The dns root server has a IP address and runs a daemon to serve top-level domain mappings. If somebody (or group of people) want to use a different root, so be it. However, right now many choose to use the one managed cooperatively.
The reason skript kitties in Romania get to your computer is because the machines have an IP address (not necessarily because they have a domain name that resolves to an IP address, but it sure makes it easier for them to find).
Please read the wikipedia and get your facts in order.
However, there are certainly unresolved issues with limited amount of IP addresses, but that's not what people are talking about here...
There are also issues about conflict resoltion about the.COM part of the address space, but that's not what this is about either (although this issue is confused somewhat)...
To me, this is like people complaining about what is on the internet (or tv, or movie theaters, or what they are serving at McDonalds, pick your poison) to their legislators hoping that they'll make some rule to change the world to their vision. If you don't like what's someone is doing, don't go there, someone will offer something different and patronize them instead. If enough people agree with you they'll change too and what you were complaining about will go out of business.
It's not like anyone is forcing people to use the current defacto DNS root that the US doesn't want to cede to authority to ICANN. As far as I know there's no law in place that you have to point a root there.
This is sounding strangely more and more like the Galileo vs GPS debate. If the UN wants to launch their own rootDNS, go ahead, but try not to interfere with Verisign, RIPE, ORSN, ORSC, etc (some of the existing rootDNS servers). Sounds to me, however, they don't actually want to set up an altRoot, but really just want the get the authority over the existing rootservers (i.e., a power play for someone corrupt person's agenda). Maybe they don't trust the US, but of course, the US doesn't have much of a reason to trust the UN either. I don't think ICANN's track record has really helped the situation either.
This has the makings of a bad situation. Currently the UN doesn't have any "tax" authority since they technically don't have any soverignty over anything (it's just a treaty organization). Just imagine if the UN did own something (even if it's virtual)...
Forget about foreign policies and Galileo, it's likely just all about the money. Here's a interesting quote...
The Commission considers that failure by Europe to act would strengthen the present US market dominance and leave Europe entirely dependent on the US for many security-related matters. Additionally, the Commission believes that there is a need to ensure that European users are not at risk from changes in service or excessive future charges or fees (the US and Russia provide a free service at present). Faced with US dominance and near monopoly (particularly if the Russian system fails because of the country's economic/political situation), the Commission considers that it would be difficult for Europe to resist such charges and perhaps impossible to develop alternatives quickly.
As if europe wasn't already inter-dependent on the US for many security-related matters, (e.g. NATO). Nobody is talking about a non-NATO EU-airforce because an airforce doesn't make any $$$. Of course to finance this endevour, the Europeans are suggesting the "establishment of revenue streams (likely to require regulatory action)" that includes the likelyhood of "levies on receivers and operating licence fees." I guess people don't mind TV and radio taxes in the EU, so maybe another one won't matter. Of course the US state department has already taken the stance that it will take WTO action against any taxes on imported GPS-only equipment or preferential licensing of Galileo technology to European firms, but unfortunatly, under the WTO rules, the europeans can choose to hose themselves with global positioning taxes to pay for this if they want to (as long as they don't discriminate against foriegn suppliers).
Of course it isn't just money, it's about jobs as well...
The Communication states that proceeding with Galileo will help to secure and augment employment in this high and expanding technological area. It estimates that the development of Galileo would support 20,000 jobs, its operation 2,000 permanent jobs, and create considerable new employment opportunities in applications so that, by 2008, there would be in the region of 100,000 jobs in direct, indirect and induced employment.
My money is that at the end of the day, the europeans will go with the so-called zero-option (deploy ground based stuff or co-op with the russians with GLONASS extensions). Seems hard to compete with something like GPS and provide little or no extra value. Maybe they'll have more luck with the DNS root servers...
By the heat/energy release argument all that sub-atomic potential relativistic energy ought to be hazzard waiting to happen (collecting since cosmic times). Better ban all matter. Under that argument, there isn't ANY possible energy source to use that's "safe" which means the only thing that needs to change is for us to use LESS energy. Under your so called "physics" argument, why change any source of energy (doesn't matter what energy source is used according to your basic "physics" argument).
Of course in my opinion, the reality is that not all energy sources are created equal (e.g., there are different side effects unrelated to carbon-dioxide). There is a sunk cost on the environment for using ANY energy, and a marginal cost for using one type vs another type (e.g., coal vs nuclear), the physics about the marginal stuff is much less basic and most folks don't understand it as well.
Having said all that, conservation is a great idea that isn't debatable (use less, have more for later). People should do more conservation and physics also says that we are way below the theoretical maximum efficiency for most of the stuff we do (meaning better technology can help). No physics involved in teaching conservation.
Also since you can't prevent your kids from resenting you, it really doesn't matter what you do, right? Especially, those pesky kids that leave their computers and TVs on 24/7 and watch DVDs in the back of their SUVs... They can get really resentful when you start talking about conservation...;^)
Sadly, much new development is just a redistribution of wealth since apparently most developers CAN'T afford to even do thier development w/o tax breaks and other incentives from the municipalities involved. If they could afford the true cost of the development, they could likely entice the owners out of their realestate with fists full of cash (or a nice home).
We are living in a real-estate bubble (commercial and residential). Development costs are being held artificially low by government subsidy (interest rates and otherwize) and pricing is being held up by speculators (borrowing on margin to try to get returns higher than the simple interest rate). Maybe one of these days we will pay the piper (like Japan did) and I'll predict it'll make the dot-bust look like a blip, but as long as the government is manipulating things, not much will be changing...
FWIW, there ARE stationary GPS satellites (kinda)
on
Forget GPS, Hello WPS
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· Score: 1
It's probably not well known, but there have been effectively "GPS stationary satellites" in operation in major cities for quite a long time called WAAS.
Basically WAAS (or Wide Area Augmentation System) has about 25 stationary ground system that correct for GPS signals with a signal that's compatible with GPS broadcasts. Originally designed by the FAA, it's really helpful for GPS car navigation systems...
GPS selective availability has been turned off since May 1st 2000..Here's some more information.
Basically, the military figured out how to easily jam GPS in an area. But before then, there were GPS field units available that averaged out the error and got better than 2-3 meters so that it didn't really matter that much...
Imaginary hypothetical hallway conversation in redmond...
Bill, the Architect: so what's up with you folks down here in the basement, I haven't been down here for a while...
Ms. Ava, the Research Lab Tech: after we finshed rediscovering electricity and patented it, we heard of this crazy fast distributed downloading system where you rely on people installing spyware to zombify their machines instead of buying servers and reinvented it, but we can't find a legitimate use for it yet other than download videos of cspan and subpona-ed legal documents for SCO...
Mr. Wu, the Product Support Tech: you think that's bad, we just got the lastest round of bug fixing in windows, but the hotfix is 2Gbytes and we figured out we'd have to spend $100M on new servers to upgrade our website to release it and we don't have the budget for it...
Bill the Architect: Mr. Wu, meet Ms. Ava. That's enough for today, I'm tired now, back to my shiny Medina castle to count my money...
I don't see how this system would be any less whacked than the current system of refereed journals (where your reputation is often more important than the content of your paper)...
Perhaps you might be familar with the following drama...
If a bank taking money from anonymous people and giving it to other anonymous people, I'd like to be the bank please. If I take the money (or perhaps just skim the money) who is to stand up and say that they didn't do the transation (and give up their anonymity)?
Currency is about trust (you trust you can trade in your techically worthless token for something of value), when this trust is broken your rely on identification as a backstop. Without the source identity backstop, you basically have to trust the bank we know banks never do anything bad with your money. You can argue that only honest banks will survive, but if nobody is complaining, how will you know which ones are honest vs the ones that are just being picked on by blackmailers?
Money being just a token is a funny thing in that it only has the value we assign to it...
I'm unsure if this is true or not in the aformentioned cases (NK & Iran), but if the leaders who hold the keys don't care about their populace mutually assured destruction doesn't do squat...
I think an approximate historical analogy might be Rome and Carthage, but perhaps that is not quite the right balance...
In criminal law, if the police acquire certain evidence illegally (e.g. w/o a search warrent), then that evidence and anything that follows from that evidence can't be used in a court case against them.
If we extended this principle to debt collection and say if the collection agencies did something illegal in the process of collecting a debt, then the debt (or at least some part of it) would be void, wouldn't that be something to think about...
The way I see it, many of the companies that collect personal information, (banks, radioshack, etc) see little or no value in the information they are protecting, it's only their value of reselling it (e.g., like a pawn shop). As a old tired example, why does radioshack need a phone number when you buy a battery?
IMHO, the goal should be to make economics work for us. The cost of them collecting and securing it should balance the value the get from selling it. Then if the expected return on investment is zero, why would they even bother to collect it? It's just because right now it costs them little to collect it and they can resell it for more is why they do it right now.
One way to get this to assign big penalties to losing control of the info so that the expected cost is high. Another way is to just bill them up front (e.g., tax companies for collecting the information). I'm guessing that in the end, some combination of things would be optimal.
Another thing to look at is to licence people (not companies) to handle information. For example, it takes a registered notary public (not a flunky that the bank assigns) to witness signatures on major business transactions. Why can a company assign some skript kitty to process social security numbers? Why should a bank VP have any access at all? Getting notary public certification is trivial for anyone with a 1/2 a brain, but they make it very clear that your butt is on the line, not the company's butt, so most of them take it pretty seriously. Something about a few hours studying for a test and a name on a license and some personal responsibility makes most folks take their jobs less like a joke (although you occasionally get the rougue CPA or notary, it isn't very common)... Maybe it's time for a certified public information collection certificate or something like that...
This reminds me of a discussion I had the other day when a friend of mine (who is a raging liberal) who sort of said off the cuff that it would be okay to discriminate against republicans by not letting them vote like we ban the natzies and communists (okay she's not really up on the actual voting laws in the USA).
Ignoring for a moment countering that bit of misinformation, I asked her why might it be okay to discriminate against someone for what they believe? She quickly responded and said it was because republicans were evil since they discriminated against blacks, gays, and poor folks and had to be stopped so we can win our country back.
I guessing that's the pot calling the kettle... (or some sort of twisted descriminatory affirmative action metaphor).
If people are so worked up about Ms Plame, I'm curious why people are constantly blaming Mr. Rove (not that there's anything wrong with blaming someone you don't like for something that they may or may not have done) and keeping quiet about Mr. Novak (who probably knows who really did it). I'm amazed that he's getting a free pass on this (on the rhetorical front)...
Or maybe it's because nobody really cares about Ms. Palme, and they really just hate the current establishment.
To use a very poor decision matrix analogy. Think (seriously) about how you feel in the following circumstances.
1. Ms. Palame was killed volunteering in a habitat for humanity building project.
2. Mr. Gates was killed volunteering in a habitat for humanity building project.
3. Ms. Palame was killed working for Haliburton.
4. Mr. Gates was killed working for Haliburton.
In case #1, do you hold a grudge against Habitat, do you not care in #2 because normally Habitat does good work. In case #3 and #4 do you always hate Haliburton?
I suspect many people have more negative emotions (e.g., hate) more than they have empathy. Personally, I find these type of decision matrices very enlightening.
1984 Rose Bowl football game between UCLA and Illinois, at which Caltech undergraduates -- lacking a football team of their own -- hacked into the scoreboard to make it read "Caltech 38, MIT 9".
Here's a reasonable account of this...
Throughout the last few months, we have been dismayed at the number of factual errors in newspaper stories related to this year's Rose Bowl stunt.... we, the Caltech students responsible, would like to clear up some points which have been misrepresented.
We installed a device to take over control of the Rose Bowl scoreboard weeks before the actual game without the knowledge of any Caltech staff or faculty. Our only modification to their equipment was a splice in the cable to the scoreboard where we attached our microprocessor. During the game, we placed several messages such as "Go Caltech!" on the scoreboard. The frustrated stadium officials responded by turning off the power to the scoreboard before the game was over. There was no malfunction of either the stadium computer or our device.
In the days following the game, we contacted the Rose Bowl officials and offered to remove our device and to explain how we had gained control. This offer was ignored by the Rose Bowl officials and the city of Pasadena. Unfortunately, the Rose Bowl officials did not understand that our project had made no modifications to their computer, as we would have told them. They needlessly spent $1200 in shipping costs to have it checked out. There was, of course, no damage and hence no repairs necessary to either their computer or scoreboard. All that really had to be done was to unplug a connector we had installed. The figure of $4000 printed by newspapers was an exaggerated estimate from the start.
Weeks later the City Prosecutor of Pasadena, against the recommendation of the Mayor and the City Council, charged us with four misdemeanors. We read this news on the front page of the Los Angeles Times five days before we received actual notification by mail from the city clerk. When articles questioning the city's sense of humor appeared in local papers, he tried to defend his actions by writing to local newspapers. Apparently the city did not consider this appropriate; his office, previously independent, has since been placed under the authority of the City Attorney.
In cooperation with the city of Pasadena, Caltech agreed to share half the amount needlessly spent by the Rose Bowl on their computer. This amount of $660 was paid by Caltech to the Rose Bowl. It was mentioned in court, and the newspapers erroneously reported it as a fine to us as individuals. The City Prosecutor dropped every charge against us, except for the insignificant "loitering in a public place after midnight." We pleaded no contest to this charge, and there was no sentence. It was agreed that this also will shortly be dropped from our record.
We have been surprised by the amount of attention which several newspapers and television stations have given to these events regarding the Rose Bowl. We have been disappointed that there have been several misconceptions and misquotes conveyed to the public. We hope that with more serious matters, journalists will take more care to report stories accurately and to avoid sensationalism.
Conclusion: Don't believe everything you read in newspapers.... deleted the names...
Well, if it's worth anything you (Ms. Anon Y. Mous), Einstein actually taught at Caltech [photo] in 1932 at as a visiting professor for several months before he went to IAS Princeton...
This was right after he won the Nobel Prize in Physics and some people credit his time at Caltech as to convince him to move to the US before the Nazi party took over in germany (and I'm supposing he'd have a much harder time leaving with the Nazis in charge).
Admittedly this could be somewhat confusing for someone who doesn't know the history and might help to explain to such a person why the Einstein Papers Project is housed at Caltech, with the backup at Princeton instead of the other way around.
Of course not everyone went there to get a degree, but quite a few prominant scientists have visited from time to time...
For your bemusement, here's an interesting summary of the life and times of Mr. Einstein...
If, states would spend more time making harder to forge driver's licences, I'd bet that no one would care about passports. However, there are states like CA and AZ that want to issue driver's licences to everyone who applies (including illegal aliens), so basically, like a social security card, they are quite useless as citizenship identification. Unfortunatly, the Feds can't prevent the states from issuing DL's to anybody walking in the door, so that's that...
Not that this matters, as people complain (and esp., the US govt worker's unions complain about the extra work), eventually, I predict there will be a EU-like card for US/CAN/MEX. There is one already for US/CAN and US/MEX, that you can get if you don't want the hassle of a passport.
My continuing point (that you seem to be consistently ignoring) is that for say a 16 bit target machine cross compiled on a 32 bit arch, both sizeof and offsetof will return the WRONG value. No amount of "magic" is gonna make that work...
However having said that, I often use OFFSETOF in my one-off code, but when you are writing a cross compiler, or code that must work on multiple machines it's sometimes not a good idea to use offsetof or sizeof.
For example, if you (and I find this to be a bad, but common practice), use a structure to define a binary file header in your code (e.g., bitmap file, or targa file), and you read the letter of the STANDARD, there's no guarantee of the layout of the structure (other than the pointer to the first member is at the same address as the pointer to the structure or other aggregate). Thus any code that does something totally non-portable like...
retcode=fread(&mystruct,1,sizeof(mystruct),fp);
is of course fataly flawed and non-portable (simple compiler switches or pragmas that control structure packing can often cause this to fail on the same architecture and same compiler), not to mention across compiler versions or platforms. In an ideal world, all file header structures would be XML-ish, but of course we don't live in that ideal world, and there are lots of legacy binary formats (and don't get me started on big/little endian)...
As with all guidelines for good programming, there are always exceptions to a rule and using sizeof and offsetof are no (uhm) exception...
Sure it might work for the internals, but how do you describe to your compiler what to return for the cross compiling value or what number to use for computing the size and offset of aggregates? I think a preprocessing macro is a reasonable thing to do for that situation (although one might reasonably argue for using some run-time scheme, there would be some inefficiencies that might make that a poor choice because c and c++ are such poor languages for doing so)...
> You wouldn't jump off a bridge just because > lots of other developers did so, would you?
I use c "just because lots of other developers did so"... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't make the same choice if there were no HLL and I wanted to design one (of course I might call my language "A");^P
BTW, most in C/C++ code *I* write, I usually use sizeof, but let's just say, IMO in a bigger project, it's sometimes prudent to just do what "lots of other developers did" before you and leave it at that...
I wonder how responses would differ if there was real property involved... Let's say I obtained (e.g., purchases, or obtained through barter) real property (say a computer), that was later determined to be stolen. Do the police have the right to...
A. Take it from me and return it to the original owner? B. Force me to say who I obtained it from?
Now replace this with intangible property (say some GPL'd source code). Let's say that I obtained a BSD license for some source code that was later determined to be stolen. Since I obtained the source code under certain rights (e.g., BSD license), do the police (or other authorities), have the right to
A. Take away the BSD license I obtained for it and replace it with the GPL license granted by the original owner? B. Force me to say who I obtained it from?
Not sure the answer is different in either of these cases.
Of course if the intangible property is a trade secret, well, hmm, I'm not so sure it should be any different there either... You can argue that trade secrets aren't even property, but if they are (and the law is currently on that position), is there any other interpretation?
My guess is that recent changes in rules regarding executive compensation (e.g. stock plans for executives and the requirement that executive compensation levels are set by independent directors) are what management and auditing are arguing about preventing them from writing a report.
Translation: daryl and buddies trying to line their pockets, but they don't want to put it in writing in an easy to understand language because the the shareholders would then know, but the auditors don't want to get caught in a lie/spin...
I know how most of you are all fro new technology, but we need these failsafes. What happens when your computer fails or your keyboard, mouse or display systems are no longer functioning. It's far too dangerous in my opinion to allow sliderules and other (now secondary) computation aids (like abacuses) fall to the wayside b/c of newer technology.
I propose that every computer science major be forced to learn how to use a slide rule and an abacus...
And we should require every gps unit to be equiped with a pendulum and a sextant as backup...
Maybe they'll get less opposition to closing light houses if they forced german ships to use the new EU galileo system instead of GPS.
On the other hand, if this happens, perhaps the lighthouse preservation lobby will force the EU government to cancel Galileo to save historic lighthouses. Stranger things have happened in Europe...
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The dns root server has a IP address and runs a daemon to serve top-level domain mappings. If somebody (or group of people) want to use a different root, so be it. However, right now many choose to use the one managed cooperatively.
.COM part of the address space, but that's not what this is about either (although this issue is confused somewhat)...
The reason skript kitties in Romania get to your computer is because the machines have an IP address (not necessarily because they have a domain name that resolves to an IP address, but it sure makes it easier for them to find).
Please read the wikipedia and get your facts in order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
However, there are certainly unresolved issues with limited amount of IP addresses, but that's not what people are talking about here...
There are also issues about conflict resoltion about the
To me, this is like people complaining about what is on the internet (or tv, or movie theaters, or what they are serving at McDonalds, pick your poison) to their legislators hoping that they'll make some rule to change the world to their vision. If you don't like what's someone is doing, don't go there, someone will offer something different and patronize them instead. If enough people agree with you they'll change too and what you were complaining about will go out of business.
It's not like anyone is forcing people to use the current defacto DNS root that the US doesn't want to cede to authority to ICANN. As far as I know there's no law in place that you have to point a root there.
This is sounding strangely more and more like the Galileo vs GPS debate. If the UN wants to launch their own rootDNS, go ahead, but try not to interfere with Verisign, RIPE, ORSN, ORSC, etc (some of the existing rootDNS servers). Sounds to me, however, they don't actually want to set up an altRoot, but really just want the get the authority over the existing rootservers (i.e., a power play for someone corrupt person's agenda). Maybe they don't trust the US, but of course, the US doesn't have much of a reason to trust the UN either. I don't think ICANN's track record has really helped the situation either.
This has the makings of a bad situation. Currently the UN doesn't have any "tax" authority since they technically don't have any soverignty over anything (it's just a treaty organization). Just imagine if the UN did own something (even if it's virtual)...
Forget about foreign policies and Galileo, it's likely just all about the money. Here's a interesting quote...
As if europe wasn't already inter-dependent on the US for many security-related matters, (e.g. NATO). Nobody is talking about a non-NATO EU-airforce because an airforce doesn't make any $$$. Of course to finance this endevour, the Europeans are suggesting the "establishment of revenue streams (likely to require regulatory action)" that includes the likelyhood of "levies on receivers and operating licence fees." I guess people don't mind TV and radio taxes in the EU, so maybe another one won't matter. Of course the US state department has already taken the stance that it will take WTO action against any taxes on imported GPS-only equipment or preferential licensing of Galileo technology to European firms, but unfortunatly, under the WTO rules, the europeans can choose to hose themselves with global positioning taxes to pay for this if they want to (as long as they don't discriminate against foriegn suppliers).Of course it isn't just money, it's about jobs as well...
My money is that at the end of the day, the europeans will go with the so-called zero-option (deploy ground based stuff or co-op with the russians with GLONASS extensions). Seems hard to compete with something like GPS and provide little or no extra value. Maybe they'll have more luck with the DNS root servers...By the heat/energy release argument all that sub-atomic potential relativistic energy ought to be hazzard waiting to happen (collecting since cosmic times). Better ban all matter. Under that argument, there isn't ANY possible energy source to use that's "safe" which means the only thing that needs to change is for us to use LESS energy. Under your so called "physics" argument, why change any source of energy (doesn't matter what energy source is used according to your basic "physics" argument).
;^)
Of course in my opinion, the reality is that not all energy sources are created equal (e.g., there are different side effects unrelated to carbon-dioxide). There is a sunk cost on the environment for using ANY energy, and a marginal cost for using one type vs another type (e.g., coal vs nuclear), the physics about the marginal stuff is much less basic and most folks don't understand it as well.
Having said all that, conservation is a great idea that isn't debatable (use less, have more for later). People should do more conservation and physics also says that we are way below the theoretical maximum efficiency for most of the stuff we do (meaning better technology can help). No physics involved in teaching conservation.
Also since you can't prevent your kids from resenting you, it really doesn't matter what you do, right? Especially, those pesky kids that leave their computers and TVs on 24/7 and watch DVDs in the back of their SUVs... They can get really resentful when you start talking about conservation...
Sadly, much new development is just a redistribution of wealth since apparently most developers CAN'T afford to even do thier development w/o tax breaks and other incentives from the municipalities involved. If they could afford the true cost of the development, they could likely entice the owners out of their realestate with fists full of cash (or a nice home).
We are living in a real-estate bubble (commercial and residential). Development costs are being held artificially low by government subsidy (interest rates and otherwize) and pricing is being held up by speculators (borrowing on margin to try to get returns higher than the simple interest rate). Maybe one of these days we will pay the piper (like Japan did) and I'll predict it'll make the dot-bust look like a blip, but as long as the government is manipulating things, not much will be changing...
Read more at this site...
Sometimes reality is better than you know... ;^)
Basically, the military figured out how to easily jam GPS in an area. But before then, there were GPS field units available that averaged out the error and got better than 2-3 meters so that it didn't really matter that much...
Imaginary hypothetical hallway conversation in redmond...
Bill, the Architect: so what's up with you folks down here in the basement, I haven't been down here for a while...
Ms. Ava, the Research Lab Tech: after we finshed rediscovering electricity and patented it, we heard of this crazy fast distributed downloading system where you rely on people installing spyware to zombify their machines instead of buying servers and reinvented it, but we can't find a legitimate use for it yet other than download videos of cspan and subpona-ed legal documents for SCO...
Mr. Wu, the Product Support Tech: you think that's bad, we just got the lastest round of bug fixing in windows, but the hotfix is 2Gbytes and we figured out we'd have to spend $100M on new servers to upgrade our website to release it and we don't have the budget for it...
Bill the Architect: Mr. Wu, meet Ms. Ava. That's enough for today, I'm tired now, back to my shiny Medina castle to count my money...
Perhaps you might be familar with the following drama...
Seems like a total non-starter idea to me...
If a bank taking money from anonymous people and giving it to other anonymous people, I'd like to be the bank please. If I take the money (or perhaps just skim the money) who is to stand up and say that they didn't do the transation (and give up their anonymity)?
Currency is about trust (you trust you can trade in your techically worthless token for something of value), when this trust is broken your rely on identification as a backstop. Without the source identity backstop, you basically have to trust the bank we know banks never do anything bad with your money. You can argue that only honest banks will survive, but if nobody is complaining, how will you know which ones are honest vs the ones that are just being picked on by blackmailers?
Money being just a token is a funny thing in that it only has the value we assign to it...
I'm unsure if this is true or not in the aformentioned cases (NK & Iran), but if the leaders who hold the keys don't care about their populace mutually assured destruction doesn't do squat...
I think an approximate historical analogy might be Rome and Carthage, but perhaps that is not quite the right balance...
In criminal law, if the police acquire certain evidence illegally (e.g. w/o a search warrent), then that evidence and anything that follows from that evidence can't be used in a court case against them.
;^)
If we extended this principle to debt collection and say if the collection agencies did something illegal in the process of collecting a debt, then the debt (or at least some part of it) would be void, wouldn't that be something to think about...
Nah, that would be too easy...
The way I see it, many of the companies that collect personal information, (banks, radioshack, etc) see little or no value in the information they are protecting, it's only their value of reselling it (e.g., like a pawn shop). As a old tired example, why does radioshack need a phone number when you buy a battery?
IMHO, the goal should be to make economics work for us. The cost of them collecting and securing it should balance the value the get from selling it. Then if the expected return on investment is zero, why would they even bother to collect it? It's just because right now it costs them little to collect it and they can resell it for more is why they do it right now.
One way to get this to assign big penalties to losing control of the info so that the expected cost is high. Another way is to just bill them up front (e.g., tax companies for collecting the information). I'm guessing that in the end, some combination of things would be optimal.
Another thing to look at is to licence people (not companies) to handle information. For example, it takes a registered notary public (not a flunky that the bank assigns) to witness signatures on major business transactions. Why can a company assign some skript kitty to process social security numbers? Why should a bank VP have any access at all? Getting notary public certification is trivial for anyone with a 1/2 a brain, but they make it very clear that your butt is on the line, not the company's butt, so most of them take it pretty seriously. Something about a few hours studying for a test and a name on a license and some personal responsibility makes most folks take their jobs less like a joke (although you occasionally get the rougue CPA or notary, it isn't very common)... Maybe it's time for a certified public information collection certificate or something like that...
Anyhow, that's just food for thought...
This reminds me of a discussion I had the other day when a friend of mine (who is a raging liberal) who sort of said off the cuff that it would be okay to discriminate against republicans by not letting them vote like we ban the natzies and communists (okay she's not really up on the actual voting laws in the USA).
;^)
Ignoring for a moment countering that bit of misinformation, I asked her why might it be okay to discriminate against someone for what they believe? She quickly responded and said it was because republicans were evil since they discriminated against blacks, gays, and poor folks and had to be stopped so we can win our country back.
I guessing that's the pot calling the kettle... (or some sort of twisted descriminatory affirmative action metaphor).
Anyhow, back to the normal bashing...
If people are so worked up about Ms Plame, I'm curious why people are constantly blaming Mr. Rove (not that there's anything wrong with blaming someone you don't like for something that they may or may not have done) and keeping quiet about Mr. Novak (who probably knows who really did it). I'm amazed that he's getting a free pass on this (on the rhetorical front)...
Or maybe it's because nobody really cares about Ms. Palme, and they really just hate the current establishment.
To use a very poor decision matrix analogy. Think (seriously) about how you feel in the following circumstances.
1. Ms. Palame was killed volunteering in a habitat for humanity building project.
2. Mr. Gates was killed volunteering in a habitat for humanity building project.
3. Ms. Palame was killed working for Haliburton.
4. Mr. Gates was killed working for Haliburton.
In case #1, do you hold a grudge against Habitat, do you not care in #2 because normally Habitat does good work. In case #3 and #4 do you always hate Haliburton?
I suspect many people have more negative emotions (e.g., hate) more than they have empathy. Personally, I find these type of decision matrices very enlightening.
Well, eventually that prank happened...
... we, the Caltech students responsible, would like to clear up some points which have been misrepresented.
... deleted the names ...
1984 Rose Bowl football game between UCLA and Illinois, at which Caltech undergraduates -- lacking a football team of their own -- hacked into the scoreboard to make it read "Caltech 38, MIT 9".
Here's a reasonable account of this...
Throughout the last few months, we have been dismayed at the number of factual errors in newspaper stories related to this year's Rose Bowl stunt.
We installed a device to take over control of the Rose Bowl scoreboard weeks before the actual game without the knowledge of any Caltech staff or faculty. Our only modification to their equipment was a splice in the cable to the scoreboard where we attached our microprocessor. During the game, we placed several messages such as "Go Caltech!" on the scoreboard. The frustrated stadium officials responded by turning off the power to the scoreboard before the game was over. There was no malfunction of either the stadium computer or our device.
In the days following the game, we contacted the Rose Bowl officials and offered to remove our device and to explain how we had gained control. This offer was ignored by the Rose Bowl officials and the city of Pasadena. Unfortunately, the Rose Bowl officials did not understand that our project had made no modifications to their computer, as we would have told them. They needlessly spent $1200 in shipping costs to have it checked out. There was, of course, no damage and hence no repairs necessary to either their computer or scoreboard. All that really had to be done was to unplug a connector we had installed. The figure of $4000 printed by newspapers was an exaggerated estimate from the start.
Weeks later the City Prosecutor of Pasadena, against the recommendation of the Mayor and the City Council, charged us with four misdemeanors. We read this news on the front page of the Los Angeles Times five days before we received actual notification by mail from the city clerk. When articles questioning the city's sense of humor appeared in local papers, he tried to defend his actions by writing to local newspapers. Apparently the city did not consider this appropriate; his office, previously independent, has since been placed under the authority of the City Attorney.
In cooperation with the city of Pasadena, Caltech agreed to share half the amount needlessly spent by the Rose Bowl on their computer. This amount of $660 was paid by Caltech to the Rose Bowl. It was mentioned in court, and the newspapers erroneously reported it as a fine to us as individuals. The City Prosecutor dropped every charge against us,
except for the insignificant "loitering in a public place after midnight." We pleaded no contest to this charge, and there was no sentence. It was agreed that this also will shortly be dropped from our record.
We have been surprised by the amount of attention which several newspapers and television stations have given to these events
regarding the Rose Bowl. We have been disappointed that there have been several misconceptions and misquotes conveyed to the public. We hope that with more serious matters, journalists will take more care to report stories accurately and to avoid sensationalism.
Conclusion: Don't believe everything you read in newspapers.
This was right after he won the Nobel Prize in Physics and some people credit his time at Caltech as to convince him to move to the US before the Nazi party took over in germany (and I'm supposing he'd have a much harder time leaving with the Nazis in charge).
Admittedly this could be somewhat confusing for someone who doesn't know the history and might help to explain to such a person why the Einstein Papers Project is housed at Caltech, with the backup at Princeton instead of the other way around.
Of course not everyone went there to get a degree, but quite a few prominant scientists have visited from time to time...
For your bemusement, here's an interesting summary of the life and times of Mr. Einstein...
If, states would spend more time making harder to forge driver's licences, I'd bet that no one would care about passports. However, there are states like CA and AZ that want to issue driver's licences to everyone who applies (including illegal aliens), so basically, like a social security card, they are quite useless as citizenship identification. Unfortunatly, the Feds can't prevent the states from issuing DL's to anybody walking in the door, so that's that...
Not that this matters, as people complain (and esp., the US govt worker's unions complain about the extra work), eventually, I predict there will be a EU-like card for US/CAN/MEX. There is one already for US/CAN and US/MEX, that you can get if you don't want the hassle of a passport.
Seems like nothing to see here, move along...
ahme, cross compiler? again
My continuing point (that you seem to be consistently ignoring) is that for say a 16 bit target machine cross compiled on a 32 bit arch, both sizeof and offsetof will return the WRONG value. No amount of "magic" is gonna make that work...
However having said that, I often use OFFSETOF in my one-off code, but when you are writing a cross compiler, or code that must work on multiple machines it's sometimes not a good idea to use offsetof or sizeof.
For example, if you (and I find this to be a bad, but common practice), use a structure to define a binary file header in your code (e.g., bitmap file, or targa file), and you read the letter of the STANDARD, there's no guarantee of the layout of the structure (other than the pointer to the first member is at the same address as the pointer to the structure or other aggregate). Thus any code that does something totally non-portable like...
retcode=fread(&mystruct,1,sizeof(mystruct),fp);
is of course fataly flawed and non-portable (simple compiler switches or pragmas that control structure packing can often cause this to fail on the same architecture and same compiler), not to mention across compiler versions or platforms. In an ideal world, all file header structures would be XML-ish, but of course we don't live in that ideal world, and there are lots of legacy binary formats (and don't get me started on big/little endian)...
As with all guidelines for good programming, there are always exceptions to a rule and using sizeof and offsetof are no (uhm) exception...
> Native or no, the sizeof operator must work.
;^P
Sure it might work for the internals, but how do you describe to your compiler what to return for the cross compiling value or what number to use for computing the size and offset of aggregates? I think a preprocessing macro is a reasonable thing to do for that situation (although one might reasonably argue for using some run-time scheme, there would be some inefficiencies that might make that a poor choice because c and c++ are such poor languages for doing so)...
> You wouldn't jump off a bridge just because
> lots of other developers did so, would you?
I use c "just because lots of other developers did so"... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't make the same choice if there were no HLL and I wanted to design one (of course I might call my language "A")
BTW, most in C/C++ code *I* write, I usually use sizeof, but let's just say, IMO in a bigger project, it's sometimes prudent to just do what "lots of other developers did" before you and leave it at that...
yes, not everyone configures gcc is for use in native compile mode...
I wonder how responses would differ if there was real property involved... Let's say I obtained (e.g., purchases, or obtained through barter) real property (say a computer), that was later determined to be stolen. Do the police have the right to...
A. Take it from me and return it to the original owner?
B. Force me to say who I obtained it from?
Now replace this with intangible property (say some GPL'd source code). Let's say that I obtained a BSD license for some source code that was later determined to be stolen. Since I obtained the source code under certain rights (e.g., BSD license), do the police (or other authorities), have the right to
A. Take away the BSD license I obtained for it and replace it with the GPL license granted by the original owner?
B. Force me to say who I obtained it from?
Not sure the answer is different in either of these cases.
Of course if the intangible property is a trade secret, well, hmm, I'm not so sure it should be any different there either... You can argue that trade secrets aren't even property, but if they are (and the law is currently on that position), is there any other interpretation?
My guess is that recent changes in rules regarding executive compensation (e.g. stock plans for executives and the requirement that executive compensation levels are set by independent directors) are what management and auditing are arguing about preventing them from writing a report.
Translation: daryl and buddies trying to line their pockets, but they don't want to put it in writing in an easy to understand language because the the shareholders would then know, but the auditors don't want to get caught in a lie/spin...
I know how most of you are all fro new technology, but we need these failsafes. What happens when your computer fails or your keyboard, mouse or display systems are no longer functioning. It's far too dangerous in my opinion to allow sliderules and other (now secondary) computation aids (like abacuses) fall to the wayside b/c of newer technology.
;^)
I propose that every computer science major be forced to learn how to use a slide rule and an abacus...
And we should require every gps unit to be equiped with a pendulum and a sextant as backup...
Uhm, yeah, right
Maybe they'll get less opposition to closing light houses if they forced german ships to use the new EU galileo system instead of GPS.
On the other hand, if this happens, perhaps the lighthouse preservation lobby will force the EU government to cancel Galileo to save historic lighthouses. Stranger things have happened in Europe...
I still think for beautiful code, you can't beat a folding editor...
And no, the emacs folding editor macros aren't quite the same thing...