I did read about Baader-Meinhoff. The German cops used to consider them borderline special ops. If they weren't that competent, then the German cops may have bigger problems with Al Queda than we thought.:-)
This reminds me of the days in University when me and my friends tried to map the University's internal computer network to figure out how to get Internet e-mail and outside connections.:-)
(Please forgive me referring to people as nodes; it makes it easier for me to explain it)
So, how do you detect the networks?
First believe they are out there. You have an approximate idea of the kind of roles needed and the places people have to be in (like near an airport or in flight schools), so you can profile people to come up with a likely set of nodes. Once you've got the nodes surveiled, rattle the network. Bring in a few of the more skittish members of the potential network in for a polite round of questioning (and I do mean POLITE -- no violence, threats or intimidation). Then watch what he does. He will activate the secret links and you will see the network sparkle into life to deal with this close call.
As you find more nodes and connections, you can begin to de-prioritize the nodes who show no signs of activity or direct connection. In your emerging network graph, you can make hypotheses about node functions which can be tested. See what happens when you try sending in an deep cover agent to talk to suspected resource network. Try offering resources which would make people interested, and see if they bite or refer you to someone else. If you can get trackable resources into the network, you can follow them to find more connections.
Another thing is to find a node (a suspect) who can be leveraged, like an invalid student visa. Bring them in and pressure them to either turn (unlikely) or expose the network and goals he knows about. Using the previous Slashdot articles on p2p networks being compromised, you can probably bring the the terrorist network to its own tipping point where they will either reorganize or disband it.
Problems with this method:
Identifying the initial nodes requires assumptions of goals and network organization. Since most of these networks will organize similarly to avoid the trouble of creating and learning a new organization, this is not unreasonable. But assuming the goals will have problems.
Profiling to find the initial nodes. Do I have to explain to a hot-bed of civil rights activists and libertines like Slashdot the evils and problems of this?
Professionalism. If the network is staffed with experience professionals (like the infamous Red Army Cell and Baider-Meinhoff were), attempts to rattle the network will fail. Your best bet is amatures recruited into the edges at critical positions, like the pilots.
Of course the best way to prevent terrorism is to remove the social conditions that encourage it. Encourage better economic opportunities for everyone and freedom from persecution and oppression. Support democracy, instead of shoring up corrupt dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China. Wherever there are the disaffected and miserable, the terrorists will find a home.
It was a small affair of about 8 or so people. We had fun until at least 8:30 pm when a couple of us left. We all agreed a better venue than Starbucks was needed. Preferably someplace that served real food & beer. Someone took a digital photo and will be soon available elsewhere.
I remember in the good ol' uu-net days when you were charged per e-mail and news posting. The concept of spamming was a theoretical concept because who would be willing to pay for sending out all those e-mails?
Also opposed to the Draft on Contravention of Extremist Activities were members of the Communist Party, who feared they could be targeted as illegal extremists.
The wheel has turned. One can only hope it will make them Ruskie Commies[1] a little more appreciative of human rights than when they were in charge.
[1] Hey, we're in the age of George Dubya'. We're allowed to use good ol' boy nominclature again!
You could not be so naive as to believe that every product of the other engineering disciplines is subjected to peer review. Some civil engineering products might fit your characterization, but you can't deny there's a non-trivial number of trade secrets being hidden from competitors/customers in every engineering discipline.
Not to the extent that software engineering does. You forget that in the more tangible engineering disciplines, they have patents that protect them so keeping everything under wraps as a trade secret is not only pointless, but counterproductive[1].
Even if there is something that is of a "highly sensitive" nature, within a company there is a peer review system. The vast majority of code is not examined by others to spot basic errors or faulty design decisions. I've worked in "trade secret" electronic design companies, and they are way more open with their competitors and the industry as a whole. Don't believe me? Go to a good technical library and gawk in horror at how many "trade secrets" electronic engineers, chemical engineers and automotive engineers share in their trade magazines.
And what happens when there's a major incident involving your design? If your chemical process blows up a plant, or your new car design causes sudden acceleration, how long will you be allowed to keep your trade secret hidden from the review of your peers? That was the main thrust of the article: when software goes bad, no one calls in the software equivalent of the NTSB.
[1] In the tangible industries, a patent is a way to get your invention out in the marketplace and let other people pay you royalties for using it. I know it's hard to believe, but patents aren't just about squashing your competition.
Software's so bad because it's still handcrafted, and the interchangable parts don't. Cars sucked too when when they were done the same way. OSS isn't the solution. The solution is for Computer Engineering to someday become as rigorous as other areas of Engineering.
You're half right. OSS isn't THE solution, but is part of a larger class of solutions. The reason mechanical and other forms of engineering could evolve into reliable disciplines is the ability to freely and openly communicate between the practitioners. With an industry wide peer review, everyone can analyze someone else's work, share their insights with everyone and everyone can benefit because that new technique or design can be incorporated by others into their work.
Shortly after the WTC attack, the American Civil Engineers society put together a panel of engineers to analyze the failure, and provide a report to the entire civil engineering community. When was the last time any proprietary software company did that? In fact, we've seen how these companies use lawsuits to squelch any such activity.
Openess, peer review and the ability to freely share information, lessons and strategies is what sets the other engineering disciplines apart from software engineering.
I think that's the problem: MSR is doing great work, while MS corrupts and ruins them to give us Clippy, the Talking Paperclip.
I think this should be a poll topic: Your favorite research lab? Lawrence Livermore, MSR, Thomas J. Watson Research, AT&T Bell Labs, Cowboy Neal's Bedroom.
It's nice to see Linux evolving into a healthy competitive ecosystem. An ecosystem of true competition vying for customers by offering better products at better prices.
Contrast with Microsoft's vision of an ecosystem where they are the big predator and everyone kow-tows to them and their whims. Nothing really happens in this ecosystem without Microsoft doing it first.
So far from being a disturbing development in Linux's history, I consider this a good sign that, contrary to Bill's opinion, the Marketplace works!
Tell that to the software rental places that got shut down in Vancouver over 10 years ago when the SPA lawyers descended. EULA are enforceable if the company is willing to fork out the money to fight them.
Or you can get an older, cheaper version of Photoshop. Photoshop 5.5, 5.0, 4.0. 3.0, all worked, and continue to work today.
Not quite, Sparky. Under the EULA, those licenses are non-transferable. You can't buy those older versions new, nor is it strictly kosher to buy an older version. Although most courts won't bother to hear a case for a user-to-user transaction, that doesn't mean it's legal.
Don't believe me? Set up a used software store in Silicon Valley and advertise California wide. See how long your doors are open before the lawyers come... I dare ya'
As for your snobbish arrogant attitude of "You are a weenie, un-talented little loser" to those who want the programs cheaper, my response to that is you haven't seen what amatures do with Flash and Photoshop. Those are the only tools out there for them to do the kind of stuff they want. Not everyone who pirates the full Photoshop are just getting rid of red-eye.
One of the best Flash animations I ever saw was from a highschool student in Germany who got started with a "borrowed" copy of Flash. Luckily, his work was so good a local web design company hired him. Last I heard, Macromedia doesn't offer good student discounts (like Adobe does). Don't be so surprised at the number of student pirates out there.
One of the earlier posters said it right: drop the price, kill piracy. Photoshop Elements is a step in the right direction. Now Adobe just needs to make it easier (i.e., cheaper) for those users to graduate to the full version. $80 from a user who would have pirated is better than nothing from a user who did.
HINT TO ADOBE ET AL: Legalize the secondary market for software!
Imagine two couples going on a high-g coaster for a date:
When the first couple gets on, the man is not physiologically fit enough to survive extreme g-forces and will be crippled for life, while his girlfriend survives fine. Meanwhile the second couple gets on and the woman dies from the extreme forces, but the man survives.
This means the surviving male and female can meet beside the ambulance taking their former partners away and go on to have a happy, productive relationship producing the next generation of high-g enthusiasts.
It's nature's way of breeding the next generation of fighter pilots.
Isn't the soil on Mars already rusted, hence the red color?
I forgot to mention that in my original post. From what I gather, only a small precentage of it is rusted (almost entirely on the surface of the rock or grain). Deep inside, there is iron just waiting for water to react with. As another poster mentioned, the Viking landers discovered "novel" chemistry when it was exposed to water. I don't know if it exploded, but it certainly did chemically react with the water.
Interesting thought...I wonder if the Egyptologists used geiger counters when they opened the pyramids? But think about it, an archaeologist is not going to see blocks of ceramics as danger, but more of artwork. They will pick it up and play with it before they realized that they are getting sick.
No, Egytpologists don't, but Anthropologists usually have to follow biohazard guidelines when digging up human remains. Also, archaeologists are carrying around geiger equipment these days (handy in dating ceramics -- which is what my proposed markers are made of!). They also like to toss a bit of it into the ol' AMS, and they'll notice some really alarming samples.
You see, I said not enough to HARM. Just enough of the stored material that anyone anaylzing the fragments would quickly realise what they're working with.
"... they just laughed. They said, 'We'll tell them it's here.'"
-- The Yakimah Tribe's response to the Hanford Hazardous Waste Monument Committee.
Scatter ceramic markers composed of the very material being stored. Not enough to kill, but enough that anyone with a geiger counter will notice something's wrong even in 10,000 years time. They dig up a marker and analyse it and figure out that this must be some nuclear site, including what is actually stored there so they can decide best how to deal with it.
but is nobody aware that the computer maker that sells more boxes to the educaton market is Apple?
No. The hardware is expensive. What's that, you say? Apple has an educational discount? Here's that discount for ya:
<conversation with my manager>
Mgr: My son's school is trying to buy some Apple computers, but they're looking for a better price.
Me: Doesn't Apple Canada have a discount?
Mgr: Yes, 15% off a $1500 machine. So they'd be paying about $1300 (CDN) per computer.
Me: Yikes! You can buy a decent computer with MS Office bundled for that price.
So as you can see, for school districts faced with chronic cash shortages, Apple has stopped being the educator's friend.
Slashdot Mirror
I did read about Baader-Meinhoff. The German cops used to consider them borderline special ops. If they weren't that competent, then the German cops may have bigger problems with Al Queda than we thought. :-)
This reminds me of the days in University when me and my friends tried to map the University's internal computer network to figure out how to get Internet e-mail and outside connections. :-)
(Please forgive me referring to people as nodes; it makes it easier for me to explain it)
So, how do you detect the networks?
First believe they are out there. You have an approximate idea of the kind of roles needed and the places people have to be in (like near an airport or in flight schools), so you can profile people to come up with a likely set of nodes. Once you've got the nodes surveiled, rattle the network. Bring in a few of the more skittish members of the potential network in for a polite round of questioning (and I do mean POLITE -- no violence, threats or intimidation). Then watch what he does. He will activate the secret links and you will see the network sparkle into life to deal with this close call.
As you find more nodes and connections, you can begin to de-prioritize the nodes who show no signs of activity or direct connection. In your emerging network graph, you can make hypotheses about node functions which can be tested. See what happens when you try sending in an deep cover agent to talk to suspected resource network. Try offering resources which would make people interested, and see if they bite or refer you to someone else. If you can get trackable resources into the network, you can follow them to find more connections.
Another thing is to find a node (a suspect) who can be leveraged, like an invalid student visa. Bring them in and pressure them to either turn (unlikely) or expose the network and goals he knows about. Using the previous Slashdot articles on p2p networks being compromised, you can probably bring the the terrorist network to its own tipping point where they will either reorganize or disband it.
Problems with this method:
Of course the best way to prevent terrorism is to remove the social conditions that encourage it. Encourage better economic opportunities for everyone and freedom from persecution and oppression. Support democracy, instead of shoring up corrupt dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China. Wherever there are the disaffected and miserable, the terrorists will find a home.
Travers Naran. Tall and big framed.
It was a small affair of about 8 or so people. We had fun until at least 8:30 pm when a couple of us left. We all agreed a better venue than Starbucks was needed. Preferably someplace that served real food & beer. Someone took a digital photo and will be soon available elsewhere.
Hey, someone had to bring it up. Boy, do I date myself by saying I had a structured software design textbook.
I remember in the good ol' uu-net days when you were charged per e-mail and news posting. The concept of spamming was a theoretical concept because who would be willing to pay for sending out all those e-mails?
I submitted this story earlier today, and it gets soundly rejected. Now it gets accepted. I feel like anchovies in the Omelette.
Hoooey! I didn't know if I was looking at the map of the relationships between spammers or the internals of a new Intel chip.
Hey, troll, y'all get back under yer' bridge. I said the Good Ol' Boys were back, and we can murder the Englush (sic) language anyway we like!
P.S. Flaming over a single letter misspelling is a sign of a wanker.
The wheel has turned. One can only hope it will make them Ruskie Commies[1] a little more appreciative of human rights than when they were in charge.
[1] Hey, we're in the age of George Dubya'. We're allowed to use good ol' boy nominclature again!
I wonder if the RPG was inspired by this book?
Not to the extent that software engineering does. You forget that in the more tangible engineering disciplines, they have patents that protect them so keeping everything under wraps as a trade secret is not only pointless, but counterproductive[1].
Even if there is something that is of a "highly sensitive" nature, within a company there is a peer review system. The vast majority of code is not examined by others to spot basic errors or faulty design decisions. I've worked in "trade secret" electronic design companies, and they are way more open with their competitors and the industry as a whole. Don't believe me? Go to a good technical library and gawk in horror at how many "trade secrets" electronic engineers, chemical engineers and automotive engineers share in their trade magazines.
And what happens when there's a major incident involving your design? If your chemical process blows up a plant, or your new car design causes sudden acceleration, how long will you be allowed to keep your trade secret hidden from the review of your peers? That was the main thrust of the article: when software goes bad, no one calls in the software equivalent of the NTSB.
[1] In the tangible industries, a patent is a way to get your invention out in the marketplace and let other people pay you royalties for using it. I know it's hard to believe, but patents aren't just about squashing your competition.
You're half right. OSS isn't THE solution, but is part of a larger class of solutions. The reason mechanical and other forms of engineering could evolve into reliable disciplines is the ability to freely and openly communicate between the practitioners. With an industry wide peer review, everyone can analyze someone else's work, share their insights with everyone and everyone can benefit because that new technique or design can be incorporated by others into their work.
Shortly after the WTC attack, the American Civil Engineers society put together a panel of engineers to analyze the failure, and provide a report to the entire civil engineering community. When was the last time any proprietary software company did that? In fact, we've seen how these companies use lawsuits to squelch any such activity.
Openess, peer review and the ability to freely share information, lessons and strategies is what sets the other engineering disciplines apart from software engineering.
I think that's the problem: MSR is doing great work, while MS corrupts and ruins them to give us Clippy, the Talking Paperclip.
I think this should be a poll topic: Your favorite research lab? Lawrence Livermore, MSR, Thomas J. Watson Research, AT&T Bell Labs, Cowboy Neal's Bedroom.
Sony is pursuing this approach and I believe there were a few other MEMS-based articles posted on Slashdot in recent years.
For those to young to remember, the ALOHA protocol was the inspiration for the Ethernet protocol.
Jar-Jar and Bail Organa looking up at the ominous new star in the heavens.
Jar-Jar: "Issa thata new moona, Bail Organa?"
CUT TO Death Star interior as the Planet Pulverizer(TM) fires and hits Alderaan.
CUT TO Jar-Jar binks being hidiously vaporized on Alderaan in a cruel twist of fate for giving the empire its power.
So you see, people, it might not be that bad...
It's nice to see Linux evolving into a healthy competitive ecosystem. An ecosystem of true competition vying for customers by offering better products at better prices.
Contrast with Microsoft's vision of an ecosystem where they are the big predator and everyone kow-tows to them and their whims. Nothing really happens in this ecosystem without Microsoft doing it first.
So far from being a disturbing development in Linux's history, I consider this a good sign that, contrary to Bill's opinion, the Marketplace works!
Tell that to the software rental places that got shut down in Vancouver over 10 years ago when the SPA lawyers descended. EULA are enforceable if the company is willing to fork out the money to fight them.
Not quite, Sparky. Under the EULA, those licenses are non-transferable. You can't buy those older versions new, nor is it strictly kosher to buy an older version. Although most courts won't bother to hear a case for a user-to-user transaction, that doesn't mean it's legal.
Don't believe me? Set up a used software store in Silicon Valley and advertise California wide. See how long your doors are open before the lawyers come... I dare ya'
As for your snobbish arrogant attitude of "You are a weenie, un-talented little loser" to those who want the programs cheaper, my response to that is you haven't seen what amatures do with Flash and Photoshop. Those are the only tools out there for them to do the kind of stuff they want. Not everyone who pirates the full Photoshop are just getting rid of red-eye.
One of the best Flash animations I ever saw was from a highschool student in Germany who got started with a "borrowed" copy of Flash. Luckily, his work was so good a local web design company hired him. Last I heard, Macromedia doesn't offer good student discounts (like Adobe does). Don't be so surprised at the number of student pirates out there.
One of the earlier posters said it right: drop the price, kill piracy. Photoshop Elements is a step in the right direction. Now Adobe just needs to make it easier (i.e., cheaper) for those users to graduate to the full version. $80 from a user who would have pirated is better than nothing from a user who did.
HINT TO ADOBE ET AL: Legalize the secondary market for software!
Imagine two couples going on a high-g coaster for a date:
When the first couple gets on, the man is not physiologically fit enough to survive extreme g-forces and will be crippled for life, while his girlfriend survives fine. Meanwhile the second couple gets on and the woman dies from the extreme forces, but the man survives.
This means the surviving male and female can meet beside the ambulance taking their former partners away and go on to have a happy, productive relationship producing the next generation of high-g enthusiasts.
It's nature's way of breeding the next generation of fighter pilots.
David Attenborough would agree with me!
I forgot to mention that in my original post. From what I gather, only a small precentage of it is rusted (almost entirely on the surface of the rock or grain). Deep inside, there is iron just waiting for water to react with. As another poster mentioned, the Viking landers discovered "novel" chemistry when it was exposed to water. I don't know if it exploded, but it certainly did chemically react with the water.
No, Egytpologists don't, but Anthropologists usually have to follow biohazard guidelines when digging up human remains. Also, archaeologists are carrying around geiger equipment these days (handy in dating ceramics -- which is what my proposed markers are made of!). They also like to toss a bit of it into the ol' AMS, and they'll notice some really alarming samples.
You see, I said not enough to HARM. Just enough of the stored material that anyone anaylzing the fragments would quickly realise what they're working with.
"... they just laughed. They said, 'We'll tell them it's here.'"
-- The Yakimah Tribe's response to the Hanford Hazardous Waste Monument Committee.
Scatter ceramic markers composed of the very material being stored. Not enough to kill, but enough that anyone with a geiger counter will notice something's wrong even in 10,000 years time. They dig up a marker and analyse it and figure out that this must be some nuclear site, including what is actually stored there so they can decide best how to deal with it.
No. The hardware is expensive. What's that, you say? Apple has an educational discount? Here's that discount for ya:
So as you can see, for school districts faced with chronic cash shortages, Apple has stopped being the educator's friend.