The urban dictionary is wrong. It calls Wild Weasels a "crazy" mission. It wasn't. It was dangerous, but so is everything else in warfare. I used to work on the F4D and F4G - The Phantom F4G was called the "Wild Weasel" in its day.
af.mil/museum. It was a cool plane. In 1984, when the US bombed Libya, F111's were the Wild Weasels, and one didn't come back. I don't think it was the result of enemy action, tho, IIRC it had mechanical problems.
Everytime I hear politician (or bidnizman) say "let the market decide" or "let the market sort things out", what he means is "Give some more time for my corporate leashholder to put a complete lock on this, and then we'll come up with a law to make it permanent forever and ever amen."
Is like when I hear a politician say "We can't pay for that tax cut". It shows the porker has forgotten - it ain't his money. It's our money. It really flames me to hear stuff like that. Rights are what you're born with, cuz God, FSM, or evolution made it a part of being human. If you're not alive, you're not human - you're worm food. If you have no liberty, you're not living as humans need to live. And every human will, unless opressed, pursue happiness. This is what's meant in the Declaration by "These truths we hold to be self evident..." We speak cuz we're human - and we speak our opinions, not gov't approved drivel, cuz we're human. Govt can neither grant nor take away a true right. All it can do is protect or oppress those who act according to their rights.
"The Constitution was better as a document enumerating the things government CAN do, with the assumption being that all other powers are strictly excluded"
The bill of rights does very specifically, strictly exclude the Federal government from exercising other powers. Read the 10th amendment. Bill Of Rights Transcript
It says that any power not granted by this constitution to the Federal Gov't is reserved to the states or to the people.
This was to prevent the Fed Gov from expanding and squeezing the states and the people into oblivion. Unfortunately, it's the least supported amendment of all.
Only the courts uphold this, and only when a law is constitutionally challenged - that is, someone has to be hurt by a law before this amendment is used to stop gov't abuse.
The founder's tradition of anonymous speech had *nothing* to do with "bandwidth", it had to do with knowing the truth about the government. Most importantly, it is important that citizens know when they're hearing honest opinion, and when they're hearing political campaigning. Political parties would *love* that the citizens NOT KNOW when they're being fed propaganda, so that the citizens are more likely to swallow it. The FEC's decision does NOT apply to people honestly expressing their opinions, but to people producing political mulch for citizens to read - that is, just like in other media, if it's a paid expression by a political party or candidate, then the citizen has the right to know the whole truth about it, including that it's not an "honest" opinion of one human, but that it is product of a political campaign. A newspaper that is NOT a paid printing from a political party or campaign is viewed as being the opinion of the person or persons running the paper. As such, you should take it with a grain of salt, like always. Blogs were invented for individuals to use, as opposed to big commercial forums produced and/or censored by companies. As a result, people often expect that when someone who appears to be a human is talking to them in blog postings (like this one), that the human is expressing personal views, not paid-for campaign compost. That's what this is about - being careful that expectations (however naive) are not used to fool the voters.
While I consider an investigation, with probable cause, of a journalist's possible crime proper, what I was objecting to was the seizure of *everything*, i.e., entire servers and hard disks. This is definitely overbroad and abusive: the cops and the judge (if warrant was issued - TFA doesn't say) absolutely had to know that the servers and disks were not used exclusively on one story where one crime may have been committed. All other data on those disks and all other services provided by those servers was innocent under any theory of law. As others have said, just the server logs alone are probably enough evidence to convict or clear whoever may have been involved.
It's called "probable cause" to believe that an entity (the paper) was involved in the crime. The state can not know whether the newspaper's computers were also used illegally as the state is claiming the coroner's password was. I can easily guess that some hacker that got the password might also hack some news corp's site that had weak security. Why? Cuz anyone would know that the state will (or should) use extra care when kicking in the doors of the press.
Something else you're missing is called "Innocent until proven guilty".
The paper is innocent, and the siezure would obviously have a serious impact on their business. A judge should take this into account before signing a warrant, especially when the criminal could so easily be someone else.
Even if non-public facts were disclosed by the newspaper, the state does not "know" that hacking was the source unless there is clear evidence. Even if hacking was the source, what indication does the state have that it was the newspaper that did the hacking? They may have been hacked too.
The coroner claims he didn't share the password. Who else would know?
To those who fought and died for American independence, "independence" meant: "...that [all men] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted...Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a [despotic] Government... We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America...mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." Specific causes of their struggle are also listed in the Declaration of Independence. And if you think this was cynical exploitation on their part, remember, *they* who signed the document were under threat of death, they *did* fight alongside those they "suckered", and yes, some of them even died doing it. For more information, you can also read the Federalist Papers.
Agreed, and there's another thing. What if the bad guys don't use standard encryption tools? It'd be easy enough to take encryption code (or math), and implement it in software used only among the "bad guys glee club". By doing this, along with generating your own keys and sending them thru non-internet means, it can become effectively impossible to break. The known methods of breaking most encryptions rely (among other things) on knowing the approximate data arrangement of the encoded text, and which algorithm to use. I don't know of any code breaking tool that starts with no knowledge of the text except a string of bytes. You'd have to use all known codebreakers at once on the string to break it. The "glee club" could refuse to cooperatively arrange the data, or they may embed garbage or multiple algorithms, etc into the data. Then "security thru obscurity" as an added feature to a solid encryption algorithm results in something that is easy to implement, which the cops could never break anyway. So from a practical standpoint, breaking all decryptions out there won't work anyway.
I'd guess it's cuz the sig isn't actually stored with the post, but with the profile ONLY. So when you post, the s/w sees your profile has a sig, and serves it up too. So it seems "retroactive" when really, it's never stored with the post at all. Saves space, etc. Just a guess.
You assume that gov't ability to read every innocent's communications somehow equates to the ability to catch the guilty before they commit a crime. Well, let's examine that. Where's the proof? The US govt knew about most of the 9/11 bombers before 9/11, but thru ineptness in handling the data they already had, they were unable to stop it.
This is very analogous to Dec 7,1941: The US military had plenty of clues and enough information to prepare, but beaurocratic bungling prevented anyone from seeing all the data in one place at one time. Also, a warning from the radar station on the northern end of the island was disregarded by the officer of the day. Even in the absence of everything else, that radar warning would have given about an hour's notice, plenty of time to sound an alert.
The lesson is that information already available should be put to good use, and collecting more data from innocent sources doesn't help.
Next assumption: Times haven't changed. There have been spies in the US since before the US revolution - even Nazi and Japanese spies in the US before Pearl harbor. The Nazis killed more Americans in US waters before Pearl Harbor than were killed at Pearl harbor - by sinking US shipping in the US intercoastal waterways on the east coast. They got their targets from both periscopes - and spies in the harbor towns who would find out where the best targets would be. Today, the treatment of innocent Japanese as a result of Pearl Harbor is considered a shame to the US.
Next assumption: The gov't will use the information *only* to prevent a suicide bomber from killing you. This is demonstratably false - kids in middle school are being charged with "terroristic threats" for being bullies. Equating school yard bullies with suicide bombers is an abortion of justice, but that's what your gov't is doing.
What's more important? Freedom is. Thousands of Americans have chosen death before giving up freedom. Being left alone isn't the same thing as being free. If one person who works for the gov't somewhere decides they don't like you, do you want that one person to have these kinds of powers to intrude on your life? Don't think that somehow, magically, someone else in gov't will stop abuse. Branches of the gov't govern themselves, and laws are set up to protect them from legal interference. For example, cops accused of brutality are investigated by other cops. Congressman accused of abuses of power are investigated by other congressman. All such "self-enforcement" policies softpedal abuses, not stop them.
Never forget the nature of the beast. Governments are groups of people controlling other people with violence and the threat of violence. All the laws, regulations, etc, are there to try to ensure that the violence and threats are only used when it benefits the greatest number of people. But the people who benefit most are those with the greatest capacity for violence, and the least to fear from consequences. This is why gov'ts must be very closely watched by the citizens. I could go on, but I think you were just trolling, not thinking.
I was careful to put "in the US" to make the distinction. Although I used the US terminology from US-based law, I think the same concepts *used to* be part of British law as well. I think that's where the US got the idea - since King George III's England wasn't respecting this (among other things) in the colonies, the upstarts there had a little tiff they called "revolution".
The article assumed that it's ok for for security services to "manage" by monitoring, breaking decryption, and reading internet traffic. The assumption here is that spying on the innocent is OK. I disagree. "Probable cause" in the US (used to) mean that the cops kept their noses out of situations until they had reason to believe that a criminal was involved in the situation. "Reasonable suspicion" in the US used to mean that the cops did not hassle (or spy on) *anyone* that wasn't doing something suspicious, even when the person was in public. This meant that cops were not supposed to collar someone walking down the street and start asking them where they got the CDs for their walkman: Doing so presumes a crime was committed, and unless the cop had a genuine reason to think so, the cop was supposed to leave the citizenry alone. The assumption that "it's ok to decrypt every frickin packet we can slurp up" throws out all of that, and privacy with it.
I don't think it's overly harsh to expect a copyright enforcement agency of the government *to*read*and*understand*copyrights* before starting an enforcement action. I'd certainly expect a traffic cop to read the speed limit sign before writing a speeding ticket.
1. Brain size less than the radius of a CD. 2. Strict adherence to every rule you've ever been told. 3. Ability to correlate carpooling with the end of the automotive industry. 4. Ability to leap to tall conclusions in a single bound. 5. Complete eagerness to swallow everything spewed forth by the BSA.
"When I consider the rules for grammar, I think
'Any fool can make a rule
and every fool will follow'." By some famous poet, I forget his name right now.
I'll try not to be flame bait, here, but the article says: "The question that customers need to pay attention to is what is going to happen to the code that was open source," says Bob Igou, a research director at Gartner. "Does it remain open source?...Or.. cannibalize it and integrate it... and in a sense the open source product goes away?" This is, of course, a complete misunderstanding. Once open, always open. The spin on the article is that a buyer may mutate the product into something the customer doesn't want...like, say, the way Microsoft mutates its products so it won't read your old spreadsheets anymore. As my example shows, the problem isn't limited to Open source, but only open source has the solution: Stick with the old version, modify it to suit new needs, modify it to output a new format that you're going to upgrade to, or... or... do anything else that meets your needs. The world changes. Open source makes it easier to keep up than the monopolists "screw you, in 8 months we're not supporting it, and we're not gonna let anyone else support it either". The article mentions that there's a worry that "great programmers" will leave the OS company once it's bought. Yeah, maybe. Maybe a buyer could commit business suicide by driving away the best people in *any* company... and maybe those good people can continue to support the OPEN product from whereever they land... or maybe, since it's open, there's ten times as many "great programmers" who have access to the code who'll take up where the originals leave off. The writers don't get the most important fact - Microsoft's monopoly is on *products* not *service*. In terms of service, MS isn't the 800 lb gorilla - open source is. For every MS employee, there's at least 100 open source programmers. And for every one that quits, there's a dozen more young folks in college whose eyes are being opened.
My local broadband providers all require that I load their special software and hardware to get DSL. Guess what? It only runs on winblows. From home, I'll get on the internet with windows when they cram my cold dead fingers into a light socket. Repeatedly. Reason #2: with graphics turned off, I can load most of the froofroo pages (like CNN) almost as fast as DSL with the graphics turned on. Block the ad websites also, and I've got DSL-speed access without the advertisements. The major reason that corporate US is concerned with home use of broadband is so that they can serve up more ads to their consumer cattle herds.
My first thought was, what happens if I'm in an accident that produces a crushing trauma on the glass implant? How big is it, and how big will be the glass shards in my bloodstream? Second - NO medical procedure is without risk - if you break the skin, you're breaching the body's number one immune system defense. Any form of encryption/DRM/security numbering scheme has a shelf life - as technology gets faster, mathematicians get smarter, etc, even if the hack that the article mentions is defeated, another hack will be only a matter of time...what's the average lifespan of DRM on music? About a week or a day? A few hours?
You wanna stick a security number in my body? I'll do it for you...
Tell me the number, I'll stick it in my brain. I'll use my digital output devices (hands) to type it in to a keypad every time I need it. And if it gets hacked, you can give me a new one to install. No problem.
I wish I had the mod points I had until yesterday, I'd mod you up. This is part of the fundamental problem with any kind of computing-denial method, even cryptography. The best cryptgraphic methods available today just buy time, not security - eventually they'll be cracked, your messages are only safe until then. The only "box" into which you can put something and make it unreachable is a black hole. And even a tiny bit of information escapes from black holes... The other problem with DRM, of course, is that you must put the encrypted and unencrypted messages and the software and its keys all into the hands of the "enemy" - your customers.
The USAF did a reliability analysis sometime in late 1970's, early 1980's, and decided to go with unmanned launches from Vandenburg cuz of this number.
The number refers to "1 in 400 mssions will result in partial loss of mission or core functionality" or something like that. A "mission" here is a payload or other shuttle activity planned for a launch. The shuttle can carry more than one payload (and has, several times). The number wasn't "one in 400 will explode" - the failure could be something like (as has happened several times) a payload fails to deploy correctly, or an experiment package gets scrubbed from a launch, etc. The worst case scenario is not the only thing considered. A launch scrub that results in a one or two day delay was not part of the number, only those problems that resulted in significant impact to the USAF's mission.
In the 1980's tho, Congress (in an attempt to continue justification of the shuttle) mandated that the department of defense would use the shuttle for Reagan's star wars stuff, so several missions for DOD (I think 9, or was it 9 years worth?) went up on shuttle.
DoD pulled out of the shuttle program after Challenger. They had a mission that was far more dangerous planned - Centaur. A large, liquid fueled school-bus-sized satellite that Shuttle could barely lift. It went up safely, without fanfare, on unmanned boosters later on.
pallmall, you're right, grandparent ac is also ignoring that many of the engineers knew the astronauts on a personal level, or at least, as coworkers. Astronauts, by and large, are also engineers, and work side-by-side with the rest of us. They're not movie stars, they're not rock stars, as some people imagine them to be.
Sorry to be a grammar Nazi on this. The media uses such hyperbole that words change meanings based on the emotional cliches spewed by the plastic hairdos on the news networks. Remember when there were no bad connotations to the word "hacker"? I do.
1. An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe.
Challenger accident was not a disaster. To say that money makes the difference between a tragic accident and a disaster is to devalue the real disasters - such as tsunamis.
I was working in the astronaut training facility in 1986 when Challenger blew up. Like many others that day, I didn't see it live, but I did see it on the first replay. My desk didn't have a line-of-site to the office TV and I was plinking away at some code on a 8088 PC. The sound of a dozen coworkers watching friends die got me up and to the TV.
To those of us at NASA who worked with the crew, it is and will always be an accident.
Because accidents can be prevented, but disasters can't.
Slashdot Mirror
The urban dictionary is wrong. It calls Wild Weasels a "crazy" mission. It wasn't. It was dangerous, but so is everything else in warfare. I used to work on the F4D and F4G - The Phantom F4G was called the "Wild Weasel" in its day. af.mil/museum. It was a cool plane. In 1984, when the US bombed Libya, F111's were the Wild Weasels, and one didn't come back. I don't think it was the result of enemy action, tho, IIRC it had mechanical problems.
Everytime I hear politician (or bidnizman) say "let the market decide" or "let the market sort things out", what he means is "Give some more time for my corporate leashholder to put a complete lock on this, and then we'll come up with a law to make it permanent forever and ever amen."
Is like when I hear a politician say "We can't pay for that tax cut". It shows the porker has forgotten - it ain't his money. It's our money.
It really flames me to hear stuff like that.
Rights are what you're born with, cuz God, FSM, or evolution made it a part of being human. If you're not alive, you're not human - you're worm food. If you have no liberty, you're not living as humans need to live.
And every human will, unless opressed, pursue happiness.
This is what's meant in the Declaration by "These truths we hold to be self evident..."
We speak cuz we're human - and we speak our opinions, not gov't approved drivel, cuz we're human.
Govt can neither grant nor take away a true right. All it can do is protect or oppress those who act according to their rights.
"The Constitution was better as a document enumerating the things government CAN do, with the assumption being that all other powers are strictly excluded"
The bill of rights does very specifically, strictly exclude the Federal government from exercising other powers. Read the 10th amendment.
Bill Of Rights Transcript
It says that any power not granted by this constitution to the Federal Gov't is reserved to the states or to the people. This was to prevent the Fed Gov from expanding and squeezing the states and the people into oblivion. Unfortunately, it's the least supported amendment of all.
Only the courts uphold this, and only when a law is constitutionally challenged - that is, someone has to be hurt by a law before this amendment is used to stop gov't abuse.
The founder's tradition of anonymous speech had *nothing* to do with "bandwidth", it had to do with knowing the truth about the government. Most importantly, it is important that citizens know when they're hearing honest opinion, and when they're hearing political campaigning.
Political parties would *love* that the citizens NOT KNOW when they're being fed propaganda, so that the citizens are more likely to swallow it.
The FEC's decision does NOT apply to people honestly expressing their opinions, but to people producing political mulch for citizens to read - that is, just like in other media, if it's a paid expression by a political party or candidate, then the citizen has the right to know the whole truth about it, including that it's not an "honest" opinion of one human, but that it is product of a political campaign.
A newspaper that is NOT a paid printing from a political party or campaign is viewed as being the opinion of the person or persons running the paper. As such, you should take it with a grain of salt, like always.
Blogs were invented for individuals to use, as opposed to big commercial forums produced and/or censored by companies. As a result, people often expect that when someone who appears to be a human is talking to them in blog postings (like this one), that the human is expressing personal views, not paid-for campaign compost.
That's what this is about - being careful that expectations (however naive) are not used to fool the voters.
While I consider an investigation, with probable cause, of a journalist's possible crime proper, what I was objecting to was the seizure of *everything*, i.e., entire servers and hard disks. This is definitely overbroad and abusive: the cops and the judge (if warrant was issued - TFA doesn't say) absolutely had to know that the servers and disks were not used exclusively on one story where one crime may have been committed. All other data on those disks and all other services provided by those servers was innocent under any theory of law.
As others have said, just the server logs alone are probably enough evidence to convict or clear whoever may have been involved.
cuz disk space is so cheap, and privacy is so valuable.
It's called "probable cause" to believe that an entity (the paper) was involved in the crime. The state can not know whether the newspaper's computers were also used illegally as the state is claiming the coroner's password was. I can easily guess that some hacker that got the password might also hack some news corp's site that had weak security. Why? Cuz anyone would know that the state will (or should) use extra care when kicking in the doors of the press.
Something else you're missing is called "Innocent until proven guilty".
The paper is innocent, and the siezure would obviously have a serious impact on their business. A judge should take this into account before signing a warrant, especially when the criminal could so easily be someone else.
Even if non-public facts were disclosed by the newspaper, the state does not "know" that hacking was the source unless there is clear evidence. Even if hacking was the source, what indication does the state have that it was the newspaper that did the hacking? They may have been hacked too.
The coroner claims he didn't share the password. Who else would know?
Laboratory researchers cause cancer in lab rats...
To those who fought and died for American independence, "independence" meant:
"...that [all men] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted...Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a [despotic] Government...
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America...mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
Specific causes of their struggle are also listed in the Declaration of Independence.
And if you think this was cynical exploitation on their part, remember, *they* who signed the document were under threat of death, they *did* fight alongside those they "suckered", and yes, some of them even died doing it. For more information, you can also read the Federalist Papers.
Agreed, and there's another thing. What if the bad guys don't use standard encryption tools? It'd be easy enough to take encryption code (or math), and implement it in software used only among the "bad guys glee club". By doing this, along with generating your own keys and sending them thru non-internet means, it can become effectively impossible to break. The known methods of breaking most encryptions rely (among other things) on knowing the approximate data arrangement of the encoded text, and which algorithm to use.
I don't know of any code breaking tool that starts with no knowledge of the text except a string of bytes. You'd have to use all known codebreakers at once on the string to break it.
The "glee club" could refuse to cooperatively arrange the data, or they may embed garbage or multiple algorithms, etc into the data. Then "security thru obscurity" as an added feature to a solid encryption algorithm results in something that is easy to implement, which the cops could never break anyway.
So from a practical standpoint, breaking all decryptions out there won't work anyway.
I'd guess it's cuz the sig isn't actually stored with the post, but with the profile ONLY. So when you post, the s/w sees your profile has a sig, and serves it up too. So it seems "retroactive" when really, it's never stored with the post at all. Saves space, etc.
Just a guess.
You assume that gov't ability to read every innocent's communications somehow equates to the ability to catch the guilty before they commit a crime. Well, let's examine that. Where's the proof? The US govt knew about most of the 9/11 bombers before 9/11, but thru ineptness in handling the data they already had, they were unable to stop it.
This is very analogous to Dec 7,1941: The US military had plenty of clues and enough information to prepare, but beaurocratic bungling prevented anyone from seeing all the data in one place at one time. Also, a warning from the radar station on the northern end of the island was disregarded by the officer of the day. Even in the absence of everything else, that radar warning would have given about an hour's notice, plenty of time to sound an alert.
The lesson is that information already available should be put to good use, and collecting more data from innocent sources doesn't help.
Next assumption: Times haven't changed. There have been spies in the US since before the US revolution - even Nazi and Japanese spies in the US before Pearl harbor. The Nazis killed more Americans in US waters before Pearl Harbor than were killed at Pearl harbor - by sinking US shipping in the US intercoastal waterways on the east coast. They got their targets from both periscopes - and spies in the harbor towns who would find out where the best targets would be.
Today, the treatment of innocent Japanese as a result of Pearl Harbor is considered a shame to the US.
Next assumption: The gov't will use the information *only* to prevent a suicide bomber from killing you. This is demonstratably false - kids in middle school are being charged with "terroristic threats" for being bullies. Equating school yard bullies with suicide bombers is an abortion of justice, but that's what your gov't is doing.
What's more important? Freedom is. Thousands of Americans have chosen death before giving up freedom. Being left alone isn't the same thing as being free. If one person who works for the gov't somewhere decides they don't like you, do you want that one person to have these kinds of powers to intrude on your life? Don't think that somehow, magically, someone else in gov't will stop abuse. Branches of the gov't govern themselves, and laws are set up to protect them from legal interference. For example, cops accused of brutality are investigated by other cops. Congressman accused of abuses of power are investigated by other congressman. All such "self-enforcement" policies softpedal abuses, not stop them.
Never forget the nature of the beast. Governments are groups of people controlling other people with violence and the threat of violence. All the laws, regulations, etc, are there to try to ensure that the violence and threats are only used when it benefits the greatest number of people. But the people who benefit most are those with the greatest capacity for violence, and the least to fear from consequences. This is why gov'ts must be very closely watched by the citizens.
I could go on, but I think you were just trolling, not thinking.
I was careful to put "in the US" to make the distinction. Although I used the US terminology from US-based law, I think the same concepts *used to* be part of British law as well. I think that's where the US got the idea - since King George III's England wasn't respecting this (among other things) in the colonies, the upstarts there had a little tiff they called "revolution".
The article assumed that it's ok for for security services to "manage" by monitoring, breaking decryption, and reading internet traffic.
The assumption here is that spying on the innocent is OK. I disagree. "Probable cause" in the US (used to) mean that the cops kept their noses out of situations until they had reason to believe that a criminal was involved in the situation.
"Reasonable suspicion" in the US used to mean that the cops did not hassle (or spy on) *anyone* that wasn't doing something suspicious, even when the person was in public. This meant that cops were not supposed to collar someone walking down the street and start asking them where they got the CDs for their walkman: Doing so presumes a crime was committed, and unless the cop had a genuine reason to think so, the cop was supposed to leave the citizenry alone.
The assumption that "it's ok to decrypt every frickin packet we can slurp up" throws out all of that, and privacy with it.
I don't think it's overly harsh to expect a copyright enforcement agency of the government *to*read*and*understand*copyrights* before starting an enforcement action.
I'd certainly expect a traffic cop to read the speed limit sign before writing a speeding ticket.
1. Brain size less than the radius of a CD.
2. Strict adherence to every rule you've ever been told.
3. Ability to correlate carpooling with the end of the automotive industry.
4. Ability to leap to tall conclusions in a single bound.
5. Complete eagerness to swallow everything spewed forth by the BSA.
"When I consider the rules for grammar, I think
'Any fool can make a rule
and every fool will follow'."
By some famous poet, I forget his name right now.
I'll try not to be flame bait, here, but the article says: ...Or .. cannibalize it and integrate it ... and in a sense the open source product goes away?" ... or... do anything else that meets your needs. The world changes. Open source makes it easier to keep up than the monopolists "screw you, in 8 months we're not supporting it, and we're not gonna let anyone else support it either".
"The question that customers need to pay attention to is what is going to happen to the code that was open source," says Bob Igou, a research director at Gartner. "Does it remain open source?
This is, of course, a complete misunderstanding. Once open, always open. The spin on the article is that a buyer may mutate the product into something the customer doesn't want...like, say, the way Microsoft mutates its products so it won't read your old spreadsheets anymore.
As my example shows, the problem isn't limited to Open source, but only open source has the solution: Stick with the old version, modify it to suit new needs, modify it to output a new format that you're going to upgrade to, or
The article mentions that there's a worry that "great programmers" will leave the OS company once it's bought. Yeah, maybe. Maybe a buyer could commit business suicide by driving away the best people in *any* company... and maybe those good people can continue to support the OPEN product from whereever they land... or maybe, since it's open, there's ten times as many "great programmers" who have access to the code who'll take up where the originals leave off.
The writers don't get the most important fact - Microsoft's monopoly is on *products* not *service*. In terms of service, MS isn't the 800 lb gorilla - open source is. For every MS employee, there's at least 100 open source programmers. And for every one that quits, there's a dozen more young folks in college whose eyes are being opened.
My local broadband providers all require that I load their special software and hardware to get DSL. Guess what? It only runs on winblows.
From home, I'll get on the internet with windows when they cram my cold dead fingers into a light socket. Repeatedly.
Reason #2: with graphics turned off, I can load most of the froofroo pages (like CNN) almost as fast as DSL with the graphics turned on. Block the ad websites also, and I've got DSL-speed access without the advertisements.
The major reason that corporate US is concerned with home use of broadband is so that they can serve up more ads to their consumer cattle herds.
My first thought was, what happens if I'm in an accident that produces a crushing trauma on the glass implant? How big is it, and how big will be the glass shards in my bloodstream?
Second - NO medical procedure is without risk - if you break the skin, you're breaching the body's number one immune system defense.
Any form of encryption/DRM/security numbering scheme has a shelf life - as technology gets faster, mathematicians get smarter, etc, even if the hack that the article mentions is defeated, another hack will be only a matter of time...what's the average lifespan of DRM on music? About a week or a day? A few hours?
You wanna stick a security number in my body? I'll do it for you...
Tell me the number, I'll stick it in my brain. I'll use my digital output devices (hands) to type it in to a keypad every time I need it.
And if it gets hacked, you can give me a new one to install. No problem.
The first C++ compiler I used was a pre-preprocessor. It scanned the C++ code, spat out C, and ran the C compiler on it.
I wish I had the mod points I had until yesterday, I'd mod you up.
This is part of the fundamental problem with any kind of computing-denial method, even cryptography. The best cryptgraphic methods available today just buy time, not security - eventually they'll be cracked, your messages are only safe until then.
The only "box" into which you can put something and make it unreachable is a black hole. And even a tiny bit of information escapes from black holes...
The other problem with DRM, of course, is that you must put the encrypted and unencrypted messages and the software and its keys all into the hands of the "enemy" - your customers.
The USAF did a reliability analysis sometime in late 1970's, early 1980's, and decided to go with unmanned launches from Vandenburg cuz of this number.
The number refers to "1 in 400 mssions will result in partial loss of mission or core functionality" or something like that. A "mission" here is a payload or other shuttle activity planned for a launch. The shuttle can carry more than one payload (and has, several times). The number wasn't "one in 400 will explode" - the failure could be something like (as has happened several times) a payload fails to deploy correctly, or an experiment package gets scrubbed from a launch, etc. The worst case scenario is not the only thing considered. A launch scrub that results in a one or two day delay was not part of the number, only those problems that resulted in significant impact to the USAF's mission.
In the 1980's tho, Congress (in an attempt to continue justification of the shuttle) mandated that the department of defense would use the shuttle for Reagan's star wars stuff, so several missions for DOD (I think 9, or was it 9 years worth?) went up on shuttle.
DoD pulled out of the shuttle program after Challenger. They had a mission that was far more dangerous planned - Centaur. A large, liquid fueled school-bus-sized satellite that Shuttle could barely lift. It went up safely, without fanfare, on unmanned boosters later on.
pallmall, you're right, grandparent ac is also ignoring that many of the engineers knew the astronauts on a personal level, or at least, as coworkers. Astronauts, by and large, are also engineers, and work side-by-side with the rest of us. They're not movie stars, they're not rock stars, as some people imagine them to be.
Sorry to be a grammar Nazi on this. The media uses such hyperbole that words change meanings based on the emotional cliches spewed by the plastic hairdos on the news networks. Remember when there were no bad connotations to the word "hacker"? I do.
From: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=disaster
disaster n.
1. An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe.
Challenger accident was not a disaster. To say that money makes the difference between a tragic accident and a disaster is to devalue the real disasters - such as tsunamis.
I was working in the astronaut training facility in 1986 when Challenger blew up. Like many others that day, I didn't see it live, but I did see it on the first replay. My desk didn't have a line-of-site to the office TV and I was plinking away at some code on a 8088 PC.
The sound of a dozen coworkers watching friends die got me up and to the TV.
To those of us at NASA who worked with the crew, it is and will always be an accident.
Because accidents can be prevented, but disasters can't.