It wouldn't surprise me if the audit clause was upheld, but clause 14.4 (which limits your recourse to legal remedy) would just be laughed away if it was ever presented in court.
Unfortunately, that turns out not to be the case. If you have ever traded stocks, you signed a similar document when you opened your account with your stockbroker. The courts have consistently upheld these agreements. Employees of stockbrokers sign the same agreement, and the courts have held that these agreements supercede just about any federal law as well. For example, employees of stockbrokers cannot sue their employer for racial discrimination in hiring/promotions, but must submit to arbitration instead. Since the arbitration panels are selected by "industry peers", which is to say the management of other financial employers, the employee doesn't have much of a chance.
There's always somebody who doesn't understand at all.
That's perhaps a bit harsh. I am not unware of, or unsympathetic to, PD and Corgha's arguments.
However, there are a few points to consider:
As always, Slashdot is a discussion forum, not a venue for publishing master's theses or extensively fact-checked
New Yorker articles.
If we lived in a microeconomist's dream universe, where all human interaction could be universally measured in non-cultural, dimentionless units of U, where information was perfect, where transaction costs were zero, where there was no capital cost associated with the acquisition of knowledge, where all humans were in perfect communication and had perfect knowledge of everything that might affect their lives, and where all humans were fully qualified to make decisions on all those factors, well, yes, age might not be necessary as a proxy for quality. But we don't live in such a world, and I think the laws of physics prohibit it anyway, so we have to make due with heuristics and proxies for the "ultimate truth".
When I say "theory of evolution" in this thread, I mean the popular definition of 'winnowing out of the less fit over a long period of time due to lesser ability to handle environmental stresses'. A person with PhDs in Biology and Statistics could certainly argue, qualify, and pick that definition to pieces. And yes, if you have n perfectly isolated environments, you will get divergent and weird results. But I think the popular definition serves for the moment.
"Age alone doesn't..." - yes, I know. But tell me, why are such a high percentage of old houses also good houses? There are several factors, including the fact that building practices today are crap, but mainly because the bad, old houses have fallen down
"Multiple tests, not just age..." - again, perhaps. But it is also kind of hard to analyze something that doesn't happen, eh? If a rule in a pretty widely tested area of law stays unchallenged for 100 years, you also have to consider that perhaps the best lawyers of the last 100 years, in their (evolutionary) quest for the best defense, just decided to let that one lie?
And the business justification for replacing Netware is...? Particularly on the printing side, if the system is used by non-technical people? I have rarely seen a solid (read "cost justified") business case for replacing Netware in a large corporate environment. Usually it boils down to "we want to go Microsoft", and since that's not an issue for you, why are you doing this?
The fact that it's a logical fallacy IS the refutation. If the age of something is the only things that's being considered, AND if age is irrelevant, then it's not logically correct to use age to argue that something sucks
The problem being that the theories of "evolution" and "marketplace of ideas" both imply that if something is old, and is still around and/or still in use, it has a high probability of being a better solution to the problem than the alternatives that have come and gone in between. Not a certainty, or even necessarily close to a 100% probability, but at least a higher probability.
So the longevity of a solution to a problem is never irrelevant. Witness the 10 Commandments, the Bill of Rights, etc.
1. You need 8 hours per day. Anything that deviates from 8 hours per day too much will come back to haunt you, the effect is cumulative.
Like anything else related to animal physiology, there is a distribution curve. There are some people out there who truely need less sleep than the average - we probably all know one or two of them. However, based on my reading (popular press, not technical) over the last 20 years, sleep researchers are gradually coming to the conclusion that the average Western adult does not get enough sleep (average need being 8-10 hours) and in fact most Westerners suffer from chronic sleep depriviation.
Don't know what can be done about it, though! Unless we somehow get everyone to go to a 6 hour work day - then the geeks would only be working 10 hours.
This isn't off topic you damn dorks, Slashdot RARELY speaks of NetWare, you guys are consumed by unix and M$. God forbid something else get thrown into the mix.
Too true. And really odd also. There are many similiarities in the way Linux and Netware are handled in large organizations, particularly in difference in perceptions between the CxO level and the trenches level. Both are good technologies under attack from the Microsoft FUD/Marketing machine. Both have much to learn from each other.
Yes, Novell had (and has) pricing and maketing problems - probably fatal. And yes, if your only experience with Netware is a 3.11 network set up by someone whose brother once took the Intro class, it can be horrendeous (sound familar? Linux set up by someone who has never used Unix before?).
But the reflexive hatred to things Netware seen on Slasdot is pretty counterproductive.
sPh
Re:Don't forget mars_nwe - the NetWare emu
on
Samba Turns 10
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· Score: 2
The architecture of NCP is vastly superior to SMB or even NFS - NFSv4 will finally have some of the killer WAN features that NCP had in 1993. The protocol, is lean, elegant, performance-optimized, and engineered to work in the real world in ways others haven't ever bothered to think through. It pretty much had to be that way, considering it was designed to run on '286s.
I agree, and you haven't even mentioned NDS. But my question is, why doesn't Novell do something with that technology? It has been clear for five years that Microsoft was winning the FUD => mindshare => marketshare game. NT dominated networks had the inevitibility of an avalanche going downhill.
Why didn't Novell recognize Microsoft's Maoist strategy by 1990 (enemy advances, we retreat...)? Many of us in the networking world did. Why didn't (and doesn't) Novell try to find some way to counterattack other than a head-on assult? Why not seriously open source some NDS code? Why not a real Netware client for Linux? Why not try to find some ground, any ground, to fight where Microsoft doesn't hold the heights? Why didn't Novell buy Netscape in 1995 when they had the cash (although given what they did to WordPerfect and SoftSolutions, maybe not!)?
At this point I am afraid it is too late for the "Big Red N".
sPh
Re:Don't forget mars_nwe - the NetWare emu
on
Samba Turns 10
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· Score: 3, Offtopic
Novell was great in it's day. I've watched it mature from the old DOS versions to the 5.x flavor.
That being said, integrating novell with a Windows NT network is a pain in the a$$. I currently support an application that runs on a Novell base(which in 3 weeks will be changed to a NT based network).
Kind of funny in three respects: (a) Netware was never a DOS program, although it has used DOS as a poor man's boot loader. Netware's distant ancestors in the family tree would be more like Wang and System/1, not Seattle DOS or its descendents. (b) that said, Novell did basically invent workable MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 networking, for which Microsoft should be eternally grateful (we all know how Bill repays debts, though) (c) it is funny how the Microsoft meme generator leads even knowledgable people to say that "Netware is not compatible", when based on history, technology, and market share over the last 20 years it is NT which is not compatible with Netware. Deliberately so, of course, as anyone who remembers the nightmare of MS-Office 97 Service Pack 2 can attest.
"Every mistake made with computers has been made three times: on mainframes, minis, and micros. Now we are building networks..."
Simple as this. Someone mistaken for someone else. Cops come in and detain the person. Worst case scenario they are in jail for 24 hours. Cops offer apology.
You don't deal very much with actual police or district attorneys (prosecutors), do you? Law enforcment personnel are humans. And like all humans, they have a tendency to (a) make quick judgements (b) take whatever actions are necessary to validate their judgements. Except that since they actually do deal with a lot of bad guys, they tend to become even more self-assured about their judgements than the typical human. And they have the tools to enforce those judgements.
So the worst case scenario is more like (i) false positive on facial recognition system (ii) put in jail over a 3-day weekend, where you are beaten and raped a few times (iii) prosecutor decides you look like someone wanted for 3 outstanding child molestation warrents (iv) fast railroad to hell.
If you don't believe me, make friends with any big-city cop. After about 15 years, when he starts to trust you, he will tell you about some of the things that really go on in the stationhouse.
That's a great article. It hits many of the points that typically come up in these discussions, particularly why collecting large amounts of information and processing it years later, out of its original context, is different from observing activities in real time. Sorry I don't have any mod points.
If it's wrong 60% of the time, couldn't you just use the opposite answer from the polygraph test and have it be wrong 40% of the time instead?
No, because what has to be measured is what the operator concludes. In statistically valid studies, even when operators have been informed that they are wrong more often than not, they still reach the wrong conclusion. You could argue that the superiors of the operators could apply the method you describe, but that would mean admitting that the system doesn't work, which would be a poor argument in court.
Some clarification would be helpful.
I agree, but the clarification would have to come from those who manufacture and support polygraphs, and I doubt that you will get honest answers from them - even if hooked up to a polygraph!
It is not up to the polygraph, but up to the examiner to determine whether the answers given by the suspect are truth or not based on the spikes. Therefore, the failure rate does not lie within the machine, but the operator of the machine.
Much like high-end hand woodworking tools, polygraphs cannot be used without a human operator. And (even granting your argument, which I don't) the performance of the machine is inseperable from the performance of the operator. So by definition any failure of the operator is a failure of "the machine", or "the system including the machine" if you prefer. And the failure rates speak for themselves.
The fact the polygraph has been used for 70 years shows that it is an effective means of collecting evidence. If it wasn't, they wouldn't still use it.
Not to be rude, but you might want to do a little research on human nature. As far as is known, humans are unique in the animal kingdom in their ability to convince themselves that something which is objectively false or useless is "effective".
If you read up on the history of the polygraph, this is clearly what is going on. Faced with a choice of admitting that they don't know who the heck committed a crime, or using a demonstrably useless machine, investigative agencies (particularly the FBI) have been using the useless machine for 70 years. And have now made such a culture of using it that they dare not admit to anyone, particularly themselves, that it just doesn't work.
I should try to trademark my face and demand royalties...
Hmmm - that would be interesting, although probably legally futile. I imagine the thing to do would be to take several pictures of your face from different angles, copyright and watermark them, and publish them with a statement that use of these or similar images of your face without your express permission is prohibited. One question would be: where would you publish the images? On a web site might not be sufficient.
That protection probably only applies to those specific images, though, and not others, including any taken in public but certainly any taken while in police custody.
Still, it would be funny to see the look on the face recognition vendor's, well, face, when you hit him with copyright and DMCA violation lawsuits.
Just because the technology failed in their "one month study" doesn't mean it's not a success.
Polygraphs (so-called "lie detectors") have a failure rate of around 60%. In other words they are worse than just going before a judge and asking him to flip a coin to determine guilt. Yet they have been in use in the US for 70 years, and the every year the USG comes out with a larger list of people who must be polygraphed.
So I would say it is definately worth it to fight very hard against bad technology right from the start.
Anyone bother to verify the authenticity of this one? I have no doubt that memos with the same message are being circulated within Microsoft. Just as similar memos are being circulated in every mega-corp whose main product is facing a competitive threat. But even though executive-level memos are not required to display decent spelling and grammar, they usually do, yet this example does not. And the bit at the end about "tracking this memo" would be implied, not stated, in such a love note.
Sorry, I don't buy this one.
sPh
Re:Picture of bills with US bill
on
The Euro
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· Score: 2
Labour, goods, and capital move freely, so when one part of the Eurozone becomes undervalued investors should come in and snap up the bargains.
Not based on my experience. (US) Americans do have a tendency to stay close to where they grew up, like all people, but if push comes to shove and the Midwest economy (say) goes down the tubes, Americans will pick up and move from Illinois to Texas, California, Washington State, or wherever jobs can be found. I have a very hard time picturing the average Brit picking up and moving to Greece because more jobs are available there.
That's funny, because in the year 2002 a factory-certified mechanic (oops: "Repair Technician") will have a background in computer troubleshooting >= that of the typical sysadmin with 1-3 years experience. Almost nothing happens in a late-model car without the approval of the powertrain management system.
A good example is my Ford Contour: although the on-board comp can't actually seize control of the shift lever (the Corvette's can!), it can refuse to put the power back on after the shift if it thinks my doing so is not in the best interest of the engine. And that's not even an adaptive control system! A good friend of mine decided to leave the wrenching world when he was trying to diagnose a problem with an automatic transmission, and the computer changed the behaviour of the trans every time he drove it. Even Windows 98 doesn't do that!
I can picture Steve Ballmer screaming five years ago about how hard it is to just stick a printer on the network and have it be discovered...so out of that comes the "Universal Plug and Play" team.
In other words, a capability which has been a core function of Novell Netware for 7 years. Too bad Microsoft didn't copy that while it was busy copying the worst features, and ignoring the best features, of Novell networking, eh?
This is just the typical mating dance between elephants who are both mature, experienced, and tough. They will circle each other for a while, bellowing challenges, doing a bit of fighting to see who (if either) is dominant, who is more willing to fight, who is more determined. Then the mating will commence (i.e. a "compromise bill" will be introducted by Mr. Hollings) and the two large elephants, and their children, will continue to dominate the rest of the herd.
I hope no one thinks that there is an actual chance that IBM or Microsoft will oppose the RIAA, MPAA, et al? Their long-term interests are identical; it is just dividing the spoils in the short term that is creating the appearance of conflict.
, the NSA is full mostly of mathematicians and computer scientsts, not physicists, so they really don't have the right staff for that.
The NSA run their own chip fab, and now that they are no longer able to buy all the equipment they need from US suppliers, they reverse engineer and rebuild the fab equipment they get from foreign sources, so I imagine they have a few physicists around some somewhere.
It is not as if we cannot possibly keep an eye on our own government. Information communities such as this one are a powerful counterbalance to government power, not to mention a multitude of technologies and legal remedies which are available to all US citizens.
Well, back in the 1970's (as documented in The Puzzle Palace) the director of the NSA testified before Congress that he didn't believe that the Constitution or the Bill of Rights applied to the activities of the NSA.
They seem to have changed their tune a bit lately, what with the Crypto Musuem, releasing a Linux distro, and generally being more citizen-friendly. But my friends who went to work there in the 1980s (some of them _very_ smart guys) never reappeared in public, so who knows what really goes on behind closed doors?
I'm from Holland (since not too long live in the US, actually) and had never heard of the book until my (US) wife bought it. I would like to see the movie, and yes, he would have spoiled it.
That's interesting, because if you read Tolkein's collected letters, you will find that Holland was the first country outside the UK where LOTR was translated and published (around 1955 IIRC), and it was a bestseller at the time. He mentions it specifically because he did not approve of the quality of the translation into Dutch and told his publisher that he needed to review all future translations before publication.
. As much value as I see in open source, I would have a very hard time accepting an open source accounting solution as a CPA auditing a set of books. Unless the company is one of the Generals (Foods, Tire, Motors) or equivalent and possesses the internal programming staff and the full time accounting staff to verify that the stuff works right, it's not worth the risk to be a beta site and discover the bugs.
Can't disagree with your sentiment, but as a person who actually supports midrange ERP packages (i.e. after the consultant leaves), you are dreaming if you think the average programming staff at the average midrange software company are a bunch of super-GAAP experts. Sure, maybe the guy they hired to do the original architecture was the reincarnation of one of the Medici's, and maybe they had a bunch of superwizards program the first release. But once it goes to maintenance it is handled by the same 2nd tier programmers who handle maintenance on all software. And they don't necessarily know more than you do about GAAP or standard accounting practices.
That you list Jackson among the people MS "defeated" is pretty telling. Jackson wasn't supposed to be the adversary, but rather an impartial... well, Judge, duh
I understand your point, and I don't disagree with it, but dealing with it in detail in my first post would have required adding 1000 more words, which I didn't/don't have time to do.
But briefly, yes, a judge is supposed to be impartial. However, when a judge sits at his bench and takes, with a straight face (more or less), the amount of poop that Microsoft threw at him (faked videotape, anyone?), and nonetheless manages to deliver a pretty fair, technically and economically astute decison, and THEN has that decision gutted at the Appeals Court level (plus getting a spanking for behaviour no different than you see from Posner, O'Conner, or other judges) for what are pretty clearly politically motivated reasons, then
Slashdot Mirror
sPh
However, there are a few points to consider:
If we lived in a microeconomist's dream universe, where all human interaction could be universally measured in non-cultural, dimentionless units of U, where information was perfect, where transaction costs were zero, where there was no capital cost associated with the acquisition of knowledge, where all humans were in perfect communication and had perfect knowledge of everything that might affect their lives, and where all humans were fully qualified to make decisions on all those factors, well, yes, age might not be necessary as a proxy for quality. But we don't live in such a world, and I think the laws of physics prohibit it anyway, so we have to make due with heuristics and proxies for the "ultimate truth".
When I say "theory of evolution" in this thread, I mean the popular definition of 'winnowing out of the less fit over a long period of time due to lesser ability to handle environmental stresses'. A person with PhDs in Biology and Statistics could certainly argue, qualify, and pick that definition to pieces. And yes, if you have n perfectly isolated environments, you will get divergent and weird results. But I think the popular definition serves for the moment.
"Age alone doesn't..." - yes, I know. But tell me, why are such a high percentage of old houses also good houses? There are several factors, including the fact that building practices today are crap, but mainly because the bad, old houses have fallen down
"Multiple tests, not just age..." - again, perhaps. But it is also kind of hard to analyze something that doesn't happen, eh? If a rule in a pretty widely tested area of law stays unchallenged for 100 years, you also have to consider that perhaps the best lawyers of the last 100 years, in their (evolutionary) quest for the best defense, just decided to let that one lie?
sPh
sPh
So the longevity of a solution to a problem is never irrelevant. Witness the 10 Commandments, the Bill of Rights, etc.
sPh
Don't know what can be done about it, though! Unless we somehow get everyone to go to a 6 hour work day - then the geeks would only be working 10 hours.
sPh
Yes, Novell had (and has) pricing and maketing problems - probably fatal. And yes, if your only experience with Netware is a 3.11 network set up by someone whose brother once took the Intro class, it can be horrendeous (sound familar? Linux set up by someone who has never used Unix before?).
But the reflexive hatred to things Netware seen on Slasdot is pretty counterproductive.
sPh
Why didn't Novell recognize Microsoft's Maoist strategy by 1990 (enemy advances, we retreat...)? Many of us in the networking world did. Why didn't (and doesn't) Novell try to find some way to counterattack other than a head-on assult? Why not seriously open source some NDS code? Why not a real Netware client for Linux? Why not try to find some ground, any ground, to fight where Microsoft doesn't hold the heights? Why didn't Novell buy Netscape in 1995 when they had the cash (although given what they did to WordPerfect and SoftSolutions, maybe not!)?
At this point I am afraid it is too late for the "Big Red N".
sPh
"Every mistake made with computers has been made three times: on mainframes, minis, and micros. Now we are building networks..."
sPh
So the worst case scenario is more like (i) false positive on facial recognition system (ii) put in jail over a 3-day weekend, where you are beaten and raped a few times (iii) prosecutor decides you look like someone wanted for 3 outstanding child molestation warrents (iv) fast railroad to hell.
If you don't believe me, make friends with any big-city cop. After about 15 years, when he starts to trust you, he will tell you about some of the things that really go on in the stationhouse.
sPh
sPh
sPh
sPh
If you read up on the history of the polygraph, this is clearly what is going on. Faced with a choice of admitting that they don't know who the heck committed a crime, or using a demonstrably useless machine, investigative agencies (particularly the FBI) have been using the useless machine for 70 years. And have now made such a culture of using it that they dare not admit to anyone, particularly themselves, that it just doesn't work.
sPh
That protection probably only applies to those specific images, though, and not others, including any taken in public but certainly any taken while in police custody.
Still, it would be funny to see the look on the face recognition vendor's, well, face, when you hit him with copyright and DMCA violation lawsuits.
sPh
So I would say it is definately worth it to fight very hard against bad technology right from the start.
sPh
Sorry, I don't buy this one.
sPh
sPh
A good example is my Ford Contour: although the on-board comp can't actually seize control of the shift lever (the Corvette's can!), it can refuse to put the power back on after the shift if it thinks my doing so is not in the best interest of the engine. And that's not even an adaptive control system! A good friend of mine decided to leave the wrenching world when he was trying to diagnose a problem with an automatic transmission, and the computer changed the behaviour of the trans every time he drove it. Even Windows 98 doesn't do that!
sPh
sPh
I hope no one thinks that there is an actual chance that IBM or Microsoft will oppose the RIAA, MPAA, et al? Their long-term interests are identical; it is just dividing the spoils in the short term that is creating the appearance of conflict.
sPh
sPh
They seem to have changed their tune a bit lately, what with the Crypto Musuem, releasing a Linux distro, and generally being more citizen-friendly. But my friends who went to work there in the 1980s (some of them _very_ smart guys) never reappeared in public, so who knows what really goes on behind closed doors?
sPh
sPh
sPh
But briefly, yes, a judge is supposed to be impartial. However, when a judge sits at his bench and takes, with a straight face (more or less), the amount of poop that Microsoft threw at him (faked videotape, anyone?), and nonetheless manages to deliver a pretty fair, technically and economically astute decison, and THEN has that decision gutted at the Appeals Court level (plus getting a spanking for behaviour no different than you see from Posner, O'Conner, or other judges) for what are pretty clearly politically motivated reasons, then
yes, I would say he was "defeated".
Just my opinion.
sPh