Back before outsourcing was a big deal I worked for a mail-order PC company doing technical support. I started at about seven bucks an hour and hammered on the phones, worked lousy shifts, and was required to work every other weekend. Usually, I loved the job but sometimes angery people got to me. I did have my life threatend on more than one occasion. In one case the threat was serious enough so that the police were even called.
After a few years of doing this gig, I started getting calls from head-hunters at work and at home. The salaries that these guys were offering were more than double what I was earning! At first I resisted their efforts, I was safe and secure in my job and I liked it but one day I recieved an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was allowed to "name my price, name my conditions" so I picked a number that I thought was unbelieveably high, said I wanted to work Monday through Friday, and that I had a guaranteed one year contract. When they agreed to meet these demands, I couldn't believe it!
I went to work as a contractor and worked for the agency for over two years when the company that I was working for offered to "buy" my contract from the agency. In the end they offered me a job with another raise, full benefits, retirement and everything! The company agreed to give me up in exchange for more business from the company. I am still there and have worked my way up the ladder.
I can credit that phone-line tech support as being a great foundation for the path that I followed and the work that I am doing today. I am glad that I did it then and am not doing it now. It was an excellent and fertile training ground that opened a lot of doors for me.
I can't help but wonder how out-sourcing will affect the future generation of tech types. If these jobs aren't around to give the "experience" that so many better jobs require. If these jobs are all overseas, what is that going to do for the corporate IS jobs that demand the well rounded experience a TS job gives?
I've suffered from depression yet I found the energy to go to the doctor and get help. I won't claim that what I've battled is as severe as some other people who I have known. Still, depression had a very severe impact on my life for a number of years (thankfully, I did not turn to drugs, alcohol, or suicide to "solve" it. I will admit that I did not directly tell the doctor I was depressed, he diagnosed it and got me on the medications that have really helped.
People are all different, each individual is unique. There are some people who are so deeply depressed that they are almost litterally zombies. Those people need the help of someone else to get them to the doctor. If you know someone in that condition, be a friend and take them by the hand and get them to the doctor.
Depression is a real condition. Being "depressed" is not the same as suffering from depression. When you are sad and you know you will get over it that is being depressed and is part of the normal human condition. Depression on the other hand is a long dark tunnel, you can not see the light at the end of the tunnel and you hold out no hope that things will get better. It is not a feeling most people would consider normal although people who suffer from it accept it as a normal part of their lives (that is why so many fail to seek help).
This chronic condition is very serious, it is the number one cause of suicide today. Chronic depression contributes to a whole slew of self-destructive behaviors and is a major contributing factor in alcoholisim, drug abuse, child neglect, and other very serious social ills.
If life seems dull or you feel trapped inside of a bubble, if you can't find happiness when others around you do, or if you just never have energy, please see a professional (start with your doctor if you do not want to see a "shrink") to see if they can help you break out of the cycle. If you even think you may be depressed, it is time to see someone. If you think of killing yourself to escape it all, please drop everything and make the call right now.
I have a teenager that I would like to voulinteer for your trials. I have only one condition, please equip the device with a remote that I can control.
I am not an Apple fan, I have never used an Apple computer but I have come to admire Apple for it's business savy. How many times has it been down for the count only to come back better, stronger, and smarter? I've lost count.
I don't know what Apple will do. I do not know any insiders and unlike Cringly, I do not have some sort of mystic ability to look into a crystal ball and predict the future.
What I do know is that Apple is currently operating from a position of financial strength, they are making quality products that have captured the public's imagination and, they have a great deal of real marketing talent on their side. At various times in their history, you could have said that Apple lacked focus but I don't think we can say that today -- I think they have a plan and are following it. I do not know what it is but I suspect that it is the right one for Apple.
Is Boot Camp a sign of something to come? I don't know and neither does anyone outside of the inside circle at Apple. Maybe it is a flag they are waving at Microsoft, telling them "Yea, we can run your O/S too" or maybe they just thought that they had to float it out there before hobbiests did something that Apple would find harder to control? Maybe by showing the public that they can run Windows, they can manipulate Microsoft into giving them a very attractive license agreement?
In the end, Apple will do what they know is the right thing for their product(s) and their plans for the future. That is what has always worked for them before. They know what they are doing. They are bright and savy technobusinessmen (hey, did I just invent a word?).
I do not know where you got your information from but it is incorrect.
The nuclear power plant in Elk River, Minnesota was decommissioned and tore down many years ago. There is another builing in it's place now. I'd call that a successful decommisioning wouldn't you?
Working with Pre and Post IBM ThinkPads everyday, I don't think that I have noticed a great deal of difference in quality or performance since Lenovo took over. Frankly, it never occured to me to look.
One thing I am sure of though, their hard drives crash just as bad now as before!
The lion's share of all computers manufactured in China are sold outside of that country. This is a rule foisted on manufacturers and it is not limited to computers SOLD in China but rather MADE in China. This is a significant difference.
While I know that there are many who may disagree with me, my opinion is that this is a rule that is there to stay. The reason that I believe this is because I suspect that the politial powers have discovered that they can charge import fees on every copy of licensed software installed on these computers. In essence the political leaders have struck a deal with Microsoft allowing them to profit for every copy of Windows that is installed on a computer built in their country! Microsoft is fine with this as it means that they sell all of that software (sales they would have otherwise missed).
I understand and agree - but this is why it is always important to "know your audience." It really helps to believe in what you are saying and to have your guns fully loaded and have a lot of ammunition that supports your position before going into a meeting. Sometimes the buzzwords help to cut through to the meat of the matter, it is kind of like shorthand to the bosses. You have to come across as knowlegable and convinced that your position is the right one.
Sometimes a word like "synergy" cuts right to the point yet I see it as a buzz word - in the case where it fits like a glove, I'll use it. Your presentation only lasts a few minutes and you have to find a fast way of telling these folks what may have taken you weeks or even months to learn. The more you can give them in the presentation, the fewer questions they will have when they get the chance to grill you.
Some of the recommendations that I have made cost significant money and you have to fight when you are asking someone to spend a couple of million dollars. If I were in their position, I myself would be extremly reluctant to spend that kind of money based on the recommendation of someone that I did not sense was confident in what they were selling.
Don't come across like a used car salesman but on the other end of the spectrum, you can't sound like you are using bid words to sound superior. Don't talk to them like they are idiots. A presentation is a sort of special form of public speaking, on one hand it gives you an opportunity to tailor your words to a small group you know well but on the other hand, they aren't exactly your friends (so don't treat them that way either). I prepare for it almost as if I am going to teach a class. I am actually there to teach them what I know and I want to share that information with them!
Oh, the irony, the "People's Republic" bowing to capitalist pressure at the expense of it's people!
Imagine the officers of a Chinese computer company in a meeting where they are trying to decide on the best way to meet this edict. I am sure that it isn't much different than the meeting and decision making process here (in the United States).
****
Overview is given: Gentlemen, a new policy has come down from Bejing, we are going to be required to install an OS on all of the computers we build! This meeting is to decide what operating system we can install that will be the most profitable for our company. There are many OS'es to choose from; Microsoft has several different flavors of Windows, there is of course a number of flavors of Linux, and then we could also consider BSD or perhaps a commercial version of Unix.
Rep from MFG: Our perspective is that we would like to limit the number of options. It is expensive for us to have too many different options available in our generic boxes.
Rep from Marketing: The lion's share of computers in homes and offices have Windows installed on them. It would be much more difficult for us to sell something that does not have Windows.
Rep from Support: My people could rise to the challenge of supporting anything, they are geeks and like to learn new things but let's face it, right now they already know Windows and it's idisyncracies.
Rep from Development: Every O/S has different drivers. Some companies only offer Windows drivers. We can not find an inexpensive modem that will work with anything besides Windows. If we offer multiple O/S'es, our development costs will skyrocket!
Rep from Shipping: We have not got enough warhouse space to stock more than a couple of different options. Each different configuration requires at least one storage bay! I barely have enough room already!
Moderator: So we can all agree that we have to limit options to one or two different Operating Systems then?
Everyone: Murmurs agreement.
Moderator: Linux is free, Windows XP costs us a lot of money and Windows XP Pro costs us even more.
Marketing: I can not agree to Linux, I do not know how many boxes we can sell like that. People who have to go out and buy retail copies of Windows would need to spend a lot more! They will mentally add that cost into the cost of the computer and I am just not sure we can overcome that!!! I will not sign off on anything other than Windows, it is as simple as that!
Moderator: Anyone else have an opinion?
Everyone:
Moderator: Everyone agrees then that we will offer Windows XP?
Everyone: Quietly mumrmer agreement.
Moderator: Should we offer XP Pro as an option?
Shipping: I think I can make space for it...
Moderator: Are we all agreed that XP Pro can be an option?
Everyone: Quietly mutter agreements
Moderator: OK, that settles it then.
*****
People, you know how this works. While the scenereo I have given is pure fiction, I have been in a thousand meetings just like this and in a nutshell this is what will happen.
I see this as something that makes society much more chocolate and vanilla. Other flavors aren't as favored so things like butterscotch fail to compete for shelf space in larger stores and are eventually discontinued by the manufacturer because he can't sell them to the Walmart's of the world. In the end, we all loose because the fringe flavors are simply no longer available and all we have left to choose from are chocolate and vanilla.
This is why naked PCs are important. They provide something that you can make any flavor you want without extra expense or hassle. Most manufaturers of naked PCs already make Windows boxes too. I suspect that the "copyright issue" is way over-blown. But this way, Microsoft wins because they are now sticking their software on every box made in China! For many naked PC buyers, this just significantly increased the cost of a computer.
I'll say it again: Oh, the irony, the "People's Republic" bowing to capitalist pressure at the expense of it's people!
I guess the short answer is: Yes, corporate speak is necessary. My former boss compared a pitch to proposing to your girlfriend. Would you wrap an engagment ring in an old newspaper and just leave it out for her to find? Would you ask her for her hand in marriage while wearing your sweats?
No, that would not be very romantic. You want to take her out to a nice place to eat dressed up, present the ring while on a knee and have it in a nice box, maybe even wrapped in a nice ribbon.
Presenting any proposal to a group of your superiors is a bit like that. Not only do you want to have a good idea but you want to be able to sell it. The right words, the right time, and the right appearance will all help you to sell your idea.
I have a strong dislike for terms like "Best Practices" and "synergy" but I manage to keep from gagging when I use 'em (and I do, but as little as possible). My current bosses like what they call "solid numbers" which are really hard to come by when you are trying to convince them that they need to spend money on something like spyware detection. How can I give them hard numbers on the money we can save if we prevent a theft of information that leads to a loss? How many millions could we lose if spyware captured information that could lead to their accessing one of our bank accounts (say the one that is used for payroll for thousands of people)? The obvious answer is millions but the hard numbers answer is impossible to come by.
It all leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. It is a game that must be played by "their" rules even when you don't agree with them or know all of them. As an IT person, you are occasionally a salesperson for your team. When that role falls on your shoulders, you have to take the good with the bad and just do your best.
There are some words that are important to use very infrequently - they have so much power that they are like pulling out a handgun. Use them very infrequently and only when all other words have been used and found to be too weak. Those words are "Ethically" "Morally" and most importantly "Fiduciary Responsibility." They are words that reach down into the core of the manager's and director's souls (VP's don't have souls).
On a scale of 1 to 10, I think this threat is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5. There are so many better ways to invade a computer than to somehow sneak this on there and wait for the machine to overheat. Especially now since the vunerability has been exposed, I'm sure the bit time virus vendors will now write code to look for it.
Sure it is probably possible, but then I suppose it would be possible to retrofit my truck into a boat. Heck, it would probably be easier and faster to do that than it would be to build and execute (in the wild) an exploit based on this.
Does anyone else feel a little uneasy about using drones to monitor citizens? On one hand, they are just another tool that can be used by police and other agencies to do a job. They are probably a lot safer and cheaper than putting a pilot and an officer in an airplane and an aerial view is a great way to get "the big picture." In many ways this is less intrusive than using a larger police presence on the ground and is really no less unsettling than pole mounted cameras. I understand all of this and acknowledge that people in public really have no right to privacy. Used properly, these tools appear perfectly legitimate for public safety use.
My concern is that in a very real sense, these things are spy planes. If a police agency is going to search your property, they need probable cause and must usually obtain a search warrant. These are protections afforded to citizens to protect them against unreasonable searches and seizures. Our forefathers understood that a strong government can easily become an oppressive government and built in this mechanism to limit their powers. It helps to protect us from having our government become a police state while still providing the government with enough authority to do the work they need to do to keep society safe. Courts have previously held that police do not need warrants to use aircraft to observe a property (mostly because the airspace above a property is not owned). One would have to assume that these unmanned craft would also not require search warrants.
Aircraft fly a few hundred feet off of the ground, the unmanned craft can fly much lower and slower, some of them are helicopter like and can hover. It is conceivable that they could fly below treetop level. Using powerful optics they could look in windows. Using infrared cameras they could see through walls. They could even deliver acoustic sensors that could listen to people's conversations, monitor traffic and so on. This is a slippery slope, one that I doubt has been tested by the courts.
Using the technology to get bad guys is something that I am all for. Using it to expand police powers is something that I am uncomfortable with. I know the good guys need all the help they can get but, there need to be stringent limits to keep the good guys from becoming bad guys. If they are going to use these tools to obtain evidence, they should obtain warrants to justify their actions.
Voting machines need to be secure, auditable, easy to use, and inexpensive to operate. They have to accurately and quickly tabulate votes and they have to assure the secrecy of an individuals vote. They need to be flexible enough to handle the voting requirements of a wide variety of precincts and they need to be secure and also fault-tolerant enough to protect the votes if something like a power-outage happens.
Some years ago I rode a bus on occasion. As I boarded the bus, I'd ask for a transfer. The driver would push a button that would spit out a small card with printing on the front and a mag-stripe on the back. When I got on the next bus I gave the driver the card and he slipped it into a box that read the stripe and lit up either a green or red light. The printing on the card was purely for my information, all the information the driver needed was on the stripe on the back of the card.
It seems to me that a card of this nature could be the perfect solution for an electronic voting system. It would have pre-printed marks that identify it by precinct and would be issued to a voter in the same manner paper ballots are issued today. The voter could step into a booth with an electronic device (touch screen computer), insert the virgin card and place his vote. Once voting is completed the vote could be registered inside the machine and recorded to the card which would then fall into a bin. These saved cards could then be used to verify the results of the votes that were cast if there was any doubt of the counts made by the machine. All of this would only take a couple of bytes per vote, it would be inexpensive, secure, auditable, fast, simple, and fault-tolerant.
Businesses are like people. Each one is unique and different, each one has specific needs, has specific goals, and the route through life is a little bit different for each one. On one hand, it makes sense for Microsoft to go after the big money that exists in the enterprise market; there is a lot of money to be made there. On the other hand when you go to an enterprise and offer them something, they won't usually take it straight off of the rack, they will want it tailored to meet their specific needs. Companies like IBM and Oracle seem to understand this far better than I expect a company like Microsoft will.
I'm not saying that I am against Microsoft entering the market, competition is usually good. What I am saying is that I think Microsoft will have to learn a lesson or two in order to actually compete. They won't be able to get away with delivering a product out of the box and then providing only a minimal level of support for it. Microsoft will have to play ball like the other big boys and learn to accept some of their rules. I expect that there will be some resistance to this from their end but, they will end up between a rock and a hardplace on the this because their enterprise level customers will simply demand it or look elsewhere.
It isn't just newspapers that need to embrace new technology, the same thing could be said for almost every industry. Technology's purpose is really to solve problems and improve on things. Any company that ignores those solutions and improvments will soon be left behind. Can you imagine the medical industry ignoring the X-ray machine, the CAT scan, and the MRI? Could you even imagine the manufacturing industry without the assembly line? No, yet in their day, these ideas were cutting edge technologies that before they came along, could hardly even be imagined.
Business has been forced to adapt or die ever since the first trader figured out how to move more product cheaply in order to out-sell his competition. That probably happened hundreds of years before Jesus walked the earth. This is NOT new news folks. Newspapers aren't immune and they have adapted and changed with the times. It wasn't all that long ago where color pictures were rare in a newspaper but today, color is common, especially in the larger papers.
I think Rupert's warning should be heeded, not just by newspapers but by all media. The most vunerable right now may be the folks that are higher-tech than the print media. It seems that the RIAA and the MPAA feel more threatened by technology than the newspapers. Thier resistance to the new kids on the block seems to be making them drag their heels in even trying to adopt the new ways in any meaningful manner.
Those that don't learn to adapt will fall behind. They will dry up and go away. Just like they have every generation before. It is the way it is, it is a dynamic that can't be changed or protected out of existance. Adopt or die is simply a fact of life in the business world. They better damed well get used to it.
Could it be that most of us here on Slashdot have similar interests and concerns? That in a sense we all come from the same side of the tracks? Slashdot is a virtual community where all are welcome but not all who visit choose to stay. We are in a sense a club, or perhaps more accurately an orginization. We find a lot to agree with here and frankly if Slashdot didn't agree with us, why would we stay?
Not all of us are liberals, nor are we conservitive. While we may have political interests and concerns, politics takes a backseat to technology. Most of us live, breath, eat, and sleep technology and stuff related to it. Hell, we are self-admitted nerds and geeks.
We have an obvious interest in the things that technology can do for us both for good and for evil. To us, it is frequently obvious that some people who use technology don't adhehre to the same level of ethics as we do, or they find some weird way to justify what they do. It isn't just the government that we gripe about. You would be hard pressed to find many positive comments about virus writers, script kiddies, spyware authors, bot-net operators, spammers, or the people who profit from their services. Many here seem to think that Microsoft is the Evil Empire and that Google can do no wrong. I'm not in either of those camps but I do question the ethics of a company profiting from a problem that they mostly created (so, I don't want to see Microsoft selling anti-spyware and anti-virus software, I think they should supply it free).
Slashdot does not tell me what to think. I am a free person and am entitled, even obligated to form my own opinions yet I find myself in agreement with most of the people here. It causes me concern that a program that was killed lives on. If congress said no, they meant no -- they did not mean repackage it and move it from one department to another. Since that was done, I question the ethics of the program. Hell, I question the ethics of the administration that would do that!
We have had ten percent ethanol in our fuel here in Minnesota for many years. I personally have never had to replace any part that has been damaged by ethanol and I don't expect the old Explorer to suffer any worse with twenty percent. Frankly, I think ethanol helps keep the fuel system cleaner.
Alcohol is less volatile than gasoline in cold weather but the lion's share of every-day cars on the road are now fuel injected and that more than makes up for some alcohol in the gas (injectors vaporize fuel much better than carburetors). Also, the alcohol really helps with frozen fuel lines and "water in the gas" both used to be big problems here in Minnesota where many of us all winter long added gas line anti-freeze (which is just alcohol) to our gas. We no longer need to do that.
Today, we don't need a second tank for gas/alcohol mixes but they do use that configuration in Brazil where most drivers use pure ethanol for fuel. I have a friend who uses E85 in her tank and she has never complained about hard starts in cold weather so, I assume that just a little gas added to the alcohol is all it takes to make it start well in the winter.
What really helps in the winter is a good battery. I try to replace mine at three years and I buy the biggest battery that will fit (you can get some 1000 amp batteries that are pretty small). Back in the days of carburetors I used to have to use a tank-heater and when it was really cold I'd even hook up a battery charger and throw a blanket over the hood and grille. I haven't done that in ten years though.
"Slash and trash" is the stuff loggers leave behind after they have harvested the timber - it is mostly small branches, leaves, and root stock. In a way, commercial timber harvesting is horrible, clear cutting leaves the land pretty baren. Still, timber is like any other crop, it is able to be replanted and grow back. It just takes a bit longer.
You have some good questions and I don't have the answers however, I can share some insight that I do have.
Any woody or grassy plant is an excellent source of cellulose. This means that much land that is currently thought of as unprofitable would be well suited to grow the crop. For instance swamps could be harvested (without harming the wetlands in the winter) and could provide a huge amount of the raw matterials. "Slash and trash" from forests being harvested for lumber and pulp could also supply a lot of cellulose from the branches, leaves, and roots that are currently unused.
From what I have read the conversion of cellulose to ethanol is pretty efficient; the bugs eat the woody stuff and crap out suggary stuff that is made into ethanol using pretty normal, efficient processes. Think of these bugs like yeast, they eat and reproduce quite well given the proper circumstances so their added cost is minimal.
While the amount of land required to produce the feedstock for an ethanol production facility is something to consider, along with the costs of producing ethanol, this is only one part of the formula. The other side is the fact that oil that the United States imports puts us at the mercy of some people who we don't want controlling us. If we can put ourselves on a diet and reduce the amount of energy we import, we have a safer country and a more stable economy while we put Americans to work making something that we currently pay someone else for. When we reduce the demand for oil it is even likely that the oil that we do import will be less expensive (we are a major consumer of oil and the law of supply and demand will slide in our favor).
Ethanol is not a new, unique, or unusual fuel. Brazil is already up and running on an alcohol based economy, the lion's share of their fuel is produced in Brazil from sugar cane. In the MidWest of the United States, many states require all of the fuel sold in their state contain ten percent ethanol. In Minnesota (where I live) we recently increased the minimum amount of ethanol to twenty percent. We have a number of ethanol plants here that are distilling ethanol from corn. E85 us also making inroads. I have not noticed any difference in the way my cars run (2000 Dodge pickup, 2000 Chevy Venture, and a 1993 Ford Explorer) since the switch. Regular gas here today was $2.04/gal. Some people say their gas mileage is about the same but I'd say that I have seen a slight decrease in the MPG from "real" gas, I would guess the number to be about 5% reduction in MPG. Still even assuming a slight reduction in MPG, how does $2.04 stack up against the price you are paying for gas?
There are many issues that get addressed politically from the pulpit. Abortion and gay marriage are two current hot-button examples. They are social issues that have been thouroughly politicized, largely because religious leaders have sent the message from the pulpit to make them political.
Even if gay marriage were legalized, the churches would still have the right to prohibit gay marriage in their church or amoung their congrigation. This is an issue that they want to control outside of their realm of direct control. They want to push their beliefs across all of society.
Ditto with abortion although I can understand that they see this as a life versus death issue. Frankly, my political leanings bend the opposite way from my personal leanings on this issue. I have made my choice and decided that what is morally right for me. The churches aren't satisfied with teaching what is right and wrong for their flock, they want to impose their beliefs on everyone.
How about the opposite end of the coin? Most conservitive churches (ie: Baptist) teach that capital punnishment is acceptable even though the bible itself teaches "Though shall not kill." There is overwhelming evidence that the system that imposes the death penaly is anything but "fair and impartial" yet these churches preach that the death penalty is not imposed often enough. I happen to believe that the system is so broken that the death penalty should be suspended until the system itself is repaired and can guarantee a fair, just application of it. From the firey sermons that I have heard, it almost seems like this is one place where they are willing to say "well a few mistakes are okay." Morally, I think this is wrong.
War - Almost every church preaches that sometimes war is okay. In today's climate it almost seems like they see the military actions as a holy war. The majority of people we are fighting are Muslim but I'm not so sure that pleases God. Aren't we all his people? I happen to think we are justified in being in Afghanistan but may not be justified in what we did in Iraq but now that we are there, it is our responsibility to fix the infrastructure we broke and help them establish a government and get them back on track. But there are people who believe strongly that all war is unjust. All these voices deserve to be heard.
And that is what my original post was about. Political speech is different. It is too important to stifle with laws. We all, each and every one of us, deserve to be free to speak our piece. Even the people off of the deep-end. Even anti-spam candidates who choose to spam the voters!
IANAL. Political Speech is held in a different light than other kinds of mass-audience speech (like advertising soap for instance). This is a good thing and this speech should continue to be protected, shielded from laws that may in some way restrict it. Even when the speech or method of speech may seem downright stupid and ill-advised. Why? Because the freedom of this kind of speech is what the United States of America is all about. This is the kind of speech our founding fathers were considering when they created the Bill of Rights! If someone is prohibited by law from stating, publishing, or distributing their political beliefs we have started down the slippery slope to an oppressing society.
I don't believe in segregation, yet if some ignorant red-neck wanted to run for office and ran on that platform, I would defend his right to publish that position. I'd actually encourage him. Why? Because it would show people who and what he really is.
I get somewhat offended when churches urge political activism among their members because I believe that the separation of church and state should go both ways. Still, these church leaders have a right to spout their opinion from the pulpit and I'd never raise a finger to stop them because the freedom of political speech is that important (and I can exercise my right to go to another church just as easily). I hope those same leaders will let me express my opinion that their flock should not need that kind of shepherding though, since they are thinking, reasoning people and not sheep that need to be told what to think and do. It does sometimes appear that they have a harder time yielding to my rights than I do to theirs though...
This is really scary to me. In essence this is data mining on steroids. Remember the stink that recently happened on the Walmart web site when their data mining tools
recommended movies starring black actors when they looked at Planet
of the Apes movies. Slashdot
even ran an article
on it.
The "6
degrees of separation theory" postulates that everyone on
earth is linked to everyone else on earth through “6 degrees of
separation” meaning that someone you know, knows someone who
knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone
who knows Osama Bin Laden.
My fear is that investigators using
this data mining tool on steroids won't understand all of the
conclusions that it reaches aren't necessarily valid. Frankly, when
you think about it, an investigator has to assume a person is guilty
until they are proved innocent (exactly the opposite of the rest of
the criminal-judicial system). They work by the process of
elimination, finding some evidence that proves a person innocent –
when they find it, they cross the suspect off of their list.
Unfortunately this kind of evidence is frequently hard to find. Can
you prove that you didn't steal that pen in your pocket? Add to
this the fact that most experienced investigators are jaded and the
potential for problems multiplies.
You probably won't even know you are
being investigated in the initial parts of the investigation at
least. If they are curious about you they will check you out
electronically first, looking at your bank accounts, credit cards,
phone records, and other data. Perhaps they will check your police
records and receive an alert if a cop runs your license or plate.
Worse yet, maybe they will alert the cop they are checking on you!
Maybe your name will be placed on a “Do
not fly” list (after all, it is safer to error on the side
of caution). You won't even know this is happening!
There are all sorts of other things
that could happen to this data too. It could become integrated into
police files, end up as an entry in your credit report, be stolen and
sold or used by the government itself for God knows what!
I am against terror and I want my
government to protect me from it. But if they start spending so much
money on monitoring people, even their own citizens, haven't the
terrorists already won a big battle? Haven't their efforts made us a
less free people and cost us billions in the process? More than
anything, I think that is what makes this idea so repulsive to me.
It lets the bad guys damage a very basic tenant of our way of life.
We are supposed to love freedom and die to protect it yet we are
letting them take it away from us bit by bit, piece by piece and, we
are doing it to ourselves.
Apple is sitting on a boatload of money and has a couple of hot products that will continue to show amazing growth for the near future at least. Like the Sony Walkman before it, the iPod line is an industry leader that can command a higher price than it's immitators.
The Palm products look like a good match for Apple. Like the iPod they are personal, portable devices that litterally define the niche they fill. They don't exactly compete with the iPod but are technological cousins that could be combined into a killer product.
Having said that, I'm not so sure that Apple needs Palm. Why would they? They have a partnership with Motorola where their product is already married to a phone which incorporates many of the most necessary features of the Palm devices! It seems to me that it may be a smarter move to work with Motorola to come up with a product that is one thrid cel phone, one third iPod, and one third PDA. This would cut their risk in half and would be far less expensive than buying another company outright. The only downside would be that they would have to share revenue with another company. I'm not even sure that would be so bad, the Motorola production capability combined with the Apple marketing savy may mean they could sell far more units than if they tried this on their own.
So, while Palm may look like an attractive pickup, once you got into bed with her, maybe the excitement wouldn't be there (and you would certainly offend your current partner.) Maybe staying in the marriage that you already have is a better option although far less exciting.
I don't know all the angles to this. What I do know is that the Apple managment has been savy enough in the past to recognize opportunity and also understand their market far better than anyone else. This is the primary reason why they are where they are today. Anyone else who has followed the path they did would have fallen in one too many potholes and been burried. Apple is still in the race. This tells me buy or no-buy, they will make the right decision.
This is news for nerds and it is stuff that matters.
Not everyone that reads Slashdot limits their interest to the latest PSP game or in making an XBox 360 run Linux. Frankly, these things are fun diversions, things that are interesting but not life-changing. The fact that our president and his henchmen sold us a bill of goods is far more important and interesting on a very different level.
I have no problem with Slashdot delving into this kind of stuff. Perhaps our community can find some way to fix some of the stuff that is broken!
Slashdot Mirror
Back before outsourcing was a big deal I worked for a mail-order PC company doing technical support. I started at about seven bucks an hour and hammered on the phones, worked lousy shifts, and was required to work every other weekend. Usually, I loved the job but sometimes angery people got to me. I did have my life threatend on more than one occasion. In one case the threat was serious enough so that the police were even called.
After a few years of doing this gig, I started getting calls from head-hunters at work and at home. The salaries that these guys were offering were more than double what I was earning! At first I resisted their efforts, I was safe and secure in my job and I liked it but one day I recieved an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was allowed to "name my price, name my conditions" so I picked a number that I thought was unbelieveably high, said I wanted to work Monday through Friday, and that I had a guaranteed one year contract. When they agreed to meet these demands, I couldn't believe it!
I went to work as a contractor and worked for the agency for over two years when the company that I was working for offered to "buy" my contract from the agency. In the end they offered me a job with another raise, full benefits, retirement and everything! The company agreed to give me up in exchange for more business from the company. I am still there and have worked my way up the ladder.
I can credit that phone-line tech support as being a great foundation for the path that I followed and the work that I am doing today. I am glad that I did it then and am not doing it now. It was an excellent and fertile training ground that opened a lot of doors for me.
I can't help but wonder how out-sourcing will affect the future generation of tech types. If these jobs aren't around to give the "experience" that so many better jobs require. If these jobs are all overseas, what is that going to do for the corporate IS jobs that demand the well rounded experience a TS job gives?
I've suffered from depression yet I found the energy to go to the doctor and get help. I won't claim that what I've battled is as severe as some other people who I have known. Still, depression had a very severe impact on my life for a number of years (thankfully, I did not turn to drugs, alcohol, or suicide to "solve" it. I will admit that I did not directly tell the doctor I was depressed, he diagnosed it and got me on the medications that have really helped.
People are all different, each individual is unique. There are some people who are so deeply depressed that they are almost litterally zombies. Those people need the help of someone else to get them to the doctor. If you know someone in that condition, be a friend and take them by the hand and get them to the doctor.
Depression is a real condition. Being "depressed" is not the same as suffering from depression. When you are sad and you know you will get over it that is being depressed and is part of the normal human condition. Depression on the other hand is a long dark tunnel, you can not see the light at the end of the tunnel and you hold out no hope that things will get better. It is not a feeling most people would consider normal although people who suffer from it accept it as a normal part of their lives (that is why so many fail to seek help).
This chronic condition is very serious, it is the number one cause of suicide today. Chronic depression contributes to a whole slew of self-destructive behaviors and is a major contributing factor in alcoholisim, drug abuse, child neglect, and other very serious social ills.
If life seems dull or you feel trapped inside of a bubble, if you can't find happiness when others around you do, or if you just never have energy, please see a professional (start with your doctor if you do not want to see a "shrink") to see if they can help you break out of the cycle. If you even think you may be depressed, it is time to see someone. If you think of killing yourself to escape it all, please drop everything and make the call right now.
I have a teenager that I would like to voulinteer for your trials. I have only one condition, please equip the device with a remote that I can control.
I am not an Apple fan, I have never used an Apple computer but I have come to admire Apple for it's business savy. How many times has it been down for the count only to come back better, stronger, and smarter? I've lost count.
I don't know what Apple will do. I do not know any insiders and unlike Cringly, I do not have some sort of mystic ability to look into a crystal ball and predict the future.
What I do know is that Apple is currently operating from a position of financial strength, they are making quality products that have captured the public's imagination and, they have a great deal of real marketing talent on their side. At various times in their history, you could have said that Apple lacked focus but I don't think we can say that today -- I think they have a plan and are following it. I do not know what it is but I suspect that it is the right one for Apple.
Is Boot Camp a sign of something to come? I don't know and neither does anyone outside of the inside circle at Apple. Maybe it is a flag they are waving at Microsoft, telling them "Yea, we can run your O/S too" or maybe they just thought that they had to float it out there before hobbiests did something that Apple would find harder to control? Maybe by showing the public that they can run Windows, they can manipulate Microsoft into giving them a very attractive license agreement?
In the end, Apple will do what they know is the right thing for their product(s) and their plans for the future. That is what has always worked for them before. They know what they are doing. They are bright and savy technobusinessmen (hey, did I just invent a word?).
I do not know where you got your information from but it is incorrect.
The nuclear power plant in Elk River, Minnesota was decommissioned and tore down many years ago. There is another builing in it's place now. I'd call that a successful decommisioning wouldn't you?
Working with Pre and Post IBM ThinkPads everyday, I don't think that I have noticed a great deal of difference in quality or performance since Lenovo took over. Frankly, it never occured to me to look.
One thing I am sure of though, their hard drives crash just as bad now as before!
The lion's share of all computers manufactured in China are sold outside of that country. This is a rule foisted on manufacturers and it is not limited to computers SOLD in China but rather MADE in China. This is a significant difference.
While I know that there are many who may disagree with me, my opinion is that this is a rule that is there to stay. The reason that I believe this is because I suspect that the politial powers have discovered that they can charge import fees on every copy of licensed software installed on these computers. In essence the political leaders have struck a deal with Microsoft allowing them to profit for every copy of Windows that is installed on a computer built in their country! Microsoft is fine with this as it means that they sell all of that software (sales they would have otherwise missed).
I understand and agree - but this is why it is always important to "know your audience." It really helps to believe in what you are saying and to have your guns fully loaded and have a lot of ammunition that supports your position before going into a meeting. Sometimes the buzzwords help to cut through to the meat of the matter, it is kind of like shorthand to the bosses. You have to come across as knowlegable and convinced that your position is the right one.
Sometimes a word like "synergy" cuts right to the point yet I see it as a buzz word - in the case where it fits like a glove, I'll use it. Your presentation only lasts a few minutes and you have to find a fast way of telling these folks what may have taken you weeks or even months to learn. The more you can give them in the presentation, the fewer questions they will have when they get the chance to grill you.
Some of the recommendations that I have made cost significant money and you have to fight when you are asking someone to spend a couple of million dollars. If I were in their position, I myself would be extremly reluctant to spend that kind of money based on the recommendation of someone that I did not sense was confident in what they were selling.
Don't come across like a used car salesman but on the other end of the spectrum, you can't sound like you are using bid words to sound superior. Don't talk to them like they are idiots. A presentation is a sort of special form of public speaking, on one hand it gives you an opportunity to tailor your words to a small group you know well but on the other hand, they aren't exactly your friends (so don't treat them that way either). I prepare for it almost as if I am going to teach a class. I am actually there to teach them what I know and I want to share that information with them!
Oh, the irony, the "People's Republic" bowing to capitalist pressure at the expense of it's people!
Imagine the officers of a Chinese computer company in a meeting where they are trying to decide on the best way to meet this edict. I am sure that it isn't much different than the meeting and decision making process here (in the United States).
****
Overview is given: Gentlemen, a new policy has come down from Bejing, we are going to be required to install an OS on all of the computers we build! This meeting is to decide what operating system we can install that will be the most profitable for our company. There are many OS'es to choose from; Microsoft has several different flavors of Windows, there is of course a number of flavors of Linux, and then we could also consider BSD or perhaps a commercial version of Unix.
Rep from MFG: Our perspective is that we would like to limit the number of options. It is expensive for us to have too many different options available in our generic boxes.
Rep from Marketing: The lion's share of computers in homes and offices have Windows installed on them. It would be much more difficult for us to sell something that does not have Windows.
Rep from Support: My people could rise to the challenge of supporting anything, they are geeks and like to learn new things but let's face it, right now they already know Windows and it's idisyncracies.
Rep from Development: Every O/S has different drivers. Some companies only offer Windows drivers. We can not find an inexpensive modem that will work with anything besides Windows. If we offer multiple O/S'es, our development costs will skyrocket!
Rep from Shipping: We have not got enough warhouse space to stock more than a couple of different options. Each different configuration requires at least one storage bay! I barely have enough room already!
Moderator: So we can all agree that we have to limit options to one or two different Operating Systems then?
Everyone: Murmurs agreement.
Moderator: Linux is free, Windows XP costs us a lot of money and Windows XP Pro costs us even more.
Marketing: I can not agree to Linux, I do not know how many boxes we can sell like that. People who have to go out and buy retail copies of Windows would need to spend a lot more! They will mentally add that cost into the cost of the computer and I am just not sure we can overcome that!!! I will not sign off on anything other than Windows, it is as simple as that!
Moderator: Anyone else have an opinion?
Everyone:
Moderator: Everyone agrees then that we will offer Windows XP?
Everyone: Quietly mumrmer agreement.
Moderator: Should we offer XP Pro as an option?
Shipping: I think I can make space for it...
Moderator: Are we all agreed that XP Pro can be an option?
Everyone: Quietly mutter agreements
Moderator: OK, that settles it then.
*****
People, you know how this works. While the scenereo I have given is pure fiction, I have been in a thousand meetings just like this and in a nutshell this is what will happen.
I see this as something that makes society much more chocolate and vanilla. Other flavors aren't as favored so things like butterscotch fail to compete for shelf space in larger stores and are eventually discontinued by the manufacturer because he can't sell them to the Walmart's of the world. In the end, we all loose because the fringe flavors are simply no longer available and all we have left to choose from are chocolate and vanilla.
This is why naked PCs are important. They provide something that you can make any flavor you want without extra expense or hassle. Most manufaturers of naked PCs already make Windows boxes too. I suspect that the "copyright issue" is way over-blown. But this way, Microsoft wins because they are now sticking their software on every box made in China! For many naked PC buyers, this just significantly increased the cost of a computer.
I'll say it again: Oh, the irony, the "People's Republic" bowing to capitalist pressure at the expense of it's people!
I guess the short answer is: Yes, corporate speak is necessary. My former boss compared a pitch to proposing to your girlfriend. Would you wrap an engagment ring in an old newspaper and just leave it out for her to find? Would you ask her for her hand in marriage while wearing your sweats?
No, that would not be very romantic. You want to take her out to a nice place to eat dressed up, present the ring while on a knee and have it in a nice box, maybe even wrapped in a nice ribbon.
Presenting any proposal to a group of your superiors is a bit like that. Not only do you want to have a good idea but you want to be able to sell it. The right words, the right time, and the right appearance will all help you to sell your idea.
I have a strong dislike for terms like "Best Practices" and "synergy" but I manage to keep from gagging when I use 'em (and I do, but as little as possible). My current bosses like what they call "solid numbers" which are really hard to come by when you are trying to convince them that they need to spend money on something like spyware detection. How can I give them hard numbers on the money we can save if we prevent a theft of information that leads to a loss? How many millions could we lose if spyware captured information that could lead to their accessing one of our bank accounts (say the one that is used for payroll for thousands of people)? The obvious answer is millions but the hard numbers answer is impossible to come by.
It all leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. It is a game that must be played by "their" rules even when you don't agree with them or know all of them. As an IT person, you are occasionally a salesperson for your team. When that role falls on your shoulders, you have to take the good with the bad and just do your best.
There are some words that are important to use very infrequently - they have so much power that they are like pulling out a handgun. Use them very infrequently and only when all other words have been used and found to be too weak. Those words are "Ethically" "Morally" and most importantly "Fiduciary Responsibility." They are words that reach down into the core of the manager's and director's souls (VP's don't have souls).
On a scale of 1 to 10, I think this threat is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5. There are so many better ways to invade a computer than to somehow sneak this on there and wait for the machine to overheat. Especially now since the vunerability has been exposed, I'm sure the bit time virus vendors will now write code to look for it.
Sure it is probably possible, but then I suppose it would be possible to retrofit my truck into a boat. Heck, it would probably be easier and faster to do that than it would be to build and execute (in the wild) an exploit based on this.
Does anyone else feel a little uneasy about using drones to monitor citizens? On one hand, they are just another tool that can be used by police and other agencies to do a job. They are probably a lot safer and cheaper than putting a pilot and an officer in an airplane and an aerial view is a great way to get "the big picture." In many ways this is less intrusive than using a larger police presence on the ground and is really no less unsettling than pole mounted cameras. I understand all of this and acknowledge that people in public really have no right to privacy. Used properly, these tools appear perfectly legitimate for public safety use.
My concern is that in a very real sense, these things are spy planes. If a police agency is going to search your property, they need probable cause and must usually obtain a search warrant. These are protections afforded to citizens to protect them against unreasonable searches and seizures. Our forefathers understood that a strong government can easily become an oppressive government and built in this mechanism to limit their powers. It helps to protect us from having our government become a police state while still providing the government with enough authority to do the work they need to do to keep society safe. Courts have previously held that police do not need warrants to use aircraft to observe a property (mostly because the airspace above a property is not owned). One would have to assume that these unmanned craft would also not require search warrants.
Aircraft fly a few hundred feet off of the ground, the unmanned craft can fly much lower and slower, some of them are helicopter like and can hover. It is conceivable that they could fly below treetop level. Using powerful optics they could look in windows. Using infrared cameras they could see through walls. They could even deliver acoustic sensors that could listen to people's conversations, monitor traffic and so on. This is a slippery slope, one that I doubt has been tested by the courts.
Using the technology to get bad guys is something that I am all for. Using it to expand police powers is something that I am uncomfortable with. I know the good guys need all the help they can get but, there need to be stringent limits to keep the good guys from becoming bad guys. If they are going to use these tools to obtain evidence, they should obtain warrants to justify their actions.
Voting machines need to be secure, auditable, easy to use, and inexpensive to operate. They have to accurately and quickly tabulate votes and they have to assure the secrecy of an individuals vote. They need to be flexible enough to handle the voting requirements of a wide variety of precincts and they need to be secure and also fault-tolerant enough to protect the votes if something like a power-outage happens.
Some years ago I rode a bus on occasion. As I boarded the bus, I'd ask for a transfer. The driver would push a button that would spit out a small card with printing on the front and a mag-stripe on the back. When I got on the next bus I gave the driver the card and he slipped it into a box that read the stripe and lit up either a green or red light. The printing on the card was purely for my information, all the information the driver needed was on the stripe on the back of the card.
It seems to me that a card of this nature could be the perfect solution for an electronic voting system. It would have pre-printed marks that identify it by precinct and would be issued to a voter in the same manner paper ballots are issued today. The voter could step into a booth with an electronic device (touch screen computer), insert the virgin card and place his vote. Once voting is completed the vote could be registered inside the machine and recorded to the card which would then fall into a bin. These saved cards could then be used to verify the results of the votes that were cast if there was any doubt of the counts made by the machine. All of this would only take a couple of bytes per vote, it would be inexpensive, secure, auditable, fast, simple, and fault-tolerant.
Businesses are like people. Each one is unique and different, each one has specific needs, has specific goals, and the route through life is a little bit different for each one. On one hand, it makes sense for Microsoft to go after the big money that exists in the enterprise market; there is a lot of money to be made there. On the other hand when you go to an enterprise and offer them something, they won't usually take it straight off of the rack, they will want it tailored to meet their specific needs. Companies like IBM and Oracle seem to understand this far better than I expect a company like Microsoft will.
I'm not saying that I am against Microsoft entering the market, competition is usually good. What I am saying is that I think Microsoft will have to learn a lesson or two in order to actually compete. They won't be able to get away with delivering a product out of the box and then providing only a minimal level of support for it. Microsoft will have to play ball like the other big boys and learn to accept some of their rules. I expect that there will be some resistance to this from their end but, they will end up between a rock and a hardplace on the this because their enterprise level customers will simply demand it or look elsewhere.
It isn't just newspapers that need to embrace new technology, the same thing could be said for almost every industry. Technology's purpose is really to solve problems and improve on things. Any company that ignores those solutions and improvments will soon be left behind. Can you imagine the medical industry ignoring the X-ray machine, the CAT scan, and the MRI? Could you even imagine the manufacturing industry without the assembly line? No, yet in their day, these ideas were cutting edge technologies that before they came along, could hardly even be imagined.
Business has been forced to adapt or die ever since the first trader figured out how to move more product cheaply in order to out-sell his competition. That probably happened hundreds of years before Jesus walked the earth. This is NOT new news folks. Newspapers aren't immune and they have adapted and changed with the times. It wasn't all that long ago where color pictures were rare in a newspaper but today, color is common, especially in the larger papers.
I think Rupert's warning should be heeded, not just by newspapers but by all media. The most vunerable right now may be the folks that are higher-tech than the print media. It seems that the RIAA and the MPAA feel more threatened by technology than the newspapers. Thier resistance to the new kids on the block seems to be making them drag their heels in even trying to adopt the new ways in any meaningful manner.
Those that don't learn to adapt will fall behind. They will dry up and go away. Just like they have every generation before. It is the way it is, it is a dynamic that can't be changed or protected out of existance. Adopt or die is simply a fact of life in the business world. They better damed well get used to it.
Could it be that most of us here on Slashdot have similar interests and concerns? That in a sense we all come from the same side of the tracks? Slashdot is a virtual community where all are welcome but not all who visit choose to stay. We are in a sense a club, or perhaps more accurately an orginization. We find a lot to agree with here and frankly if Slashdot didn't agree with us, why would we stay?
Not all of us are liberals, nor are we conservitive. While we may have political interests and concerns, politics takes a backseat to technology. Most of us live, breath, eat, and sleep technology and stuff related to it. Hell, we are self-admitted nerds and geeks.
We have an obvious interest in the things that technology can do for us both for good and for evil. To us, it is frequently obvious that some people who use technology don't adhehre to the same level of ethics as we do, or they find some weird way to justify what they do. It isn't just the government that we gripe about. You would be hard pressed to find many positive comments about virus writers, script kiddies, spyware authors, bot-net operators, spammers, or the people who profit from their services. Many here seem to think that Microsoft is the Evil Empire and that Google can do no wrong. I'm not in either of those camps but I do question the ethics of a company profiting from a problem that they mostly created (so, I don't want to see Microsoft selling anti-spyware and anti-virus software, I think they should supply it free).
Slashdot does not tell me what to think. I am a free person and am entitled, even obligated to form my own opinions yet I find myself in agreement with most of the people here. It causes me concern that a program that was killed lives on. If congress said no, they meant no -- they did not mean repackage it and move it from one department to another. Since that was done, I question the ethics of the program. Hell, I question the ethics of the administration that would do that!
We have had ten percent ethanol in our fuel here in Minnesota for many years. I personally have never had to replace any part that has been damaged by ethanol and I don't expect the old Explorer to suffer any worse with twenty percent. Frankly, I think ethanol helps keep the fuel system cleaner.
Alcohol is less volatile than gasoline in cold weather but the lion's share of every-day cars on the road are now fuel injected and that more than makes up for some alcohol in the gas (injectors vaporize fuel much better than carburetors). Also, the alcohol really helps with frozen fuel lines and "water in the gas" both used to be big problems here in Minnesota where many of us all winter long added gas line anti-freeze (which is just alcohol) to our gas. We no longer need to do that.
Today, we don't need a second tank for gas/alcohol mixes but they do use that configuration in Brazil where most drivers use pure ethanol for fuel. I have a friend who uses E85 in her tank and she has never complained about hard starts in cold weather so, I assume that just a little gas added to the alcohol is all it takes to make it start well in the winter.
What really helps in the winter is a good battery. I try to replace mine at three years and I buy the biggest battery that will fit (you can get some 1000 amp batteries that are pretty small). Back in the days of carburetors I used to have to use a tank-heater and when it was really cold I'd even hook up a battery charger and throw a blanket over the hood and grille. I haven't done that in ten years though.
"Slash and trash" is the stuff loggers leave behind after they have harvested the timber - it is mostly small branches, leaves, and root stock. In a way, commercial timber harvesting is horrible, clear cutting leaves the land pretty baren. Still, timber is like any other crop, it is able to be replanted and grow back. It just takes a bit longer.
You have some good questions and I don't have the answers however, I can share some insight that I do have.
Any woody or grassy plant is an excellent source of cellulose. This means that much land that is currently thought of as unprofitable would be well suited to grow the crop. For instance swamps could be harvested (without harming the wetlands in the winter) and could provide a huge amount of the raw matterials. "Slash and trash" from forests being harvested for lumber and pulp could also supply a lot of cellulose from the branches, leaves, and roots that are currently unused.
From what I have read the conversion of cellulose to ethanol is pretty efficient; the bugs eat the woody stuff and crap out suggary stuff that is made into ethanol using pretty normal, efficient processes. Think of these bugs like yeast, they eat and reproduce quite well given the proper circumstances so their added cost is minimal.
While the amount of land required to produce the feedstock for an ethanol production facility is something to consider, along with the costs of producing ethanol, this is only one part of the formula. The other side is the fact that oil that the United States imports puts us at the mercy of some people who we don't want controlling us. If we can put ourselves on a diet and reduce the amount of energy we import, we have a safer country and a more stable economy while we put Americans to work making something that we currently pay someone else for. When we reduce the demand for oil it is even likely that the oil that we do import will be less expensive (we are a major consumer of oil and the law of supply and demand will slide in our favor).
Ethanol is not a new, unique, or unusual fuel. Brazil is already up and running on an alcohol based economy, the lion's share of their fuel is produced in Brazil from sugar cane. In the MidWest of the United States, many states require all of the fuel sold in their state contain ten percent ethanol. In Minnesota (where I live) we recently increased the minimum amount of ethanol to twenty percent. We have a number of ethanol plants here that are distilling ethanol from corn. E85 us also making inroads. I have not noticed any difference in the way my cars run (2000 Dodge pickup, 2000 Chevy Venture, and a 1993 Ford Explorer) since the switch. Regular gas here today was $2.04/gal. Some people say their gas mileage is about the same but I'd say that I have seen a slight decrease in the MPG from "real" gas, I would guess the number to be about 5% reduction in MPG. Still even assuming a slight reduction in MPG, how does $2.04 stack up against the price you are paying for gas?
There are many issues that get addressed politically from the pulpit. Abortion and gay marriage are two current hot-button examples. They are social issues that have been thouroughly politicized, largely because religious leaders have sent the message from the pulpit to make them political.
Even if gay marriage were legalized, the churches would still have the right to prohibit gay marriage in their church or amoung their congrigation. This is an issue that they want to control outside of their realm of direct control. They want to push their beliefs across all of society.
Ditto with abortion although I can understand that they see this as a life versus death issue. Frankly, my political leanings bend the opposite way from my personal leanings on this issue. I have made my choice and decided that what is morally right for me. The churches aren't satisfied with teaching what is right and wrong for their flock, they want to impose their beliefs on everyone.
How about the opposite end of the coin? Most conservitive churches (ie: Baptist) teach that capital punnishment is acceptable even though the bible itself teaches "Though shall not kill." There is overwhelming evidence that the system that imposes the death penaly is anything but "fair and impartial" yet these churches preach that the death penalty is not imposed often enough. I happen to believe that the system is so broken that the death penalty should be suspended until the system itself is repaired and can guarantee a fair, just application of it. From the firey sermons that I have heard, it almost seems like this is one place where they are willing to say "well a few mistakes are okay." Morally, I think this is wrong.
War - Almost every church preaches that sometimes war is okay. In today's climate it almost seems like they see the military actions as a holy war. The majority of people we are fighting are Muslim but I'm not so sure that pleases God. Aren't we all his people? I happen to think we are justified in being in Afghanistan but may not be justified in what we did in Iraq but now that we are there, it is our responsibility to fix the infrastructure we broke and help them establish a government and get them back on track. But there are people who believe strongly that all war is unjust. All these voices deserve to be heard.
And that is what my original post was about. Political speech is different. It is too important to stifle with laws. We all, each and every one of us, deserve to be free to speak our piece. Even the people off of the deep-end. Even anti-spam candidates who choose to spam the voters!
IANAL. Political Speech is held in a different light than other kinds of mass-audience speech (like advertising soap for instance). This is a good thing and this speech should continue to be protected, shielded from laws that may in some way restrict it. Even when the speech or method of speech may seem downright stupid and ill-advised. Why? Because the freedom of this kind of speech is what the United States of America is all about. This is the kind of speech our founding fathers were considering when they created the Bill of Rights! If someone is prohibited by law from stating, publishing, or distributing their political beliefs we have started down the slippery slope to an oppressing society.
I don't believe in segregation, yet if some ignorant red-neck wanted to run for office and ran on that platform, I would defend his right to publish that position. I'd actually encourage him. Why? Because it would show people who and what he really is.
I get somewhat offended when churches urge political activism among their members because I believe that the separation of church and state should go both ways. Still, these church leaders have a right to spout their opinion from the pulpit and I'd never raise a finger to stop them because the freedom of political speech is that important (and I can exercise my right to go to another church just as easily). I hope those same leaders will let me express my opinion that their flock should not need that kind of shepherding though, since they are thinking, reasoning people and not sheep that need to be told what to think and do. It does sometimes appear that they have a harder time yielding to my rights than I do to theirs though...
The "6 degrees of separation theory" postulates that everyone on earth is linked to everyone else on earth through “6 degrees of separation” meaning that someone you know, knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Osama Bin Laden.
My fear is that investigators using this data mining tool on steroids won't understand all of the conclusions that it reaches aren't necessarily valid. Frankly, when you think about it, an investigator has to assume a person is guilty until they are proved innocent (exactly the opposite of the rest of the criminal-judicial system). They work by the process of elimination, finding some evidence that proves a person innocent – when they find it, they cross the suspect off of their list. Unfortunately this kind of evidence is frequently hard to find. Can you prove that you didn't steal that pen in your pocket? Add to this the fact that most experienced investigators are jaded and the potential for problems multiplies.
You probably won't even know you are being investigated in the initial parts of the investigation at least. If they are curious about you they will check you out electronically first, looking at your bank accounts, credit cards, phone records, and other data. Perhaps they will check your police records and receive an alert if a cop runs your license or plate. Worse yet, maybe they will alert the cop they are checking on you! Maybe your name will be placed on a “Do not fly” list (after all, it is safer to error on the side of caution). You won't even know this is happening!
There are all sorts of other things that could happen to this data too. It could become integrated into police files, end up as an entry in your credit report, be stolen and sold or used by the government itself for God knows what!
I am against terror and I want my government to protect me from it. But if they start spending so much money on monitoring people, even their own citizens, haven't the terrorists already won a big battle? Haven't their efforts made us a less free people and cost us billions in the process? More than anything, I think that is what makes this idea so repulsive to me. It lets the bad guys damage a very basic tenant of our way of life. We are supposed to love freedom and die to protect it yet we are letting them take it away from us bit by bit, piece by piece and, we are doing it to ourselves.
Apple is sitting on a boatload of money and has a couple of hot products that will continue to show amazing growth for the near future at least. Like the Sony Walkman before it, the iPod line is an industry leader that can command a higher price than it's immitators.
The Palm products look like a good match for Apple. Like the iPod they are personal, portable devices that litterally define the niche they fill. They don't exactly compete with the iPod but are technological cousins that could be combined into a killer product.
Having said that, I'm not so sure that Apple needs Palm. Why would they? They have a partnership with Motorola where their product is already married to a phone which incorporates many of the most necessary features of the Palm devices! It seems to me that it may be a smarter move to work with Motorola to come up with a product that is one thrid cel phone, one third iPod, and one third PDA. This would cut their risk in half and would be far less expensive than buying another company outright. The only downside would be that they would have to share revenue with another company. I'm not even sure that would be so bad, the Motorola production capability combined with the Apple marketing savy may mean they could sell far more units than if they tried this on their own.
So, while Palm may look like an attractive pickup, once you got into bed with her, maybe the excitement wouldn't be there (and you would certainly offend your current partner.) Maybe staying in the marriage that you already have is a better option although far less exciting.
I don't know all the angles to this. What I do know is that the Apple managment has been savy enough in the past to recognize opportunity and also understand their market far better than anyone else. This is the primary reason why they are where they are today. Anyone else who has followed the path they did would have fallen in one too many potholes and been burried. Apple is still in the race. This tells me buy or no-buy, they will make the right decision.
This is news for nerds and it is stuff that matters.
Not everyone that reads Slashdot limits their interest to the latest PSP game or in making an XBox 360 run Linux. Frankly, these things are fun diversions, things that are interesting but not life-changing. The fact that our president and his henchmen sold us a bill of goods is far more important and interesting on a very different level.
I have no problem with Slashdot delving into this kind of stuff. Perhaps our community can find some way to fix some of the stuff that is broken!