I really enjoyed Galactica. They've constructed a very interesting story - one that will hopefully allow for a well done story arc over several years of episodes. I've really missed having a good TV sci-fi that I can watch without my wife commenting on the muppets (Farscape).
What I liked:
* Finally a depiction of the military that was like what I experienced in the Navy. Adama and Tigh's attidude was very much like my CO and XO. The attitudes and language was right on. And finally they showed a few enlisted people that matter! Even the fraternization (the chief and boomer), gambling and Tigh's baiting of Starbuck came off great. Adama was very, very good.
* Adama's handling of the civilian government.
* The cylons. They were damn efficient. Took few risks. They sought the most damage with the least exposure they could get. And they appear to not be one dimensional.
* Boltar - like most traitors, he is not inherently a turncoat, but is being carefully manipulated into that position.
What I didn't like:
* Cheesy internet "teen model" porno grade sex scenes.
When I was in the US Navy, I got to learn a few things that most security experts get to learn the hard and embarrasing way:
1) Security is hard work and requires the involvement of people with great integrity willing to work very hard. Security requires the highest level of attention to detail, trust that proceedures will be followed and absolute trust that when the proceedures don't work, don't apply or are circumvented that the individual will make the right decisions.
2) You cannot delegate security to any machine. This includes padlocks, safes, computers, surveilance systems, and alarm systems. These are all designed to assist the hard working humans with great integrity. They have no ability to make decisions when their processes fail, are circumvented or don't apply.
3) The inclusion of anyone without great integrity inside a secured area is insecure. Loose lips sink ships. This is why security is so difficult in any semi-democratic organization - there is no way to exclude those you can't trust.
4) Confidence is like corrosion. It slowly destroys even the strongest security just as corrosion will eventually sink the most powerful ship in the fleet.
Sounds like WSIS violated three of four of these rules.
Wow. So the government wants cut in on the music license fee extortion business... I'm sure that the bulk of the levy will go directly to the small bureacracy that is the Candadian government. Thank you for reminding me what my Political Science 120 professor said years ago:
The only difference between the mafia and government is that we've decided that the government is the bully of choice.
This idea is no different than, say, making protection schemes (shakedowns) and ponzi schemes (pyramids) legal as long as the government gets their cut!
I live somewhere where I have to drive three hours to use a toll road. If you have to pay tolls, get better senators and congressmen and get some pork-barrel money!
What I want is democratic speed limits - i.e. radar the trafic and dynamically set the speed limit based on the average trafic speed + some margin... Would be usefull. Wrecks are caused by different drivers going too fast and too slow...
CDs don't look so bad now, do they. You mean I can listen to it over and over, forever, and sell it when I'm done, and all for only $15? WAKE UP. CDS ARE CHEAP.
If you value music that highly, then they are cheap. If you understand the cost of listening to the radio, then they are expensive. At the end of the day, what is troubling about CDs is that there is not a wild variety of prices for music from artist to artist from label to label. New album, low demand, $13.99. New album, high demand, $13.99. Greatest hits, big time 70s rock band, $7.99, Greatest hits, obscure polka artist, $7.99.
If you are asking questions about product certifications, then you need to talk to a good insurance broker about product liability and guarantee policies. The broker will do a great job of explaining how your firm can be held liable for malfunctions, injuries, etc... all of wich the certification process is designed to help with. This testing is an important step in that:
a) it helps you determine specifications that become important limits for warranties b) it ensures you will have minimal exposure to suits. c) it helps the insurance company underwrite your liability policy.
Copyrights are not bad. Patents are not bad. Patents and Copyrights that never expire, are overbroad, obvious, derivitave or otherwise place ideas off limits for extended periods of time are evil.
Open Source allows for the market to take control of a product
I'm not so sure of this. The developers, or whoever tells them what to do and can make it stick, has control of the product. In closed source, people "vote" for software by paying for it and, hopefully, the company responds by improving it to get the most "votes".
In the open source world, the market controls the product, and in some cases (php-nuke, post-nuke, and MID-Pro) the market runs off with the product, or creates a competing product, often leaving the developer back in the dust. In other cases, the market buys the developer's vision (Linus and Linux) and allows the developer to continue his work. One of the most unique features of open source is that to play, for the most part, you have to give up 100% control of derivitaves of your product.
The really important question, is which of these two models is better for the users? I think it depends on what the users want and need of the product. If they need it to remain stable and upgradable, then closed source is probably a better alternative.
I disagree with this. I would leave it with it depends on the product. The method of development largely doesn't matter unless the product you are buying is less than a 95%+ fit. Then open source has an advantage in that it can be customized beyond most closed source products (exception: development tools and databases).
There is no way for the users to "vote" for a product or implementation except by using it. Maybe I've missed it, but I've also never seen any case where the developers did any "market research" (i.e. asked the users of a product where they want to see if go).
This is another common mistake made by the media in covering open source. OSS developers do research the market and communicate with users. They don't use focus groups, polls, or industry gurus. They do use tools like bug trackers, email lists, IRC, and even take calls from end users on occasion. One could argue that open source product is closer to it's market because user-developers are in closer touch to their users through the development process than closed source. I've been running mozilla for years - back from pre-beta days - and communicating with developers from early on. There are changes I suggested (and probaly 500 other people too) that are in there!
Tools are most useful when their UI doesn't change radically between versions and when they remain compatible with old data.
??? Tools are most usefull when they are appropriate for the job. A better tool will replace a less appropriate one. The UI and data format are two areas where improvements can, will and should be made. So are features, functions, and archetecture. I'd still be using WordStar, Turbo-C, 1-2-3 and DBase if what you claim was at all true. What your are saying is I have a great idea! Let's make it work just like the bad idea I have except for better!
This is a real issue since Telco cusomter service is highly regulated - they have to fix your phone - whereas the Cable Guy is not held to the same standard.
I'm really, really sick of seeing people act as if Open Source (TM) is some kind of software development corporation. It is not, it is a process. The assertion that a private interest developing software is somehow guided by the market whereas OS development is flawed:
* Open Source is guided by it's market of user-developers. This is the opposite of the author's assertion: reality is that closed source software is insulated from market demands - how many years has it been since MS Word's index feature was broke? How many years will it be till they fix it?
* Forking is where generally needs diverge and the user-developer creates a product more close to their need. In conventional private development, this rarely happens unless a market is large enough of a cusomter's need is enough to fund development. That open source products fork to smaller markets is a strength of the model - people can spend less to get exactly what they want.
* What the author is trying to express is that open source products more quickly diversify - in fact it's possible in the open source world for a product to spin in to thousands of uniqe forks where each fork may have as few as one user!
What the author is missing is that Open Source allows for the market to take control of a product - whereas we are used to the model where the product is insulated from the market by the company that makes it.
Would most of the planet know about it today without his help? Doubtful.
LOL. He deserves 1/(Senators+USReps+Lobyists+Bureaucrats) of credit. By my "fuzzy math" that would be 1/(100+457+3,210+several million) or approximately.000000001% of credit for the internet. Al does deserve 100% of the credit for making "I invented the ___________," "risky _____ shcheme" and "I demand a recount" jokes popular, and for a brief time funny.
Gore has went on the join the irrelevent think tank of could-have-been winners with Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale. To bad - the current crop of democratic presidential candidates makes Al Gore look very, very good.
Do what most of us do at age 32 - turn off the noise in your life and stop buying music. Most of the stuff that passes for music is actually a refined form of auditory manure. Unfortunately, all the nutrition has been removed - so if you are looking for ideas and answers, the latest Brittney Spears release really doesn't contain the answer. Hell, it's not even good braincandy and their are much more attractive porn stars to look at if that's your thing.
As I sit here reading slashdot and watching adaware run it's scan on my PC... I am amazed at the ammount of crap that comes from the two or three times a week I open IE and how little is the reuslt of Mozilla...
I have been waiting for the moment of truth for DRM computing - and it appears to be happening! See, if there ever was an opportunity for Linux and every other OS that has been crushed by Microsoft it is materializing now:
* DRM restricts user freedom and will baloon TCO for windows based computers. TCO will increase due to having to add layers of complexity to support, development and ultimately, downtime due to problems that can't be fixed easily by the end user (you really don't have rights. and I can't give them to you). This is not a trivial upgrade.
* The only real control the user will have is over the power chord and what plugs into the system. Because the system doesn't trust the user.
* Finally, the market is primed. It's been almost 10 years since Chicago (windows 95) which really is where MS was able to parlait their Visual Basic, Office and Windows products into the current monopoly on the desktop. Most business people and end users alike complain about having to buy increasingly expensive computers to run Word, Excel, Outlook and IE. They don't see a value change at all. They don't see improved features. They do see having to buy something they already have again.
In other words, this is the year for open source to go on the offensive:
* Linux can own the data center. It makees a better file, messaging, web and database server that Windows.
* OpenOffice is good enough.
* Gnome and KDE are good enoug.
* Linux security delivers on much of what DRM is built to deliver. The difference: Linux (and other open source oses) can be trusted, so we don't need hardware's help. Windows on the other hand...
The letter might mean something if Caldera er SCO had not been a linux developer. I like the parallel to the music business. I'm sure corporate america is quaking in their boots with SCO's threat to make a lot of noise and sue some college kids and grandmas, the settle out of court.
Just be glad that Hazel was distracted by puffery like politically correcting your speech:) She could have really screwed things up if she applied that kind of attention to actual research.
The latter neither provides full feature compatibility with MS Office, nor has any specific advantages to be adopted as a standard
LOL! You are telling a government to use someone else's standard. Governments, unlike companies and individuals get to make standards for others to follow. In the US, the courts have kept WordPerfect going by mandating all filings and such be done in WP format. The market has little or no say.
Does it really solve a customer's problem? Is the customer willing/able to pay for it? Can it be done faster/better/cheaper than alternatives?
The whys aren't the issue here - SST achieves:
* Less time wasted by passengers (try flying a three hop 24 hour flight and you will understand the need) * Increased flight frequency with fewer aircraft (move the same number of passengers with more flights with fewer planes) * Development of new technologies that can and will be sold and used in other areas
The why question comes out for excercises like testing the resistance of a live monkey's skull to an impact with a claw hammer.
Everything remotely reliable, that is, in science at least, peer reviewed, is published in journals.
Ahhhh... the ivory tower comes down to earth only to leave for the clouds again. The problem is that the vast minority of writing is done in a schollarly setting and the vast majority is done somewhere less lofty than the ivory tower.
And what of many journals that have or will become electronic only?
As I read/. I am struck by the persistence of people saying:
* This can't be done! * This can't be done economically! * We shouldn't try because it can't be done.
I just hope the people working on making a plane that will cut down on my travel time have a different attitude. I hope they are asking how can it be done? rather than why can't it be done.
It's easy to be a nay sayer. Nothing exposes genius faster than naysayers proven wrong.
Frankly, I am not as concerned about electronic voting as I am getting Americans to actually vote in the first place.
Are you sure about this idea? The American people - if you read/. are:
* Lazy fat overweight whopper-bigmac-big bacon chees classic supersize fry eaters who * Do nothing but argue the merits of oss vs closed source software while * waiting for Duke Nukem Forever and * their "exact copy" of the latest DVD or CD to be downloaded from a peer to peer network at the same time as * they invade helpless countries led by benovelent leaders who would never threaten their neighbors, let alone their own citizens with WMD while enjoying * free pr0n
Most people I know vote straight Democrat or straight Republican, and rarely actually do any homework about "the issues" or what the candidates they are voting for actually represent.
HMM. Or maybe they are more interested in advancing the party over one or two candidates. Split ticket voting versus straight ticket voting often isn't always the result of intellectual lazyness. Sometimes a voter feels the best way to get his or her way is to vote for the party that best represents him or her.
As one of the few regulated monopolies allowed in our economic system, it is ludicrous to expect telecoms to do anything other than seek monopolies look at what is going on in telecom land:
* AT&T is trying to enforce it's monopoly rights over certain kinds of electronic transactions. * The cell industry just was drug kicking and screeming to number portability. * Annual service terms are being snuck into many isp and t1 contracts
I would say that there is no news that a utility opposes anything that affects their ability to be a monopolist.
Slashdot Mirror
I really enjoyed Galactica. They've constructed a very interesting story - one that will hopefully allow for a well done story arc over several years of episodes. I've really missed having a good TV sci-fi that I can watch without my wife commenting on the muppets (Farscape).
What I liked:
* Finally a depiction of the military that was like what I experienced in the Navy. Adama and Tigh's attidude was very much like my CO and XO. The attitudes and language was right on. And finally they showed a few enlisted people that matter! Even the fraternization (the chief and boomer), gambling and Tigh's baiting of Starbuck came off great. Adama was very, very good.
* Adama's handling of the civilian government.
* The cylons. They were damn efficient. Took few risks. They sought the most damage with the least exposure they could get. And they appear to not be one dimensional.
* Boltar - like most traitors, he is not inherently a turncoat, but is being carefully manipulated into that position.
What I didn't like:
* Cheesy internet "teen model" porno grade sex scenes.
* Commercials were too long.
* No next episode yet.
When I was in the US Navy, I got to learn a few things that most security experts get to learn the hard and embarrasing way:
1) Security is hard work and requires the involvement of people with great integrity willing to work very hard. Security requires the highest level of attention to detail, trust that proceedures will be followed and absolute trust that when the proceedures don't work, don't apply or are circumvented that the individual will make the right decisions.
2) You cannot delegate security to any machine. This includes padlocks, safes, computers, surveilance systems, and alarm systems. These are all designed to assist the hard working humans with great integrity. They have no ability to make decisions when their processes fail, are circumvented or don't apply.
3) The inclusion of anyone without great integrity inside a secured area is insecure. Loose lips sink ships. This is why security is so difficult in any semi-democratic organization - there is no way to exclude those you can't trust.
4) Confidence is like corrosion. It slowly destroys even the strongest security just as corrosion will eventually sink the most powerful ship in the fleet.
Sounds like WSIS violated three of four of these rules.
Wow. So the government wants cut in on the music license fee extortion business... I'm sure that the bulk of the levy will go directly to the small bureacracy that is the Candadian government. Thank you for reminding me what my Political Science 120 professor said years ago:
The only difference between the mafia and government is that we've decided that the government is the bully of choice.
This idea is no different than, say, making protection schemes (shakedowns) and ponzi schemes (pyramids) legal as long as the government gets their cut!
Go Canada!
I live somewhere where I have to drive three hours to use a toll road. If you have to pay tolls, get better senators and congressmen and get some pork-barrel money!
What I want is democratic speed limits - i.e. radar the trafic and dynamically set the speed limit based on the average trafic speed + some margin... Would be usefull. Wrecks are caused by different drivers going too fast and too slow...
CDs don't look so bad now, do they. You mean I can listen to it over and over, forever, and sell it when I'm done, and all for only $15? WAKE UP. CDS ARE CHEAP.
If you value music that highly, then they are cheap. If you understand the cost of listening to the radio, then they are expensive. At the end of the day, what is troubling about CDs is that there is not a wild variety of prices for music from artist to artist from label to label. New album, low demand, $13.99. New album, high demand, $13.99. Greatest hits, big time 70s rock band, $7.99, Greatest hits, obscure polka artist, $7.99.
If you are asking questions about product certifications, then you need to talk to a good insurance broker about product liability and guarantee policies. The broker will do a great job of explaining how your firm can be held liable for malfunctions, injuries, etc... all of wich the certification process is designed to help with. This testing is an important step in that:
a) it helps you determine specifications that become important limits for warranties
b) it ensures you will have minimal exposure to suits.
c) it helps the insurance company underwrite your liability policy.
If you want to do something that a large number of government officials will not approve of:
1) Pay your taxes.
1A) Don't break other laws - particulary obscure ones.
2) Do not work for the government or a government contractor.
Copyrights are not bad. Patents are not bad. Patents and Copyrights that never expire, are overbroad, obvious, derivitave or otherwise place ideas off limits for extended periods of time are evil.
Open Source allows for the market to take control of a product
I'm not so sure of this. The developers, or whoever tells them what to do and can make it stick, has control of the product. In closed source, people "vote" for software by paying for it and, hopefully, the company responds by improving it to get the most "votes".
In the open source world, the market controls the product, and in some cases (php-nuke, post-nuke, and MID-Pro) the market runs off with the product, or creates a competing product, often leaving the developer back in the dust. In other cases, the market buys the developer's vision (Linus and Linux) and allows the developer to continue his work. One of the most unique features of open source is that to play, for the most part, you have to give up 100% control of derivitaves of your product.
The really important question, is which of these two models is better for the users? I think it depends on what the users want and need of the product. If they need it to remain stable and upgradable, then closed source is probably a better alternative.
I disagree with this. I would leave it with it depends on the product. The method of development largely doesn't matter unless the product you are buying is less than a 95%+ fit. Then open source has an advantage in that it can be customized beyond most closed source products (exception: development tools and databases).
There is no way for the users to "vote" for a product or implementation except by using it. Maybe I've missed it, but I've also never seen any case where the developers did any "market research" (i.e. asked the users of a product where they want to see if go).
This is another common mistake made by the media in covering open source. OSS developers do research the market and communicate with users. They don't use focus groups, polls, or industry gurus. They do use tools like bug trackers, email lists, IRC, and even take calls from end users on occasion. One could argue that open source product is closer to it's market because user-developers are in closer touch to their users through the development process than closed source. I've been running mozilla for years - back from pre-beta days - and communicating with developers from early on. There are changes I suggested (and probaly 500 other people too) that are in there!
Tools are most useful when their UI doesn't change radically between versions and when they remain compatible with old data.
??? Tools are most usefull when they are appropriate for the job. A better tool will replace a less appropriate one. The UI and data format are two areas where improvements can, will and should be made. So are features, functions, and archetecture. I'd still be using WordStar, Turbo-C, 1-2-3 and DBase if what you claim was at all true. What your are saying is I have a great idea! Let's make it work just like the bad idea I have except for better!
This is a real issue since Telco cusomter service is highly regulated - they have to fix your phone - whereas the Cable Guy is not held to the same standard.
I'm really, really sick of seeing people act as if Open Source (TM) is some kind of software development corporation. It is not, it is a process. The assertion that a private interest developing software is somehow guided by the market whereas OS development is flawed:
* Open Source is guided by it's market of user-developers. This is the opposite of the author's assertion: reality is that closed source software is insulated from market demands - how many years has it been since MS Word's index feature was broke? How many years will it be till they fix it?
* Forking is where generally needs diverge and the user-developer creates a product more close to their need. In conventional private development, this rarely happens unless a market is large enough of a cusomter's need is enough to fund development. That open source products fork to smaller markets is a strength of the model - people can spend less to get exactly what they want.
* What the author is trying to express is that open source products more quickly diversify - in fact it's possible in the open source world for a product to spin in to thousands of uniqe forks where each fork may have as few as one user!
What the author is missing is that Open Source allows for the market to take control of a product - whereas we are used to the model where the product is insulated from the market by the company that makes it.
And the Amiga will come back...
(Go ahead, mod me down, I said Amiga)
Would most of the planet know about it today without his help? Doubtful.
.000000001% of credit for the internet. Al does deserve 100% of the credit for making "I invented the ___________," "risky _____ shcheme" and "I demand a recount" jokes popular, and for a brief time funny.
LOL. He deserves 1/(Senators+USReps+Lobyists+Bureaucrats) of credit. By my "fuzzy math" that would be 1/(100+457+3,210+several million) or approximately
Gore has went on the join the irrelevent think tank of could-have-been winners with Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale. To bad - the current crop of democratic presidential candidates makes Al Gore look very, very good.
Do what most of us do at age 32 - turn off the noise in your life and stop buying music. Most of the stuff that passes for music is actually a refined form of auditory manure. Unfortunately, all the nutrition has been removed - so if you are looking for ideas and answers, the latest Brittney Spears release really doesn't contain the answer. Hell, it's not even good braincandy and their are much more attractive porn stars to look at if that's your thing.
As I sit here reading slashdot and watching adaware run it's scan on my PC... I am amazed at the ammount of crap that comes from the two or three times a week I open IE and how little is the reuslt of Mozilla...
I have been waiting for the moment of truth for DRM computing - and it appears to be happening! See, if there ever was an opportunity for Linux and every other OS that has been crushed by Microsoft it is materializing now:
* DRM restricts user freedom and will baloon TCO for windows based computers. TCO will increase due to having to add layers of complexity to support, development and ultimately, downtime due to problems that can't be fixed easily by the end user (you really don't have rights. and I can't give them to you). This is not a trivial upgrade.
* The only real control the user will have is over the power chord and what plugs into the system. Because the system doesn't trust the user.
* Finally, the market is primed. It's been almost 10 years since Chicago (windows 95) which really is where MS was able to parlait their Visual Basic, Office and Windows products into the current monopoly on the desktop. Most business people and end users alike complain about having to buy increasingly expensive computers to run Word, Excel, Outlook and IE. They don't see a value change at all. They don't see improved features. They do see having to buy something they already have again.
In other words, this is the year for open source to go on the offensive:
* Linux can own the data center. It makees a better file, messaging, web and database server that Windows.
* OpenOffice is good enough.
* Gnome and KDE are good enoug.
* Linux security delivers on much of what DRM is built to deliver. The difference: Linux (and other open source oses) can be trusted, so we don't need hardware's help. Windows on the other hand...
The letter might mean something if Caldera er SCO had not been a linux developer. I like the parallel to the music business. I'm sure corporate america is quaking in their boots with SCO's threat to make a lot of noise and sue some college kids and grandmas, the settle out of court.
Just be glad that Hazel was distracted by puffery like politically correcting your speech :) She could have really screwed things up if she applied that kind of attention to actual research.
The latter neither provides full feature compatibility with MS Office, nor has any specific advantages to be adopted as a standard
LOL! You are telling a government to use someone else's standard. Governments, unlike companies and individuals get to make standards for others to follow. In the US, the courts have kept WordPerfect going by mandating all filings and such be done in WP format. The market has little or no say.
Does it really solve a customer's problem? Is the customer willing/able to pay for it? Can it be done faster/better/cheaper than alternatives?
The whys aren't the issue here - SST achieves:
* Less time wasted by passengers (try flying a three hop 24 hour flight and you will understand the need)
* Increased flight frequency with fewer aircraft (move the same number of passengers with more flights with fewer planes)
* Development of new technologies that can and will be sold and used in other areas
The why question comes out for excercises like testing the resistance of a live monkey's skull to an impact with a claw hammer.
Everything remotely reliable, that is, in science at least, peer reviewed, is published in journals.
Ahhhh... the ivory tower comes down to earth only to leave for the clouds again. The problem is that the vast minority of writing is done in a schollarly setting and the vast majority is done somewhere less lofty than the ivory tower.
And what of many journals that have or will become electronic only?
As I read /. I am struck by the persistence of people saying:
* This can't be done!
* This can't be done economically!
* We shouldn't try because it can't be done.
I just hope the people working on making a plane that will cut down on my travel time have a different attitude. I hope they are asking how can it be done? rather than why can't it be done.
It's easy to be a nay sayer. Nothing exposes genius faster than naysayers proven wrong.
Frankly, I am not as concerned about electronic voting as I am getting Americans to actually vote in the first place.
/. are:
Are you sure about this idea? The American people - if you read
* Lazy fat overweight whopper-bigmac-big bacon chees classic supersize fry eaters who
* Do nothing but argue the merits of oss vs closed source software while
* waiting for Duke Nukem Forever and
* their "exact copy" of the latest DVD or CD to be downloaded from a peer to peer network at the same time as
* they invade helpless countries led by benovelent leaders who would never threaten their neighbors, let alone their own citizens with WMD while enjoying
* free pr0n
Most people I know vote straight Democrat or straight Republican, and rarely actually do any homework about "the issues" or what the candidates they are voting for actually represent.
HMM. Or maybe they are more interested in advancing the party over one or two candidates. Split ticket voting versus straight ticket voting often isn't always the result of intellectual lazyness. Sometimes a voter feels the best way to get his or her way is to vote for the party that best represents him or her.
As one of the few regulated monopolies allowed in our economic system, it is ludicrous to expect telecoms to do anything other than seek monopolies look at what is going on in telecom land:
* AT&T is trying to enforce it's monopoly rights over certain kinds of electronic transactions.
* The cell industry just was drug kicking and screeming to number portability.
* Annual service terms are being snuck into many isp and t1 contracts
I would say that there is no news that a utility opposes anything that affects their ability to be a monopolist.