Especially in the war on terror, public relations is a huge issue (and perhaps the most important one). The problem we are currently having is that the insurgents are recruiting people faster than we can neutralize (either by killing or capturing) them. If we were to use unethical or excessive force in dealing with the insurgents, we will only succeed in driving more and more people to the insurgent's cause. Events such as the prison abuse scandal have hurt our efforts in Iraq and in neighboring regions. Some people will be driven to the insurgency regardless of what we do in the Middle East and across the globe, but we must take whatever steps possible (and reasonable) to limit the number of people who join the insurgency.
What's interesting is that in the past 50 years we've fought two or three such wars, losing every one and we still have optimists who believe "This time for sure!".
You can't fight a war this way. The fundamental problem is not the rules have changed, but rather you start with a false assumption.
This is not to say military might is not necessary. But it is necessary in the classic sense that you rejected and say is no longer possible. It exists in the sense of when all else has failed. It exists in the sense of the Powell Doctrine, that when you go you go balls to the walls. You throw everything at the war and end it quickly.
Sun Tzu understood this. The Romans understood this. This is not a new concept.
The problem is, in a republic like ours, war of this nature has to be justified. The President has to go to the people and say "We need your sons and daughters. We need your wealth. We need the sweat of your brow. With all these things, we can win this war." Franklin Roosevelt did that. No other President since has. It's interesting that FDR won WWII in not much more time than we've been in Iraq.
So the problem is either the cowardice of Presidents to make that argument, or the lack of a proper justification of war, or maybe both. It's not because the rules changed.
As for GW Bush, we can look back at the impact he's had with his steel duties(something that Clinton refused to implement). Such examples have resulted in raising costs to companies who use those resources, while at the same time protecting the existing producers from competition and taking the market pressure off of them to increase productivity and efficiency of operation.
Most people think that the first explanation they hear is the truth, and don't spend much time analyzing the facts and trying to understand the complexities. As such you've been told that Republicans are free-traders and free market capitalists and that's what you believe.
The truth is far more complicated that that.
Consider this take on Jimmy Carter for instance, who was responsible for deregulating the airline, trucking, railroad, oil and breaking up AT&T. It even notes that Reagan made a deal with the Teamsters to get their votes, promising to halt deregulation of trucking.
The only thing Republicans are good at is taking credit for stuff that goes well, and placing blame when it goes poorly.
Reagan didn't believe in fiscal conservatism or free-market capitalism either. He never did balance the budget, despite his 1980 campaign promise. His view of capitalism was to protect companies from competition, which has always been the core of Republican economic policies.
The Democrats are much closer to those beliefs than the Republicans. You can stuff your head in the sand if you want, but as you noted that is what Clinton brought us, and Bush just brought us a return of Reagan's failed policies(while totally ignoring Reagan's good policies).
So what? This was an off-hand remark made in private. Have we come to the point where every word one says must be parsed and examined for any trace of anything that might offend the most hypersensative among us lest he or she be branded a racist?
The Party is not President Bush, and President Bush is not the Party. Vote for or against policies. Trying to indirectly slap Bush in the face by voting against someone simply because they are in the same Party is petulant and immature.
This is rather idealistic and misses reality. In the United States, if a party has a President in office that President is regarded not just the leader of the country but also the political leader of the party. Given the President's power of the Bully pulpit, the influence on policy direction is extreme.
By voting for advocates of fiscal conservatism and the free-market who are Republican, I can be "voting against" President Bush just as much as someone who votes for a candidate who believes in an even more gargantuan national government and a far greater socialized economy can be "voting against" President Bush.
I'm not aware of any Republicans who believe in fiscal conservatism or free-market capitalism.
It's interesting, when unaffiliated groups monitor elections in countries which are just finally getting around to voting, they use opinion polls to track whether or not there is fraud going on in the election. That is if the polls say X is going to win 60/40, and he loses 49/51... that flags that something's wrong.
That being said, polls have a margin of error and are pretty worthless when the results are close.
It's a tough pill to swallow seeing how a fascist movement headed by Karl Rove has usurped and taken a steaming squat all over the name of conservatism. But I believe that if a man makes something of value or merit, he should be rewarded for that effort.
Karl Rove hasn't done anything to conservatism. Bushie is exactly what the Republicans have always been, a prime defender of corporations against competition.
Believing that a man should be rewarded for making something of merit, is a liberal concept.
I'm a later earlier adopter. I have a 51" HDTV from Sony I bought back in 2002. It's an older style rear-projection model, but I love it and DVDs look awesome on it.
Only problem is, there is no HDMI.
I have no plans to buy a new television until that sucker dies. Since I use it only for playing movies, that's probably a good 5-10 years out.
The permissions system means that a common virus could damage a user's home directory, but the system for the most part would remain unaffected, including other users.
So instead of corrupting a part of the system I can reinstall from a boot CD, the virus only destroys my personal data I spent years collecting and inputing.
Whew! What a relief!
You convinced me! I'm going out, right now, to buy a Macintosh.
But it does not mean that the end-user (or the distributor) *has* to make the source public, and that's what I was getting at.
Yes, but you can't stop them... so effectively that point is nullified.
Now Tivo has gotten around this by using a proprietary mechanism to keep you from reinstalling your own modified version back on their hardware. Redhat has gotten around this by enclosing their own non-GPL licensed customizations in their Linux distribution which prevents you from redistributing the product as a whole.
But these are the loopholes which GPL v3 is trying to correct.
So I'm not quite certain how the statement regarding Stallman is unfair. It looks to me as the claims that it is not is nothing more than doublespeak.
That's a mis-characterization of Richard Stallman's viewpoint. He doesn't believe that all software source code should be available to the public. Rather, he believes that all source code should be available to the end user. There is an important difference.
Doesn't the GPL then also say that the end-user can freely redistribute the source and binaries? Doesn't that in effect make the source available to the public?
There are licenses which give the source code to the end-user, but don't allow for redistribution. Are these acceptable as "free" by Stallman?
My friends brother was on the Warner Bros label as a small country band.
The impression I get wasn't so much that it was CD sales they benefited from, but rather better gigs. They got to open for big name stars like Reba, Charlie Daniels, etc. That's where the money was, from touring...
It wasn't much money, but it was enough to go full time at it. Otherwise, it's a part time job and you've got to make money for food doing something else in addition. The dream is to go full time, have a larger audience who then realize your great talents and you go even larger.
Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, and you continue as the opening band.
Amen. That buying the production hardware stuff at project startup. How can you even know what you're going to need for deployment until after you get somethign constructed and tested?
I worked on a project a few years ago where they did this. Some idiot said he wanted the biggest box he could get. So they ordered like 3-4 of these 8-way 700-Mhz Xeon servers. The two way boxes we had in development outperformed them with the app.
Actually what I find fascinating. The more pampered the individual, the more assured they are that these chinese want to work 60 hours a week for little to nothing.
We've learned this over and over again at my company. The likelihood of scrapping the whole thing because you've got nothing is logarithmic to the cost. That is, the more the costs go up, the more likely you scrap the whole thing.
The project has to be bitten in chunks. Lay out the functionality, and then start implementing it one small piece at a time, integrating as you go along. The Big Bang approach is always doomed to failure, or explosive costs, especially when you get to the reality that to deploy you need to shut down the business for two weeks to manage the data conversion. Lot's of small $1 million projects are more likely to succeed and be at budget then one big $20 million project.
This isn't news. It's the whole momentum behind a lot of modern development techniques such as Agile, or architectural such as SOA.
There's also a corrolary that any project involving a big consulting company like EDS, CSC, Anderson(or whatever the hell their name isnow), etc. is more than likely going to cost double what it should.
Take this break in the JonBenet Ramsey case -- turns out it wasn't the parents, but some nut-job ex-teacher.
I must be old fashioned. I generally don't believe in convictions until a Jury has heard the case.
The ex-wife of this teacher has now stated that he was with her in alabama when the killing occured, and another witness said he was obsessed with reading reports on the Ramsey killing as well as some another girl who died in california.
While he's said some things which weren't public, he's also said some things which contradict the evidence.
So you'll forgive me if I don't convict him in public. Think maybe I'll wait for the police to investigate and go from there.
My girlfriend's company uses some sort of Citrix solution for their desktops.
Every couple of weeks, something happens... The Citrix server goes offline during the day and 100 employees in their accounting department are unable to get any work done for 15-30 minutes or so. And whatever they were working on has to be reentered too.
I was somewhat surprised by this when she first told me this happened. But I suspect the reality is that a company who is so concerned with cost that they implement Citrix is also to cheap to have a decent redundant data center and network.
Until after this theorectical worm takes over the planet?
There are a lot of things in place today which weren't in place back with Blaster that allow IT depts to respond to these events... beyond just patching I mean.
Well... at work we use VMWare ESX, but our disk is on Hitachi SAN... and so backups are performed by doing shadow copies at the disk level.
At home I use Virtual Server, and I've found running backups inside works.
The other method I've used is to pause the VM and then copy the files to a different location. On my little home machine with 4 virtuals and about 80 gigs of data this takes around 4 hours to complete. I have a script that does it for me, so each machine is maybe only offline for 30-45 minutes.
The point is, if you want 24 hour availability you pay for it and do what's necessary. If not, then you can probably survive a few hours of blackout periods to do backups.
Slashdot Mirror
What's interesting is that in the past 50 years we've fought two or three such wars, losing every one and we still have optimists who believe "This time for sure!".
You can't fight a war this way. The fundamental problem is not the rules have changed, but rather you start with a false assumption.
This is not to say military might is not necessary. But it is necessary in the classic sense that you rejected and say is no longer possible. It exists in the sense of when all else has failed. It exists in the sense of the Powell Doctrine, that when you go you go balls to the walls. You throw everything at the war and end it quickly.
Sun Tzu understood this. The Romans understood this. This is not a new concept.
The problem is, in a republic like ours, war of this nature has to be justified. The President has to go to the people and say "We need your sons and daughters. We need your wealth. We need the sweat of your brow. With all these things, we can win this war." Franklin Roosevelt did that. No other President since has. It's interesting that FDR won WWII in not much more time than we've been in Iraq.
So the problem is either the cowardice of Presidents to make that argument, or the lack of a proper justification of war, or maybe both. It's not because the rules changed.
Ronald Reagan: Protectionist
As for GW Bush, we can look back at the impact he's had with his steel duties(something that Clinton refused to implement). Such examples have resulted in raising costs to companies who use those resources, while at the same time protecting the existing producers from competition and taking the market pressure off of them to increase productivity and efficiency of operation.
Most people think that the first explanation they hear is the truth, and don't spend much time analyzing the facts and trying to understand the complexities. As such you've been told that Republicans are free-traders and free market capitalists and that's what you believe.
The truth is far more complicated that that.
Consider this take on Jimmy Carter for instance, who was responsible for deregulating the airline, trucking, railroad, oil and breaking up AT&T. It even notes that Reagan made a deal with the Teamsters to get their votes, promising to halt deregulation of trucking.
The only thing Republicans are good at is taking credit for stuff that goes well, and placing blame when it goes poorly.
Reagan didn't believe in fiscal conservatism or free-market capitalism either. He never did balance the budget, despite his 1980 campaign promise. His view of capitalism was to protect companies from competition, which has always been the core of Republican economic policies.
The Democrats are much closer to those beliefs than the Republicans. You can stuff your head in the sand if you want, but as you noted that is what Clinton brought us, and Bush just brought us a return of Reagan's failed policies(while totally ignoring Reagan's good policies).
I would say the answer is: Yes
This is rather idealistic and misses reality. In the United States, if a party has a President in office that President is regarded not just the leader of the country but also the political leader of the party. Given the President's power of the Bully pulpit, the influence on policy direction is extreme.
I'm not aware of any Republicans who believe in fiscal conservatism or free-market capitalism.
It's interesting, when unaffiliated groups monitor elections in countries which are just finally getting around to voting, they use opinion polls to track whether or not there is fraud going on in the election. That is if the polls say X is going to win 60/40, and he loses 49/51... that flags that something's wrong.
That being said, polls have a margin of error and are pretty worthless when the results are close.
Karl Rove hasn't done anything to conservatism. Bushie is exactly what the Republicans have always been, a prime defender of corporations against competition.
Believing that a man should be rewarded for making something of merit, is a liberal concept.
I'm a later earlier adopter. I have a 51" HDTV from Sony I bought back in 2002. It's an older style rear-projection model, but I love it and DVDs look awesome on it.
Only problem is, there is no HDMI.
I have no plans to buy a new television until that sucker dies. Since I use it only for playing movies, that's probably a good 5-10 years out.
So sorry, Sony, better luck next time.
So instead of corrupting a part of the system I can reinstall from a boot CD, the virus only destroys my personal data I spent years collecting and inputing.
Whew! What a relief!
You convinced me! I'm going out, right now, to buy a Macintosh.
Yes, but you can't stop them... so effectively that point is nullified.
Now Tivo has gotten around this by using a proprietary mechanism to keep you from reinstalling your own modified version back on their hardware. Redhat has gotten around this by enclosing their own non-GPL licensed customizations in their Linux distribution which prevents you from redistributing the product as a whole.
But these are the loopholes which GPL v3 is trying to correct.
So I'm not quite certain how the statement regarding Stallman is unfair. It looks to me as the claims that it is not is nothing more than doublespeak.
Doesn't the GPL then also say that the end-user can freely redistribute the source and binaries? Doesn't that in effect make the source available to the public?
There are licenses which give the source code to the end-user, but don't allow for redistribution. Are these acceptable as "free" by Stallman?
My friends brother was on the Warner Bros label as a small country band.
The impression I get wasn't so much that it was CD sales they benefited from, but rather better gigs. They got to open for big name stars like Reba, Charlie Daniels, etc. That's where the money was, from touring...
It wasn't much money, but it was enough to go full time at it. Otherwise, it's a part time job and you've got to make money for food doing something else in addition. The dream is to go full time, have a larger audience who then realize your great talents and you go even larger.
Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, and you continue as the opening band.
Still it's all about that dream.
Amen. That buying the production hardware stuff at project startup. How can you even know what you're going to need for deployment until after you get somethign constructed and tested?
I worked on a project a few years ago where they did this. Some idiot said he wanted the biggest box he could get. So they ordered like 3-4 of these 8-way 700-Mhz Xeon servers. The two way boxes we had in development outperformed them with the app.
Actually what I find fascinating. The more pampered the individual, the more assured they are that these chinese want to work 60 hours a week for little to nothing.
We've learned this over and over again at my company. The likelihood of scrapping the whole thing because you've got nothing is logarithmic to the cost. That is, the more the costs go up, the more likely you scrap the whole thing.
The project has to be bitten in chunks. Lay out the functionality, and then start implementing it one small piece at a time, integrating as you go along. The Big Bang approach is always doomed to failure, or explosive costs, especially when you get to the reality that to deploy you need to shut down the business for two weeks to manage the data conversion. Lot's of small $1 million projects are more likely to succeed and be at budget then one big $20 million project.
This isn't news. It's the whole momentum behind a lot of modern development techniques such as Agile, or architectural such as SOA.
There's also a corrolary that any project involving a big consulting company like EDS, CSC, Anderson(or whatever the hell their name isnow), etc. is more than likely going to cost double what it should.
Oh yeah, and Volvo driving!
Do elitists sip port, or do they drink Vodka like their Commie loving brethren?
You just ridicule them for crying conspiracy.
"What!? Next you're going to be claiming Bush killed JFK!"
Why is being skeptical a bad thing?
God what are you some pinko communist abortion wanting gay loving pond scum terrorist sympathizer?
How dare you try to be reasonable and informed!
I must be old fashioned. I generally don't believe in convictions until a Jury has heard the case.
The ex-wife of this teacher has now stated that he was with her in alabama when the killing occured, and another witness said he was obsessed with reading reports on the Ramsey killing as well as some another girl who died in california.
While he's said some things which weren't public, he's also said some things which contradict the evidence.
So you'll forgive me if I don't convict him in public. Think maybe I'll wait for the police to investigate and go from there.
My girlfriend's company uses some sort of Citrix solution for their desktops.
Every couple of weeks, something happens... The Citrix server goes offline during the day and 100 employees in their accounting department are unable to get any work done for 15-30 minutes or so. And whatever they were working on has to be reentered too.
I was somewhat surprised by this when she first told me this happened. But I suspect the reality is that a company who is so concerned with cost that they implement Citrix is also to cheap to have a decent redundant data center and network.
As far as "how did he get the code for the login screen"?
I would have thought the answer was obvious... It's probably an Open Source CMS framework of some sort, and the code is available at sourceforge.
The second question is answered by phishing. I get these all the time for paypal.com.
I think google is fucked. I understand what they are trying to do, but...
the news media didn't invent google as a verb, they started using it after it became common place in the populace.
Wait a minute...
Mac Pro
dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
16 Gigs RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 4500
23" cinema display
Mac OSX
$11,648
Dell Precision Workstation 690
dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
16 Gigs RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 4500
24" widescreen flat panel
Windows XP x64 edition
$9,908
Guess it depends on how you configure them, doesn't it?
Until after this theorectical worm takes over the planet?
There are a lot of things in place today which weren't in place back with Blaster that allow IT depts to respond to these events... beyond just patching I mean.
Well... at work we use VMWare ESX, but our disk is on Hitachi SAN... and so backups are performed by doing shadow copies at the disk level.
At home I use Virtual Server, and I've found running backups inside works.
The other method I've used is to pause the VM and then copy the files to a different location. On my little home machine with 4 virtuals and about 80 gigs of data this takes around 4 hours to complete. I have a script that does it for me, so each machine is maybe only offline for 30-45 minutes.
The point is, if you want 24 hour availability you pay for it and do what's necessary. If not, then you can probably survive a few hours of blackout periods to do backups.