So basically, you don't know what you want, probably don't know why you want it, what it has to do, or what you're willing to spend on it, but you want the answer?
The ID card is hardly a novel idea. The concept once surfaced in a Reagan cabinet meeting in 1981. Then-Attorney General William French Smith argued that a perfectly harmless ID card system would be necessary to reduce illegal immigration. A second cabinet member asked: why not tattoo a number on each American's forearm? According to Martin Anderson, the White House domestic policy adviser at the time, Reagan blurted out "My god, that's the mark of the beast." As Anderson wrote, "that was the end of the national identification card" during the Reagan years. H.R. 231 is proof that bad ideas never die in Washington; they just wait for another day.
And of course, if Sen Hollings adds an exemption for systems development folks the question becomes "Who constitutes a legitimate developer?" The 14-year old down the street probably doesn't, but I know folks who have a home lab that rivals what some hardware OEMs have.
Why would you want to make this distinction? I know some 14 year-olds that can write way better code than people with 30 years of application development experience.
Once you let the government decide to whom an exclusion can and can't apply, you are asking to get abused.
This Sunday's Arlo and Janis pays homage to Chuck Jones. It also made me laugh out loud and long.
When my six year-old niece and four year-old daughter, who were watching Sponge Bob Square Pants, asked what I was laughing at, I knew this was a teachable moment. We will spend the rest of the day watching all our WB videos.
On a related note, all this talk about Alphas (Alpha AXP for you old-timers) makes me sentimental for my Alpha AXP PC 150 (Jensen) gathering dust in my basement.
I have been thinking about powering it up and trying something on it, but the choices seem limited. Since the Jensen is a bizzare EISA machine, even distros that support later alpha architectures (PCI), don't support the Jensen. So far I have downloaded NetBSD, since it seems to be the only BSD that supports Jensen.
Other suggestions about what to run are welcome. I have also been looking at getting a Tru64 hobby license, but I don't know how far back I have to get to get a version that supports it.
The bigger questions is what do I do with the box once I get it running? I already have a Netgear firewall, and don't need a print server. The graphics card is unsupported, so X workstation is not possible, either.
What should I do with this heat generating paperweight?
Does this mean Hollywood is against PVRs until AOLTimeWarnerMcDonaldsDisneyMegaCorp buys out Tivo? Then they will be in Washington bucking for a federal handout to make PVRs mandatory in everyone's home. You will be branded un-American, a Communist, or even a "terrorist" if you don't own one.
Actually, I was thinking it would look really neat hanging upside down on the underside of my overhead book bin in my cube. The screen would just peek out from under the book bin. No desk space wasted, and the unit is still horizontal.
What, you can't install the DVD drive upside down?!?!? Woops!!! CRASH!!!!
So are you saying, "Just because they could, does not mean they will."
Of course they will, it's just a matter of time and money, of each the feds have plenty.
The National ID Card: It's Baaack!
by Stephen Moore
Hughes Aircraft Company now has a new identification technology involving a syringe-implantable transponder. Described as a "safe and inexpensive" worker identification technology, the procedure involves planting a tiny microchip under the skin. The chip contains a 10-character alphanumeric identification code that can never be duplicated. The microchip is read by an electronic scanner -- the type that reads the price tag on the food you buy at the grocery store. The ID card is hardly a novel idea. The concept once surfaced in a Reagan cabinet meeting in 1981. Then-Attorney General William French Smith argued that a perfectly harmless ID card system would be necessary to reduce illegal immigration. A second cabinet member asked: why not tattoo a number on each American's forearm? According to Martin Anderson, the White House domestic policy adviser at the time,
Reagan blurted out "My god, that's the mark of the beast." As Anderson wrote, "that was the end of the national identification card" during the Reagan years. H.R. 231 is proof that bad ideas never die in Washington; they just wait for another day.
Well, I was all set to jump in here to trash this thing and thought, "How are they going to measure the effect of this?" Politicians like nothing better than to throw some of your money down a black hole, and nobody knows if it was a net benefit (other than the folks who got the computers.)
So I go to look at the Maine educational stats , thinking that it is some sort of backwater, lagging behind Arkansas. I was quite suprised to find that the average scores are all above the national average. ALL the scores are all solidy above average.
So I need to rethink this. Maybe they are smart enough already, and don't need computers. Maybe they will do and learn very clever things with these laptops.
I dont know why they are bitchin' about people posting virus source code examples. I got hundreds of ILOVEYOU and CodeRed code examples sent to me within hours. I didn't have to look very hard.
Cacheprof is a tool designed to help programmers quantify and understand the cache behaviour of programs and algorithms. With this knowledge, you might be able to modify your code to be more cache-friendly and thereby faster. Cacheprof will run your program, simulating a cache of your choice, and will annotate each line of source code with the number of memory references and the number of cache misses caused by that line. It will also print summaries per-procedure, and for the program as a whole. Finally, it will count the number of instructions executed, which can be very useful.
It seems that the biggest problem with thinking like this, "If you are innocent, you have nothing to hide" is that is unconstitutional. Did these people skip civics class that day?
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Slashdot Mirror
And I want it NOW!
The National ID Card: It's Baaack! by Stephen Moore
The ID card is hardly a novel idea. The concept once surfaced in a Reagan cabinet meeting in 1981. Then-Attorney General William French Smith argued that a perfectly harmless ID card system would be necessary to reduce illegal immigration. A second cabinet member asked: why not tattoo a number on each American's forearm? According to Martin Anderson, the White House domestic policy adviser at the time, Reagan blurted out "My god, that's the mark of the beast." As Anderson wrote, "that was the end of the national identification card" during the Reagan years. H.R. 231 is proof that bad ideas never die in Washington; they just wait for another day.
Already happened:
USS Yorktown dead in water after divide by zero
And of course, if Sen Hollings adds an exemption for systems development folks the question becomes "Who constitutes a legitimate developer?" The 14-year old down the street probably doesn't, but I know folks who have a home lab that rivals what some hardware OEMs have.
Why would you want to make this distinction? I know some 14 year-olds that can write way better code than people with 30 years of application development experience.
Once you let the government decide to whom an exclusion can and can't apply, you are asking to get abused.
This Sunday's Arlo and Janis pays homage to Chuck Jones. It also made me laugh out loud and long.
When my six year-old niece and four year-old daughter, who were watching Sponge Bob Square Pants, asked what I was laughing at, I knew this was a teachable moment. We will spend the rest of the day watching all our WB videos.
Try www.linuxalpha.org
On a related note, all this talk about Alphas (Alpha AXP for you old-timers) makes me sentimental for my Alpha AXP PC 150 (Jensen) gathering dust in my basement.
I have been thinking about powering it up and trying something on it, but the choices seem limited. Since the Jensen is a bizzare EISA machine, even distros that support later alpha architectures (PCI), don't support the Jensen. So far I have downloaded NetBSD, since it seems to be the only BSD that supports Jensen.
Other suggestions about what to run are welcome. I have also been looking at getting a Tru64 hobby license, but I don't know how far back I have to get to get a version that supports it.
The bigger questions is what do I do with the box once I get it running? I already have a Netgear firewall, and don't need a print server. The graphics card is unsupported, so X workstation is not possible, either.
What should I do with this heat generating paperweight?
Uh, huh. And where was the Democratic president with the "Veto" stamp?
You mean the one who got a Lewinski from Hollywood types every time he set foot into California or they came to the White House?
... it smells like victory.
Does this mean Hollywood is against PVRs until AOLTimeWarnerMcDonaldsDisneyMegaCorp buys out Tivo? Then they will be in Washington bucking for a federal handout to make PVRs mandatory in everyone's home. You will be branded un-American, a Communist, or even a "terrorist" if you don't own one.
Shades of "Universal Broadband Access".
This is very necessary legislation. I want SOMETHING so I can go after my 16 year-old neighbor who is re-broadcasting reruns of "Charles in Charge"!
#!/bin/sh
cd $INSTALLDIR
mv crayon.rpm bite_me.rpm
exit
Actually, I was thinking it would look really neat hanging upside down on the underside of my overhead book bin in my cube. The screen would just peek out from under the book bin. No desk space wasted, and the unit is still horizontal.
What, you can't install the DVD drive upside down?!?!? Woops!!! CRASH!!!!
is that we will see Dave Barry introduce a Microsoft OS release or product within the next two years.
So why don't the Linux vendors get a cut of the blank CD media tax? Only seem fair.
Of course they will, it's just a matter of time and money, of each the feds have plenty.
The National ID Card: It's Baaack!
by Stephen Moore
Well, I was all set to jump in here to trash this thing and thought, "How are they going to measure the effect of this?" Politicians like nothing better than to throw some of your money down a black hole, and nobody knows if it was a net benefit (other than the folks who got the computers.)
So I go to look at the Maine educational stats , thinking that it is some sort of backwater, lagging behind Arkansas. I was quite suprised to find that the average scores are all above the national average. ALL the scores are all solidy above average.
So I need to rethink this. Maybe they are smart enough already, and don't need computers. Maybe they will do and learn very clever things with these laptops.
Oh, the other interesting thing on the gov's web site.
Students at all three grades who reported using the Internet at home had higher average scores than those who indicated they did not use the Internet.
Other than the disingenuously scaled graphic, they forget the basic statistical principle, "Correlation does not imply causality"
You might be better off saying "Smarter kids use the Internet more." Or the two may have nothing to do with each other.
but Microsoft has made MSN even more irrelevant than it was before.
Zone Alarm just told me that Windows Media Player is tring to ping my default gateway.
Now WHY would it want to do that? Is it part of a security scheme?
If it tell ZoneAlarm to not allow Internet access to WMP, am I in violation of DMCA? Is ZoneAlarm a circumvention tool?
National ID Cards: New Technologies, Same Bad Idea
I dont know why they are bitchin' about people posting virus source code examples. I got hundreds of ILOVEYOU and CodeRed code examples sent to me within hours. I didn't have to look very hard.
I think the proper quote is, "You don't bring a knife to a gunfight".
LaBrea to trap the RIAA
What is Cacheprof?
Cacheprof is a tool designed to help programmers quantify and understand the cache behaviour of programs and algorithms. With this knowledge, you might be able to modify your code to be more cache-friendly and thereby faster. Cacheprof will run your program, simulating a cache of your choice, and will annotate each line of source code with the number of memory references and the number of cache misses caused by that line. It will also print summaries per-procedure, and for the program as a whole. Finally, it will count the number of instructions executed, which can be very useful.
I just grind and snort the beans...
It seems that the biggest problem with thinking like this, "If you are innocent, you have nothing to hide" is that is unconstitutional. Did these people skip civics class that day?
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I always thought it funny that the original PC model number was 5150.
This is the same code used on police two-way radio for "Mental case, not responsible"