Would these planes be vulnerable to EMP pulses over lasers that have been discussed here on/. before?
I ask this because the planes will be remote controlled which would require some type of radio link. That implies and antennae. Is it possible to harden an antennae against EMP and still recieve a low power signal from many miles away? (assumption: the remote control tranmitter would have to be portable which would limit it to a few hundred watts?)
Would it be possible to control the plane with a laser communication system using a high altitude AWACs in order to keep line of sight.
From what I've read about modern military history, the goal of war is not to kill people, it is to destroy the combat effectiveness of the enemy's forces.
This kind of thinking is the reason why the U.S. military can't beat a truly committed enemy. It doesn't help that their idea of "combat effectiveness" is hopelessly self-referential (combat effectiveness is the ability to reduce combat effectiveness of an enemy).
I was suprised to learn that the M-16 was not designed to kill the enemy, it was designed to maim. The bullet is steel cased, pointed, and designed to tumble. A lucky shot (luck being relative) will take out more than one enemy as the bullet passes through one in a random fashion and into another. The enemey is then left with two wounded to drag home and care for. If you want to see the enemy's moral drop, have them carry come a lot of wounded who are screaming in pain as infection sets in. If you want to see moral drop even faster, force them to leave those same screaming wounded on the battle field.
The combat effectiveness of the enemy includes their will to fight. I'm a big guy who doesn't like to get hit. I have bluffed my way through several fights just by looking mean. This corresponds to the psychological aspect of war. We want to hit and kill the enemy without them even knowing that we have been there, thus raising fear in the average forcibly recruited soldier. Just as happened in Irag, we want to scare the off the battlefield so that we don't risk getting hit ourselves.
Unmanned aircrafts controlled remotely just make sense. Smaller tighter craft with more aerodynamic designs will basically consist of a missile carrying engine with wing stubs. They'll be in, hit the enemy, perform maneuvers that would kill a pilot, and be out again before the enemy has a chance to get a shot off. Being taken down without even a chance to fight back has got to be one of the most demoralizing situations imaginable for a soldier.
Of course, as others have stated, this will be an impetus for politician to involves us in even more conflicts that we shouldn't be in. Call it the 'see-it-doesn't-hurt-us' factor.
a) they don't have to send out a cease and desist letter directly from the output of the program. Lawyer for RIAA will use the output of the program to find where an infringing MP3 might be, use that to go look for him/herself, and then decide if the C&D letter is appropriate. The program will just be used to improve lawyer efficiency.
b) they don't have to catch every bootleg MP3. Just enough to put a chill on the free speech issue.
c) they only have to search for a subset of their copyrighted songs. Those top 100 that are currently popular. They aren't loosing much money on the rest, and those are scarce on the Net anyway.
d) the RIAA et.al., can run their own damn search engines on mainframes with all the money they've ripped from artist.
Hasn't Microsoft proven time and again that software technology doesn't have to be good to fool the sheople, just good enough?
Your assumption in that you assume a right as an adult to browse arbitrary information sources from public terminal without being monitored.
You have a right to read porno mags on the street corner. I have a right to watch you read porno mags on the street corner, take pictures of you reading porno mags on the street corner, and even publish pictures of you reading porno mags on the street corner in the Sunday Times. You do not have a right to privacy, or even an expectation to a right to privacy, in a public place. Furthermore, you do not have a right to use public facilities for any purpose you desire. I may have paid taxes that funded the building of Yankee Stadium, but that doesn't give me the right to participate in group sex in the middle of center field during the 7th inning stretch of the World Series.
they have hired thugs for that. Officially the thugs are called 'federal marshalls'; unofficially, they are hired guns who work for major corporations that contribute to major politicians.
It's like this: Bill goes to Al Bush, and explains how all these people are robbing him and that because of that, he may not have money to contribute to the next campaign or sponsor the conference in $PLUSH_VACATION_SPOT. Al Bush then appoints a couple BSA people as special agents and sends them out with a few of the regularly armed boys. They knock on your door with a warrant and proceed to confiscate everything you have to stay in business.
Remember the golden rule. The BSA will always act in a legal way, because it is so easy for them to change the definition of 'legal'.
Here's why I disagree: if government is to step in, then that means that society wants it, right? But if society really wants it, then society can fix it itself. Just use blacklists, or require crypto sigs on mail that you receive and look it up in a trustworthy-vs-spammer database, etc.
So instead of enforcing a law that says everyone must identify themselves (or at least their originating address), you would have us work at one level removed from the problem. After half the people in the world have been spammed, the spammer's name can go into a blacklist. Of course, what will be blacklisted if no name was sent, and what's to stop them from using another throw away account.
IMHO, the only advantage that is gained by using government for this, is not that it forces society to deal with the problem (since, if government is involved, then unless there's corruption, it means that society already wants to deal with it). Rather, it forces society into a consensus of how to deal with the problem. The problem I have with that is that when government tries to dictate how to deal with a problem, they come up with crap (e.g. DMCA).
e.g., traffic laws (what we have now is so much worse than the early days of the car when people could just cross the intersection whenever they liked, isn't it?).
e.g., environmental control laws (it is much better when companies get to decide when their waste is too toxic for the environment, isn't it?)
I could go on with a long list of good laws that lead to an orderly and civil society, but suffice it to say that not all laws are bad. Your slander of the entire legal system supported by a single example pushed through by powerful individuals in a manner that, if not corrupt, is at least questionable, does not give due credit to a system that has served us well for two centuries. Right now we have a tension in how people should interact. It is a proper role for the government (the organization appointed to add order to how we interact) to add order to this interaction.
You may think that your government solution for how to deal with the problem is perfect, but it has holes. For example, if the spam doesn't have a valid return address, and you trace it to having come from a relay outside of USA, what can you do? You just end up with an unenforcable law. I hate unenforcable laws.
If it becomes too much of a problem, you can block the entire domain at the US borders? We can nuke that country? How about, we exercise trade sanctions or even enter into a treaty with said country? Since the citizens of that country would most likely have the same problems that we are, maybe we could get them to implement a compatible law.
BTW, when was the last time you got a fax without the transmitting number being printed on it? All fax machines, and programs automatically add the originating phone number because companines large enough to make a profit selling these consumer products don't want to run up against the law. A lone spammer on AOL may spurn the law, but do you think PSINet or AT&T would do it openly without getting paid some fairly high dollars? And if they get paid that much, that means that the cost to the spammer will be increased, which should cause a decrease in the quantity of spam. Which in the end is all that we really want anyway.
I think this would be a place where we need the government to step in. It is illegal to send a fax without the originating phone number. This is both acceptable and effective, since if someone wants to converse with me I have to be able to contact them. Spam should be the same way. It should be illegal to send email without the correct and legitimate origin as a return address within the same domain. That way I could respond to the email with an encrypted, uuencoded copy of a core dump or two. Anonymous re-mailers are safe here, since they would only be required to attach the remailer's address.
PSINet, AT&T, et. al. will think twice about these contracts once they understand that mass spamming will result in a righteous DoS attack. The spammers will have to either pay higher rates, or find a legitimate job. Either way I won't have to delete 30 bogus emails a day anymore.
the average programmers will consume nearly their entire work day just in reading and understanding the new code generated by the good programmers
If the project was being run correctly, the average programmer wouldn't be reading the good programmers code at all. Ever heard of code-by-contract? How about object-oriented code? I don't have to dig down and understand the code in glibc, because it is in a fucking library. All I need to know is the function name and its parameters. If I'm having to read code in order to use it, it wasn't written be a very good programmer at all.
It is easy for an office to beat the home on the social dimension,...
Not unless the company is hiring some freaky women to come in a couple times a week to provide certain services that are illegal to be provide for pay in most of these united states. Playing pinball just doesn't compare the games me and my woman play.
One of the main points of the ad was to ridicule the cheap open-plan offices in which programmers were traditionally housed and promote the fact that at Microsoft each developer gets a plush personal office.
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An open office plan contributes to making the work environment stronger on the social dimension.
This lack of internal consistency amplifies another one of his points.
In the long run it is impossible for an organization to be excellent in one area and mediocre in all others.
If you see one of your best people walking out the door at 6:00 pm, try to think why you haven't challenged that person with an interesting project. If you see one of your average programmers walking out the door at 6:00 pm, recognize that this person is not developing into a good programmer. An average programmer's productivity will never be significant in a group of good programmers. If you care about profits, you must either come up with a new training program for the person or figure out the best way to terminate his or her employment with your organization.
This is beyond the pale. I'm up at 6am exercising. I drop the kids off at 8am and arrive at work by 8:30. Put in my 8 hours and leave at 5. If I am to be rested the next day, I need to be in bed by 10pm. This leaves a total of 4 hours a day to devote to the next generation of programmers, let my wife know that she isn't a single mother, and maybe play at one of my many hobbies that are generally ignored. Greenspun can kiss my ass. Excuse the french, but that is as polite as I can put it. If my company (which is realistic, BTW) installed a pool table, rock wall, garden, grand piano, etc, they would all be summarily IGNORED. This is work. I do it to make a living so that I can spend time with what is truly important.
If my manager challenged me for walking out after having been at the office for 10 hours, then he won't have to ask himself anything. I will ask him to kiss my ass. I've done it before and I'll do it again.
And just in case it wasn't clear before, Greenspun and all of you "keep 'em entertained while we work them to death" managers can KISS MY ASS!!
How would reform of soft money have prevented the scenario you portrayed? Should there be a law preventing me from calling everyone in the phone book and explaning how Bush/Gore is an idiot/hero?
Everyone says we need to change, but change in and of itself isn't necessarily good. You have to move to something better. What do you propose?
This is actually looking more and more doable as time goes on.
You still missed the main point of my post. After you have done it, what do you have? You've now picked another ruler.
For those who have read Animal Farm, you've traded the humans for the pigs. Are you any better off? Would it not be easier to force the humans to act correctly in the first place. Someone must rule, and without checks and balances they will rule in their own interest. Creating another system without installing the checks and balances is a waste of time at best and most likely counter-productive.
What we have here is a case where good people with good intentions have lost there credibility through hyperbole.
How did the model program reduce binge drinking? Through reality. It showed students that there was no need to drink yourself silly in an attempt to keep up.
How could DARE actually work? Through reality. Instead of saying 'pot kills', they should say that pot will reduce your performance. (I think they should still be allowed to say that CRACK and sniffing glue kills?)
The point is that people who are still trying to figure out how the world works are incredibly sensitive to hypocrisy, and they invariably reject it out of hand once it is found. A rejected hypocrit is not an authority, no matter whose uniform they are wearing. Iff DARE is to be effective, they must present the most solid research in the frankest manner possible.
Because it wouldn't work for any reasonable amount of time.
So company XYZ wants a domain name so that the people can easily find their web site. What name service do they go with? The most popular of course. The people want an easy way to find company XYZ. Which service do they use? The most popular of course.
But company ABC, out of moral impetus, refuses to use the most popular. What's the result? Considering that most people won't even change to a resolution above 640x480x60Hz on a brand new 19' monitor, ABC's site will never see a hit except by a few geeks. To stay in business they must switch to the most popular. Eventually, the only service left will be the most popular. Who will controll it then? Don't say, "We will", unless you're willing to define 'we' and a method of how the 'we' will control. If you can define those two parameters, it makes more sense to replace the head of the current system with your definition than to replace the current extensive infrastructure.
The point is, you can't run and hide to a different technical solution every time someone tries to usurp power. The way of the world dictates that some people work to create, and some people work to dominate the creation of others. If you move to a new technical solution, the dominators will simply move in to take it over. Who else is willing to give up their technical pursuits in order to manage any new solution you come up with? Any one willing to wants the power, not to create new geek toys, so you immediately get yourself into the exact same position.
This is a social problem, not a technical one. This problem requires that geeks pull their heads out of their monitors, stand up and say, "Hell no. You're not going to simply walk in here and claim our work for yourself. Get the hell out." Then we have to install people who want to be in power, but put checks and balances in place. They must know that they can get kicked out just like the last group if they don't look after the proper interest.
I think a valid response would be to get a lot of the big names that actually were responsible for the internet and DNS together (Al Gore would probably like to head up the group), and let them go on for a while about how this group is quickly losing its legitimacy. Especially in America (I can't speak about other cultures since I don't know them), people get upset when they hear of someone usurping the work of another. So all the inventors get together, send a letter to Congress which says, "Heh, they're stealing our stuff", then give a few whiny interviews on Opra. Politician will start raving about the injustice, the Pres will hold some town hall meetings, Heraldo Rivera will do a special where he finds the draft of a DNS spec in a locked vault of a demolished building. In other words, watch how quickly things change to the way we like them.
Always remember, society is just a system. Learn to hack it.
It doesn't matter what OS you're running or what Email proggy you use if the person is dumb enough to run random executables.
But what happens when an email program provides a preview feature that will open an email and show you the first few lines and an auto-execute feature that will run an arbitrary program when the email is opened?
What happens when both features are enabled out of the box? Is a heart surgeon to be called stupid because he spends his days reading up on heart surgery instead of all the intricacies of computer security?
And what do you want to bet that the NSA can break your encryption?
That's the point in the one time pad. Eliminates all possibility of decryption as long as the pad length is the same as the message, and as long as the pad is kept secret.
Even without that, I would find it very suprising to learn that anyone, including the NSA, finds it trivial to decrypt multiple levels. Even then, the problem with the big guns is that they are big. You ever seen the flotilla that accompanies one of the Navy's big gun ships or aircraft carriers. Getting the NSA to pull out there best and brightest to tackle 4 level encryption to bust a drug ring or kiddie porn ring will not be and easy political maneuver.
The FBI has a packet sniffer. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
Seriously though. As I read the description, the only thing that would come to mind was that this device would only stop the most stupid of criminal. The type of rogues that murdered Michael Jordan's father. They commit a crime and then run around telling everyone about it.
Anyone foolish enough to be transmitting data in the clear concerning something that the FBI would care about needs to be locked away for their own protection. Any criminal with half a brain would set up a VPN to set up an SSH session in order to run their custom chat program that uses one-time-pad security. I guess the paranoid aren't being caught, only those who would log into #imACriminal and type, "Me Shotgun. Me rob Wells Fargo at Fifth and main last night. Me live in yellow house."
Again, I reiterate, this will only catch the stupid criminals, and maybe those that the powers that be want bad enough to invest the resource of the NSA to break a ridiculous amount of encryption.
Re:And lo, the mechanic speaks.
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Air-Powered Cars
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The only problem I see is in compressing the air. I used to drive long-haul trucks, which use compressed air for brakes (for slashdotters not in the know).
Job one every morning was to drain all the water out of the air tanks. You pull a cord which opens a valve and lets the air in the tank blow out the water that settles in the bottom. You wouldn't believe all the muck that is in the air that winds up in that water. If the tanks aren't drained for a few days they will spray out a grey goo that's just nasty.
My point is that low maintenance will only be moved from the engine to the compressor (another high maintenance item) and the associated holding tanks. Probably not as bad as an engine like you say, but still not trivial.
a) there is a 1% chance I'll die from bad software and 100% chance that I can sue someone somewhere if I do die. The chances of my estate actually recieving any substantial money are very low, since the lawyers will eat up all the settlement pointing fingers at each other.
-OR-
b) the software that runs the equipment has be inspected by dozens of different hospitals, each of which is putting their own pocketbooks on the line (there's no one else to point a finger at. They have the code, the should review it before using it.) The chances of death are nearly null. The chances of my estate actually receiving any substantial settlement are also nearly null (hospital argues that the use of the software is standard practice and has been proven safe in the past).
All other things being equal, I'd trust dozens of front-line reviewers with their own asses on the line, rather than a few unknown reviewers with unknown motivation.
Either the apps are simple desktop "applets", or they will be low quality knock-offs of good software.
Designing, developing, and testing a robust, feature-rich application takes a lot of time. He gives a total of 8 man-years per product. My experience says this is plenty for the 'developer' quality software you see on freshmeat (ie, the software does its job if you treat it right), but will not cut the mustard of what consumers expect from a CompUSA shelf box.
My gut feeling is that they will be hawking the type of software that you find in those big 'bargain boxes' at CompUSA. First there are the cheap knock-offs: "Heh, look. $10 for a CAD program!! I gotta have this." Unfortunately, trying to do anything but the tutorial crashes program. Then there are the useless extension to outdated shareware: "Look. 1001 Card Games. Only $10. And here is 101 Arcade Games That We All Wish We Could Forget. Still only $10."
It's nice to have 117 more developers on board, but since they're closed source I don't see them contributing much to the community other than some exposure on store shelves. Even then, if they're software is as sub-standard as I expect it to be, it may prove to be negative exposure.
Download their PDF product description. Right there in bold letters, one of the benefits of to "Service Providers" is:
Increases barriers to competition Sounds like just another lock in device is coming down the line.
Add a wireless networking card, and build a pad that displays X11 streams. Audio out and a mic will make the telephone functions much more usefull. Make sure you leave all the processing on the server so that the display pad stays cheap, because I'll want to buy several.
Do this and you will have the ultimate home server system.
Speaking of which, does anyone see the release of StarOffice as GPL as anything other than an attempt by Sun to kill off Microsoft's cash cow, Office?
No.
Consider Sun's position. They see everyone moving to Wintel boxes because of Office compatibility and the other slew of productivity software available for the Wintel platform. More and more, they see their own cash cow slipping away as MS takes hold of the network effect once again.
In this case McNealy can do one of two things. He can sit idly by as his company is slowly pushed into irrelevance. Or he can fight with all his might to stop the network effect. The only way to do this is to create your own network that is just as big as the other. The people at Sun realize this, and they also realize that the viral nature of the GPL added to the cost advantage will create a network effect that will dwarf MS.
I for one am ready to help them. Whenever you receive a MS doc that won't display in SO, send a reply tactfully:
1) asking for the document in a standard format
2) explaining that it's not the sender's fault that MS makes gratuitious changes to their file formats in order to foil competitors (not to help them)
3) explaining that you use a Office Suite that doens't cost an arm-n-leg or burden IT with licenscing issues (doing audits is expensive and time consuming)
I've done this and have gotten very positive results from my coworkers.
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Would these planes be vulnerable to EMP pulses over lasers that have been discussed here on /. before?
I ask this because the planes will be remote controlled which would require some type of radio link. That implies and antennae. Is it possible to harden an antennae against EMP and still recieve a low power signal from many miles away? (assumption: the remote control tranmitter would have to be portable which would limit it to a few hundred watts?)
Would it be possible to control the plane with a laser communication system using a high altitude AWACs in order to keep line of sight.
From what I've read about modern military history, the goal of war is not to kill people, it is to destroy the combat effectiveness of the enemy's forces.
This kind of thinking is the reason why the U.S. military can't beat a truly committed enemy. It doesn't help that their idea of "combat effectiveness" is hopelessly self-referential (combat effectiveness is the ability to reduce combat effectiveness of an enemy).
I was suprised to learn that the M-16 was not designed to kill the enemy, it was designed to maim. The bullet is steel cased, pointed, and designed to tumble. A lucky shot (luck being relative) will take out more than one enemy as the bullet passes through one in a random fashion and into another. The enemey is then left with two wounded to drag home and care for. If you want to see the enemy's moral drop, have them carry come a lot of wounded who are screaming in pain as infection sets in. If you want to see moral drop even faster, force them to leave those same screaming wounded on the battle field.
The combat effectiveness of the enemy includes their will to fight. I'm a big guy who doesn't like to get hit. I have bluffed my way through several fights just by looking mean. This corresponds to the psychological aspect of war. We want to hit and kill the enemy without them even knowing that we have been there, thus raising fear in the average forcibly recruited soldier. Just as happened in Irag, we want to scare the off the battlefield so that we don't risk getting hit ourselves.
Unmanned aircrafts controlled remotely just make sense. Smaller tighter craft with more aerodynamic designs will basically consist of a missile carrying engine with wing stubs. They'll be in, hit the enemy, perform maneuvers that would kill a pilot, and be out again before the enemy has a chance to get a shot off. Being taken down without even a chance to fight back has got to be one of the most demoralizing situations imaginable for a soldier.
Of course, as others have stated, this will be an impetus for politician to involves us in even more conflicts that we shouldn't be in. Call it the 'see-it-doesn't-hurt-us' factor.
Why does everyone forget that:
a) they don't have to send out a cease and desist letter directly from the output of the program. Lawyer for RIAA will use the output of the program to find where an infringing MP3 might be, use that to go look for him/herself, and then decide if the C&D letter is appropriate. The program will just be used to improve lawyer efficiency.
b) they don't have to catch every bootleg MP3. Just enough to put a chill on the free speech issue.
c) they only have to search for a subset of their copyrighted songs. Those top 100 that are currently popular. They aren't loosing much money on the rest, and those are scarce on the Net anyway.
d) the RIAA et.al., can run their own damn search engines on mainframes with all the money they've ripped from artist.
Hasn't Microsoft proven time and again that software technology doesn't have to be good to fool the sheople, just good enough?
Your assumption in that you assume a right as an adult to browse arbitrary information sources from public terminal without being monitored.
You have a right to read porno mags on the street corner. I have a right to watch you read porno mags on the street corner, take pictures of you reading porno mags on the street corner, and even publish pictures of you reading porno mags on the street corner in the Sunday Times. You do not have a right to privacy, or even an expectation to a right to privacy, in a public place. Furthermore, you do not have a right to use public facilities for any purpose you desire. I may have paid taxes that funded the building of Yankee Stadium, but that doesn't give me the right to participate in group sex in the middle of center field during the 7th inning stretch of the World Series.
Buy a CD because of one catchy tune on the radio? This is obviously targetted at rich kids without bills to pay.
they have hired thugs for that. Officially the thugs are called 'federal marshalls'; unofficially, they are hired guns who work for major corporations that contribute to major politicians.
It's like this: Bill goes to Al Bush, and explains how all these people are robbing him and that because of that, he may not have money to contribute to the next campaign or sponsor the conference in $PLUSH_VACATION_SPOT. Al Bush then appoints a couple BSA people as special agents and sends them out with a few of the regularly armed boys. They knock on your door with a warrant and proceed to confiscate everything you have to stay in business.
Remember the golden rule. The BSA will always act in a legal way, because it is so easy for them to change the definition of 'legal'.
Here's why I disagree: if government is to step in, then that means that society wants it, right? But if society really wants it, then society can fix it itself. Just use blacklists, or require crypto sigs on mail that you receive and look it up in a trustworthy-vs-spammer database, etc.
So instead of enforcing a law that says everyone must identify themselves (or at least their originating address), you would have us work at one level removed from the problem. After half the people in the world have been spammed, the spammer's name can go into a blacklist. Of course, what will be blacklisted if no name was sent, and what's to stop them from using another throw away account.
IMHO, the only advantage that is gained by using government for this, is not that it forces society to deal with the problem (since, if government is involved, then unless there's corruption, it means that society already wants to deal with it). Rather, it forces society into a consensus of how to deal with the problem. The problem I have with that is that when government tries to dictate how to deal with a problem, they come up with crap (e.g. DMCA).
e.g., traffic laws (what we have now is so much worse than the early days of the car when people could just cross the intersection whenever they liked, isn't it?).
e.g., environmental control laws (it is much better when companies get to decide when their waste is too toxic for the environment, isn't it?)
I could go on with a long list of good laws that lead to an orderly and civil society, but suffice it to say that not all laws are bad. Your slander of the entire legal system supported by a single example pushed through by powerful individuals in a manner that, if not corrupt, is at least questionable, does not give due credit to a system that has served us well for two centuries. Right now we have a tension in how people should interact. It is a proper role for the government (the organization appointed to add order to how we interact) to add order to this interaction.
You may think that your government solution for how to deal with the problem is perfect, but it has holes. For example, if the spam doesn't have a valid return address, and you trace it to having come from a relay outside of USA, what can you do? You just end up with an unenforcable law. I hate unenforcable laws.
If it becomes too much of a problem, you can block the entire domain at the US borders? We can nuke that country? How about, we exercise trade sanctions or even enter into a treaty with said country? Since the citizens of that country would most likely have the same problems that we are, maybe we could get them to implement a compatible law.
BTW, when was the last time you got a fax without the transmitting number being printed on it? All fax machines, and programs automatically add the originating phone number because companines large enough to make a profit selling these consumer products don't want to run up against the law. A lone spammer on AOL may spurn the law, but do you think PSINet or AT&T would do it openly without getting paid some fairly high dollars? And if they get paid that much, that means that the cost to the spammer will be increased, which should cause a decrease in the quantity of spam. Which in the end is all that we really want anyway.
I think this would be a place where we need the government to step in. It is illegal to send a fax without the originating phone number. This is both acceptable and effective, since if someone wants to converse with me I have to be able to contact them. Spam should be the same way. It should be illegal to send email without the correct and legitimate origin as a return address within the same domain. That way I could respond to the email with an encrypted, uuencoded copy of a core dump or two. Anonymous re-mailers are safe here, since they would only be required to attach the remailer's address.
PSINet, AT&T, et. al. will think twice about these contracts once they understand that mass spamming will result in a righteous DoS attack. The spammers will have to either pay higher rates, or find a legitimate job. Either way I won't have to delete 30 bogus emails a day anymore.
the average programmers will consume nearly their entire work day just in reading and understanding the new code generated by the good programmers
If the project was being run correctly, the average programmer wouldn't be reading the good programmers code at all. Ever heard of code-by-contract? How about object-oriented code? I don't have to dig down and understand the code in glibc, because it is in a fucking library. All I need to know is the function name and its parameters. If I'm having to read code in order to use it, it wasn't written be a very good programmer at all.
It is easy for an office to beat the home on the social dimension,...
Not unless the company is hiring some freaky women to come in a couple times a week to provide certain services that are illegal to be provide for pay in most of these united states. Playing pinball just doesn't compare the games me and my woman play.
One of the main points of the ad was to ridicule the cheap open-plan offices in which programmers were traditionally housed and promote the fact that at Microsoft each developer gets a plush personal office.
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An open office plan contributes to making the work environment stronger on the social dimension.
This lack of internal consistency amplifies another one of his points.
In the long run it is impossible for an organization to be excellent in one area and mediocre in all others.
If you see one of your best people walking out the door at 6:00 pm, try to think why you haven't challenged that person with an interesting project. If you see one of your average programmers walking out the door at 6:00 pm, recognize that this person is not developing into a good programmer. An average programmer's productivity will never be significant in a group of good programmers. If you care about profits, you must either come up with a new training program for the person or figure out the best way to terminate his or her employment with your organization.
This is beyond the pale. I'm up at 6am exercising. I drop the kids off at 8am and arrive at work by 8:30. Put in my 8 hours and leave at 5. If I am to be rested the next day, I need to be in bed by 10pm. This leaves a total of 4 hours a day to devote to the next generation of programmers, let my wife know that she isn't a single mother, and maybe play at one of my many hobbies that are generally ignored. Greenspun can kiss my ass. Excuse the french, but that is as polite as I can put it. If my company (which is realistic, BTW) installed a pool table, rock wall, garden, grand piano, etc, they would all be summarily IGNORED. This is work. I do it to make a living so that I can spend time with what is truly important.
If my manager challenged me for walking out after having been at the office for 10 hours, then he won't have to ask himself anything. I will ask him to kiss my ass. I've done it before and I'll do it again.
And just in case it wasn't clear before, Greenspun and all of you "keep 'em entertained while we work them to death" managers can KISS MY ASS!!
How would reform of soft money have prevented the scenario you portrayed? Should there be a law preventing me from calling everyone in the phone book and explaning how Bush/Gore is an idiot/hero?
Everyone says we need to change, but change in and of itself isn't necessarily good. You have to move to something better. What do you propose?
This is actually looking more and more doable as time goes on.
You still missed the main point of my post. After you have done it, what do you have? You've now picked another ruler.
For those who have read Animal Farm, you've traded the humans for the pigs. Are you any better off? Would it not be easier to force the humans to act correctly in the first place. Someone must rule, and without checks and balances they will rule in their own interest. Creating another system without installing the checks and balances is a waste of time at best and most likely counter-productive.
What we have here is a case where good people with good intentions have lost there credibility through hyperbole.
How did the model program reduce binge drinking? Through reality. It showed students that there was no need to drink yourself silly in an attempt to keep up.
How could DARE actually work? Through reality. Instead of saying 'pot kills', they should say that pot will reduce your performance. (I think they should still be allowed to say that CRACK and sniffing glue kills?)
The point is that people who are still trying to figure out how the world works are incredibly sensitive to hypocrisy, and they invariably reject it out of hand once it is found. A rejected hypocrit is not an authority, no matter whose uniform they are wearing. Iff DARE is to be effective, they must present the most solid research in the frankest manner possible.
Because it wouldn't work for any reasonable amount of time.
So company XYZ wants a domain name so that the people can easily find their web site. What name service do they go with? The most popular of course. The people want an easy way to find company XYZ. Which service do they use? The most popular of course.
But company ABC, out of moral impetus, refuses to use the most popular. What's the result? Considering that most people won't even change to a resolution above 640x480x60Hz on a brand new 19' monitor, ABC's site will never see a hit except by a few geeks. To stay in business they must switch to the most popular. Eventually, the only service left will be the most popular. Who will controll it then? Don't say, "We will", unless you're willing to define 'we' and a method of how the 'we' will control. If you can define those two parameters, it makes more sense to replace the head of the current system with your definition than to replace the current extensive infrastructure.
The point is, you can't run and hide to a different technical solution every time someone tries to usurp power. The way of the world dictates that some people work to create, and some people work to dominate the creation of others. If you move to a new technical solution, the dominators will simply move in to take it over. Who else is willing to give up their technical pursuits in order to manage any new solution you come up with? Any one willing to wants the power, not to create new geek toys, so you immediately get yourself into the exact same position.
This is a social problem, not a technical one. This problem requires that geeks pull their heads out of their monitors, stand up and say, "Hell no. You're not going to simply walk in here and claim our work for yourself. Get the hell out." Then we have to install people who want to be in power, but put checks and balances in place. They must know that they can get kicked out just like the last group if they don't look after the proper interest.
I think a valid response would be to get a lot of the big names that actually were responsible for the internet and DNS together (Al Gore would probably like to head up the group), and let them go on for a while about how this group is quickly losing its legitimacy. Especially in America (I can't speak about other cultures since I don't know them), people get upset when they hear of someone usurping the work of another. So all the inventors get together, send a letter to Congress which says, "Heh, they're stealing our stuff", then give a few whiny interviews on Opra. Politician will start raving about the injustice, the Pres will hold some town hall meetings, Heraldo Rivera will do a special where he finds the draft of a DNS spec in a locked vault of a demolished building. In other words, watch how quickly things change to the way we like them.
Always remember, society is just a system. Learn to hack it.
It doesn't matter what OS you're running or what Email proggy you use if the person is dumb enough to run random executables.
But what happens when an email program provides a preview feature that will open an email and show you the first few lines and an auto-execute feature that will run an arbitrary program when the email is opened?
What happens when both features are enabled out of the box? Is a heart surgeon to be called stupid because he spends his days reading up on heart surgery instead of all the intricacies of computer security?
And what do you want to bet that the NSA can break your encryption?
That's the point in the one time pad. Eliminates all possibility of decryption as long as the pad length is the same as the message, and as long as the pad is kept secret.
Even without that, I would find it very suprising to learn that anyone, including the NSA, finds it trivial to decrypt multiple levels. Even then, the problem with the big guns is that they are big. You ever seen the flotilla that accompanies one of the Navy's big gun ships or aircraft carriers. Getting the NSA to pull out there best and brightest to tackle 4 level encryption to bust a drug ring or kiddie porn ring will not be and easy political maneuver.
The FBI has a packet sniffer. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
Seriously though. As I read the description, the only thing that would come to mind was that this device would only stop the most stupid of criminal. The type of rogues that murdered Michael Jordan's father. They commit a crime and then run around telling everyone about it.
Anyone foolish enough to be transmitting data in the clear concerning something that the FBI would care about needs to be locked away for their own protection. Any criminal with half a brain would set up a VPN to set up an SSH session in order to run their custom chat program that uses one-time-pad security. I guess the paranoid aren't being caught, only those who would log into #imACriminal and type, "Me Shotgun. Me rob Wells Fargo at Fifth and main last night. Me live in yellow house."
Again, I reiterate, this will only catch the stupid criminals, and maybe those that the powers that be want bad enough to invest the resource of the NSA to break a ridiculous amount of encryption.
The only problem I see is in compressing the air. I used to drive long-haul trucks, which use compressed air for brakes (for slashdotters not in the know).
Job one every morning was to drain all the water out of the air tanks. You pull a cord which opens a valve and lets the air in the tank blow out the water that settles in the bottom. You wouldn't believe all the muck that is in the air that winds up in that water. If the tanks aren't drained for a few days they will spray out a grey goo that's just nasty.
My point is that low maintenance will only be moved from the engine to the compressor (another high maintenance item) and the associated holding tanks. Probably not as bad as an engine like you say, but still not trivial.
Let's see? Do I want to go to the hospital where:
a) there is a 1% chance I'll die from bad software and 100% chance that I can sue someone somewhere if I do die. The chances of my estate actually recieving any substantial money are very low, since the lawyers will eat up all the settlement pointing fingers at each other.
-OR-
b) the software that runs the equipment has be inspected by dozens of different hospitals, each of which is putting their own pocketbooks on the line (there's no one else to point a finger at. They have the code, the should review it before using it.) The chances of death are nearly null. The chances of my estate actually receiving any substantial settlement are also nearly null (hospital argues that the use of the software is standard practice and has been proven safe in the past).
All other things being equal, I'd trust dozens of front-line reviewers with their own asses on the line, rather than a few unknown reviewers with unknown motivation.
16 apps in a year from 117 engineers.
Either the apps are simple desktop "applets", or they will be low quality knock-offs of good software.
Designing, developing, and testing a robust, feature-rich application takes a lot of time. He gives a total of 8 man-years per product. My experience says this is plenty for the 'developer' quality software you see on freshmeat (ie, the software does its job if you treat it right), but will not cut the mustard of what consumers expect from a CompUSA shelf box.
My gut feeling is that they will be hawking the type of software that you find in those big 'bargain boxes' at CompUSA. First there are the cheap knock-offs: "Heh, look. $10 for a CAD program!! I gotta have this." Unfortunately, trying to do anything but the tutorial crashes program. Then there are the useless extension to outdated shareware: "Look. 1001 Card Games. Only $10. And here is 101 Arcade Games That We All Wish We Could Forget. Still only $10."
It's nice to have 117 more developers on board, but since they're closed source I don't see them contributing much to the community other than some exposure on store shelves. Even then, if they're software is as sub-standard as I expect it to be, it may prove to be negative exposure.
nothing to see here.
Download their PDF product description. Right there in bold letters, one of the benefits of to "Service Providers" is:
Increases barriers to competition
Sounds like just another lock in device is coming down the line.
Add a wireless networking card, and build a pad that displays X11 streams. Audio out and a mic will make the telephone functions much more usefull. Make sure you leave all the processing on the server so that the display pad stays cheap, because I'll want to buy several.
Do this and you will have the ultimate home server system.
This is not what I dream about no matter how much tetris I've played.
And yet, just like the amnesiacs, you do not get better at it. You trying to tell us something here timothy?
You seem to express the belief that you have a right to be covered in the first place.
How realistic can it be if all the sensory input (to the body) goes through the mouse? Yay! My hand is shaking, but my ass isn't...
That's because you don't the the mouse positioned properly. Lot safer than hampsters, no?
Speaking of which, does anyone see the release of StarOffice as GPL as anything other than an attempt by Sun to kill off Microsoft's cash cow, Office?
No.
Consider Sun's position. They see everyone moving to Wintel boxes because of Office compatibility and the other slew of productivity software available for the Wintel platform. More and more, they see their own cash cow slipping away as MS takes hold of the network effect once again.
In this case McNealy can do one of two things. He can sit idly by as his company is slowly pushed into irrelevance. Or he can fight with all his might to stop the network effect. The only way to do this is to create your own network that is just as big as the other. The people at Sun realize this, and they also realize that the viral nature of the GPL added to the cost advantage will create a network effect that will dwarf MS.
I for one am ready to help them. Whenever you receive a MS doc that won't display in SO, send a reply tactfully:
1) asking for the document in a standard format
2) explaining that it's not the sender's fault that MS makes gratuitious changes to their file formats in order to foil competitors (not to help them)
3) explaining that you use a Office Suite that doens't cost an arm-n-leg or burden IT with licenscing issues (doing audits is expensive and time consuming)
I've done this and have gotten very positive results from my coworkers.