I'm just hoping wireless can save us. I'm currently dependant upon an infrastructure owned by a single entity and protected by polititions who just happen to be for sale. It's just a matter of time. If you have a choice between wireless and wired, choose wireless. If we keep pumping money to wireless providers, the technology will only get better; and wireless has much lower entry barriors, so we can count on competition. Adam Smith would be proud.
It seems no matter who you talk to in the USA, you hear the same comments, politicians are for say, they don't work in the best interests of the public, they're corrupt. Well then DO something about it. It seems the number of people you hear this from is sifficient that if you all actually banded together to bring about a truly representative government that actually works for the people, you'd have a lot of clout.
But instead, we just find more people not voting, withdrawing from political affairs, giving up. No! Stand up! Overthrow that corrupt government you have. You will have the support of the majority of the world in doing so, I'm not sure if American laws allow it, but I'm sure you could get a lot of donations from around the world for such a political campaign. I know I'd throw in some money for an anti-Republican, anti-Democrat party if I could.
It was de-regulation that caused every hamburger chain to combine into one.
It was de-regulation that caused every big box consumer store to combine into one.
It was de-regulation that caused every candy bar company to combine into one.
Apples and oranges. That argument applies to businesses where entities, offices, etc are separate. Telecommunications is completely different; there is one set of phone lines running through a neighbourhood, there is one set of cable lines running through a neighbourhood.
Do you really think a municipality would allow every company that wants to come along to put up more wires? Do you really think residents would want dozens of different wires running through their streets? Do you really think it would be economically viable for a company to wire up a neighbourhood if they only had one or two customers in an area?
It's an economic factor why there's only one set of telephone and cable wires in a city. And as another poster said, if there was pure deregulation, what would force the owners of those wires to let anyone else use them? They would be the gatekeeper for that telephone network or cable company, they would dictate what goes down those wires and how much you pay, and the consumer would have very little choice.
This is why regulation is needed, because it's not like a burger joint where someone can just put up a new franchise next door - a new player can't simply lay down a new set of wires.
The infrastructure in this case should be a public asset that is there to facilitate commerce and competition, allowing any players to enter, like our public road system. All companies can use the roads in an equal manner.
And that's what a one-tier internet does, allow anyone to enter the game because they have the same access to the market as anyone else. A two-tier would force all the small players on the wider internet out of business because they would have to pay a toll to reach the consumers.
You like real life analogies? It's like each neighbourhood being able to set up a toll on the roads in their area dictating that all red cars need to pay $5 to pass, after those roads were already paid for by taxpayers. I as a consumer already paid for a road to the internet, paying for my DSL or cable, I should be able to pick what colour car I drive down that road, not have that dictated to me.
Explain to me how you can have an understanding of A records and IPv4, and a very basic understanding of what IPv6 is (not going into how it works or anything) and NOT know what an AAAA record is? I'm genuinely interested in the thought process.
Very simple, I've never looked into how DNS in IPv6 works, I said I'd only looked very basically at IPv6. And this is exactly the kind of guide needed, "A record in IPv4 == AAAA record in IPv6"
They exist for many other fields, there needs to be a "IPv6 guide for IPv4 developers" or some similar book. Something which puts IPv6 components in terms of IPv4, something that might have a section (since we're talking DNS above) giving an example IPv4 BIND record for a domain, and then an equivilant record for IPv6 to help people relate to the changes.
What I most want is a decent howto on IPv6 transition. I know the basics, I know the theory of how it's suppose to work. But I'll be damned if I know how numbering works (I know there's some odd pre or suffix in the numbering, no?), I have no idea what theses AAAA records are, etc.
And before someone says to just go read the RFCs, no, what needs to be made is a transition guide for those already familiar with IPv4. Myself, and most others, probably don't want to sit reading dry RFCs. Give me a lesson pack on how DNS records differ, or how the numbering works in relation to IPv4.
That will be one of the most useful things in getting techies prepared for the change.
And if something like that already exists (it probably does, I just haven't found it yet), someone please post it so we can all get up to speed.
If I understood it, I'd probably take the extra time to make all my future software IPv6 compatible.
Yes, there would absolutely be no legitimate reason for a company to do this. Blogs, many of which are unsigned, are truly the worlds most reliable source for all information on those evil corporations.
Geez, it seems no one has a sense of humour any more. I guess I should have specifically ended with a </silly> tag....
Yes, you too can now easily track all those slamming your product, no matter how much it might deserve public scorn. Have your lawyer on speed dial, because it's time to stop that pesky public from interfering with your business model by commenting on such silly things as "quality."
Referring to a system with equal votes between elected representatives of democracies and kleptocratic representatives of dictatorships as "democracy on a world scale" is so mind-bogglingly stupid it could only come from someone with a.ca address.
Who on earth even said dictatorships would get a voice? That is a huge "ass"umption and more FUD. We're talking the UN, which I would hope would work in the best interests of freedom and equity around the world.
And has American control been able to do anything to prevent that? I really don't see how an international body could do any worse.
Censorship on a domestic level is completely different from address and name allocation. Apples and oranges.
And if I recall, certain American companies have recently been slammed for helping Chinese censorship. Where's the outcry from the US Senate over that? It seems like a double standard for freedom.... freedom, unless we can make a profit off oppression.
Only because, at the monment, they don't have the power to do it outside their borders too.
If you really think that would occur, you truly are paranoid.
First, they would only be once voice, we're not talking about "giving the internet to the Chinese." Geez, talk about overblowing things.
Second, really, will this international body actually be able to enforce things in sovereign states? With the current status quo, has the USA been able to mandate "you shall not censor" to other countries with it's current control over the internet? Nope. Why on earth would that power change?
What this comes down to is Americans not wanting to give up their dominante world position, the idea of actually sharing control with any other country scares the shit out of them. Democracy on a world scale, what a concept.
You would rather China have a say in the administration of the internet?
Yes, because America's exclusive control over the internet is having such a profound influence in preventing oppression and censorship online in China.
The argument is such FUD. What a country does with regard to IP routing, firewalling, etc within their borders is completely separate from the proposed handover of administration in IP allocation and other such policies. You're talking about ensuring global internet policies work for the improvement of all countries.
When it comes to influence from oppressive regimes, most certainly more needs to be done to ensure their ability to censor freedom of information is held in check. However I don't see much of that happening under current administration of the internet - if anything, we keep hearing stories about American software companies actually *helping* these regimes oppress their people.
I think fewer people would have a problem with it if Microsoft bundled for example OpenOffice, Firefox, VLC and Gimp.
Ahh, but if they bundled OpenOffice, then Corel could jump and scream about being discriminated against.
If they bundled Firefox (it always seems to come back to IE/Firefox when the subject of bundling comes up), Opera and Netscape could jump and scream about it.
At what point do you stop? There's a lot of software out there, how do you decide what to include?
I'm not trying to troll as one moderator suggested, I'm asking an honest question that we as a community need to decide what exactly our objectives are. What is "right" and what is "wrong"?
You can't have it both ways
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Whoa wait a minute here....
They're less statisfied because of the woeful default applications, unlike Linux you have to buy/download all your additional tools.
However when Microsoft tries to bundle things with the OS to solve this problem (think IE), they're demonized for being a monopoly and trying to leverage their OS to cut out the competition.
So which is it? Do we want an all-in-one OS and application suite or do we want a distinct separation of the OS from it's applications to prevent abuse.
I am NOT defending MS. I'm personally on the side that they're exploiting a monopoly. However this means you can't expect everything to "be there" when you're finished installing Windows.
Just a random ponder.... I wonder when M$ or others will accuse SuSE or RH of trying to stiffle the competition by bundling apps with the OS.
Use the Chinese alphabet. If you have a year where you run out, it's all just one big hurricane.
You're partially right. There are names that begin with X, Y, and Z, just most are foreign. For example, the English spelling of my girlfriend's name starts with X (it's a Chinese name). So to say after W they have to move to Greek letters should be insulting to almost every foreigner living in North America.
you are not. Many CS graduates these days are jobless because of programs like this. Switch to a vocational program while you still have a change.
This post should win dumbest troll of the year.
I used to have this debate back when I was in school with people. In the school I began my degree there were two programs, a computer science program and a more "practical" computer information systems.
In Computer Science we learned the theoretical background, we learned how and why computers work as they do, and more importantly - how to learn. Language and skills were a way to re-enforce this theoretical base.
The CIS program learned the skills of the day. You know what one of their courses were? "Programming in Visual Basic" How many of those people taking that course 7 years ago do you think are still finding gainful employment programming in VB? And how many had to go back for skills upgrading?
I remember one summer on coop, two CS students, one CIS student. It was a help desk job, nothing exciting. But a call came in to help a user with Word. The response from the CIS person, "We didn't learn Word, we learned Word Perfect." So? If you had the theoretical background you could figure it out, find the relivant connections between the two.
As opposed to myself, my primary job these days is programming in perl. Do you think I was ever "taught" perl? No, we did C, C++, Java, etc. But I had the background to learn it on my own, because I learned how to learn, I learned how languages worked through courses such as "compiler design."
So are you in the wrong program? Depends, do you want a long term job or have to retrain every few years? People like Dan Zambonini are absolutely wrong, things like "learning XML" can be done from a book if you know the relivent background about languages and such schemas. I know that's how I learned (alright, working for the 'father of XML' for a few years certainly didn't hurt...).
If you see more construction cranes in China, have you thought about what stage their society's at? It's rapidly developing, and starting from a less developed point. Of course they're building more stuff, but they're still a looong way away from U.S. infrastructure.
Yes that is very true. However if you dig under the surface a little you find not only is it an infrastructure building project by they're also investing in research in parallel. Their universities are pumping out new research developments like water out of a tap, their businesses are growing at a pace that make us look as if we're going backwards. And most important, they're using all this wealth from our money flowing to China to buy up companies around the world.
They're building the infrastructure, and they're building the economy around it as well. They will pass us within a decade unless we stop looking at short term profits. As for the comment about it's easier to get stuff done - yes, that is true too. It's the only advantage I see to their government system, the government has the long term vision of where it wants to go and need not worry about these silly little things called 'elections.'
Regardless, it is time to take the economic threwat seriously.
Corporations are more to blame for the decline of science than the government. Most industrial development is ultimately driven by companies looking to make money on new technologies. Lately, most companies have been gutting research budgets in favor of more short term profits (ie. HP). Look at most job postings, how many both require an advanced degree and are willing to pay enough to hire someone? Most companies aren't interested. Until corporate America can look past next quarter's numbers, R&D will not really exist in the U.S. anymore.
You hit the nail on the head. I just got back from visiting my girlfriend's parents in Mainland China, and the change I see there over the past year is mind blowing. In North America we're focused on the short term profit, on how to make a buck in the next quarter, in China they see the big picture and the long term goal. They know where they want to go, and know that some investments are long term.
We've forgotten that, and we're going to pay dearly for it over the next decade. In her home city I saw 4 bridges, multiple express ways, and countless buildings being built all at once. You could see at least 100 cranes at a time from any vantage point. In North America we have crumbling infrastructure, budgets on everything from education to health being slashed, and crumbling cities.
We need to wake up and see that we will become irrelivant unless we start looking at the long term.
Um, yeah, take a look at the globe, and compare the size of South Korea to the size of the United States (as well as the rest of the countries that have "got us beat"). In terms of infrastructure, how much do you think it costs to lay fiber from one end of S. Korea or Japan, or Austria to the other, compared to the US? Those are relatively small and densly populated countries, compared to the United States, a large country with more vast, unpopulated areas than any other industrial nation.
Alright, point taken. Now look at Canada on the map, larger than the US. Yet we're beating America too in broadband availability, so your argument doesn't hold water. It's all about policies by government.
And on that point, the comment in the original article about the evils of "anti-competative policies" - there's nothing wrong with such policies, there are such things as natural monopolies. However what make these natural monopolies not become anti-comsumer is government actually taking up it's role and regulating such industries to the benefit of the public. Putting in place watchdogs and policies that ensure these industries don't take advantage of the consumer and give the product at the price the consumers deserve.
Those are the policies being enacted by all these countries which are "beating" the US in broadband. Using the power of economies of scale and highly regulating it.
If America wants to get broadband out to all consumers by 2007 you have to stop this silly deregulation stuff and simply mandate that these companies get it done.
I completely agree, if there's a security flaw in a piece of software or hardware I own I want to know about it so I can take action to minimize the risk.
As another comment said, in such situations it's foolish to believe only the good guys have discovered this flaw. All users of the product are at risk while the truth about a flaw is kept in the shadows.
I'm still amazed that lawsuits can be filed for disclosing a security flaw, how is that right in any way?
It's like being sued for announcing someone left their front door unlocked. It's more an embarrassment to the person who left if unlocked, you can't be held accountable for someone else's stupidity.
If this kind of situation continues it's going to have a chilling effect on research, which will have long term negative consequences. Not only will it slow down technological innovation but it will lead to a very large exploit that will fester for months until someone comes along and paralyzes the entire internet. Smart. So much for talk in the US government about preparing for cyber attacks....
he University of Alberta, located in Edmonton, AB, uses Telus as it's primary ISP. By arbitrarily blocking this site, without consultation with the customer(s), they've breached a contract with the University, and by extension, the Alberta government. I expect there'll be some movement on this pretty quickly.
Ha! Doubtful, this is ALBERTA we're talking about. I'm sure King Ralph and his buddies would love the fact Telus is taking on these unionized workers. Can't let those lefties gain any support or have anything interfere in unfettered capitalism.
Alberta do anything that would help a union or worker's cause? Not in my lifetime. Remember, they're the home of the Canadian Alliance (or whatever mask they're going by this year).
Basic constitutional rights should solve this problem Telus has created, but beyond that there are "common carrier" agreements to think of. I reall either Yahoo or MSN dropping all monitoring of chat rooms about three years ago because they were challenged for not monitoring and censoring *all* rooms. Will this open a similar can of worms with Telus?
They do not consider this site acceptable and have blocked it, what's to stop another group from using this as precedent to demand another site they deem "unacceptable" blocked.
It's funny, just last week I was having a debate with my girlfriend who is a Chinese national, and she was defending the Great Firewall of China as a needed evil to maintain the stability of the country. I was saying how there is no situation that can justify restricting freedom of expression and knowledge. Last night she quickly pointed out that it seems Canada is no better. Telus is putting themselves on par with a murderous regeim, nice when it comes to basic freedoms, nice.
This matter can be allowed to slide. As a Telus customer I can't access that site from home, I can't get all sides of the story in this despute. That is not right.
I tried to complain to the CRTC, however the CRTC does not regulate ISPs (unfortunately). They claim internet service is competative enough it doesn't need regulating.... in this case we see that's not true. I have only two options for high speed internet, ADSL or cable. Sure there are other ADSL providers, but they all use Telus' copper. So even if I were to switch to one of these other providers, I still can't get around the block. It's these other providers that should be screaming bloody murder, the mandated openning of phone company infrastructure obviously has limits on how open it is.
not to use the public machines for any financial or private communications.
Agreed. When I travel what I do is change my password on all my accounts to one which I will throw away when I return home. Yes, there's still a risk of abuse, but the window is hopefully small enough if you're only gone for a few weeks that it won't be a problem.
What I also do is forward all my email accounts to a throw-away Gmail account. Again, so I can read and respond to email but not be concerned someone could try and break into my box. It also means I'll avoid at all costs trying to ssh into my machine.
The final really geeky thing I sometimes do is setup an almost honeypot box. A machine that I can ssh into with a throw-away password that is on an isolated network. I then place an ssh key somewhere on this box and use it to ssh to one of my other boxes if needed. This way the only password I will type will be to this honeypot box, not to the actual machine I need access to (being a sysadmin, sometimes you need to pop in to a machine while away, but I'll never 'su' - I'll ask whoever is covering for me to actually do that 'work'). Again one great advantage of this is you can then just erase the key from that honeypot box, so even if the keylogging person is somewhat techno-savvy, they can't get access to that key. If you hide about 3 keys on the machine, you can do this use/erase method 3 times over your trip.
And I know others will probably suggest an ssh-key on a usb key, another very good idea - as long as you're going somewhere that has a high enough level of computing to be able to use this method. Most of my trips have been to the developing world, where machines are still running win98. USB keys don't exactly work too well on those machines, if they even have USB slots.;)
The key takeaway message is - use a one-time password and create a throw-away email account for communication. And I agree, no banking! Leave your online banking info with someone at home and email them to do it for you. Nothing wrong with being a little paranoid.:)
Generally, those women want to "settle down" when they've gotten a lot of wrinkles, gained a good deal of weight, and had a few kids. This is when those cool guys she had before lose interest and go after younger women, so they "graciously" settle for a guy who's a little more dull but will give them money to live off of.
And we're supposed to be grateful to them.
That is EXACTLY my point. We're the second choice when other options wear out. We've always been there, ready to be loyal and loving.... but it's not until they need us they come knocking.
My solution in university was to find a nice geek girl, a fellow CS major. Alas it didn't work out, but that was absolute heaven for the three years we dated. I've since found myself another CS major, not quite as geeky as I'd like based on my past experience, but geek girls are definitely the way to go. You can have geeky adventures together.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just hoping wireless can save us. I'm currently dependant upon an infrastructure owned by a single entity and protected by polititions who just happen to be for sale. It's just a matter of time. If you have a choice between wireless and wired, choose wireless. If we keep pumping money to wireless providers, the technology will only get better; and wireless has much lower entry barriors, so we can count on competition. Adam Smith would be proud.
It seems no matter who you talk to in the USA, you hear the same comments, politicians are for say, they don't work in the best interests of the public, they're corrupt. Well then DO something about it. It seems the number of people you hear this from is sifficient that if you all actually banded together to bring about a truly representative government that actually works for the people, you'd have a lot of clout.
But instead, we just find more people not voting, withdrawing from political affairs, giving up. No! Stand up! Overthrow that corrupt government you have. You will have the support of the majority of the world in doing so, I'm not sure if American laws allow it, but I'm sure you could get a lot of donations from around the world for such a political campaign. I know I'd throw in some money for an anti-Republican, anti-Democrat party if I could.
Quit being sheep!
It was de-regulation that caused every hamburger chain to combine into one.
It was de-regulation that caused every big box consumer store to combine into one.
It was de-regulation that caused every candy bar company to combine into one.
Apples and oranges. That argument applies to businesses where entities, offices, etc are separate. Telecommunications is completely different; there is one set of phone lines running through a neighbourhood, there is one set of cable lines running through a neighbourhood.
Do you really think a municipality would allow every company that wants to come along to put up more wires? Do you really think residents would want dozens of different wires running through their streets? Do you really think it would be economically viable for a company to wire up a neighbourhood if they only had one or two customers in an area?
It's an economic factor why there's only one set of telephone and cable wires in a city. And as another poster said, if there was pure deregulation, what would force the owners of those wires to let anyone else use them? They would be the gatekeeper for that telephone network or cable company, they would dictate what goes down those wires and how much you pay, and the consumer would have very little choice.
This is why regulation is needed, because it's not like a burger joint where someone can just put up a new franchise next door - a new player can't simply lay down a new set of wires.
The infrastructure in this case should be a public asset that is there to facilitate commerce and competition, allowing any players to enter, like our public road system. All companies can use the roads in an equal manner.
And that's what a one-tier internet does, allow anyone to enter the game because they have the same access to the market as anyone else. A two-tier would force all the small players on the wider internet out of business because they would have to pay a toll to reach the consumers.
You like real life analogies? It's like each neighbourhood being able to set up a toll on the roads in their area dictating that all red cars need to pay $5 to pass, after those roads were already paid for by taxpayers. I as a consumer already paid for a road to the internet, paying for my DSL or cable, I should be able to pick what colour car I drive down that road, not have that dictated to me.
Explain to me how you can have an understanding of A records and IPv4, and a very basic understanding of what IPv6 is (not going into how it works or anything) and NOT know what an AAAA record is? I'm genuinely interested in the thought process.
Very simple, I've never looked into how DNS in IPv6 works, I said I'd only looked very basically at IPv6. And this is exactly the kind of guide needed, "A record in IPv4 == AAAA record in IPv6"
They exist for many other fields, there needs to be a "IPv6 guide for IPv4 developers" or some similar book. Something which puts IPv6 components in terms of IPv4, something that might have a section (since we're talking DNS above) giving an example IPv4 BIND record for a domain, and then an equivilant record for IPv6 to help people relate to the changes.
What I most want is a decent howto on IPv6 transition. I know the basics, I know the theory of how it's suppose to work. But I'll be damned if I know how numbering works (I know there's some odd pre or suffix in the numbering, no?), I have no idea what theses AAAA records are, etc.
And before someone says to just go read the RFCs, no, what needs to be made is a transition guide for those already familiar with IPv4. Myself, and most others, probably don't want to sit reading dry RFCs. Give me a lesson pack on how DNS records differ, or how the numbering works in relation to IPv4.
That will be one of the most useful things in getting techies prepared for the change.
And if something like that already exists (it probably does, I just haven't found it yet), someone please post it so we can all get up to speed.
If I understood it, I'd probably take the extra time to make all my future software IPv6 compatible.
Yes, there would absolutely be no legitimate reason for a company to do this. Blogs, many of which are unsigned, are truly the worlds most reliable source for all information on those evil corporations.
Geez, it seems no one has a sense of humour any more. I guess I should have specifically ended with a </silly> tag....
Let the lawsuits begin....
Yes, you too can now easily track all those slamming your product, no matter how much it might deserve public scorn. Have your lawyer on speed dial, because it's time to stop that pesky public from interfering with your business model by commenting on such silly things as "quality."
Referring to a system with equal votes between elected representatives of democracies and kleptocratic representatives of dictatorships as "democracy on a world scale" is so mind-bogglingly stupid it could only come from someone with a .ca address.
Who on earth even said dictatorships would get a voice? That is a huge "ass"umption and more FUD. We're talking the UN, which I would hope would work in the best interests of freedom and equity around the world.
What gives you the right to forbid China from having a say in the administration of the Internet?
i n_mainland_China
The despicable way[1] they currently administer it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_
And has American control been able to do anything to prevent that? I really don't see how an international body could do any worse.
Censorship on a domestic level is completely different from address and name allocation. Apples and oranges.
And if I recall, certain American companies have recently been slammed for helping Chinese censorship. Where's the outcry from the US Senate over that? It seems like a double standard for freedom.... freedom, unless we can make a profit off oppression.
Only because, at the monment, they don't have the power to do it outside their borders too.
If you really think that would occur, you truly are paranoid.
First, they would only be once voice, we're not talking about "giving the internet to the Chinese." Geez, talk about overblowing things.
Second, really, will this international body actually be able to enforce things in sovereign states? With the current status quo, has the USA been able to mandate "you shall not censor" to other countries with it's current control over the internet? Nope. Why on earth would that power change?
What this comes down to is Americans not wanting to give up their dominante world position, the idea of actually sharing control with any other country scares the shit out of them. Democracy on a world scale, what a concept.
You would rather China have a say in the administration of the internet?
Yes, because America's exclusive control over the internet is having such a profound influence in preventing oppression and censorship online in China.
The argument is such FUD. What a country does with regard to IP routing, firewalling, etc within their borders is completely separate from the proposed handover of administration in IP allocation and other such policies. You're talking about ensuring global internet policies work for the improvement of all countries.
When it comes to influence from oppressive regimes, most certainly more needs to be done to ensure their ability to censor freedom of information is held in check. However I don't see much of that happening under current administration of the internet - if anything, we keep hearing stories about American software companies actually *helping* these regimes oppress their people.
Microsoft bundles/promotes their own software.
I think fewer people would have a problem with it if Microsoft bundled for example OpenOffice, Firefox, VLC and Gimp.
Ahh, but if they bundled OpenOffice, then Corel could jump and scream about being discriminated against.
If they bundled Firefox (it always seems to come back to IE/Firefox when the subject of bundling comes up), Opera and Netscape could jump and scream about it.
At what point do you stop? There's a lot of software out there, how do you decide what to include?
I'm not trying to troll as one moderator suggested, I'm asking an honest question that we as a community need to decide what exactly our objectives are. What is "right" and what is "wrong"?
Whoa wait a minute here....
They're less statisfied because of the woeful default applications, unlike Linux you have to buy/download all your additional tools.
However when Microsoft tries to bundle things with the OS to solve this problem (think IE), they're demonized for being a monopoly and trying to leverage their OS to cut out the competition.
So which is it? Do we want an all-in-one OS and application suite or do we want a distinct separation of the OS from it's applications to prevent abuse.
I am NOT defending MS. I'm personally on the side that they're exploiting a monopoly. However this means you can't expect everything to "be there" when you're finished installing Windows.
Just a random ponder.... I wonder when M$ or others will accuse SuSE or RH of trying to stiffle the competition by bundling apps with the OS.
</devil's advocate>
Use the Chinese alphabet. If you have a year where you run out, it's all just one big hurricane.
You're partially right. There are names that begin with X, Y, and Z, just most are foreign. For example, the English spelling of my girlfriend's name starts with X (it's a Chinese name). So to say after W they have to move to Greek letters should be insulting to almost every foreigner living in North America.
Besides, wouldn't you love to see Hurricane Xena?
you are not. Many CS graduates these days are jobless because of programs like this. Switch to a vocational program while you still have a change.
This post should win dumbest troll of the year.
I used to have this debate back when I was in school with people. In the school I began my degree there were two programs, a computer science program and a more "practical" computer information systems.
In Computer Science we learned the theoretical background, we learned how and why computers work as they do, and more importantly - how to learn. Language and skills were a way to re-enforce this theoretical base.
The CIS program learned the skills of the day. You know what one of their courses were? "Programming in Visual Basic" How many of those people taking that course 7 years ago do you think are still finding gainful employment programming in VB? And how many had to go back for skills upgrading?
I remember one summer on coop, two CS students, one CIS student. It was a help desk job, nothing exciting. But a call came in to help a user with Word. The response from the CIS person, "We didn't learn Word, we learned Word Perfect." So? If you had the theoretical background you could figure it out, find the relivant connections between the two.
As opposed to myself, my primary job these days is programming in perl. Do you think I was ever "taught" perl? No, we did C, C++, Java, etc. But I had the background to learn it on my own, because I learned how to learn, I learned how languages worked through courses such as "compiler design."
So are you in the wrong program? Depends, do you want a long term job or have to retrain every few years? People like Dan Zambonini are absolutely wrong, things like "learning XML" can be done from a book if you know the relivent background about languages and such schemas. I know that's how I learned (alright, working for the 'father of XML' for a few years certainly didn't hurt...).
If you see more construction cranes in China, have you thought about what stage their society's at? It's rapidly developing, and starting from a less developed point. Of course they're building more stuff, but they're still a looong way away from U.S. infrastructure.
Yes that is very true. However if you dig under the surface a little you find not only is it an infrastructure building project by they're also investing in research in parallel. Their universities are pumping out new research developments like water out of a tap, their businesses are growing at a pace that make us look as if we're going backwards. And most important, they're using all this wealth from our money flowing to China to buy up companies around the world.
They're building the infrastructure, and they're building the economy around it as well. They will pass us within a decade unless we stop looking at short term profits. As for the comment about it's easier to get stuff done - yes, that is true too. It's the only advantage I see to their government system, the government has the long term vision of where it wants to go and need not worry about these silly little things called 'elections.'
Regardless, it is time to take the economic threwat seriously.
Corporations are more to blame for the decline of science than the government. Most industrial development is ultimately driven by companies looking to make money on new technologies. Lately, most companies have been gutting research budgets in favor of more short term profits (ie. HP). Look at most job postings, how many both require an advanced degree and are willing to pay enough to hire someone? Most companies aren't interested. Until corporate America can look past next quarter's numbers, R&D will not really exist in the U.S. anymore.
You hit the nail on the head. I just got back from visiting my girlfriend's parents in Mainland China, and the change I see there over the past year is mind blowing. In North America we're focused on the short term profit, on how to make a buck in the next quarter, in China they see the big picture and the long term goal. They know where they want to go, and know that some investments are long term.
We've forgotten that, and we're going to pay dearly for it over the next decade. In her home city I saw 4 bridges, multiple express ways, and countless buildings being built all at once. You could see at least 100 cranes at a time from any vantage point. In North America we have crumbling infrastructure, budgets on everything from education to health being slashed, and crumbling cities.
We need to wake up and see that we will become irrelivant unless we start looking at the long term.
Um, yeah, take a look at the globe, and compare the size of South Korea to the size of the United States (as well as the rest of the countries that have "got us beat"). In terms of infrastructure, how much do you think it costs to lay fiber from one end of S. Korea or Japan, or Austria to the other, compared to the US? Those are relatively small and densly populated countries, compared to the United States, a large country with more vast, unpopulated areas than any other industrial nation.
Alright, point taken. Now look at Canada on the map, larger than the US. Yet we're beating America too in broadband availability, so your argument doesn't hold water. It's all about policies by government.
And on that point, the comment in the original article about the evils of "anti-competative policies" - there's nothing wrong with such policies, there are such things as natural monopolies. However what make these natural monopolies not become anti-comsumer is government actually taking up it's role and regulating such industries to the benefit of the public. Putting in place watchdogs and policies that ensure these industries don't take advantage of the consumer and give the product at the price the consumers deserve.
Those are the policies being enacted by all these countries which are "beating" the US in broadband. Using the power of economies of scale and highly regulating it.
If America wants to get broadband out to all consumers by 2007 you have to stop this silly deregulation stuff and simply mandate that these companies get it done.
I completely agree, if there's a security flaw in a piece of software or hardware I own I want to know about it so I can take action to minimize the risk.
As another comment said, in such situations it's foolish to believe only the good guys have discovered this flaw. All users of the product are at risk while the truth about a flaw is kept in the shadows.
Exactly, he did the right thing.
I'm still amazed that lawsuits can be filed for disclosing a security flaw, how is that right in any way?
It's like being sued for announcing someone left their front door unlocked. It's more an embarrassment to the person who left if unlocked, you can't be held accountable for someone else's stupidity.
If this kind of situation continues it's going to have a chilling effect on research, which will have long term negative consequences. Not only will it slow down technological innovation but it will lead to a very large exploit that will fester for months until someone comes along and paralyzes the entire internet. Smart. So much for talk in the US government about preparing for cyber attacks....
he University of Alberta, located in Edmonton, AB, uses Telus as it's primary ISP. By arbitrarily blocking this site, without consultation with the customer(s), they've breached a contract with the University, and by extension, the Alberta government. I expect there'll be some movement on this pretty quickly.
Ha! Doubtful, this is ALBERTA we're talking about. I'm sure King Ralph and his buddies would love the fact Telus is taking on these unionized workers. Can't let those lefties gain any support or have anything interfere in unfettered capitalism.
Alberta do anything that would help a union or worker's cause? Not in my lifetime. Remember, they're the home of the Canadian Alliance (or whatever mask they're going by this year).
I'm sorry, but how can an antenna possibly be illegal? If that were true, then a long piece of wire would now be illegal too.
Hrm, no, we're talking 2.4GHz, I guess that would actually be a *short* piece of wire, my bad.
But regardless, it's like saying owning a screwdriver is illegal because it could be used to take the hinges off an insecure door. Dumb.
Basic constitutional rights should solve this problem Telus has created, but beyond that there are "common carrier" agreements to think of. I reall either Yahoo or MSN dropping all monitoring of chat rooms about three years ago because they were challenged for not monitoring and censoring *all* rooms. Will this open a similar can of worms with Telus?
They do not consider this site acceptable and have blocked it, what's to stop another group from using this as precedent to demand another site they deem "unacceptable" blocked.
It's funny, just last week I was having a debate with my girlfriend who is a Chinese national, and she was defending the Great Firewall of China as a needed evil to maintain the stability of the country. I was saying how there is no situation that can justify restricting freedom of expression and knowledge. Last night she quickly pointed out that it seems Canada is no better. Telus is putting themselves on par with a murderous regeim, nice when it comes to basic freedoms, nice.
This matter can be allowed to slide. As a Telus customer I can't access that site from home, I can't get all sides of the story in this despute. That is not right.
I tried to complain to the CRTC, however the CRTC does not regulate ISPs (unfortunately). They claim internet service is competative enough it doesn't need regulating.... in this case we see that's not true. I have only two options for high speed internet, ADSL or cable. Sure there are other ADSL providers, but they all use Telus' copper. So even if I were to switch to one of these other providers, I still can't get around the block. It's these other providers that should be screaming bloody murder, the mandated openning of phone company infrastructure obviously has limits on how open it is.
My passwords are really secure - they use characters that aren't even on the keyboard!
;)
Oh yeah? I use the imaginary number in mine!
not to use the public machines for any financial or private communications.
;)
:)
Agreed. When I travel what I do is change my password on all my accounts to one which I will throw away when I return home. Yes, there's still a risk of abuse, but the window is hopefully small enough if you're only gone for a few weeks that it won't be a problem.
What I also do is forward all my email accounts to a throw-away Gmail account. Again, so I can read and respond to email but not be concerned someone could try and break into my box. It also means I'll avoid at all costs trying to ssh into my machine.
The final really geeky thing I sometimes do is setup an almost honeypot box. A machine that I can ssh into with a throw-away password that is on an isolated network. I then place an ssh key somewhere on this box and use it to ssh to one of my other boxes if needed. This way the only password I will type will be to this honeypot box, not to the actual machine I need access to (being a sysadmin, sometimes you need to pop in to a machine while away, but I'll never 'su' - I'll ask whoever is covering for me to actually do that 'work'). Again one great advantage of this is you can then just erase the key from that honeypot box, so even if the keylogging person is somewhat techno-savvy, they can't get access to that key. If you hide about 3 keys on the machine, you can do this use/erase method 3 times over your trip.
And I know others will probably suggest an ssh-key on a usb key, another very good idea - as long as you're going somewhere that has a high enough level of computing to be able to use this method. Most of my trips have been to the developing world, where machines are still running win98. USB keys don't exactly work too well on those machines, if they even have USB slots.
The key takeaway message is - use a one-time password and create a throw-away email account for communication. And I agree, no banking! Leave your online banking info with someone at home and email them to do it for you. Nothing wrong with being a little paranoid.
Generally, those women want to "settle down" when they've gotten a lot of wrinkles, gained a good deal of weight, and had a few kids. This is when those cool guys she had before lose interest and go after younger women, so they "graciously" settle for a guy who's a little more dull but will give them money to live off of.
:)
And we're supposed to be grateful to them.
That is EXACTLY my point. We're the second choice when other options wear out. We've always been there, ready to be loyal and loving.... but it's not until they need us they come knocking.
My solution in university was to find a nice geek girl, a fellow CS major. Alas it didn't work out, but that was absolute heaven for the three years we dated. I've since found myself another CS major, not quite as geeky as I'd like based on my past experience, but geek girls are definitely the way to go. You can have geeky adventures together.