I would expect that if any benchmarks came out favoring Windows, and if they were reported here, they would be roundly and loudly shot down with 1) criticisms of the testing protocol, and/or 2) criticisms of the bias of the testing agency.
I don't agree, or at least I think you're leaving out a significant point. I think the/. community rails against Microsoft-funded tests, but otherwise takes these tests to heart. Just look at the recent ZDNet testing that showed NT could barf out static Web pages faster than Linux. There were calls of bias, to be sure, but what actually happened was a bunch of Linux users jumped up and re-did the tests, and then a few leaders in the community went to ZDNet to watch the tests being run. And guess what? The tests were right, and rather than poo-poo the results, the developers actively worked to fix the errors. This community is self-correcting. Give us real results that we can reproduce, and we'll take it not as an attack but as a springboard for improvement. Or at least, that's what recent history indicates.
This kind of head-in-the-sand response is exactly why making headway is so difficult. Tell that to a CEO and he'll say, "okay, thanks, buh-bye." It's a pointless response -- it's basically saying, "we can't fix it, so we'll just criticize how you run your company." It gets you nowhere.
Some technologies (such as PowerPoint) tend to limit productivity more than enhance it. This would be an excellent time to outlaw such programs.
Again, a response that will never work -- like saying, "we can't help, so just stop using that software." It won't happen. Happily in this case, I suspect that many developers use PowerPoint for presentations, so few would make such an inane suggestion to a CEO or CTO.
There's also little racial difference between them all. I mean, they're all Americanized people. At least Czechov had an accent.
Hey, that's a great point. Dialects and accents should still exist for humans at this point in time, and should probably be more obvious than they were in the original series. They will need to fix this, I think. Perhaps the writers & producers are just so used to the newer Star Treks that they haven't realized that this prequel now more limits them with "real world" issues. And frankly, I think that would be good. It would be realistic.
Oh no, they're more worried about trying to create a good show than trying to be PC to pander to all the whiny wacko liberals who think it's their right to force their views down everyone's throat.
Ok, mod me down, I'm not PC
Actually, I think this is a reason to mod your post up. Star Trek originally wasn't very PC at all -- yes, it had some "advanced" notions at the time, such as blacks and women serving on-deck and reporting directly to the captain -- but it also objectified alien women, was crude in many cases (and I don't just mean sexually crude, I mean the captain and others could often be curt or foul-mouthed as much as TV censors would allow), and was less restrained in general. Kirk flew by the seat of his pants a whole lot, and thought with the lap of his pants a whole lot. I want that back, and might even expect more of it, since this is a prequel that supposedly would be from a less evolved time.
The vulcan was a hissing bitch during the first half, I thought count bakula wanted to cry several time, the plot was mediocre even by the standards of the crew that brought us voyager.
Well, considering that Archer already told her at thier first meeting he'd love to knock her on her ass, can you BLAME HER?;-)
And may I say that what you both just talked about is exactly what would keep people talking -- conflict that is a little more "from the gut". These people don't necessarily all like each other, although they have redeeming... uh... qualities that keep you from hating them too much. But this really does seem to be something that has been long lost in the Star Trek world, and it would be nice to have the prequel continue to rediscover what it was about the original series that turned it into a successful franchise.
I started watching Star Trek, the original series, in reruns around 1979-1981 (somewhere in there). I was about 8 at the time. I watched The Next Generation pretty loyally, then got bored. To keep the interest of people such as myself, I think they need to resolve the following issues.
As another poster mentioned, there is little "ramp up" for technology here -- transporters, which broke a few times on the original series, are already working in this prequel. Odd.
Humans get into a firefight, and their laser guns appear to be just as effective as the alien enemies? Huh? We're the weaker race here, and the Vulcans are witholding technology -- this should be like tanks overpowering men on horses.
While the original series had lots of knobs and buttons and limited computer technology, we don't have to just dump computers in this series and live with the inconsistency! There are ways to make things switch-driven and manual without having them appear to be "1960s sci-fi".
I loved intro images from our real-life space program. And I loved the ties to Earth at the beginning of the show, such as the "Klingot" coming from "Oklahoma". But then they're out in space and poof, we're back to generic Star Trek. I want more of Earth, more of Mars, more of our solar system.
I think the following things were done well, and I hope they do not lose these things.
Raw sexuality. This is Captain Kirk being "normal" -- aliens come on to him, manipulate him, and arouse him. I liked the Jello, like the aliens with "three" and want more of it, not so much for porn as for being true to what Star Trek was about.
Less technobabble. When the doctor is explaining the Klingon's situation, he gets cut off: "just tell me, is he dead?" I want more tough talk. It feels accurate to the original series.
Tension. FINALLY. Things were too easy in the later series. Here people get excited ("tell him to be quiet" -- "SHUT UP!"). Now if we could just get them to be scared of some alien life, and intimidated a little too, there might be enough tension to be entertaining.
Fighting. Captain Kirk fought lizard-men. He made enemies. He killed people. It was great to see laser fights in this new show. But there also needs to be hand-to-hand combat, and anger. This is the tension (again) that made the original.
Again, I think this is promising. I will watch next week's show. But they really need to build on the things they got right, and kill off the things they got wrong. I really think the technology issue is the biggest problem, and I really think they can get around it. Look at a modern cockpit -- half of the homes in the USA have a computer, but a cockpit is still a mess of buttons and panels. We must encourage them to be more realistic with the tech on this show.
These terrorists had commited no previous crimes, so their faces wouldn't be in the system.
That's not true. I alluded to "watch lists" in my previous message, and in fact, 2 or 3 of the terrorists were indeed on those watch lists. Watch lists include photos. As another poster said, while not all of them would have been picked up or stopped, a number would have -- and since the two on the watch list I heard about had pilot training, stopping them may have stopped at least some part of the hijackings. But regardless of this specific situation, we are also discussing future use, and even if the system has a 75% failure rate, that is still 25% of the killings that will be stopped. That is significant, as any person saved by the 25% would tell you.
I do not feel that a system needs to be perfect to be put into place. I believe in rough concensus and running code. In this case, a "human filter" that prevents a mere 10% or 40% of crime is successful enough for me to consider.
BTW, what freedom is restricted by checking your face? They are supposed to check your ID at the very least, is that a restriction on freedom too? Where does it say you must enter an airplane anonymously?
Great points, Agusto. I guess the only real concern is what another poster mentioned -- the difference between "scanning and matching" and "tracking". A match of my face, if discarded when I turn out to have no criminal record, well that's probably OK for me. If I have to show ID to get on the plane anyway, why object? However, are you also scanning all the family members that are seeing me off? Those people didn't have to provide photo ID. And are you keeping this data somewhere? For instance, do I, as a person with no criminal record, end up with thousands of bits of data compiled about me?
saw mother off on 5-sept-2002, LAX
picked mother up on 7-sept-2002, LAX, with childhood friend
shopped at Macy's in SF on 15-sept-2002
etc.
I don't know about you, but I can almost convince myself of the usefulness of such data -- say some law-abiding citizen "goes bad" at some point. We could reconstruct their entire life all in the name of "profiling" that kind of person so we can root them out easier next time. But that totally violates all the people who don't go bad. They are open to manipulation by corrupt officials who abuse the power they have. They are open to manipulation by companies that might buy (or compile themselves) that data. Laws could be applied retroactively to people by running a SELECT statement on a database, and finding out all the people who may have broken a law that didn't exist at the time. For instance, at the urging of the RIAA:
SELECT * FROM citizens WHERE purchases="mp3 player"
I'm not suggesting I've presented a compelling reason to NOT do these things, just that I'm still working through this stuff, so I'm very uneasy rushing into anything.
The real fact of the matter is that even with this face recognition software in place at Logan on the day of the attack, nothing could have stopped these men once they had their attack in motion.
Hmm. I don't know if that is the real fact of the matter. It seems to me that the real fact of the matter is that with something like this in place, these men would have been stopped before their attack was in motion. That counts, that's wonderful protection. I think it's a very real, persuasive argument. The only thing left for me to wrestle with is, how easy is it for me as a law-abiding citizen to live anonymously? It used to be I could just not use credit cards, and no one would have a "dossier" on me. Then it was that plus, don't give out info online -- certainly not to doubleclick. Now what? Wear sunglasses so I can remain anonymous? How long before wearing sunglasses is prohibited in airports? And how long after that before wearing sunglasses is automatically just-cause for putting someone on a watch list? Will previously legal acts be used to turn law-abiding people into criminals?
I would like to see face recognition software used for the coming war. Part of what I've been hearing is that the people of Afghanistan say that they are resigned to being slaughtered even though "they are not the enemy" -- and I've heard people here talk about how if we go slaughter them after they slaughter us, we're no better than they are. Well, what does slashdot think of this -- is it too naive? Couldn't we go into these countries -- obviously forcing our way in, which would hopefully only cause military casualties -- and ferret out only Taliban members and Al Queda members using face recognition software? There may only be 1,000 "criminals" whose photos we'd use, so the scanning might be able to happen quickly.
I realize it probably sounds very big-brother-ish to say "scan the citizens for criminals among them" but it's a lot better than "bomb everyone and sort 'em out later."
Wow, that seems totally over the top for such a low-key, easily solved mistake. I mean, he messes up his mod point, surely other moderators will mod up the parent post to cover for that mistake, and you call him a "pigfucker"? Demo, don't let these kind of posts get you down -- they're inappropriate and way out of line for such a trivial thing. Can/. encourage a little more civility? Maybe?
I agree with your criticism of the original post, Reality Master. And I would add an additional criticism: the terrorists have not stood up and said why they did what they did. So the original post that Reality Master replied to, and it's original article, are either guessing, or inferring, or else it was written by the terrorists. In which case, I suspect that the FBI will be knocking on slashdot's door pretty soon.
Since I don't believe that the article was written by the terrorists -- it certainly isn't portrayed that way -- I'm left thinking it's just guesswork, which I reject, or else they inferred it based upon current information. If that's the case, every person on slashdot is equally qualified to state why it was done, based upon current information. It's entirely up to each person's interpretation. And in that case, my interpretation is that these are terrorists, these are evil people who are willing to sacrifice innocent people. There is no higher cause at work here. They are petty, self-absorbed people who are willing to sacrifice and sell-out their own people and other innocent people for an unstated message that I would reject even if it were stated. I give no forum to murderers.
My God, Katz, is this you? This is a well-done article, I think. You made good sense, you made good points, you even sounded reasonable. I guess something has changed.
I'm saying that that the motivations are similar. The U.S. uses aircraft carriers and hits military targets because it has the ability to do so. Terrorists hijack planes because it works.
That is such an oversimplification that it no longer rings true. A kidnapper may imprison people, and the government may imprison the kidnapper -- yet even though both "imprision" people, one is clearly viewed differently in the eyes of the world. You may suggest that they are not any different, but that viewpoint is in such a minority that you can see, for all practical purposes, the entire world has rejected it as a legitimate notion. Free countries are built based on the idea that there is such a thing as "just" treatment, and people deliberately migrate to countries that, in their view, implement such principles most fairly. You can say that the motivations of a government and a terrorist group are similar, but I would submit that in reality, it is almost solely their motivations that differentiate them. Why tolerate the Canadian government imprisoning people? I should move to the US! Or, in reverse, I should abandon the USA, which imprisions thousands of its own citizens every day, and head for Canada! But of course, I don't. And this is because I see a massive difference in intentions. Canada, USA, UK, France, a huge number of countries that are free or at least closely resemble free, do not see a massive outflux of the citizenry because those citizens find their government is typically acting (not always) to ensure safety and stability of the majority. Very, very few people would view the kidnapper, who also imprisons people, as acting to secure the majority. In fact, knowing that kidnapping is an illegal act, such a person would be deliberately choosing to create instability.
So you can suggest that the USA "hitting military targets" and terrorists "hijacking planes" are somehow similar -- but even in your own words, you give away the true difference in motivations, the differences that cause the citizens of these countries to believe what they do: the USA hits military targets. For any free country, images of children dying due to bombing runs are the last, last thing that a government official wants. Because if the citizens can vote, they can vote him or her out of office! On the other hand, these terrorists, by your own words, have hijacked planes with civilians, and targeted buildings full of innocent people for destruction. That is vastly different in my mind. These murderers have no citizenry to hold them accountable, they hide so that other nations cannot hold them accountable, and they undertake actions which they know cannot be condoned.
Even if they are recording all calls, it would be impossible to listen to them all.
I am not an expert, please disregard my comment if you wish. However, I have spent the last 7 years working on large-scale Web sites, trying to solve the problems of how to sort and present massive volumes of data. It is possible that they have the exact issues you describe. Consider especially the storage space for the insane amount of data a single day's worth of cell phone calls would consume. However, I want you to also consider how you might "drill down" into these phone calls. For instance, real-world: the company I work for tracks all calls, going back for years. We have a Web interface. You pick the month and get a big list of all calls for that month. Narrow it down to the day and get a smaller list. If you can also offer criteria such as the hour of day, the caller, or the number, you can get a very focused list. I actually used the system recently, when I heard from a vendor that someone was impersonating me. So I looked for any outgoing calls to that vendor's number on specific days, and there it was: someone in Marketing was indeed calling my vendor.
Let's apply that here: first, they limit the calls to the 10th and 11th. Great, only 20 million calls now. Then, they limit the calls to only a few obviously related cities (San Francisco, Boston, New York, maybe a few others). Great, only half a million calls now. Then they start plugging in whatever evidence they might have -- perhaps they focus on any cell phone that called a car rental agency. Where do they get the car rental agency numbers? They pull from a national yellow-pages database. I have one such CD on my desk here, with monthly updates, even! So great, now they're limited to only 50,000 calls. I don't know about you, but I can listen manually to 100 calls if my boss asks. He puts 500 people on such a task, and every single one of those 50,000 calls will be listened to.
Call accounting systems already exist for consumers to purchase. Yellow pages on CD already exist. Databases that can handle millions or billions of records already exist. Imagine what an agency with billions of dollars to spend and some of the top minds in the country could do. I'm a schmuck and I've built Web interfaces that do similar on a smaller scale -- these guys can run circles around me. So I believe it when they say they will "review" all the cell phone calls.
But this sort of response, borne from anger, that most Americans seem to have a passion for right now, is the true evil. Consider the *whole*, not just your own side of it.
I'm going to get modded down (ouch), but I'm going to have to say, "no thanks" here. Why would I say no to your entirely reasonable (sounding) request to consider both sides? Well, even if these murderers have a point, they haven't stated it in the wake of the bombing, so all we can do is guess. And I'm not interested in guessing. In addition, while killing my family will get my attention, I will not give those killers the attention they desire. Even if they have a legitimate point, they made their point by slaughtering innocent people. Therefore, my deliberate choice is to give them enough attention to see them bombed or jailed, and no more. I don't care what their point might be, based on our speculation or even their plainly stated comments. They killed people. Their comments are now lost on me.
Is that closed-minded? Well, you're free to view it however you wish. But people who slaughter the people I love don't get to "open a dialogue" with me. I won't reward that behavior by giving them what they want. I have seen in my lifetime a living example of how to cause change on a massive scale, in the life of Martin Luther King. I've seen non-violence work. That is what I support, that is what I listen to. These thugs deserve zero consideration from me.
...I would suggest that this economy is no longer the kind of economy that will support an employee dictating "my way or the highway". It is very likely your supervisor will pick "highway" even if you're very good, because there are many, many highly-qualified candidates now coming into job interviews. It wasn't like this a year ago. I realize other slashdotters may challenge me on that, because it's not a very nice thing to tell someone that they're possibly expendable. However, your boss may very well think that way, regardless. So be careful.
In addition, the "good salary" you claim to be getting may be due to the fact that you're churning out sites fast but charging the same rates you did back when you custom-built them. By asking to change the process, you may be getting a change in salary too.
Finally, don't forget that object-oriented, modular programming is supposed to make cookie-cutter work possible. If you're reusing your code over and over, sure, it could be sloppy, careless work, but it also may be that you've got a system working well and just object to the monotony more than the code. If that's the case, ask to be put on different projects, rather than taking a hard-core "reform-or-I-walk" stance.
This guy has two 19" monitors, seven computers, a beer fridge, coffee maker, and a little plush penguin - Potelé. How many friends do you think he has?
Well, I want friends like that. The potential for LAN games is just too tempting.
...and that is, the old make things visible rule. Supposedly, if people have to remember a switch, it is less usable than an application that displays the switch.
You assume that having professional musicians is a good thing, and that the only way they can make money is through album sales. Neither is necessarily true.
You're not necessarily right. Personally, I think having professional musicians is a good thing, and since this is so completely subjective, there is no absolute answer.
Ever hear of live performances? CD's are nice and all, but there's no substitute for a live band playing their hearts out.
This doesn't scale well -- releasing a song online for mass distribution at 25 per mp3 may earn the artist just as much as a boatload of $200 concert tickets. Simply put, concerts can only hit limited groups of people. In addition, such a system would hurt artists who can make amazing music but have terrible stage fright. And it would hurt hobbiest musicians who compose their work entirely with computers -- stage shows of a person pressing a button on a computer and then standing around while people listen to the song, well, that's not much of a performance, even though it may be a great song.
I think choice is exactly what we need, and this new license can only help. But I do not think this new license needs to be pushed as the "correct" way to do music. It is only one of many ways, and musicians (and music fans!) should be free to do as they choose.
Have you any idea what you're talking about? Glibc doesn't just use the GPL, it is and always has been a GNU project.
Have you any idea what you had to ignore to make that statement? You imply that because it's GNU, it's okay for RMS to treat Ulrich poorly. But that's my point -- there is NO justification for that kind of behavior. I don't care if it's the "RMS GNU GPL" project -- if you treat the core developer like crap, expect to be known as a person who treats core developers like crap, and by extension, expect that core developers may want to distance themselves from you.
There are valid reasons to pick other licenses instead of the GPL. The (percieved) attitude of its adovcates isn't one of them.
I disagree. When the attitude of its advocates is to try to take over projects that use their license, and steal the very name of Linux away from its owner, then that is a very, very good reason to steer clear. If you don't consider how these people act, then don't be surprised when your own code is hijacked.
I'm not sure that your misunderstanding is deliberate.
Not deliberate.
There is a significant difference between forcing people to look at something and allowing them to look at something.
Your point is good, most/. readers will like it. But in my opinion, I see little difference -- a 5 year-old who is exposed to porn before the parent is prepared to deal with it is still exposed, whether deliberate or inadvertent. I guess we just differ.
Did I ever imply that I want to take over the job of parenting?
I interpreted your sentence, "I can't understand why people are so keen to stop their children seeing things" as an indication that you disapproved of such parenting, and your sentence, "it would be far better to just leave the Internet unfiltered and foster a spirit of family discussion in the home" as an indication of how you were going to parent for these parents. I apologize for misinterpreting, perhaps you meant to make the comments as idle thoughts that you had no intention of actively pushing.
Even if your point is valid, wouldn't this just be what the government would be doing by blocking certain sites on the Internet?
Again, I concede that you have a good point, and that probably everyone on/. will agree with you. Except me. See, I view this first of all as conservative -- and not in the political sense, but rather in the "err on the side of caution" sense. By doing this, the government does not disable my ability to expose my child to porn or talk to them about the "birds and the bees" -- in my own home, on my own time. Parents who dislike this will raise their children differently on their own time, and parents who like this can continue to use the library. It strikes me as something of a win/win situation. Of course, legit, adult porn freaks get the shaft (so to speak), but help them out too by installing private viewing screens that require card access (as one/. poster suggested).
why do you want the government inflicting its own opinions on what your child can see?
I guess I just don't see it as "inflicting" if I'm free to raise my child more liberally on my own. But again, to my point (and I'm playing devil's advocate here a little): if I do want the goverment to parent, and you jump in to argue against it, I think you are getting involved in a parenting "arrangement" I have established with the government. You open yourself to exactly what I suggested: getting physically beat up if the parent feels you're threatening the child's safety, or getting stuck with a kid -- "Hey, I wanted to protect my child in a public place, where I expect community decency laws to be upheld. If you're trying to take that away from me, then fine, YOU raise the kid and see how you do."
I realize, you could counter, "but YOU are taking away MY porn, you intrude on my rights in pursuit of your own." And again, if you said as much I would concede your point again and continue on with my thoughts/parenting/voting patterns anyway. I would also concede some kind of private viewing area for the pervs (which I myself would frequent) but as for what's public, yep, I hold that to a different standard. I'm one of those freaks that thinks the "Disney-fying" of NYC that the mayor did is great, and people who moaned that the adult character of the city is gone, well, fine with me. I'm sorry they're unhappy, but guess what? I'm going to vote for more people to do that kind of thing more often.
One day they're going to see it, they might as well be prepared for it.
Of course, that's exactly the point that any of those parents are going to make: they need to prepare their kids for this. Just because a 3 year-old will "someday" see some porn doesn't mean 5 people should rush up to the kid with laptops running hardcore porn mpegs and say, "get prepared, kid!" I suppose it's possible you disagree, but how far are you willing to go -- once you've usurped the parent here, once you've said "I don't care that you're the parent, I'm better at it" -- are you willing to usurp the parent in other areas? What if the parent agrees with you and says, "fine, you think you know how to raise this kid, then do so."
As a parent myself, I know very well how carefully I try to avoid parenting for others. I had a very religious mother who refused to let her child have the number 6 stamped on her hand as she entered a day care center -- because "6" is an evil number (think 666). Do I think the parent is flat-out absurd? Yep. Do I stamp the kid with a 6 and tell the mother to get used to it? No way. I say, "how about I stamp your hand with a J, for Jesus?" The second you start parenting for other parents, you're likely to get physically beat up, or end up adopting a kid you didn't really want -- you just thought the parent was stupid. Kids shouldn't be collateral damage in those kinds of pissing contests.
maybe you shouldn't go around pretending to be an expert if you don't know what you are talking about
That's great advice for yourself. I hope you heed it. As for me, I've looked at your profile and Web site, and it's clear you're a Windows shill. I've got a decade of experience at Borland, Actuate, SST, and other companies implementing the very systems you imply I have no experience with. I again reject your attacks, and feel sorry that your only rebuttal is to attack me rather than my arguments. I think you've made my case for me. You can't beat down the proof, so you attack (poorly) my credentials. That's feeble, at best.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't agree, or at least I think you're leaving out a significant point. I think the /. community rails against Microsoft-funded tests, but otherwise takes these tests to heart. Just look at the recent ZDNet testing that showed NT could barf out static Web pages faster than Linux. There were calls of bias, to be sure, but what actually happened was a bunch of Linux users jumped up and re-did the tests, and then a few leaders in the community went to ZDNet to watch the tests being run. And guess what? The tests were right, and rather than poo-poo the results, the developers actively worked to fix the errors. This community is self-correcting. Give us real results that we can reproduce, and we'll take it not as an attack but as a springboard for improvement. Or at least, that's what recent history indicates.
This kind of head-in-the-sand response is exactly why making headway is so difficult. Tell that to a CEO and he'll say, "okay, thanks, buh-bye." It's a pointless response -- it's basically saying, "we can't fix it, so we'll just criticize how you run your company." It gets you nowhere.
Again, a response that will never work -- like saying, "we can't help, so just stop using that software." It won't happen. Happily in this case, I suspect that many developers use PowerPoint for presentations, so few would make such an inane suggestion to a CEO or CTO.
Hey, that's a great point. Dialects and accents should still exist for humans at this point in time, and should probably be more obvious than they were in the original series. They will need to fix this, I think. Perhaps the writers & producers are just so used to the newer Star Treks that they haven't realized that this prequel now more limits them with "real world" issues. And frankly, I think that would be good. It would be realistic.
Actually, I think this is a reason to mod your post up. Star Trek originally wasn't very PC at all -- yes, it had some "advanced" notions at the time, such as blacks and women serving on-deck and reporting directly to the captain -- but it also objectified alien women, was crude in many cases (and I don't just mean sexually crude, I mean the captain and others could often be curt or foul-mouthed as much as TV censors would allow), and was less restrained in general. Kirk flew by the seat of his pants a whole lot, and thought with the lap of his pants a whole lot. I want that back, and might even expect more of it, since this is a prequel that supposedly would be from a less evolved time.
And may I say that what you both just talked about is exactly what would keep people talking -- conflict that is a little more "from the gut". These people don't necessarily all like each other, although they have redeeming... uh... qualities that keep you from hating them too much. But this really does seem to be something that has been long lost in the Star Trek world, and it would be nice to have the prequel continue to rediscover what it was about the original series that turned it into a successful franchise.
I started watching Star Trek, the original series, in reruns around 1979-1981 (somewhere in there). I was about 8 at the time. I watched The Next Generation pretty loyally, then got bored. To keep the interest of people such as myself, I think they need to resolve the following issues.
I think the following things were done well, and I hope they do not lose these things.
Again, I think this is promising. I will watch next week's show. But they really need to build on the things they got right, and kill off the things they got wrong. I really think the technology issue is the biggest problem, and I really think they can get around it. Look at a modern cockpit -- half of the homes in the USA have a computer, but a cockpit is still a mess of buttons and panels. We must encourage them to be more realistic with the tech on this show.
That's not true. I alluded to "watch lists" in my previous message, and in fact, 2 or 3 of the terrorists were indeed on those watch lists. Watch lists include photos. As another poster said, while not all of them would have been picked up or stopped, a number would have -- and since the two on the watch list I heard about had pilot training, stopping them may have stopped at least some part of the hijackings. But regardless of this specific situation, we are also discussing future use, and even if the system has a 75% failure rate, that is still 25% of the killings that will be stopped. That is significant, as any person saved by the 25% would tell you.
I do not feel that a system needs to be perfect to be put into place. I believe in rough concensus and running code. In this case, a "human filter" that prevents a mere 10% or 40% of crime is successful enough for me to consider.
Great points, Agusto. I guess the only real concern is what another poster mentioned -- the difference between "scanning and matching" and "tracking". A match of my face, if discarded when I turn out to have no criminal record, well that's probably OK for me. If I have to show ID to get on the plane anyway, why object? However, are you also scanning all the family members that are seeing me off? Those people didn't have to provide photo ID. And are you keeping this data somewhere? For instance, do I, as a person with no criminal record, end up with thousands of bits of data compiled about me?
I don't know about you, but I can almost convince myself of the usefulness of such data -- say some law-abiding citizen "goes bad" at some point. We could reconstruct their entire life all in the name of "profiling" that kind of person so we can root them out easier next time. But that totally violates all the people who don't go bad. They are open to manipulation by corrupt officials who abuse the power they have. They are open to manipulation by companies that might buy (or compile themselves) that data. Laws could be applied retroactively to people by running a SELECT statement on a database, and finding out all the people who may have broken a law that didn't exist at the time. For instance, at the urging of the RIAA:
SELECT * FROM citizens WHERE purchases="mp3 player"
I'm not suggesting I've presented a compelling reason to NOT do these things, just that I'm still working through this stuff, so I'm very uneasy rushing into anything.
Hmm. I don't know if that is the real fact of the matter. It seems to me that the real fact of the matter is that with something like this in place, these men would have been stopped before their attack was in motion. That counts, that's wonderful protection. I think it's a very real, persuasive argument. The only thing left for me to wrestle with is, how easy is it for me as a law-abiding citizen to live anonymously? It used to be I could just not use credit cards, and no one would have a "dossier" on me. Then it was that plus, don't give out info online -- certainly not to doubleclick. Now what? Wear sunglasses so I can remain anonymous? How long before wearing sunglasses is prohibited in airports? And how long after that before wearing sunglasses is automatically just-cause for putting someone on a watch list? Will previously legal acts be used to turn law-abiding people into criminals?
I would like to see face recognition software used for the coming war. Part of what I've been hearing is that the people of Afghanistan say that they are resigned to being slaughtered even though "they are not the enemy" -- and I've heard people here talk about how if we go slaughter them after they slaughter us, we're no better than they are. Well, what does slashdot think of this -- is it too naive? Couldn't we go into these countries -- obviously forcing our way in, which would hopefully only cause military casualties -- and ferret out only Taliban members and Al Queda members using face recognition software? There may only be 1,000 "criminals" whose photos we'd use, so the scanning might be able to happen quickly.
I realize it probably sounds very big-brother-ish to say "scan the citizens for criminals among them" but it's a lot better than "bomb everyone and sort 'em out later."
Wow, that seems totally over the top for such a low-key, easily solved mistake. I mean, he messes up his mod point, surely other moderators will mod up the parent post to cover for that mistake, and you call him a "pigfucker"? Demo, don't let these kind of posts get you down -- they're inappropriate and way out of line for such a trivial thing. Can /. encourage a little more civility? Maybe?
I agree with your criticism of the original post, Reality Master. And I would add an additional criticism: the terrorists have not stood up and said why they did what they did. So the original post that Reality Master replied to, and it's original article, are either guessing, or inferring, or else it was written by the terrorists. In which case, I suspect that the FBI will be knocking on slashdot's door pretty soon.
Since I don't believe that the article was written by the terrorists -- it certainly isn't portrayed that way -- I'm left thinking it's just guesswork, which I reject, or else they inferred it based upon current information. If that's the case, every person on slashdot is equally qualified to state why it was done, based upon current information. It's entirely up to each person's interpretation. And in that case, my interpretation is that these are terrorists, these are evil people who are willing to sacrifice innocent people. There is no higher cause at work here. They are petty, self-absorbed people who are willing to sacrifice and sell-out their own people and other innocent people for an unstated message that I would reject even if it were stated. I give no forum to murderers.
My God, Katz, is this you? This is a well-done article, I think. You made good sense, you made good points, you even sounded reasonable. I guess something has changed.
That is such an oversimplification that it no longer rings true. A kidnapper may imprison people, and the government may imprison the kidnapper -- yet even though both "imprision" people, one is clearly viewed differently in the eyes of the world. You may suggest that they are not any different, but that viewpoint is in such a minority that you can see, for all practical purposes, the entire world has rejected it as a legitimate notion. Free countries are built based on the idea that there is such a thing as "just" treatment, and people deliberately migrate to countries that, in their view, implement such principles most fairly. You can say that the motivations of a government and a terrorist group are similar, but I would submit that in reality, it is almost solely their motivations that differentiate them. Why tolerate the Canadian government imprisoning people? I should move to the US! Or, in reverse, I should abandon the USA, which imprisions thousands of its own citizens every day, and head for Canada! But of course, I don't. And this is because I see a massive difference in intentions. Canada, USA, UK, France, a huge number of countries that are free or at least closely resemble free, do not see a massive outflux of the citizenry because those citizens find their government is typically acting (not always) to ensure safety and stability of the majority. Very, very few people would view the kidnapper, who also imprisons people, as acting to secure the majority. In fact, knowing that kidnapping is an illegal act, such a person would be deliberately choosing to create instability.
So you can suggest that the USA "hitting military targets" and terrorists "hijacking planes" are somehow similar -- but even in your own words, you give away the true difference in motivations, the differences that cause the citizens of these countries to believe what they do: the USA hits military targets. For any free country, images of children dying due to bombing runs are the last, last thing that a government official wants. Because if the citizens can vote, they can vote him or her out of office! On the other hand, these terrorists, by your own words, have hijacked planes with civilians, and targeted buildings full of innocent people for destruction. That is vastly different in my mind. These murderers have no citizenry to hold them accountable, they hide so that other nations cannot hold them accountable, and they undertake actions which they know cannot be condoned.
I am not an expert, please disregard my comment if you wish. However, I have spent the last 7 years working on large-scale Web sites, trying to solve the problems of how to sort and present massive volumes of data. It is possible that they have the exact issues you describe. Consider especially the storage space for the insane amount of data a single day's worth of cell phone calls would consume. However, I want you to also consider how you might "drill down" into these phone calls. For instance, real-world: the company I work for tracks all calls, going back for years. We have a Web interface. You pick the month and get a big list of all calls for that month. Narrow it down to the day and get a smaller list. If you can also offer criteria such as the hour of day, the caller, or the number, you can get a very focused list. I actually used the system recently, when I heard from a vendor that someone was impersonating me. So I looked for any outgoing calls to that vendor's number on specific days, and there it was: someone in Marketing was indeed calling my vendor.
Let's apply that here: first, they limit the calls to the 10th and 11th. Great, only 20 million calls now. Then, they limit the calls to only a few obviously related cities (San Francisco, Boston, New York, maybe a few others). Great, only half a million calls now. Then they start plugging in whatever evidence they might have -- perhaps they focus on any cell phone that called a car rental agency. Where do they get the car rental agency numbers? They pull from a national yellow-pages database. I have one such CD on my desk here, with monthly updates, even! So great, now they're limited to only 50,000 calls. I don't know about you, but I can listen manually to 100 calls if my boss asks. He puts 500 people on such a task, and every single one of those 50,000 calls will be listened to.
Call accounting systems already exist for consumers to purchase. Yellow pages on CD already exist. Databases that can handle millions or billions of records already exist. Imagine what an agency with billions of dollars to spend and some of the top minds in the country could do. I'm a schmuck and I've built Web interfaces that do similar on a smaller scale -- these guys can run circles around me. So I believe it when they say they will "review" all the cell phone calls.
I'm going to get modded down (ouch), but I'm going to have to say, "no thanks" here. Why would I say no to your entirely reasonable (sounding) request to consider both sides? Well, even if these murderers have a point, they haven't stated it in the wake of the bombing, so all we can do is guess. And I'm not interested in guessing. In addition, while killing my family will get my attention, I will not give those killers the attention they desire. Even if they have a legitimate point, they made their point by slaughtering innocent people. Therefore, my deliberate choice is to give them enough attention to see them bombed or jailed, and no more. I don't care what their point might be, based on our speculation or even their plainly stated comments. They killed people. Their comments are now lost on me.
Is that closed-minded? Well, you're free to view it however you wish. But people who slaughter the people I love don't get to "open a dialogue" with me. I won't reward that behavior by giving them what they want. I have seen in my lifetime a living example of how to cause change on a massive scale, in the life of Martin Luther King. I've seen non-violence work. That is what I support, that is what I listen to. These thugs deserve zero consideration from me.
...I would suggest that this economy is no longer the kind of economy that will support an employee dictating "my way or the highway". It is very likely your supervisor will pick "highway" even if you're very good, because there are many, many highly-qualified candidates now coming into job interviews. It wasn't like this a year ago. I realize other slashdotters may challenge me on that, because it's not a very nice thing to tell someone that they're possibly expendable. However, your boss may very well think that way, regardless. So be careful.
In addition, the "good salary" you claim to be getting may be due to the fact that you're churning out sites fast but charging the same rates you did back when you custom-built them. By asking to change the process, you may be getting a change in salary too.
Finally, don't forget that object-oriented, modular programming is supposed to make cookie-cutter work possible. If you're reusing your code over and over, sure, it could be sloppy, careless work, but it also may be that you've got a system working well and just object to the monotony more than the code. If that's the case, ask to be put on different projects, rather than taking a hard-core "reform-or-I-walk" stance.
Well, I want friends like that. The potential for LAN games is just too tempting.
...and that is, the old make things visible rule. Supposedly, if people have to remember a switch, it is less usable than an application that displays the switch.
You're not necessarily right. Personally, I think having professional musicians is a good thing, and since this is so completely subjective, there is no absolute answer.
This doesn't scale well -- releasing a song online for mass distribution at 25 per mp3 may earn the artist just as much as a boatload of $200 concert tickets. Simply put, concerts can only hit limited groups of people. In addition, such a system would hurt artists who can make amazing music but have terrible stage fright. And it would hurt hobbiest musicians who compose their work entirely with computers -- stage shows of a person pressing a button on a computer and then standing around while people listen to the song, well, that's not much of a performance, even though it may be a great song.
I think choice is exactly what we need, and this new license can only help. But I do not think this new license needs to be pushed as the "correct" way to do music. It is only one of many ways, and musicians (and music fans!) should be free to do as they choose.
Have you any idea what you had to ignore to make that statement? You imply that because it's GNU, it's okay for RMS to treat Ulrich poorly. But that's my point -- there is NO justification for that kind of behavior. I don't care if it's the "RMS GNU GPL" project -- if you treat the core developer like crap, expect to be known as a person who treats core developers like crap, and by extension, expect that core developers may want to distance themselves from you.
I disagree. When the attitude of its advocates is to try to take over projects that use their license, and steal the very name of Linux away from its owner, then that is a very, very good reason to steer clear. If you don't consider how these people act, then don't be surprised when your own code is hijacked.
Not deliberate.
Your point is good, most /. readers will like it. But in my opinion, I see little difference -- a 5 year-old who is exposed to porn before the parent is prepared to deal with it is still exposed, whether deliberate or inadvertent. I guess we just differ.
I interpreted your sentence, "I can't understand why people are so keen to stop their children seeing things" as an indication that you disapproved of such parenting, and your sentence, "it would be far better to just leave the Internet unfiltered and foster a spirit of family discussion in the home" as an indication of how you were going to parent for these parents. I apologize for misinterpreting, perhaps you meant to make the comments as idle thoughts that you had no intention of actively pushing.
Again, I concede that you have a good point, and that probably everyone on /. will agree with you. Except me. See, I view this first of all as conservative -- and not in the political sense, but rather in the "err on the side of caution" sense. By doing this, the government does not disable my ability to expose my child to porn or talk to them about the "birds and the bees" -- in my own home, on my own time. Parents who dislike this will raise their children differently on their own time, and parents who like this can continue to use the library. It strikes me as something of a win/win situation. Of course, legit, adult porn freaks get the shaft (so to speak), but help them out too by installing private viewing screens that require card access (as one /. poster suggested).
I guess I just don't see it as "inflicting" if I'm free to raise my child more liberally on my own. But again, to my point (and I'm playing devil's advocate here a little): if I do want the goverment to parent, and you jump in to argue against it, I think you are getting involved in a parenting "arrangement" I have established with the government. You open yourself to exactly what I suggested: getting physically beat up if the parent feels you're threatening the child's safety, or getting stuck with a kid -- "Hey, I wanted to protect my child in a public place, where I expect community decency laws to be upheld. If you're trying to take that away from me, then fine, YOU raise the kid and see how you do."
I realize, you could counter, "but YOU are taking away MY porn, you intrude on my rights in pursuit of your own." And again, if you said as much I would concede your point again and continue on with my thoughts/parenting/voting patterns anyway. I would also concede some kind of private viewing area for the pervs (which I myself would frequent) but as for what's public, yep, I hold that to a different standard. I'm one of those freaks that thinks the "Disney-fying" of NYC that the mayor did is great, and people who moaned that the adult character of the city is gone, well, fine with me. I'm sorry they're unhappy, but guess what? I'm going to vote for more people to do that kind of thing more often.
Of course, that's exactly the point that any of those parents are going to make: they need to prepare their kids for this. Just because a 3 year-old will "someday" see some porn doesn't mean 5 people should rush up to the kid with laptops running hardcore porn mpegs and say, "get prepared, kid!" I suppose it's possible you disagree, but how far are you willing to go -- once you've usurped the parent here, once you've said "I don't care that you're the parent, I'm better at it" -- are you willing to usurp the parent in other areas? What if the parent agrees with you and says, "fine, you think you know how to raise this kid, then do so."
As a parent myself, I know very well how carefully I try to avoid parenting for others. I had a very religious mother who refused to let her child have the number 6 stamped on her hand as she entered a day care center -- because "6" is an evil number (think 666). Do I think the parent is flat-out absurd? Yep. Do I stamp the kid with a 6 and tell the mother to get used to it? No way. I say, "how about I stamp your hand with a J, for Jesus?" The second you start parenting for other parents, you're likely to get physically beat up, or end up adopting a kid you didn't really want -- you just thought the parent was stupid. Kids shouldn't be collateral damage in those kinds of pissing contests.
That's great advice for yourself. I hope you heed it. As for me, I've looked at your profile and Web site, and it's clear you're a Windows shill. I've got a decade of experience at Borland, Actuate, SST, and other companies implementing the very systems you imply I have no experience with. I again reject your attacks, and feel sorry that your only rebuttal is to attack me rather than my arguments. I think you've made my case for me. You can't beat down the proof, so you attack (poorly) my credentials. That's feeble, at best.