
Do you mean that Islam is incompatible with democracy? Or that the country is in such bad potiical and economic state that democracy is impossible? Is it the low population density? The lack of infrastructure?
Are they not ready for democracy now, or will they never be ready for democracy? If it is the former, then what steps of milestones do you see before the democratic solution is practical? Is it anything like India (democratic after the British left, but spilt apart because of an early religion-fueled civil war) or Japan (Monarchy until the U.S. took over, switching to democracy after temporary U.S. "monarchy") or Puerto Rico (somewhat independent, somewhat dependant) or something else?
OBL and other terrorists probably thought the USA would strike back swiftly and deadly against Afghanistan and other Arabian suspected countries. Taliban and other radical fundamentalist Muslim groups could then unite, using recent US attacks as the rallying cry for a Jihad. However, instead of retaliating immediately, the USA slowly built up an anti-terror coalition, diplomatically and systematically. As the coalition included all of the Americas and Europe, slowly the Arab nations joined as well, possibly for fear of being seen to support such terror. I think OBL didn't see this global coalition coming by any reckoning, and is now shitting bricks. Taliban's actions seem to imply this, as they themselves are calling this a US-led war against Islam, which it clearly isn't, especially as the USA has the support of other several Islamic countries.
I agree 100%. Furthermore, it appears that this was the work of Colin Powell, who argued for the "world consensus" approach rather than the unilateral fast action that some of the war-hawks desired. As much as I am wary of the Bush Administration, it does look like he chose some of the best of the best for his cabinet, and a good balance all around. Maybe this is a sequel that is better than the original administration. In any case, if his role becomes more public, Powell might be the first African-American Vice President, if not President. Hell, if Cheney's health goes south, we may see it in the next four years...
Afghanistan is one of those places that we disrupted during the cold war, then forgot. I echo others' sentiments when they say, get people on the ground, get rid of this government that supports terrorism, stablize the country, dump Marshall Plan-level dollars on them, then give democracy a try. Maybe we need to look at some other countries, and see what's brewing. Hopefully, the news stations will forget about market-share and public opinion polls, and actually do some world-news reporting for a few minutes a day. I appreciate NPR's coverage more every day...
There does seem to be a problem, but I'm not sure it's fatal.
One possiblity is with the premium content. A few weeks ago, they were offering MP3s of "alternative" bands, including one I've been meaning to check out. I liked them, and may buy some of the CDs on my next Amazon purchase. I was pleased that the songs were complete and had the correct names (something that bugs me about Napster et all), and that the song was what the marketers thought were one of the strong tracks on the album. Once you've established that a group is willing to pay for good content, you can use this "try-before-you-buy", content-based marketing with a better success rate.
Second, you can make deals with other companies to direct traffic to them. For instance, Salon often has great book reviews or author interviews. It appears they have made a deal with Powell's, to provide links to their books. I've made a few purchases based on Salon articles, and this has the potential to make money for whoever is willing to pay a fee to be the site that gets linked.
Third - do you need advertisers? It's the dominant model today, but there are examples (though few and far between) of content providers getting by without advertisers. Public television and radio come to mind, but I believe there are some journals and special-interest publications with few or no ads.
I agree, it leaves the banner advertisers asking "Why do I want to pay for ads that only get seen by the deadbeats?" Salon will have to struggle to make the free content compelling, to get a better class of deadbeat, but they've done it in the past. I'm starting to look forward to a "pay-as-you-go" internet, where crappy content can go to hell (or the slow lane next to hell), and the sites I know and love can get paid to do what they do. Love and Buzz may keep the Internet alive during the good times, but money and financial security is what is required during the slow times.
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No, it ain't off-topic. It's really hard to say what justice is in a time like this. I can think of a few folks from the past decade that get the same room in hell:
Augusto Pinochet, totured, etc., thousands of his own citizens: Living out the rest of his life, not put on trial because doctors say it would be too hard on him.
Slobodan Milosevic et all, used war and genocide for political gain: On trial or have warrants out for their arrest. May get life in prison for killing thousands.
Saddam Hussain, used chemical weapons against his own citizens, invaded a neighboring country: Still in power, probably using oil money for millitary purposes.
Hitler, killed millons of Jews, responsible for WW2: committed suicide (accomplises were put on trial - executed?)
9/11 terrorists: Died with their victims.
Do people that do horrible things get punished in this life? It seems 10% get punished, 10% get imprisoned, and 80% retire with a pension. If you were the U.S. soldier from NYC, looking at Bin Laden waving the white flag, would you fire?
What would have happen if, on 9/12, Bin Laden would have shown up in France, demanding to have a trial in a country that didn't have the death penalty? Would we have bombed France?
So far, I concider the U.S. action to be justifiable. Bin Laden is a clear and present danger to the world, and I have no doubt he would have gotten the same treatment as Milosevic (whatever that turns out to be) if he had turned himself in, or if the Taliban had turned him in. Hell, we might have had U.N. inspectors running around Afghanistan like they did in Iraq, with about the same effect. Instead, they decided to fight, and the rules of war are very different. By the way, we seem to be following all those rules, with very little civilian casualities (even less than were killed on 9/11).
It's times like these that an afterlife with heaven and hell are so attractive - at least everyone gets what they deserve. However, I have a hard time believing in the afterlife, and it's even harder when the idea gives so much comfort to the terrorists. My personal philosophy has been to believe in God and heaven and hell, but act as if the only justice is the justice we make on earth.
That doesn't answer your question, does it? In short, yeah, the average joe and maybe the not-so-average jane wants these guys dead, by whatever means necessary. Some even wanted to nuke the whole place. I have been plesantly suprised by an administration that instead seems to understand the importance of a limited war, international support, and building the nation of Afghanistan from the rubble. I don't have a lot of faith in G.W., but he seems to be wise enough to listen to the right people. When I listen to his speeches, I worry about mob rule. When I see the actual deeds, it looks a lot like measured justice, and I'm pretty happen.
There are two ways to fight bad laws. The first way is to have elected representatives repeal the laws. Not damn likely, when the people that like the laws are the same ones who are paying for campaign ads.
The second is civil disobedience. I'm proud of any scientist who is willing to go against this law. It would be even more effective if the IEEE or other professional groups spoke out against the law. It would be even more effective if those groups told it's members to break those laws openly and publicly, and millions did it, and millions of tech workers were put in prison for it. However, I doubt tech workers (or even Slashdot readers) have that kind of code of ethics. I know I'd have trouble doing that, especially since I'd have no guarantees others were doing the same.
I laughed when a friend told me she was taking an "ethics for engineers" class. How ridiculous - what ethical questions do engineers have? Then I read the textbook, and realized that there's a big hole in CS and engineering education. For instance, I had no idea that, as long as certain criteria are met, a whistle blower that exposes fraud in a government contract is entitled to a portion of any settlement or judgement against his or her employer. I also learned how long a fraud conviction takes, and the personal cost involved, and had to think about what I would do in a similar situation.
I'm proud of these scientists. It sucks, but I hope they go to jail or get fined, and the wheels of justice move swiftly. Yes, I support the EFF. I gave them a chunk of G.W.'s tax rebate, and as soon as I get my damn hat, I'll probably give again.
However, I'm not sure if you should take the tactic of "work people aren't potential friends". Sure, there can be problems at work (promotion competition, office politics, too many friendly favors), but the benefits are many. 70% or more or the problems at work are lack of communication between employees. I've worked for weeks on problems that would have been solved in an hour over beers with another co-worker. It's ranged from little things like not knowing about a useful global variable or obscure Unix command to finding out an impossible problem I was working on wasn't even a line item in the contract. Even better is when the guy who left for another company thinks of you for a position in his new company. Horizontal promotion is a lot easier when you have friends in the new company.
Of course, this is mostly theoretical. I spend a month at a time with the guys from work, because we spend a month at a time at the customer's office in another state. We eat together every night, share stories while the backups run, talk politics, religion, technology, and hobbies. And, when we get back to the home office, we never go for a beer. Lunch maybe, but no weekend time.
Who has been locked up for this? Oh wait, no one has. Yeah, someone else was locked up because their company was selling a product based on breaking a US law, but no one has been arrested for this.
You can say "CORPORATE POLICE STATE!" all you want, but the fact is, this particular law is awful, one guy has been sent to jail, and there's been at least one court case so far which has affirmed that corporate interests do not outweigh free speech. Like every other horrible anti-speech law that has been passed in the last few years, it will die a slow death. People will be prosecuted under it, sure, but that's the only way to start the chain of events that leads to the Supreme Court striking the ugly thing down.
This isn't goverment thugs defending their interests. This is government employees doing their jobs, and scientists taking a moral stance, and the American legal system taking it's slow, painful path to justice, same as it ever was.
Yeah, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms which have been tried from time to time. Support the EFF, dammit!
Ah, but in the U.S., I can look at contraversial religious websites, websites that criticize Islam (and my own religion) , porn [do you really need a link?], and pretty much anything I want. Even when someone says I can't look at some information, I can look at it, and they can take me to court, and see if a judge thinks their concerns are more important then free speech.
I'm getting sick of these sophmoric statements of "the U.S. is just as bad as [x]", where x is the criminal of the day. Part of my discomfort is because I recently had the same frame of mind, and I hate seeing others make the same mistakes.
Why would we know of U.S. warcrimes in Afghanistan? The Taliban kicked all the foriegn journalists out. Sure, we don't see all the evidence against Bin Laden, but few dispute that his organization trained Islamic radicals, and was probably behind other terrorist acts as well as Sep. 11. I would be angry if we were putting him on trial without enumerating evidence, but first we need to imprison him based on the evidence we have.
Yeah, the U.S. government used propaganda and spin control and even lies, just like every other government on earth. But we also have a free and active press, which is always trying to catch the government lying. Sure, the big media is all corporate controlled and puts the rich white man spin on everything, but there's plenty of other news outlets, and almost every large city I've been in has a newspaper whose sole reason for existance seems to be to criticize the big media paper in town. Afghanistan? No free press. Saudi Arabia? No real free press.
This is a country where three little letters seperate propaganda from porn from anti-propaganda, and there's nothing George W., Time Warner/AOL, or Microsoft can do to stop it. And when they try, we can eventually beat 'em in court.
Nazis were bad
Jews were screwed by the Nazis
Not all Germans are bad (one wasn't)
Capitalism CAN save lives!
Black+White=CLASSY
When your audience can't be trusted to remember a face, use RED
I cried when E.T. died. I never cried during the List
Spielberg needs to spend some more time with 8-year-olds.
To be honest , I don't know much about the history of bridge building. When I think of the history of bridge building, I think of different kinds of bridges, including:
a big log over a stream
two big logs over a stream
two big logs over a stream, with other logs lashed on
cut wood bridge, maybe treated wood, maybe covered (why do those New England bridges have a roof?)
Rope and wood bridges from Indiana Jones movies
Stone bridges from England (or even ancient Rome?)
Modern highway bridges (concrete, supports, standards for the road leading to the bridge, etc.)
Modern suspension bridges (Golden Gate)
Drawbridges
Those cool bridge-on-wheels the army uses.
etc.
I don't know what the progression is, how people went from a log over a river to a suspension bridge, or the tech needed to cut wood and make strong rope, or how stone bridges were constructed. I imagine some folks specialized in bridge construction, studying previous designs and learning from contemporary practitioners.
I do know that it took hundreds to thousands of years to get to the point where there was a science of bridge building, where the strengths and weaknesses of designs and materials were known, written down, and taught. There was also a point where you had to go to a formal school to learn bridge building, and that the government had to certify you as a bridge builder in order for you to design bridges that the public would use.
We're in the early stages of engineering software. In some places, there's a amateur engineer culture, where some people have an affinity for the stuff, and allowed to do their own thing. In other places, there's a "hire the expert" mentality, where outside masters are brought in to do the design work, and locals are used as cheap labor. In still other places, there's a guild mentality, where educating the next generation and producing a quality product are emphasized. I know of few, if any, places where a modern engineering mentality is maintained, where practitioners are certified to have a certain level of competency, where standards are required, where products are reviewed and analyzed scientifically, where mistakes are published and lessons learned in an institutional manner. Bridge builder all know about Tacoma Narrows, and plan accordingly. Software engineers still write un-commented code in non-portable ways, and expensive "disasters" happen daily.
Sure, software engineering != civil engineering. But is that due to intractable differences between the two disciplines, or because civil engineering is mature and responsible, while software engineering worships the local experts and laughs at professional rigor?
Until you move over to the Windows world, where it's Alt-F4. Just as fast, but there's that little internal lookup function, where you have to think "wait, I'm in a MS program, it's not Ctrl-W, it's Alt-F4". Now, once that info's availible, then it's easy to close the other windows (Alt-Tab, Alt-F4, repeat), but the first 500 times you do it, you have to remember what you are doing. And then, when you switch to another system, you have to remember what the command is there. I'd be appalled if there was a little counter that counted how much time I wasted typing "ls" at an MS-DOS command prompt, or DIR at a bash prompt.
Keyboard shortcuts are damn fast, once you've gone beyond memorization to the point where they are second nature. My problem is, I try to learn emacs, but when I need code done fast, it's still faster for me to type it in Textpad on an MS machine, then use WS-FTP to ftp it to the Unix machine. For a long time, the only commands I used in emacs was Mark, Move to end of file, Delete marked area, Insert Files (my Windows edited file), Close app. I couldn't even memorize all of those - thank goodness for the mouse menus in X-emacs.
When I have a good month-long project where I type in and edit code all day, I'll learn emacs, and I might agree with you. Until then, I'll stick with a light, powerful, mouse-driven program like Textpad, and memorize a few commands like the shortcut to bring up the Search and Replace dialog.
I agree, but I don't think "the government" is in a position to do this. There's no Secretary of IT that mandates what the Executive branch uses. For the most part, I assume there's a big "money pot", high-up employees get whatever toy they want, be it IBM, Dell, Apple, Sony, or Nintendo. (BTW - anyone else watch West Wing for the computers? Dell one week, Thinkpads the next, and I'm pretty sure I saw an iMac once...)
Ditto for other branches - I can't imagine that there's a central IT org that can mandate what congressmen work on, or what field offices use. How do they network? Simple networks based around huge steel purchases from the 70's, or the government's intranet, the Internet.
Even the millitary isn't too standardized. I've seen some rugidized laptops provided by, I think, Compaq, in huge metal cases. I imagine that heat generation is a problem, so these are probably kept in the low-power range. Vendors have to make sure their stuff works on the laptops, but that's it.
I've done some military contract work, and one of the fundamentals is that the military owns the applications and the code, unless the applications are of-the-shelf equipment. If you are a big enough company, then you can claim that a peice of software is of-the-shelf, but they may look at you crooked and try to determine if you'll be around 20 years from now, when it breaks. It appears that Microsoft meets that criteria, since we've never had the military blink when we've based a small project on top of MS Windows or MS Office.
That's the rub - government development is not ongoing, but instead in quantum leaps. They are more likely to develop a standard application, verify it works, then sit on it for 5-20 years until it no longer meets requirements, then start the process of budgetting for an upgrade, taking bids, etc., which can last years. Can open-source work in an environment where there is 20 years between patches, where it has to be right when you deliver it to the customer?
It's not impossible, of course. I've seen the military force some interesting things on contractors, such as Ada. But I don't expect them to do it this year, this presidency, or even by the next president. This is a category where commerical businesses will have to lead.
However, the Ninth circuit is also the home turf of the movie industry. I suspect a number of judges know which side their bread is buttered on. The same is probably true of the Sixth Judicial District of the California state court system.
Thanks for the correction and clarification, as well as pointing out the resource - I hope a moderator is watching, so that folks will get the correct facts.
Sorry, my subtlety detector is in the shop... Are you ragging on the Ford Festiva? I'm a proud owner of one, that my family gave me back in college (for free!). Amoung the many features:
Great gas mileage (30+ some weeks)
Self-changing oil (Self-draining, just add a quart or two a month!)
Simple radio system (No CD or tape player)
User-provided cronometer (the backlighting for the stereo's LCD display is out)
Ample trunk space (For my laptop and the 12-pack of oil)
Simplified air conditioning (no cooling, only heating)
Multi-terrain capability (roads and sidewalks!)
Daily excercise (no power steering, so your arms get a workout.)
Seats 5 uncomfortably (I'm the only one that rides in it these days...)
I'm sure there are other benefits. It has a few annoyances, but still runs. I can afford a better car, but I can't bring myself to change until this one dies. The thing simply lasts forever without needing maintainace work, so I'll probably have it for another 5-10 years.
I'm seeing a lot of interesting cases being cited in this ruling. Some have been mentioned already, and a few others have caught my eye (Religious Technology Center v Lerma (E.D.Va. 1995) 897 F.Supp. 260, 263. - Isn't the RTC the Scientology group?) Is there an online resource for a summary of these rulings, or is this a situtation where you need paralegals and a wall of books?
I assume that the ruling, if the Supreme Court doesn't hear it, will stand, but that another circuit court may interpret differently, in which case it will eventually go to the Supreme Court. Looks like it's time to donate to the EFF, so that they will have the funds to argue the case at the next level.
You, sir, are pure evil. How am I going to get any work done today if I can play all the classics of my youth on my Visor until the batteries run out?
What's next, an Atari emulator?
My solution was a set of batch files that ran when the CD was inserted. The "installation program" was interactive, including a menu with several options. The program did things like selectively copy files, changed permissions from read-only to read write (files copied from a CD were read-only by default), verify network shares and copy files to other computers, and even updated DLLs if necessary (reboot required). It took about a week to develop, but simplified the instructions a great deal (Close program on all PCs, Insert CD, Select 2, Reboot all PCs when done).
Is MS-DOS really gone, or do they have the same kind of MS-DOS emulation that WinNT has? And, if it is gone, does anyone know of a free scripting language that would perform like DOS Batch files? I'd hate to think if there was a hardware failure I'd have to buy an installation software suite, or convince the customer to install a nationwide secure network...
Just out of curiosity, what applications need full registry access?
I'm not really a Windows developer, so I'm not familiar with programatically changing the registry. But I have manually changed the registry to allow automatic login, and you may even be able to auto-login into the admin's account (BTW, the PCs I did this for were not on the network, and needed to boot straight to the desktop). Now, you need to know the desired password for the auto-login to work, but there may still be a security issue with a program that is allowed to read and write any keys in the registry.
Does Windows allow full registry access by default, or does it make some restrictions?
If this gets modded down (or, can't think why, up), then the next meta-modder will see it! Real-time metamoderation!
Any AC's want to comment how this signals the doom of Slashdot / OSDN / VA Linux?
You:That, my friend, is the problem. If you wait, by the time you buy your next PC it will come with XP preinstalled. You'll use it whether you like it or not.
Ahh, but I may be planning to build my next system rather then buy it from a dealer. I'm hoping that, for the next few months at least, you'll be able to purchase the OEM version of Win2K from a hard drive seller. Or, if XP is REALLY annoying, I may even be willing to buy a non-OEM copy of Win2K.
Seriously, I have almost always bought a new computer based on a new operating system. I think this is a common experience. I've never upgraded a Windows operating system, except for my first college computer, when Win95 came out a few months after I purchased it - and Gateway gave me a free upgrade coupon for that one.
Why? Well, like most home PC users, I don't upgrade the hardware much. I buy a system that's more than I need at the time, and when I start feeling the pinch, there's no clear upgrade path to the next system. For instance, I could use a GeForce2/3, a video card with DVD-out (and a DVD player that supports that), Firewire, a 3x to 5x processor increase (350 Mhz to somewhere in the high 1000's), and maybe get the memory up to half a gig. But there's no good upgrade path - that's a motherboard change (to one w/ AGP and that supports a faster processor), and it means discarding my current DVD drive, and possible other hard drives. I might as well buy a new, integrated system. And while I'm at it, I might as well get the latest operating system. I wanted to buy a new PC around the time Black and White came out, but I decided to wait and see if XP would be worth the wait.
Which puts me in a bind. Like others say, there's not much differance between XP and 2000, except for some (downloadable) bells and whistles, and that AWFUL authentication scheme. I'll wait until the verdict to see if I should go XP, 2000, or ME. Unlike some ZDNet columnists, I'm pretty happy with Win98SE...
If it wasn't for the funky licsensing, I'd jump right on, and have my PC delivered tommorrow. I'm afraid a million others are making the same choice, and we might see a boom in PC sales by Christmas, maybe not.
Most companies and people that run them don't understand what it takes to properly setup and maintain a network.
OK, I'll assume you're the smart guy. Where do you find this basic info? It seems too concrete and vendor specific for a CS class. Having spent a summer interning with MIS students, all I can figure is they learn a little programming and a lot of beer drinking.
I have my own Linux router (not LRP, just a 586 with Debian and IP-Chains), and I've had a hell of a time finding any decent information. The HOW-TOs are useful, but always seem to have holes, or say "this section to be added later" for the things I actually need. There is no online documentation, and Google searches always find something close, but not what I'm looking for.
This isn't something I do for work, so I have no "mentor" to ask questions of. We're a small company, and our admin knows a bit more than I do. I'm having trouble finding a book (I have O'Reilly's Bulding Internet Firewalls on order). I've found no repository of sample IPCHAINS scripts, or even an "official" way to add them to a Debian system.
How do you go from clueless to "smart"? Why is it, when it comes to security, the Slashdot advice is always "Get a person with a clue as security admin" and never "Here's a clue, here's where to get a clue"?
(OK, it's a semi-troll - it's just fun to theorize about CmdrTaco / VA Linux / OSDN conspiracies)
Seriously, this is what the net is good at - it's so new, a site like the Onion can get away with finding the humor in the attack. SNL would have had a hard time doing it, Bill Maher is in a lot of shit for doing what he does, and newspapers still think Mallard Fillmore belongs in the comics section.
On a more personal note, the repeated clip of planes crashing into buildings, the footage of New Yorker's reacting, the climbing death tolls, the speeches of pundits and politicians - none of this moved me on an emotional level, except to push me into further shock. But, when I read this article from that Onion issue, it moved me to tears.
Do you mean that Islam is incompatible with democracy? Or that the country is in such bad potiical and economic state that democracy is impossible? Is it the low population density? The lack of infrastructure?
Are they not ready for democracy now, or will they never be ready for democracy? If it is the former, then what steps of milestones do you see before the democratic solution is practical? Is it anything like India (democratic after the British left, but spilt apart because of an early religion-fueled civil war) or Japan (Monarchy until the U.S. took over, switching to democracy after temporary U.S. "monarchy") or Puerto Rico (somewhat independent, somewhat dependant) or something else?
I'm interested in your answer.
I agree 100%. Furthermore, it appears that this was the work of Colin Powell, who argued for the "world consensus" approach rather than the unilateral fast action that some of the war-hawks desired. As much as I am wary of the Bush Administration, it does look like he chose some of the best of the best for his cabinet, and a good balance all around. Maybe this is a sequel that is better than the original administration. In any case, if his role becomes more public, Powell might be the first African-American Vice President, if not President. Hell, if Cheney's health goes south, we may see it in the next four years...
Afghanistan is one of those places that we disrupted during the cold war, then forgot. I echo others' sentiments when they say, get people on the ground, get rid of this government that supports terrorism, stablize the country, dump Marshall Plan-level dollars on them, then give democracy a try. Maybe we need to look at some other countries, and see what's brewing. Hopefully, the news stations will forget about market-share and public opinion polls, and actually do some world-news reporting for a few minutes a day. I appreciate NPR's coverage more every day...
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One possiblity is with the premium content. A few weeks ago, they were offering MP3s of "alternative" bands, including one I've been meaning to check out. I liked them, and may buy some of the CDs on my next Amazon purchase. I was pleased that the songs were complete and had the correct names (something that bugs me about Napster et all), and that the song was what the marketers thought were one of the strong tracks on the album. Once you've established that a group is willing to pay for good content, you can use this "try-before-you-buy", content-based marketing with a better success rate.
Second, you can make deals with other companies to direct traffic to them. For instance, Salon often has great book reviews or author interviews. It appears they have made a deal with Powell's, to provide links to their books. I've made a few purchases based on Salon articles, and this has the potential to make money for whoever is willing to pay a fee to be the site that gets linked.
Third - do you need advertisers? It's the dominant model today, but there are examples (though few and far between) of content providers getting by without advertisers. Public television and radio come to mind, but I believe there are some journals and special-interest publications with few or no ads.
I agree, it leaves the banner advertisers asking "Why do I want to pay for ads that only get seen by the deadbeats?" Salon will have to struggle to make the free content compelling, to get a better class of deadbeat, but they've done it in the past. I'm starting to look forward to a "pay-as-you-go" internet, where crappy content can go to hell (or the slow lane next to hell), and the sites I know and love can get paid to do what they do. Love and Buzz may keep the Internet alive during the good times, but money and financial security is what is required during the slow times.