No, these are Engineering disasters. I'm not sure what Windows is, but it ain't engineering.
Very true. But it's a good example of the same phenomenon as the Vasa and Hyatt disasters. A common "engineering" problem is changes ordered by management that doesn't understand (or give a damn) about good engineering. That, and pressure to deliver by an arbitrary date (determined by marketing) despite the dangerous changes.
But the biggest problem in all of these is that the knowledgeable engineers often don't have the nerve to protest incorrect change orders from superiors. Young engineers sometimes do this, but after they've lost their jobs a few times, they wise up and just make sure there's thorough documentation for when the disaster happens. This documentation is not only useful in court; it is why we know so much about many historic engineering disasters.
I also would have liked an off-white background and unspecified font size and style of the main text for readability's sake.
I found that it honors my chosen colors and font size. It has no choice, really, because when faced with a new browser, one of my first acts is usually to hunt down the config thingies for them, and check the little boxes next to "Ignore page's...". Maybe I'll turn this off and look at the new/.'s colors and fonts.
Also, I've frequently run across the observation that you can quickly judge the "user friendliness" of a web site's designers. You just tell your browser not to override such things, set your default colors and fonts to something other than what the browser came with, and see what shows up on your screen.
The main symptom of user hostility is forcing a white background. The best comment I've seen on this practice is: Would you ask your users to stare at a lit fluorescent light? Many computer screens are fluorescent lights, actually, so if you specify background=white, that's exactly what you're doing. You're assaulting your viewers' eyes with a fully-lit fluorescent rectangle, and forcing them to take steps to mitigate your assault by spending time overriding your settings. Or just suffer from your assault, because they don't know how to mitigate it.
The print-book industry discovered this sort of thing ages ago. That why, for example, paperback books are mostly made with off-white paper. This is done intentionally, so that the books can be comfortably read in sunlight. The web publishing "industry" hasn't yet learned lessons like this though. And it seems that the/. folks aren't any more interested in such topics than most of the other awful web sites out there.
Nah; the problem with trying to make a quandary out of this question is that fish were laying eggs 100 million years before there were chickens (or even birds). And the dinosaur ancestors of birds laid eggs that were pretty much indistinguishable from bird eggs. (They probably tasted just like chicken eggs, too.;-)
To make it an interesting question, you need to add a lot more words to the question. And you have to be careful with your definitions.
Oh, c'mon; how many people (or companies) have ever been sued for using IBM or Microsoft equipment? Anyone with the slightest experience knows how bug-ridden their stuff has always been. But there are no apparent legal repercussions to this at all. And vendors of software with with demonstrably better reliability have a hell of a time breaking into "their" market.
Let's face it; "bug-free" is neither a marketing nor legal advantage, at least not in the business and retail markets.
When I worked at then Unisys Airline Center in the early 1990's, the defect count for the product we were working on had to be down in the single digits before a new version of the product was released,...
Those of us with a bit of experience recognize this as having one primary effect: Employees are strongly discouraged from reporting bugs.
I've worked on any number of projects where my immediate boss would make it abundantly clear that we keep our own private lists of "issues", and only add something to the official bug list when we have implemented a fix.
If you want to know about bugs, you'd better make damned sure that there is no punishment for reporting a bug.
Someone who cops a feel is a little different than a sexual predator at least in my mind.
Of course, the courts may think differently than you do.
We had a good example hereabouts (a suburb of Boston) a few years back, when there was a news story about a college student who'd had a few drinks on a Saturday night relieved himself in an alley. Unfortunately for him, he was spotted by a cop, arrested, charged with, and convicted of indecent exposure. It was pointed out in the news stories that now he'd have to register as a sex offender anywhere he ever lived again.
Among all the comments of the draconian nature of this, there were a few that pointed out another problem: To many of us who read the stories, the phrases "sex offender" and "sexual predator" now induce the thought "Probably another guy caught peeing in a dark alley."
Someone once observed that a problem with unjust laws is that they bring the entire legal system into disrespect. Some of the best examples are the extreme reactions to things like this.
It's crap like this that makes me want the public school system abolished and replaced with something more privately run, where competition can weed out this kind of stupid behavior.
Sorry, but this story happened in the United States, where that wouldn't work. Our Constitutional rights only protect us from government actions. Private corporations are not required to follow the Bill of Rights.
Since this was a public school system, the kid has a chance of getting the courts to apply the First Ammendment (which includes freedom of speech and the press). Of course, he'd have to file suit, and the local courts would almost certainly decide against him, leading to appeals. It wouldn't be decided before he graduates, as the appeals process can easily take a decade, so it wouldn't affect the school while he's a student there. And it would cost his family a LOT of money.
In a private school, the story is different: He would have no rights whatsoever. Well, ok, they would probably be pushing it if they did something to him that caused serious physical damage or death. But short of that, a private school can legally impose any sort of restrictions they like, and the courts won't say a word. If a student were to try a lawsuit, the judge would probably just laugh and tell him to get back to his studies.
It's similar with employment, where the employer can impose any on-the-job restrictions they like (short of serius physical injury). The only exception is that the 13th Ammendment says that an employee can quit (with possible fines depending on the employment contract). An underage student doesn't even have the right to escape; the legal system will label this "truancy" and return the student to the school.
And good luck finding a "market" solution to this. Competition only works when at least one competitor is willing to supply what you want. If they all have "gentlemen's agreements" to not supply something, you don't get it.
Of course; there's little point in making a "router" if you're making linux (or unix) systems. Any unix-like system can handle routing and general gateway tasks.
And it's true that RedHat's systems aren't really any better (or worse) than any other linux distro at such tasks. The point was that, since RedHat is supplying the OS for these laptops, they are in a good position to supply the infrastructure for internet connectivity. If you're ordering 500 laptops, and figure that you need 7 gateway boxes, the easy thing could be to just call your RedHat rep and place an order for all the stuff you think you need. The rep will probably be happy to discuss your setup and suggest additional stuff you might want.
Of course, this won't always work. But the "foot in the door" approach is an old one, and should work as well here as anywhere.
How lucrative this will be for RedHat isn't obvious. We're talking about doing business with some very poor people. It's likely that other vendors weren't particularly interested. Perhaps we should be commending RedHat for tackling a task that could be a lot of work with little financial payoff. Just the satisfaction of helping a lot of poor kids.
Or maybe, in a decade or two, it'll pay off and RedHat will be the preferred computer vendor for the poorer half of the world, with some of the first batch of kids working for them. Sort of the Grameen Bank of computing.
Why Fedora? Fedora is designed to be a desktop system, not an embedded system.
I can imagine a likely reason that RedHat is involved. These laptops will have their own "mesh" wireless software to communicate. But this won't get them out onto the Internet, where all the educational (and entertainment) stuff sits. For that, a local population of laptops needs a gateway/server. RedHat makes those, and they're pretty good.
I'll guess that their plan is to give away a few of these as "starter" systems, to get the kids connected. But there will soon be demand for more, and some of the population will have enough money to buy better systems. RedHat will look like the Good Guys, so guess who will be the first choice for the new systems. I'd think that an Ubuntu system might be better, but what do I know?
Also note that this is a situation where Steve Jobs might have a chance. Packaging up a Mac Mini as a gateway to serve as an Internet link for a flock of these laptops could work very well. Maybe some folks at Apple are thinking of this; maybe not and they'll let RedHat do it. Stay tuned.
Anyway, this is probably what really worries Bill Gates. Around the world there will be a generation whose first machine wasn't Windows; it was that little linux toy. How is MS going to sell anything in that market?
Hell, in some particularly screwed-up societies, it's believed that having sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS.
Kind of illustrates the OP's point that education is the ultimate solution, doesn't it?
Yup. And this is the main point that seems to be missed in this flamefest.
In a lot of the world, people are kept poor and helpless by a system that effectively prevents them from learning how they could get out of the hole they were born into.
One very real prospect with this One Laptop Per Child project is that it will provide an information path past societies' controlling elite. People will be able to learn that things like "sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS" are lies. They'll be able to learn the truth about such diseases, despite the efforts of their "superiors" to keep them ignorant. They'll learn that things are different in other parts of the world, and they'll learn why.
It'll be interesting to see what sort of controls are put on this technology in various parts of the world. Bill Gates can't be the only powerful person with reason to dislike it and want to control it.
If the people making content don't like it, fit you business to meet what the consumer wants, the way the consumer wants it.
Easy enough to say, but with DRM coming, this may not be possible.
Recently, I've helped several groups of friends make CDs, which they (and I) can sell, getting all the income. But in the near future, new recording equipment will probably include DRM. This means that if you or I make our own private CDs and sell them, the purchaser will hasve to pay the DRM owner (probably Microsoft) for the right to use the CD. You and I will also have to pay the DRM owner for the right to use our own CDs.
I've had a bit of fun pointing this out to a few musician friends. You can probably imagine the reactions, first denial, then the look of horror as they realize that I'm probably right.
As far as I can tell, there is no intention to give you control over the DRM keys for the next generation of computers. The keys will probably be held by Microsoft and Apple, and possibly by a few other industry giants. Not just commercial recordings, but also your own recordings won't work unless you're up to date in your DRM subscription fees.
I can't quite make out the keyboards, but they look vaguely like the common English (American?) keyboard. This is reasonable for a prototype built at MIT, but not appropriate for most of the intended recipients. I haven't read anything about this, and google doesn't seem to know anything, either.
So what's the plan for including appropriate keyboards? Special keyboards for each locale, that only work there? Some scheme for a general-purpose keyboard that can be easily be used by children who speak/read/write Macedonian or Greek or Arabic or Cantonese or Mongolian or...?
I'd really be interested in the latter. I've been trying to develop "internationalized" stuff, and I've found that information about how to enter the above language on my keyboard is pretty much impossible to find.
Of course, this could be because I'm in the US, where vendors see no reason to provide any help for any language other than English.
[W]e know that theft is wrong only if it's a picture...but if it's software, the company, programmers, and/or engineers all deserve it. It's really, really odd how there exists such a warped view of reality.
Not odd at all. To put it more generally: If it's mine, it's valuable and should be protected from thieves. If it's yours, it's not important, and I have a right to copy it for my own use.
This is pretty much the way the world works. "Get over it", as the political types keep telling us.;-)
The Chinese dpo no trust Windows unless they have the source code.
Nothing new or unusual here. The security folks have long had one primary rule: If you're at all interested in security, you don't run any software unless you have all the source code and you've compiled it yourself.
If you run a binary from someone else, you have no way of knowing what's hidden in there. It could be doing all sorts of things in addition to what you think it's doing, and you have no way of knowing.
Microsoft does have a bit of a history of delivering software that "calls home" and send information extracted from your computer. But Microsoft is hardly the only one that does this. Any time a vendor refuses access to the source, the first assumption should be that they're hiding something.
Anyone who thinks this is just hypothetical should do a bit of reading on this important case study in which American-supplied software contained an extra "feature".
Otherwise anytime you piss off someone in power, by pointing out corruption say, they have a perfectly legal way to lock you up, or threaten to do so.
Of course, in the present US, they don't need a legal way to lock you up. You're just grabbed and carted off to jail, usually in another country, to be held until terrorism ends or Jesus returns, whichever comes first.
A new protocol will help greatly, but it won't stop the REAL problem which is people shitting in communal waters.
Interesting metaphor. Fact is that public waters tend to be full of shit, and there's nothing we can do about it. Reservoirs are routinely colonized by fish, waterfowl and aquatic arthropods, which eat the plants and each other and shit out the waste. Water supplies can only minimize this; they can't prevent it. So, rather than fighting a hopeless battle and delivering contaminated water, they accept the situation. They try to keep the reservoir somewhat clean, but they also filter and sterilize the water while delivering it.
It's likely that the same situation with email is permanent. Attacks can cut down somewhat on spammers, but like the insect larvae in the reservoirs, there will always be spammers in the internet. Delivering clean email will require filtering and decontamination software. We already have lots of it in place, and it's likely that we will always need it.
There will always be hucksters and scammers out there trying to separate us from our money.
Why isn't the FBI and the State Department going after these attackers? Maybe they're too busy listening to American phone conversations. Those conversations must be very valuable, especially running up to elections...
You hit the nail on the head. Having inside knowledge of your opponents' strategies is one of the most valuable tools when you're trying to win an election. It's nearly as valuable as having a "special relationship" with the people (or machines) that count the votes.
Anyone who thinks that domestic spying has anything to do with foreign enemies is simply naive and ignorant about how the system works.
I keep seeing the phrase "Internet platform". Is there a coherent definition of this phrase? Or is it another of those phrases like "Web 2.0" that means whatever the writer wants it to mean, and is just used to impress the newbies with something that sound technical but isn't?
Yes the above code is valid html. Do you speak it?
Yeah, but I also know English pretty well, and that wasn't syntactically correct English. The "there" should be "they're". And the "Do" really shouldn't be capitalized, unless you're also going to capitalize "believe".
Oh, and where's the closing > for the <body tag?;-)
I don't even think drive by wire systems have been approved for braking or steering in cars yet. They all have to have a direct link in case the power assist features fail.
A weekend news story here in New England brought out the importance of this in aircraft: It seems that Senator Ted Kennedy was flying back from a speaking engagement in western Massachusetts, when the plane (a 6-seater) was hit by lightning. It knocked out the plane's electronics. The pilot safely landed it at an airport near Hartford, where Kennedy spent the night.
If the plane's controls had been all electronic, we'd probably now be missing yet another Kennedy.
This does make one wonder how resistant the big jets really are to lightning. They may look big to a mere human, but they're pretty small compared to a thunderstorm.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, molasses is regularly used in making some dark beers.
Molasses is also a common ingredient in Boston Baked Beans. (Sometimes they're sweetened with maple syrup; sometimes with both.)
But yet, most of that molasses was to be used in making rum.
No, these are Engineering disasters. I'm not sure what Windows is, but it ain't engineering.
Very true. But it's a good example of the same phenomenon as the Vasa and Hyatt disasters. A common "engineering" problem is changes ordered by management that doesn't understand (or give a damn) about good engineering. That, and pressure to deliver by an arbitrary date (determined by marketing) despite the dangerous changes.
But the biggest problem in all of these is that the knowledgeable engineers often don't have the nerve to protest incorrect change orders from superiors. Young engineers sometimes do this, but after they've lost their jobs a few times, they wise up and just make sure there's thorough documentation for when the disaster happens. This documentation is not only useful in court; it is why we know so much about many historic engineering disasters.
I also would have liked an off-white background and unspecified font size and style of the main text for readability's sake.
...". Maybe I'll turn this off and look at the new /.'s colors and fonts.
/. folks aren't any more interested in such topics than most of the other awful web sites out there.
I found that it honors my chosen colors and font size. It has no choice, really, because when faced with a new browser, one of my first acts is usually to hunt down the config thingies for them, and check the little boxes next to "Ignore page's
Also, I've frequently run across the observation that you can quickly judge the "user friendliness" of a web site's designers. You just tell your browser not to override such things, set your default colors and fonts to something other than what the browser came with, and see what shows up on your screen.
The main symptom of user hostility is forcing a white background. The best comment I've seen on this practice is: Would you ask your users to stare at a lit fluorescent light? Many computer screens are fluorescent lights, actually, so if you specify background=white, that's exactly what you're doing. You're assaulting your viewers' eyes with a fully-lit fluorescent rectangle, and forcing them to take steps to mitigate your assault by spending time overriding your settings. Or just suffer from your assault, because they don't know how to mitigate it.
The print-book industry discovered this sort of thing ages ago. That why, for example, paperback books are mostly made with off-white paper. This is done intentionally, so that the books can be comfortably read in sunlight. The web publishing "industry" hasn't yet learned lessons like this though. And it seems that the
Neither came first. They both came together ...
;-)
Nah; the problem with trying to make a quandary out of this question is that fish were laying eggs 100 million years before there were chickens (or even birds). And the dinosaur ancestors of birds laid eggs that were pretty much indistinguishable from bird eggs. (They probably tasted just like chicken eggs, too.
To make it an interesting question, you need to add a lot more words to the question. And you have to be careful with your definitions.
I'm going to trademark Web aleph-null and Web aleph-one.
Well, I'm going to trademark all the names between those.
Oh, c'mon; how many people (or companies) have ever been sued for using IBM or Microsoft equipment? Anyone with the slightest experience knows how bug-ridden their stuff has always been. But there are no apparent legal repercussions to this at all. And vendors of software with with demonstrably better reliability have a hell of a time breaking into "their" market.
Let's face it; "bug-free" is neither a marketing nor legal advantage, at least not in the business and retail markets.
When I worked at then Unisys Airline Center in the early 1990's, the defect count for the product we were working on had to be down in the single digits before a new version of the product was released, ...
Those of us with a bit of experience recognize this as having one primary effect: Employees are strongly discouraged from reporting bugs.
I've worked on any number of projects where my immediate boss would make it abundantly clear that we keep our own private lists of "issues", and only add something to the official bug list when we have implemented a fix.
If you want to know about bugs, you'd better make damned sure that there is no punishment for reporting a bug.
Someone who cops a feel is a little different than a sexual predator at least in my mind.
Of course, the courts may think differently than you do.
We had a good example hereabouts (a suburb of Boston) a few years back, when there was a news story about a college student who'd had a few drinks on a Saturday night relieved himself in an alley. Unfortunately for him, he was spotted by a cop, arrested, charged with, and convicted of indecent exposure. It was pointed out in the news stories that now he'd have to register as a sex offender anywhere he ever lived again.
Among all the comments of the draconian nature of this, there were a few that pointed out another problem: To many of us who read the stories, the phrases "sex offender" and "sexual predator" now induce the thought "Probably another guy caught peeing in a dark alley."
Someone once observed that a problem with unjust laws is that they bring the entire legal system into disrespect. Some of the best examples are the extreme reactions to things like this.
It's crap like this that makes me want the public school system abolished and replaced with something more privately run, where competition can weed out this kind of stupid behavior.
Sorry, but this story happened in the United States, where that wouldn't work. Our Constitutional rights only protect us from government actions. Private corporations are not required to follow the Bill of Rights.
Since this was a public school system, the kid has a chance of getting the courts to apply the First Ammendment (which includes freedom of speech and the press). Of course, he'd have to file suit, and the local courts would almost certainly decide against him, leading to appeals. It wouldn't be decided before he graduates, as the appeals process can easily take a decade, so it wouldn't affect the school while he's a student there. And it would cost his family a LOT of money.
In a private school, the story is different: He would have no rights whatsoever. Well, ok, they would probably be pushing it if they did something to him that caused serious physical damage or death. But short of that, a private school can legally impose any sort of restrictions they like, and the courts won't say a word. If a student were to try a lawsuit, the judge would probably just laugh and tell him to get back to his studies.
It's similar with employment, where the employer can impose any on-the-job restrictions they like (short of serius physical injury). The only exception is that the 13th Ammendment says that an employee can quit (with possible fines depending on the employment contract). An underage student doesn't even have the right to escape; the legal system will label this "truancy" and return the student to the school.
And good luck finding a "market" solution to this. Competition only works when at least one competitor is willing to supply what you want. If they all have "gentlemen's agreements" to not supply something, you don't get it.
Of course; there's little point in making a "router" if you're making linux (or unix) systems. Any unix-like system can handle routing and general gateway tasks.
And it's true that RedHat's systems aren't really any better (or worse) than any other linux distro at such tasks. The point was that, since RedHat is supplying the OS for these laptops, they are in a good position to supply the infrastructure for internet connectivity. If you're ordering 500 laptops, and figure that you need 7 gateway boxes, the easy thing could be to just call your RedHat rep and place an order for all the stuff you think you need. The rep will probably be happy to discuss your setup and suggest additional stuff you might want.
Of course, this won't always work. But the "foot in the door" approach is an old one, and should work as well here as anywhere.
How lucrative this will be for RedHat isn't obvious. We're talking about doing business with some very poor people. It's likely that other vendors weren't particularly interested. Perhaps we should be commending RedHat for tackling a task that could be a lot of work with little financial payoff. Just the satisfaction of helping a lot of poor kids.
Or maybe, in a decade or two, it'll pay off and RedHat will be the preferred computer vendor for the poorer half of the world, with some of the first batch of kids working for them. Sort of the Grameen Bank of computing.
Why Fedora? Fedora is designed to be a desktop system, not an embedded system.
I can imagine a likely reason that RedHat is involved. These laptops will have their own "mesh" wireless software to communicate. But this won't get them out onto the Internet, where all the educational (and entertainment) stuff sits. For that, a local population of laptops needs a gateway/server. RedHat makes those, and they're pretty good.
I'll guess that their plan is to give away a few of these as "starter" systems, to get the kids connected. But there will soon be demand for more, and some of the population will have enough money to buy better systems. RedHat will look like the Good Guys, so guess who will be the first choice for the new systems. I'd think that an Ubuntu system might be better, but what do I know?
Also note that this is a situation where Steve Jobs might have a chance. Packaging up a Mac Mini as a gateway to serve as an Internet link for a flock of these laptops could work very well. Maybe some folks at Apple are thinking of this; maybe not and they'll let RedHat do it. Stay tuned.
Anyway, this is probably what really worries Bill Gates. Around the world there will be a generation whose first machine wasn't Windows; it was that little linux toy. How is MS going to sell anything in that market?
Hell, in some particularly screwed-up societies, it's believed that having sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS.
Kind of illustrates the OP's point that education is the ultimate solution, doesn't it?
Yup. And this is the main point that seems to be missed in this flamefest.
In a lot of the world, people are kept poor and helpless by a system that effectively prevents them from learning how they could get out of the hole they were born into.
One very real prospect with this One Laptop Per Child project is that it will provide an information path past societies' controlling elite. People will be able to learn that things like "sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS" are lies. They'll be able to learn the truth about such diseases, despite the efforts of their "superiors" to keep them ignorant. They'll learn that things are different in other parts of the world, and they'll learn why.
It'll be interesting to see what sort of controls are put on this technology in various parts of the world. Bill Gates can't be the only powerful person with reason to dislike it and want to control it.
If the people making content don't like it, fit you business to meet what the consumer wants, the way the consumer wants it.
Easy enough to say, but with DRM coming, this may not be possible.
Recently, I've helped several groups of friends make CDs, which they (and I) can sell, getting all the income. But in the near future, new recording equipment will probably include DRM. This means that if you or I make our own private CDs and sell them, the purchaser will hasve to pay the DRM owner (probably Microsoft) for the right to use the CD. You and I will also have to pay the DRM owner for the right to use our own CDs.
I've had a bit of fun pointing this out to a few musician friends. You can probably imagine the reactions, first denial, then the look of horror as they realize that I'm probably right.
As far as I can tell, there is no intention to give you control over the DRM keys for the next generation of computers. The keys will probably be held by Microsoft and Apple, and possibly by a few other industry giants. Not just commercial recordings, but also your own recordings won't work unless you're up to date in your DRM subscription fees.
So what's the license that comes with this?
;-)
Do I have to sign an NDA to use it? If so, I can't share my knowledge without MS's permission.
Does anything I write belong to MS? I'm not crazy about the idea that I'll have to pay to use something that I wrote.
A bit of digging didn't turn up the license that I'll presumably have to agree to by clicking on something (or maybe just by downloading something).
No, I don't trust MS's lawyers.
I can't quite make out the keyboards, but they look vaguely like the common English (American?) keyboard. This is reasonable for a prototype built at MIT, but not appropriate for most of the intended recipients. I haven't read anything about this, and google doesn't seem to know anything, either.
...?
So what's the plan for including appropriate keyboards? Special keyboards for each locale, that only work there? Some scheme for a general-purpose keyboard that can be easily be used by children who speak/read/write Macedonian or Greek or Arabic or Cantonese or Mongolian or
I'd really be interested in the latter. I've been trying to develop "internationalized" stuff, and I've found that information about how to enter the above language on my keyboard is pretty much impossible to find.
Of course, this could be because I'm in the US, where vendors see no reason to provide any help for any language other than English.
One thing I wonder is how they're going to run debuggers without admin privs.
Debuggers? Microsoft has debuggers?
You learn something new every day here.
[W]e know that theft is wrong only if it's a picture...but if it's software, the company, programmers, and/or engineers all deserve it. It's really, really odd how there exists such a warped view of reality.
;-)
Not odd at all. To put it more generally: If it's mine, it's valuable and should be protected from thieves. If it's yours, it's not important, and I have a right to copy it for my own use.
This is pretty much the way the world works. "Get over it", as the political types keep telling us.
The Chinese dpo no trust Windows unless they have the source code.
Nothing new or unusual here. The security folks have long had one primary rule: If you're at all interested in security, you don't run any software unless you have all the source code and you've compiled it yourself.
If you run a binary from someone else, you have no way of knowing what's hidden in there. It could be doing all sorts of things in addition to what you think it's doing, and you have no way of knowing.
Microsoft does have a bit of a history of delivering software that "calls home" and send information extracted from your computer. But Microsoft is hardly the only one that does this. Any time a vendor refuses access to the source, the first assumption should be that they're hiding something.
Anyone who thinks this is just hypothetical should do a bit of reading on this important case study in which American-supplied software contained an extra "feature".
Otherwise anytime you piss off someone in power, by pointing out corruption say, they have a perfectly legal way to lock you up, or threaten to do so.
Of course, in the present US, they don't need a legal way to lock you up. You're just grabbed and carted off to jail, usually in another country, to be held until terrorism ends or Jesus returns, whichever comes first.
[O]ne way or the other, he got up there, and this means that, if not the majority, at least a good deal of people think like that piece of scum.
Nah; it just means that some folks at Diebold like him.
As Joe Stalin told us; it's not the people that cast the ballots, it's the people (now machines) that count the ballots that matter.
A new protocol will help greatly, but it won't stop the REAL problem which is people shitting in communal waters.
Interesting metaphor. Fact is that public waters tend to be full of shit, and there's nothing we can do about it. Reservoirs are routinely colonized by fish, waterfowl and aquatic arthropods, which eat the plants and each other and shit out the waste. Water supplies can only minimize this; they can't prevent it. So, rather than fighting a hopeless battle and delivering contaminated water, they accept the situation. They try to keep the reservoir somewhat clean, but they also filter and sterilize the water while delivering it.
It's likely that the same situation with email is permanent. Attacks can cut down somewhat on spammers, but like the insect larvae in the reservoirs, there will always be spammers in the internet. Delivering clean email will require filtering and decontamination software. We already have lots of it in place, and it's likely that we will always need it.
There will always be hucksters and scammers out there trying to separate us from our money.
Why isn't the FBI and the State Department going after these attackers? Maybe they're too busy listening to American phone conversations. Those conversations must be very valuable, especially running up to elections...
You hit the nail on the head. Having inside knowledge of your opponents' strategies is one of the most valuable tools when you're trying to win an election. It's nearly as valuable as having a "special relationship" with the people (or machines) that count the votes.
Anyone who thinks that domestic spying has anything to do with foreign enemies is simply naive and ignorant about how the system works.
I keep seeing the phrase "Internet platform". Is there a coherent definition of this phrase? Or is it another of those phrases like "Web 2.0" that means whatever the writer wants it to mean, and is just used to impress the newbies with something that sound technical but isn't?
Yes the above code is valid html. Do you speak it?
;-)
Yeah, but I also know English pretty well, and that wasn't syntactically correct English. The "there" should be "they're". And the "Do" really shouldn't be capitalized, unless you're also going to capitalize "believe".
Oh, and where's the closing > for the <body tag?
I don't even think drive by wire systems have been approved for braking or steering in cars yet. They all have to have a direct link in case the power assist features fail.
A weekend news story here in New England brought out the importance of this in aircraft: It seems that Senator Ted Kennedy was flying back from a speaking engagement in western Massachusetts, when the plane (a 6-seater) was hit by lightning. It knocked out the plane's electronics. The pilot safely landed it at an airport near Hartford, where Kennedy spent the night.
If the plane's controls had been all electronic, we'd probably now be missing yet another Kennedy.
This does make one wonder how resistant the big jets really are to lightning. They may look big to a mere human, but they're pretty small compared to a thunderstorm.