That tank game was great. The variation in levels, the obstacles... I particularly dug bouncing tank shells off the walls.
However, I have to say the funniest thing was when you could occasionally take advantage of a game bug, and teleport yourself to the opposite side of the screen. This was accomplished by running your tank into a wall or corner enough that the game got confused, and "wrapped" you to the opposite corner or wall.
My brother never mastered that trick, which I often used to great effect against him. Yeah, it was a cheat/hack... but when you're a kid in my house, winning was way more important than playing fair.
And honestly, it's not that winning was so freaking important... it's that losing was so incredibly painful. Really... having to hear your brother brag about it and rub your nose in it for days and days... Yeah, OK... so I'm a cheating rat... At least I didn't stuff it in his face when I won.
*Sigh* Thanks kid... thanks for for making me feel even older than I am... sheesh.
I owned a couple of these, and while I must admit to some initial diappointment with the Atari 2600 Pacman, I did grow to like it. The thing I hated most (this is going to seem trivial) was the fact that the Pacman icon did not change directions when you made a corner, like on the arcade version. Yeah, yeah... I know, minor point, but it really grew to irritate me.
If you want to talk about modern games, then no "worst" list would be complete without Ultima IX... that game almost drove me to drink.
The origin of the word is french... it means "to sort."
You are talking about the difference in triage between normal situations, versus mass casualty. In a mass casualty incident, you would be correct; the most-critically injured, who could not be saved without an inordinate amount of resources expended (resources that could be used to save multiple other patients) are made comfortable and allowed to die.
This situation is very uncommon in normal civilian EMS in the United States. For a mass casualty incident, however, your point is a valid one.
The original poster is correct. EMS crews have many things to do in the field, and finding some little plug on a crushed vehicle so they can gather data (that will probably NOT be useful at the hospital) is NOT a priority.
This is just one more thing that can break down, and get lost/stolen, dead batteries, etc. Many medics will bring me a polariod of the vehicle the patient was in... that's about all I need, in addition to some other basic info about the crash. Medics are trained to gather this kind of thing already; it's dogma in the care of the blunt trauma patient.
How much intrusion into the passenger compartment? Restrained? (seat belt) Air bag deployed? Did anyone in the vehicle not survive? Prolonged extrication time? Ejected from the vehicle? Was it a rollover accident? etc.
Hospital personell are trained to consider these factors, not that the vehicle was traveling at 37.8MPH at the time of collision... Physicians are, for the most part, not engineers; they are not trained to translate that information into something clinically useful. Further, other factors (how much slack in the seatbelt, etc) will obfuscate the usefulness of that measurement.
Most "mechanism of injury" info is only useful to raise or lower your clinical suspicion for certain types of injuries. You'd still try to treat the patient, not the number.
All that aside, I think a good open standard for these recorders would be a good thing... just not for EMS reasons.
Talk to any military or police sniper, and ask to see their rifle data/log book (they ALL have one. If they don't, you are probably talking to a wanna-be). Odds are, it'll be printed on waterproof paper.
Is this going to be totally stereotype driven? Will they try to sell black turtlenecks to people who scope out the works of Nietzsche, or flower aprons to Martha Stewart readers?
Can you imagine trying to predict a certain wardrobe for THIS audience? (all of whom are likely to be buying Oreilly books)
Sooo... The next time I go there to buy a TCP/IP networking book they'll try to sell me one of those SYN/ACK thinkgeek shirts (yes, I admit it. I think those are kind of stylin') and yet... Geeks have a dominant streak of not following typical social norms. And they are going to try to predict a wardrobe? Color me incredulous.
'UNBIASED Knowledge is Good' - any other kind is Bad.
Yes. Though it's probably wise to examine the biased knowledge as well. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then... you'd hate to throw away valuable science, simply because you didn't like the source.
Women who don't breast feed don't gain the protective benefits of breast feeding... though they do gain the benefits of a term pregnancy. They still benefit, just not as much. Miscarriages do not seem to be protective in the same way a term pregnancy is and neither are abortions protective(a manmade miscarriage).
Abortions themselves may not be independently harmful, or they might be... who knows? If you can control for the other factors, I'm sure you'd agree that this would be pretty useful knowledge. I'd think women would want to know if they were increasing their breast cancer risk, or not...
Informed consent requires full disclosure of the risks and benefits.
I hate to be a party pooper, but there actually may be something to the abortion theory. To be fair, however, it probably has little to do with the act of abortion itself.
The human breast does not reach full maturity until at least one pregnancy is completed. If a person has multiple abortions and never carries a pregnancy to term, their risk for breast cancer COULD be higher, but it may be because of never having children; the fact that the woman aborted all her pregnancies is just the method. She could just as easily be a spinster or nun, and carry the same risk.
It's shortsighted to automatically assume that science is bad, simply because it contradicts some concept one holds dear. Look at the research objectively, and judge it on its merits.
Knowledge is Good.
Re:And fond memories they are!
on
New Phrack
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Yep, Phrack has come to my rescue too.
Was talking to a systems guy where I was working (where they still use VMS), and inquired why we hadn't migrated to something else... His reply was that VMS had never been hacked.
Never been hacked?? That piqued my curiousity... fortunately, I knew just where to look (from my misspent youth). A short search of the Phrack archives turned up not one but several VMS hacks. They were mostly social engineering hacks rather than code expoits, but they were legitimate hacks.
Rather than getting annoyed at an amateur (which I was, and still remain), the systems guy actually read the articles with some interest. The ability to learn something from someone who's clearly your tech inferior, without any ego getting in the way... gotta admire that.
I'd say that before a certain developmental stage, you are unlikely to form memories. When might that be... who knows, probably depends on the person.
Whether you can recall early memories that you DID form might have a lot to do with the type of memory, and what brought it to the surface. Painful memories are obviously going to burn brightly, unless they are so painful that your subconscious edits them out.
Odors often trigger memories quite powerfully. In theory, is has to do with the sense of smell being closely tied in with the limbic system. These kinds of memories are often very emotional. Can you still remember your first girlfriend's perfume? Maybe not specifically, but you might remember it if you smelled it, if only from the emotions is would generate. I can still clearly recall my grandmothers perfume, and my uncle's pipe smoke (the uncle died when I was pretty young).
It's a good question... a child psych person might know.
Heheh. Absolutely. Don't know about you, but I love burritos... don't know where I'd be without "the Bell."
How ironic that those minimum wage tech-support types (it's a dirty job, but let's face it... someone's gotta do it) are making more money than the people mentioned in the article. Nobody ever said life was fair, but cmon...
It's one thing to work for some kind of equity: training, health care benefits, a vested retirement plan, future job consideration, or even your own parking space. I just hope these guys have something in writing that says they'll get preference when a full-time (or heck, even part-time is better than free) position when one comes open. Work for free to get noticed by the boss? At the rate managers come and go, these freebie employees might be building up sweat equity in exactly nothing.
Might be time to move on to another market, or get a temporary job to pay the bills. For families with kids, mortgage, etc this has to be no fun.
That has to be hard to swallow; going from a fully-paid, full-benefits employee to a minimally-paid stock-options-only person.
Stock options only? Considering the life expectancy of some of the Dot-coms out there, you'd be better off working at Taco Bell. Yes, fast food is a job, but it's painful to do with a degree under your belt (I'd expect more liberal arts majors to be doing that). "Hello, tech support desk" becomes "you want any hot sauce with those burritos?" How awful.
I'm not a tech for a living; strictly a hobbyist. My day job required me to work an slave-labor internship... 100+ hours per week... but even THAT was paid. You can't pay the rent with stock options.
I don't see how the companies that are employing these folks are getting away with this kind of thing. Whether you agree with it or not, there is a minimum-wage.
The only problem with them (probably only a problem to slashdotters) is that they don't do in-depth computer hardware reviews; general computer reviews are about all you get.
and no... I'm not affiliated with them in any way, aside from being a happy subscriber. They accept no advertisements at all, and are entirely member-supported. If something sucks, they say so... an invaluable service for those of you that don't like throwing your money away.
Digital pix can be Emailed to some poor soldier's torturer overseas in mere minutes... personally, just the thought of that chills me to the bone.
All they need is one person who can get on base... contractor, volunteer, or reservist. Heck, even somebody's dependent teenager might fancy himself a political dissident and "do his part against the war." (I'm not ripping on principled objectors... we're talking traitors here) That's a huge number of people, and enough that you could probably find a "fifth column" among them, particularly if you're fighting an unpopular conflict. Enemy Intelligence agencies will exploit all kinds of things to coopt people... ethnic loyalties, family ties, sex, money, drugs, the foolishness of youth... the number of ways you can compromise a person and turn them into a spy is endless.
It's even easier if what they are asked to do is seemingly innocuous... "snap some pictures of house #X on Patton Street. Just some pictures, nothing else."
Also, people do live off-base. What about those bases where there is not enough on-base housing, or on-base housing has a waiting list of a year or more? The latter scenario is common in some states where the extreme cost of living/housing drives everyone to try to live on-base. Don't think that those military budget cuts haven't affected the housing availability. The housing military can afford off-base is typically in a seedier area, often apartments (particularly for junior officers and enlisted). Those areas are easy to surveil... lots of traffic, people hanging around... you can even rent an apartment in the same complex if you want to watch a "high-interest" target for a longer time frame.
This type of thing is nothing new... terrorists like the Red Army Faction, Black September, November 17, et al have done meticulous surveilance and research on their targets. There is a reason the military trains its personnel to be on the lookout for surveilance, tails, and the like (obviously, the more sensitive your position, the higher your suspicion). More than anything else, it pays to make yourself a harder target, and to act on your suspicions. If joe Al-Queda sees some security types sniffing around, they'll likely abort for an easier target.
The loss of this data is a huge screw-up on the part of the healthcare contractor. There is little more a terrorist organization or enemy power would need than those files. Those CID investigators better be feeling the heat.
They are claiming a theoretical traction increase of 90%(!) potentially using some kind of conductive rubber in car tires.
What's most interesting about the opposite application (deicing) seems to be that they are using the ice to melt itself.
The deicing will clearly be more efficient, since resistive heaters are so very inefficient... but they should still have to expend at least the amount of energy that would be needed to convert the ice to water... 80 calories per gram, if I recall my Heat of Fusion values correctly (physics was like 15 years ago, so I may have that totally wrong)
Still, to avoid all those losses from inefficient resistive heaters? Potentially very lucrative tech here.
They even have prototypes already... I'm impressed.
Protons carrying the charge, hmmm? I suppose any charged particle could theoretically carry a current, but I must admit I never thought of "proton flow" as a way to do it...
Water really is an interesting material.
Universal solvent (polar solvent, for you organic chemistry nitpickers)
Has its greatest density BEFORE it reaches its solid state of matter (ice). If you ever wondered why ponds and rivers don't freeze from the bottom up, that's the reason. Someone correct me, but I think the temperature of greatest density is 39F.
That's really quite a discovery... can't wait to see if they can make something useful out of it.
Tricare is administered by regions. When you enroll in tricare, you are assigned to a region.
Northeast, Mid-atlantic, Gulfsouth, etc.
There is no TRICARE West region... but judging by the number of states mentioned in the article, I'd guess this contractor was dealing with the Central region (15 states), with the possible addition of california (1 state, obviously), or the Northwest region (2 states)
forget about virtually protecting patient data with VPNs and encrytption... how about some physical security? They state that there was "reasonable security" for a company; hmmmm... obviously that hinges on your definition of reasonable.
Data like this is a gold mine if the thieves have any idea how to use it. I hope they are advising people to put fraud alerts on their credit reports... but there are things worse than identity theft. What might that information be worth to a foreign power, or terrorist organization?
"Um...no. If the source code is available, and if you can do whatever you want with it, then there is NO RATIONAL BASIS by which you can call this closed source"
Yes, yes, you are correct. I was merely taking liberty with the term to posit a question. Forgive me.
But let me ask again: Might one not consider program documentation as an analog to the program code? One that shows you "how it works", but that's simply easier to read? If you were some kind of autistic savant who could read the compiled machine code, would the compiled binary not serve the same purpose? All three, binary, code, and docs, tell you, in one form or another "how it works," if you follow my logic. The only difference seems to be in the level of skill required to read them.
I never said they were not free to charge for support; in fact, you'll note I said the exact opposite. They are free to do what they want with their documentation... it's theirs, after all. I'm not disputing their right to do this at all, and you are correct that it's not illegal, immoral, or unethical... It just seems inconsistent.
But I'd say the guy that writes his own HOWTO should be just as free to do what he wants... because it's his HOWTO. Suing him would be like Microsoft suing the author of "Windows for Dummies"...
Closed source: You don't know how the program works, and even if you find out, you can't tell anybody.
Open Source: You know how the program works.
Isn't witholding documentation just another form of closed source? Source code tells you how the program works... and so does documentation. Granted, it takes much greater education and L33t 5ki11z to actually read the source code, but the concept is the same. It's almost like giving a printed manual to someone who can't read.
Charging for a service, like support, is one thing. If they have a guy they are paying to moderate the forum and answer questions, then that guy needs to get paid. Nothing at all wrong with that. Binding the answeree to some form of NDA seems a bit much, particularly if they are not directly plagiarizing the material.
Linux is free, you can download it and use it any way you want. If you want a neatly packaged distro, you have the option of buying it, but you can hack it apart and make it yourself. You can roll your own... or you can pay for the convenience of having someone else roll it for you; ie. paying for a service. What's wrong with a guy getting some support, and then writing a mini-HOWTO? If only microsoft technicians were allowed to support windows, I'd be in real trouble, considering how many of my friends' computers I support.
Someone enlighten me if I'm missing something here.
No Jail; unfortunate that the jury didn't agree with you. Yes, people who commit manslaughter, negligent homicide, etc, go to jail... but those are very different charges, with very different culpable mental states. Intent counts for a great deal in the eyes of the law. The law decided that this was an honest, if horrible, mistake. No Mens Rea could be shown, and these charges are not strict liability crimes, where a culpable mental state would NOT have to be proven.
The charges that the prosecution chose were interesting:
They couldn't prove murder; no evidence that the officers purposefully or knowingly set out to murder Diallo, and no malice.
They couldn't prove Negligent or Reckless homicide; those both require a failure to be aware of, or a reckless wanton disregard for (respectively) an unjustifiable risk, AND a gross deviation from the standard of care from the perspective of a reasonable officer.
They tried to charge all four officers with the greater and lesser-included offenses for EACH ROUND they fired... 41 sets of charges total... that was transparent grandstanding by the prosecutor.
The officers were not fired, but none of them will likely ever work the street again.
Under union rules, they cannot be fired without cause (benefits of unionization, from the workers' point of view). They were acquited by the tryers of the facts, so there is no cause for dismissal. The NYPD is already facing a civil suit by Diallo's family... the last thing they need is another one from the four officers. The FOP will not allow malicious firings (obvious political pandering in this case) to go unchallenged, nor should they.
What's next? Firing an officer because he wrote the mayor a parking ticket? In the bad old days of law enforcement, that used to happen. Being a cop is an unpopular job at times, and those union protections are a Good Thing (TM), primarily to allow the officer to do his job without fear of reprisals. Enforcing the law against powerful people is impossible without those protections; those union rules are there to prevent exactly the kind of political paybacks and pandering you seem to be advocating.
Slashdot Mirror
That tank game was great. The variation in levels, the obstacles... I particularly dug bouncing tank shells off the walls.
However, I have to say the funniest thing was when you could occasionally take advantage of a game bug, and teleport yourself to the opposite side of the screen. This was accomplished by running your tank into a wall or corner enough that the game got confused, and "wrapped" you to the opposite corner or wall.
My brother never mastered that trick, which I often used to great effect against him. Yeah, it was a cheat/hack... but when you're a kid in my house, winning was way more important than playing fair.
And honestly, it's not that winning was so freaking important... it's that losing was so incredibly painful. Really... having to hear your brother brag about it and rub your nose in it for days and days... Yeah, OK... so I'm a cheating rat... At least I didn't stuff it in his face when I won.
*Sigh* Thanks kid... thanks for for making me feel even older than I am... sheesh.
I owned a couple of these, and while I must admit to some initial diappointment with the Atari 2600 Pacman, I did grow to like it. The thing I hated most (this is going to seem trivial) was the fact that the Pacman icon did not change directions when you made a corner, like on the arcade version. Yeah, yeah... I know, minor point, but it really grew to irritate me.
If you want to talk about modern games, then no "worst" list would be complete without Ultima IX... that game almost drove me to drink.
The origin of the word is french... it means "to sort."
You are talking about the difference in triage between normal situations, versus mass casualty. In a mass casualty incident, you would be correct; the most-critically injured, who could not be saved without an inordinate amount of resources expended (resources that could be used to save multiple other patients) are made comfortable and allowed to die.
This situation is very uncommon in normal civilian EMS in the United States. For a mass casualty incident, however, your point is a valid one.
The original poster is correct. EMS crews have many things to do in the field, and finding some little plug on a crushed vehicle so they can gather data (that will probably NOT be useful at the hospital) is NOT a priority.
This is just one more thing that can break down, and get lost/stolen, dead batteries, etc. Many medics will bring me a polariod of the vehicle the patient was in... that's about all I need, in addition to some other basic info about the crash. Medics are trained to gather this kind of thing already; it's dogma in the care of the blunt trauma patient.
How much intrusion into the passenger compartment?
Restrained? (seat belt)
Air bag deployed?
Did anyone in the vehicle not survive?
Prolonged extrication time?
Ejected from the vehicle?
Was it a rollover accident?
etc.
Hospital personell are trained to consider these factors, not that the vehicle was traveling at 37.8MPH at the time of collision... Physicians are, for the most part, not engineers; they are not trained to translate that information into something clinically useful. Further, other factors (how much slack in the seatbelt, etc) will obfuscate the usefulness of that measurement.
Most "mechanism of injury" info is only useful to raise or lower your clinical suspicion for certain types of injuries. You'd still try to treat the patient, not the number.
All that aside, I think a good open standard for these recorders would be a good thing... just not for EMS reasons.
Talk to any military or police sniper, and ask to see their rifle data/log book (they ALL have one. If they don't, you are probably talking to a wanna-be). Odds are, it'll be printed on waterproof paper.
Check out this website if you really MUST have one of your very own: Check the store/accessories section
no doubt about that.
Is this going to be totally stereotype driven? Will they try to sell black turtlenecks to people who scope out the works of Nietzsche, or flower aprons to Martha Stewart readers?
Can you imagine trying to predict a certain wardrobe for THIS audience? (all of whom are likely to be buying Oreilly books)
Sooo... The next time I go there to buy a TCP/IP networking book they'll try to sell me one of those SYN/ACK thinkgeek shirts (yes, I admit it. I think those are kind of stylin') and yet... Geeks have a dominant streak of not following typical social norms. And they are going to try to predict a wardrobe? Color me incredulous.
'UNBIASED Knowledge is Good' - any other kind is Bad.
Yes. Though it's probably wise to examine the biased knowledge as well. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then... you'd hate to throw away valuable science, simply because you didn't like the source.
Women who don't breast feed don't gain the protective benefits of breast feeding... though they do gain the benefits of a term pregnancy. They still benefit, just not as much. Miscarriages do not seem to be protective in the same way a term pregnancy is and neither are abortions protective(a manmade miscarriage).
Abortions themselves may not be independently harmful, or they might be... who knows? If you can control for the other factors, I'm sure you'd agree that this would be pretty useful knowledge. I'd think women would want to know if they were increasing their breast cancer risk, or not...
Informed consent requires full disclosure of the risks and benefits.
I hate to be a party pooper, but there actually may be something to the abortion theory. To be fair, however, it probably has little to do with the act of abortion itself.
The human breast does not reach full maturity until at least one pregnancy is completed. If a person has multiple abortions and never carries a pregnancy to term, their risk for breast cancer COULD be higher, but it may be because of never having children; the fact that the woman aborted all her pregnancies is just the method. She could just as easily be a spinster or nun, and carry the same risk.
It's shortsighted to automatically assume that science is bad, simply because it contradicts some concept one holds dear. Look at the research objectively, and judge it on its merits.
Knowledge is Good.
Yep, Phrack has come to my rescue too.
Was talking to a systems guy where I was working (where they still use VMS), and inquired why we hadn't migrated to something else... His reply was that VMS had never been hacked.
Never been hacked?? That piqued my curiousity... fortunately, I knew just where to look (from my misspent youth). A short search of the Phrack archives turned up not one but several VMS hacks. They were mostly social engineering hacks rather than code expoits, but they were legitimate hacks.
Rather than getting annoyed at an amateur (which I was, and still remain), the systems guy actually read the articles with some interest. The ability to learn something from someone who's clearly your tech inferior, without any ego getting in the way... gotta admire that.
How many roads must a man walk down?
So long, and thanks for all the karma!
I'd say that before a certain developmental stage, you are unlikely to form memories. When might that be... who knows, probably depends on the person.
Whether you can recall early memories that you DID form might have a lot to do with the type of memory, and what brought it to the surface. Painful memories are obviously going to burn brightly, unless they are so painful that your subconscious edits them out.
Odors often trigger memories quite powerfully. In theory, is has to do with the sense of smell being closely tied in with the limbic system. These kinds of memories are often very emotional. Can you still remember your first girlfriend's perfume? Maybe not specifically, but you might remember it if you smelled it, if only from the emotions is would generate. I can still clearly recall my grandmothers perfume, and my uncle's pipe smoke (the uncle died when I was pretty young).
It's a good question... a child psych person might know.
Heheh. Absolutely. Don't know about you, but I love burritos... don't know where I'd be without "the Bell."
How ironic that those minimum wage tech-support types (it's a dirty job, but let's face it... someone's gotta do it) are making more money than the people mentioned in the article. Nobody ever said life was fair, but cmon...
It's one thing to work for some kind of equity: training, health care benefits, a vested retirement plan, future job consideration, or even your own parking space. I just hope these guys have something in writing that says they'll get preference when a full-time (or heck, even part-time is better than free) position when one comes open. Work for free to get noticed by the boss? At the rate managers come and go, these freebie employees might be building up sweat equity in exactly nothing.
Might be time to move on to another market, or get a temporary job to pay the bills. For families with kids, mortgage, etc this has to be no fun.
That has to be hard to swallow; going from a fully-paid, full-benefits employee to a minimally-paid stock-options-only person.
Stock options only? Considering the life expectancy of some of the Dot-coms out there, you'd be better off working at Taco Bell. Yes, fast food is a job, but it's painful to do with a degree under your belt (I'd expect more liberal arts majors to be doing that). "Hello, tech support desk" becomes "you want any hot sauce with those burritos?" How awful.
I'm not a tech for a living; strictly a hobbyist. My day job required me to work an slave-labor internship... 100+ hours per week... but even THAT was paid. You can't pay the rent with stock options.
I don't see how the companies that are employing these folks are getting away with this kind of thing. Whether you agree with it or not, there is a minimum-wage.
Any chance they'll do a fly-by on the original moon landing site so we can STOP hearing from these types?
That WOULD be a giant leap for mankind.
I've said it before on this forum; Consumer Reports
The only problem with them (probably only a problem to slashdotters) is that they don't do in-depth computer hardware reviews; general computer reviews are about all you get.
and no... I'm not affiliated with them in any way, aside from being a happy subscriber. They accept no advertisements at all, and are entirely member-supported. If something sucks, they say so... an invaluable service for those of you that don't like throwing your money away.
Digital pix can be Emailed to some poor soldier's torturer overseas in mere minutes... personally, just the thought of that chills me to the bone.
All they need is one person who can get on base... contractor, volunteer, or reservist. Heck, even somebody's dependent teenager might fancy himself a political dissident and "do his part against the war." (I'm not ripping on principled objectors... we're talking traitors here) That's a huge number of people, and enough that you could probably find a "fifth column" among them, particularly if you're fighting an unpopular conflict. Enemy Intelligence agencies will exploit all kinds of things to coopt people... ethnic loyalties, family ties, sex, money, drugs, the foolishness of youth... the number of ways you can compromise a person and turn them into a spy is endless.
It's even easier if what they are asked to do is seemingly innocuous... "snap some pictures of house #X on Patton Street. Just some pictures, nothing else."
Also, people do live off-base. What about those bases where there is not enough on-base housing, or on-base housing has a waiting list of a year or more? The latter scenario is common in some states where the extreme cost of living/housing drives everyone to try to live on-base. Don't think that those military budget cuts haven't affected the housing availability. The housing military can afford off-base is typically in a seedier area, often apartments (particularly for junior officers and enlisted). Those areas are easy to surveil... lots of traffic, people hanging around... you can even rent an apartment in the same complex if you want to watch a "high-interest" target for a longer time frame.
This type of thing is nothing new... terrorists like the Red Army Faction, Black September, November 17, et al have done meticulous surveilance and research on their targets. There is a reason the military trains its personnel to be on the lookout for surveilance, tails, and the like (obviously, the more sensitive your position, the higher your suspicion). More than anything else, it pays to make yourself a harder target, and to act on your suspicions. If joe Al-Queda sees some security types sniffing around, they'll likely abort for an easier target.
The loss of this data is a huge screw-up on the part of the healthcare contractor. There is little more a terrorist organization or enemy power would need than those files. Those CID investigators better be feeling the heat.
It boggles the mind.
They are claiming a theoretical traction increase of 90%(!) potentially using some kind of conductive rubber in car tires.
What's most interesting about the opposite application (deicing) seems to be that they are using the ice to melt itself.
The deicing will clearly be more efficient, since resistive heaters are so very inefficient... but they should still have to expend at least the amount of energy that would be needed to convert the ice to water... 80 calories per gram, if I recall my Heat of Fusion values correctly (physics was like 15 years ago, so I may have that totally wrong)
Still, to avoid all those losses from inefficient resistive heaters? Potentially very lucrative tech here.
They even have prototypes already... I'm impressed.
Protons carrying the charge, hmmm? I suppose any charged particle could theoretically carry a current, but I must admit I never thought of "proton flow" as a way to do it...
Water really is an interesting material.
Universal solvent (polar solvent, for you organic chemistry nitpickers)
Has its greatest density BEFORE it reaches its solid state of matter (ice). If you ever wondered why ponds and rivers don't freeze from the bottom up, that's the reason. Someone correct me, but I think the temperature of greatest density is 39F.
That's really quite a discovery... can't wait to see if they can make something useful out of it.
yeah... and babelfish totally mangled it.
Good for translating words, but the syntax was atrocious.
I'd comment on the article, but I can't make sense of it... any native spanish speakers wanna translate for this poor semi-spanish-speaking gringo?
Tricare is administered by regions. When you enroll in tricare, you are assigned to a region.
Northeast, Mid-atlantic, Gulfsouth, etc.
There is no TRICARE West region... but judging by the number of states mentioned in the article, I'd guess this contractor was dealing with the Central region (15 states), with the possible addition of california (1 state, obviously), or the Northwest region (2 states)
Just FYI.
if you haven't got physical security, you haven't got ANY security.
forget about virtually protecting patient data with VPNs and encrytption... how about some physical security? They state that there was "reasonable security" for a company; hmmmm... obviously that hinges on your definition of reasonable.
Data like this is a gold mine if the thieves have any idea how to use it. I hope they are advising people to put fraud alerts on their credit reports... but there are things worse than identity theft. What might that information be worth to a foreign power, or terrorist organization?
"Um...no. If the source code is available, and if you can do whatever you want with it, then there is NO RATIONAL BASIS by which you can call this closed source"
Yes, yes, you are correct. I was merely taking liberty with the term to posit a question. Forgive me.
But let me ask again: Might one not consider program documentation as an analog to the program code? One that shows you "how it works", but that's simply easier to read? If you were some kind of autistic savant who could read the compiled machine code, would the compiled binary not serve the same purpose? All three, binary, code, and docs, tell you, in one form or another "how it works," if you follow my logic. The only difference seems to be in the level of skill required to read them.
I never said they were not free to charge for support; in fact, you'll note I said the exact opposite. They are free to do what they want with their documentation... it's theirs, after all. I'm not disputing their right to do this at all, and you are correct that it's not illegal, immoral, or unethical... It just seems inconsistent.
But I'd say the guy that writes his own HOWTO should be just as free to do what he wants... because it's his HOWTO. Suing him would be like Microsoft suing the author of "Windows for Dummies"...
This seems like Closed Source by another route.
Closed source: You don't know how the program works, and even if you find out, you can't tell anybody.
Open Source: You know how the program works.
Isn't witholding documentation just another form of closed source? Source code tells you how the program works... and so does documentation. Granted, it takes much greater education and L33t 5ki11z to actually read the source code, but the concept is the same. It's almost like giving a printed manual to someone who can't read.
Charging for a service, like support, is one thing. If they have a guy they are paying to moderate the forum and answer questions, then that guy needs to get paid. Nothing at all wrong with that. Binding the answeree to some form of NDA seems a bit much, particularly if they are not directly plagiarizing the material.
Linux is free, you can download it and use it any way you want. If you want a neatly packaged distro, you have the option of buying it, but you can hack it apart and make it yourself. You can roll your own... or you can pay for the convenience of having someone else roll it for you; ie. paying for a service. What's wrong with a guy getting some support, and then writing a mini-HOWTO? If only microsoft technicians were allowed to support windows, I'd be in real trouble, considering how many of my friends' computers I support.
Someone enlighten me if I'm missing something here.
No Jail; unfortunate that the jury didn't agree with you. Yes, people who commit manslaughter, negligent homicide, etc, go to jail... but those are very different charges, with very different culpable mental states. Intent counts for a great deal in the eyes of the law. The law decided that this was an honest, if horrible, mistake. No Mens Rea could be shown, and these charges are not strict liability crimes, where a culpable mental state would NOT have to be proven.
The charges that the prosecution chose were interesting:
They couldn't prove murder; no evidence that the officers purposefully or knowingly set out to murder Diallo, and no malice.
They couldn't prove Negligent or Reckless homicide; those both require a failure to be aware of, or a reckless wanton disregard for (respectively) an unjustifiable risk, AND a gross deviation from the standard of care from the perspective of a reasonable officer.
They tried to charge all four officers with the greater and lesser-included offenses for EACH ROUND they fired... 41 sets of charges total... that was transparent grandstanding by the prosecutor.
The officers were not fired, but none of them will likely ever work the street again.
Under union rules, they cannot be fired without cause (benefits of unionization, from the workers' point of view). They were acquited by the tryers of the facts, so there is no cause for dismissal. The NYPD is already facing a civil suit by Diallo's family... the last thing they need is another one from the four officers. The FOP will not allow malicious firings (obvious political pandering in this case) to go unchallenged, nor should they.
What's next? Firing an officer because he wrote the mayor a parking ticket? In the bad old days of law enforcement, that used to happen. Being a cop is an unpopular job at times, and those union protections are a Good Thing (TM), primarily to allow the officer to do his job without fear of reprisals. Enforcing the law against powerful people is impossible without those protections; those union rules are there to prevent exactly the kind of political paybacks and pandering you seem to be advocating.