It's the information. Have you actually listened to some of the things that they're demanding you not use? The last few lists I have heard rattled off before takeoff have included GPS devices. What? GPS devices are passive, they are receive-only. So what does the airline care if I have one connected during the flight?
Second, use of GPS devices in flight is at the discretion of the airline and the captain of the airliner. Most US airlines either do not prohibit, or specifically do allow, use of GPS receivers during flight (not during takeoff and landing). If you have any question or concern about that, the First Officer or Captain is usually standing by the cockpit door during boarding and you can ask her if it is OK to use the GPS.
And finally, while airlines do some things to maximize revenue, they also do a lot of things strictly in the name of safety. Since the exact effects of RF interference from consumer electronics are not known, some airlines play it safer-than-safe and do not allow them in flight. That is their call and quite sensible.
Over a week ago, Asa pointed out that the Firebird name might not stick for more than a few months [mozillazine.org]. In that post, he mentions Mozilla Browser as a possible name for the 1.5 release.
That stance, though , is a bit inconsistent with other statements that "Firebird" was approved all the way up through the AOLTW chain of command. One would not spend the political capital to get something like that approved by the "corner suits" if it were intended only for internal consumption. I suspect that there is an element of climbdown here.
Then you're probably out of business anyway, so what does it matter at that point?
I'll reply to this message, but cover several similar points.
First, I should note that I do consider sanity checks and cost/benefit analysis when making backup/recovery plans. So I agree with many of these comments. BUT...
(1) Disasters happen more often than people expect. And they can happen to you, not just the other guy. Wildpackets almost went out of business as a result of underestimating that.
(2) Being out of business anyway - well - that's a discussion I had with the owner of one small company. I pointed out to him that one of his core values was loyalty to his employees. In the event of a big disaster, he and his family would collect the insurance check and sell the site, but his (former) employees' mortgage payments would continue. He got the point and agreed to improve disaster recovery plans.
(3) "Both of our sites will never get hit at the same time". I had a friend in charge of DR for a large company who analyzed 10 years of data center disasters and came to the same conclusion. He put the backup right down the street from the primary. Ever hear of the Great Chicago Flood? Luckily for my friend he was working at another company when both his primary and backup were taken out by that event!
Given that I live in Tornado Alley, I may be a bit sensitive on that topic!
However, three years ago I was visiting a number of my (then) employer's sites worldwide and there was a disturbing tendency for there to be a severe thunderstorm with tornado while I at a site - some in places where tornados are typically seen only once every 100 years. So don't be too sure!
But floods, large fires, or some sort of large-scale natural disaster can happen anywhere. Flooding anyone?
There's one aspect in which Dr. Koch's backup system can't keep up with tape solutions: storing the backup medium in another location after the backup has been completed.
As long as this isn't necessary, Dr. Koch's backup system offers some rather unique advantages.
Out of curiosity, what is the use of a backup that is not periodically rotated off-site? And by "off-site" I mean at least 50 km away? What happens when a tornado takes out the building holding the critical data AND the building holding that nice array of IDE drives 2 minutes apart?
With an electronic voting system, how can I check how it's working?
Testing, testing, and more testing. A huge number of rigorous tests.
Compared to many other projects, designing and implementing a secure, accurate voting machine isn't technically challenging. The challenge comes in proving that the voting machine is both secure and accurate.
The fundamental problem being that the people who write the specs, make the purchase, and oversee the proof testing are the same people who have the greatest conflict of interest in the entire process. I am not saying that all politicians would cheat if they could, but by their vary nature successful politicians are people who are driven to be elected at any cost. And that kind of thinking tends to become corrupting and corrupted over time.
This comment has been made every time a new processor comes out, and the usual reply is that there are plenty of applications that still require more CPU performance (which there certainly are), and sooner or later there will be one which is sufficiently compelling that Joe Sixpack will upgrade
However, what really happens is that the major box manufacturers need to keep their price points between $1500 and $2500 - if the prices for the "basic machine" (as actually sold - not as advertised in the Sunday paper) fell below that they would not be able to survive.
So Dell, Gateway, HP, etc. work with Intel to assure a constant flow of "new, improved, and faster" CPUs, put those in their boxes, and terminate the "older, slower" systems. Then the volumes on the slower chips and their associate motherboards fall and Intel terminates them due to "lack of demand". So the cycle continues.
Other than gamers and a few applications heavily dependent on processing (when was the last time you folded a protein) very few PC users have gained from the speed increases of the last two years. Most businesses I know are putting fresh 20 GB hard drives into their 3 y.o. P3 733s and are quite satisfied.
Babies do better with Duplos (4x the size of normal Legos).
Also, start a set of maple unit blocks - we have several hundred of them now and the guys still use them every day as the oldest approaches 11.
Forget about most junky and flashy plastic toys and electronic gizmos though - the rumours about kids having more fun with the empty box are quite true.
This is a Good Thing, IMHO, as Mozilla itself was getting fat and bloated. Of the Mozilla step-children I like Pheonix the best and I'm glad to see that the Mozilla team has the self-honesty to realize the better way to go and ditch major portions of their established work.
Perhaps. But in the corporate environment, you cannot afford to have rugs pulled out from under you like this. Consider a technology director who just finished convincing the powers-that-be that Mozilla was preferable for an enterprise-wide, mission-critical app (perhaps due to security concerns). Now comes this announcment, and that guy is looking for a new job while Internet Explorer is made mandatory at that site. Oops.
The corporate market is where 80% of the world's PC installs occur, and Mozilla.org has never shown the maturity to support that market.
These are not buzzwords. 'Strawman' is a common name for a typical logical fallacy -- quite CS and unbuzzwordly for me.
I am familiar with the concept of logical fallacies. The problem is that in consultant-speak "Strawman" = "Argument that I would prefer not to deal with head on, so I will ridicule to death instead". That is what I am seeing in the mozilla.org statement.
Unlikely... Uncle Arthur's firm was a tax/audit/accounting firm. You're probably thinking of it's old sister firm, Andersen Consulting
About 4 years before the Arthur Andersen / Andersen Consulting (Accenture) breakup, when it became clear that AC would not continue to pay AA $2 billion/year just for the value of the name, Arthur Andersen formed a new consulting division, replicating the process that created AC in the first place. It was Arthur Andersen's consulting division, not their accountants nor Accenture, who were heavily involved at Enron.
I have a hard time interpreting this as anything except the death of Mozilla. Particularly given the buzzword density of the mozilla.org roadmap announcement. Phrases such as "reset... around", "rich", "strawmen" - has Mozilla been invaded by refugees from Arthur Andersen?
Or perhaps this is just a way of disposing of the outstanding Mozilla bugs that no one is willing to fix? Just start a new product instead?
The Lightwave 4000 is great, but it needs a focusing lens. I wrote the manufacturer to tell them this but for some reason they haven't followed my advice;-(
I thought there was a GPS hack anyhow, where if you fed the data of 3 GPS located in the same place into a computer, it would triangulate and correct for the distortion error.
Nope. Remember the quote from The Firm: "Remember - I'm smarter than you."? The guys who designed GPS were better mathematicans and better planners than just about everyone else. This possibility is covered in the design such that SA really does work. Until you get into post-processing, etc.
This was *exactly* why we here in Europe shouldn't have scratched our own satelite project (named Galileo, IIRC)
I would have a hard time seeing the EU not including exactly the same capability in Galileo, since control of precision targeting capability is critical for national defense. Of course, perhaps the EU is anticipating that it will have no concept of national defense by the time Galileo arrives.
lets face it folks, Columbia and her sisters were NEVER supposed to be in operation for this long.. iirc AIRLINES aren't allowed to fly planes which are more than 25 yrs old (i may be wrong on this one).. and the shuttle goes through MUCH more stress in reentry than your regular airliner.
While not disagreeing with your post, please be aware that there are scheduled airlines (in the United States even) flying DC-3s today. Probably these are mostly converted C-47s of 1944 vintage or so. 60 years old and still ticking...
At the end of the Mexican-American war, when we had captured Mexico City, we "negotiated" the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in which we took an enormous quantity of land from Mexico. This land would eventually become the states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
This is a little-known period in US history and well worth studying. However, I would have a hard time believing that Mexico had a claim to any of the land that is now Wyoming, Kansas, or even Colorado as late as 1840! Could you provide some backup for that?
The safety record sucks. After Challenger Richard Feynman put the probability of a fatal accident at one in fifty. So far, NASA's on the money and the nature of the shuttle is such that if someone dies, everybody dies.
While I agree with much of you post, I cannot agree with this line of thinking. Consider:
How many people died learning how to build sailing ships that can cross the Atlantic?
How many people died learning how to build airplanes between 1903 and 1953?
The Columbia astronauts were all volunteers and fully aware of the risks they took. They were presumably happy with their lives, and died in (at most) 30 seconds. Since the Columbia accident, over 110 people have died in nightclub fires (Chicago and Rhode Island), many of them crushed to death over a period of 30 minutes. Hell, my next-door neighbor died in a traffic accident caused by pure stupidity on the other driver's part yesterday.
If exploring space is worthwhile (I think it is) then risks will have to be taken and some of the pioneers will die. 500 years from now when families are taking vacations to the space stations in the rings of Saturn, it will seem like a very primitive and dangerous time that 21st century - but that is the nature of life.
As for materials, any modern materials will last a long long time if properly maintained. Houses built of wood 100's of years ago are still standing and our wood products now are much stronger/better.
Yeah, and finding actual 2 inch by 4 inch wood (NOT 2x4s) to fix those old houses is a lot of fun!
But I have two sad words to add: Formosan Termites. They are in North America and headed north; the frost line didn't seem to stop them. So I don't think you can count on wood lasting another 200 years - probably better to use steel.
I have lived in several North American houses >100 years old, and I was sure that most of them would last another 100 with proper maintenance. So it is possible.
However, a problem you will face is climate control and ventilation. Those 1800s houses were drafty, had huge non-living-space attics, and had poor energy efficiency. After thinking about it for a while, and visiting friends' tract mansions that smell of mold and rot 18 months after completion, I am convinced that the excess (and energy-consuming) ventilation through those old houses is a bit part of why they last so long.
Unfortunatley it is no longer acceptable to have your bedroom go to 110 deg.F in the summer and 38 deg.F + draft in the winter! So were I designing a new house to last, I would add a very large heat exchanger and the necessary vents, fans, smoke detectors, dampers, etc. to force-draft a good amount of air through the house. This would probably mean a duct system separate from the air conditioner (I would probably use radiant floor heating). And also a lot of motors, fans, controls, etc - so buy spare parts for 20 years down the road.
Your idea of an insulated equipment space between the top floor and attic is a good one - possibly you would want to put the heat exchanger there. And I would go ahead and wire for Cat6 and CATV, since technologies like that don't go away as fast as people think. But use conduit so you can change your mind on the media later.
Other things I would consider: real plaster and lath walls, copper supply / cast iron waste pipe, and for sure lots of access hatches so that things can be fixed without disassembling the walls.
This is what the government wants to do. They know that they are fractured into little beaucracies beyond usefulness to the average citizen. So there is a major MAJOR initiative, fronted by the Bush White House, to make the government work together so it can be more responsive and helpful to you. National Science Foundation, GSA, a bunch of groups are working on this. They want to move the government into the twentieth century at least, much less the twenty-first!
Problem is, as a free citizen I don't necessarily want the government to become more integrated and efficient. Any given government function, sure: Let's have the Dept. of Motor Vehicles set up a good, useful web site. And having just moved from a state with a good DMV web site to one with a Neandrathal DMV - the sooner the better.
But integrate all government databases at all levels into one super authentication and data store? No thanks. I would far rather live with some inefficiency and extra expense than ever see that happen.
Another consideration is that it might not even work. Frank Herbert had a good story about a society that made itself as efficient as possible, until things were moving so fast that they started to disintegrate. They had to create a "Department of Sabatoge" to slow themselves down. I could easily see that happening with these super databases.
One correction: as of 9:30 AM EST on 2003/03/07, SCO's market valuation was $22 million US. Where the valuation stands say next Tuesday morning will tell what the stockholders and market think of the prospects of this lawsuit.
If there is a real chance for SCO to win that lawsuit, or at least settle in the region of a billion dollars, then SCO is worth that billion dollars. If the shareholders think that's the case they simply shouldn't sell their shares for less than what they are worth. If enough shareholders think that way the price of the shares will go up until it reflects the value of SCO including any money from the lawsuit (or at least what the majority of people think what the value is).
I suspect in fact that this lawsuit is SCO's exit strategy. They know aren't going to make it much longer as an independent company. If their current market value is 100 million (say), they sue IBM for 1 billion, then get bought by IBM for 400 million, they will have successfully shut down their firm and gotten the best possible deal for their stockholders. Management will probably get a sweet payoff out of the deal too of course.
There are plenty of places that even you wouldn't want to drive your car (despite your superior attitude)
"On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog";-)
Well, Slashdot is a good place to post short rants, and a bad place to hold complex discussions. So I will just note for the record: I lived in the kinds of neighborhoods that banks don't serve for 15 years of my adult life, including the years while I was attending a top 10 MBA program. I have taken plenty of graduate-level economics classes and have received mostly A's (for whatever that is worth!).
I am familiar with the arguments of classical (not "Classical") economics and I think they make a lot of logical sense. Problem is, my real world experience shows me that actual human beings do not behave as economists say they "should". Game theory gets a little closer, but has a very hard time modeling long-term hidden collusion. Which does exist I am afraid.
I note that Crabgrass Frontier is back in print, which surprises me. Try reading through it (heavy going in the middle) and learn about things such as the US Federal Government's "Mortgage Quality Maps" and why an emergency directive was issued around 1970 to shred them all. A few survived - take a look at them, and then tell me again about competitive markets for credit!
Financial services to the poor have, all else equal, much higher default risk. And default costs swamp everything else. Consider that the margin over cost of funds for most consumer credit is 2-3%. A default rate of 1% destroys the profitability.
And the proof of this is in the market. Credit companies are neither bashful nor shy. If there was money to make, your friends and Cap One and First USA would divert some of 1 billion or so peices of mail then send.
The "higher risk" theory explains a difference in credit costs of up to x%. We can argue what x is: 10, 20, 50? But it does not explain differences in credit costs of 100, 200, up to 10,000%.
And no, SuperBank isn't going to jump in to the low end market just because there is a profit to be made, for two reasons: historical under-the-table handshake agreements not to do so (see Crabgrass Frontier, referenced in another post, for an example of how this was done with home mortgages for 90 years) and the fact that buttoned down, upper-middle-class bankers flat out don't like to do business in less savory neighborhoods. If they don't feel comfortable driving the BMW there, they won't make a loan there either, regardless of the potential profit.
Slashdot Mirror
Second, use of GPS devices in flight is at the discretion of the airline and the captain of the airliner. Most US airlines either do not prohibit, or specifically do allow, use of GPS receivers during flight (not during takeoff and landing). If you have any question or concern about that, the First Officer or Captain is usually standing by the cockpit door during boarding and you can ask her if it is OK to use the GPS.
And finally, while airlines do some things to maximize revenue, they also do a lot of things strictly in the name of safety. Since the exact effects of RF interference from consumer electronics are not known, some airlines play it safer-than-safe and do not allow them in flight. That is their call and quite sensible.
sPh
sPh
First, I should note that I do consider sanity checks and cost/benefit analysis when making backup/recovery plans. So I agree with many of these comments. BUT...
(1) Disasters happen more often than people expect. And they can happen to you, not just the other guy. Wildpackets almost went out of business as a result of underestimating that.
(2) Being out of business anyway - well - that's a discussion I had with the owner of one small company. I pointed out to him that one of his core values was loyalty to his employees. In the event of a big disaster, he and his family would collect the insurance check and sell the site, but his (former) employees' mortgage payments would continue. He got the point and agreed to improve disaster recovery plans.
(3) "Both of our sites will never get hit at the same time". I had a friend in charge of DR for a large company who analyzed 10 years of data center disasters and came to the same conclusion. He put the backup right down the street from the primary. Ever hear of the Great Chicago Flood? Luckily for my friend he was working at another company when both his primary and backup were taken out by that event!
That's my 0.02 anyway.
sPh
However, three years ago I was visiting a number of my (then) employer's sites worldwide and there was a disturbing tendency for there to be a severe thunderstorm with tornado while I at a site - some in places where tornados are typically seen only once every 100 years. So don't be too sure!
But floods, large fires, or some sort of large-scale natural disaster can happen anywhere. Flooding anyone?
sPh
sPh
sPh
So Dell, Gateway, HP, etc. work with Intel to assure a constant flow of "new, improved, and faster" CPUs, put those in their boxes, and terminate the "older, slower" systems. Then the volumes on the slower chips and their associate motherboards fall and Intel terminates them due to "lack of demand". So the cycle continues.
Other than gamers and a few applications heavily dependent on processing (when was the last time you folded a protein) very few PC users have gained from the speed increases of the last two years. Most businesses I know are putting fresh 20 GB hard drives into their 3 y.o. P3 733s and are quite satisfied.
sPh
Also, start a set of maple unit blocks - we have several hundred of them now and the guys still use them every day as the oldest approaches 11.
Forget about most junky and flashy plastic toys and electronic gizmos though - the rumours about kids having more fun with the empty box are quite true.
sPh
The corporate market is where 80% of the world's PC installs occur, and Mozilla.org has never shown the maturity to support that market.
sPh
sPh
sPh
Or perhaps this is just a way of disposing of the outstanding Mozilla bugs that no one is willing to fix? Just start a new product instead?
sPh
sPh
sPh
sPh
sPh
sPh
- How many people died learning how to build sailing ships that can cross the Atlantic?
- How many people died learning how to build airplanes between 1903 and 1953?
- The Columbia astronauts were all volunteers and fully aware of the risks they took. They were presumably happy with their lives, and died in (at most) 30 seconds. Since the Columbia accident, over 110 people have died in nightclub fires (Chicago and Rhode Island), many of them crushed to death over a period of 30 minutes. Hell, my next-door neighbor died in a traffic accident caused by pure stupidity on the other driver's part yesterday.
If exploring space is worthwhile (I think it is) then risks will have to be taken and some of the pioneers will die. 500 years from now when families are taking vacations to the space stations in the rings of Saturn, it will seem like a very primitive and dangerous time that 21st century - but that is the nature of life.sPh
But I have two sad words to add: Formosan Termites. They are in North America and headed north; the frost line didn't seem to stop them. So I don't think you can count on wood lasting another 200 years - probably better to use steel.
sPh
However, a problem you will face is climate control and ventilation. Those 1800s houses were drafty, had huge non-living-space attics, and had poor energy efficiency. After thinking about it for a while, and visiting friends' tract mansions that smell of mold and rot 18 months after completion, I am convinced that the excess (and energy-consuming) ventilation through those old houses is a bit part of why they last so long.
Unfortunatley it is no longer acceptable to have your bedroom go to 110 deg.F in the summer and 38 deg.F + draft in the winter! So were I designing a new house to last, I would add a very large heat exchanger and the necessary vents, fans, smoke detectors, dampers, etc. to force-draft a good amount of air through the house. This would probably mean a duct system separate from the air conditioner (I would probably use radiant floor heating). And also a lot of motors, fans, controls, etc - so buy spare parts for 20 years down the road.
Your idea of an insulated equipment space between the top floor and attic is a good one - possibly you would want to put the heat exchanger there. And I would go ahead and wire for Cat6 and CATV, since technologies like that don't go away as fast as people think. But use conduit so you can change your mind on the media later.
Other things I would consider: real plaster and lath walls, copper supply / cast iron waste pipe, and for sure lots of access hatches so that things can be fixed without disassembling the walls.
sPH
But integrate all government databases at all levels into one super authentication and data store? No thanks. I would far rather live with some inefficiency and extra expense than ever see that happen.
Another consideration is that it might not even work. Frank Herbert had a good story about a society that made itself as efficient as possible, until things were moving so fast that they started to disintegrate. They had to create a "Department of Sabatoge" to slow themselves down. I could easily see that happening with these super databases.
sPh
sPH
sPh
Well, Slashdot is a good place to post short rants, and a bad place to hold complex discussions. So I will just note for the record: I lived in the kinds of neighborhoods that banks don't serve for 15 years of my adult life, including the years while I was attending a top 10 MBA program. I have taken plenty of graduate-level economics classes and have received mostly A's (for whatever that is worth!).
I am familiar with the arguments of classical (not "Classical") economics and I think they make a lot of logical sense. Problem is, my real world experience shows me that actual human beings do not behave as economists say they "should". Game theory gets a little closer, but has a very hard time modeling long-term hidden collusion. Which does exist I am afraid.
I note that Crabgrass Frontier is back in print, which surprises me. Try reading through it (heavy going in the middle) and learn about things such as the US Federal Government's "Mortgage Quality Maps" and why an emergency directive was issued around 1970 to shred them all. A few survived - take a look at them, and then tell me again about competitive markets for credit!
sPh
And no, SuperBank isn't going to jump in to the low end market just because there is a profit to be made, for two reasons: historical under-the-table handshake agreements not to do so (see Crabgrass Frontier, referenced in another post, for an example of how this was done with home mortgages for 90 years) and the fact that buttoned down, upper-middle-class bankers flat out don't like to do business in less savory neighborhoods. If they don't feel comfortable driving the BMW there, they won't make a loan there either, regardless of the potential profit.
sPh