I will accurately measure the light moving away from me at 3,000,000 km/s and you will accurately measure the light moving toward you at 3,000,000 km/s. Well, if you get that result, you're certainly not measuring accurately! Last I checked, the speed of light was 299,792.458 km/s. Of course, it's been a long time since high school, so I may have forgotten.
In my opinion, this is a terrible way to build the system, and "debugging" methods like this are the reason so much code sucks.
You're not developing the project for a "master user," you're developing it for normal users. Debugging code while in the "master" mode will do nothing more than give you a false sense of whether your code is buggy or not.
It's like installing an app, and then testing it as root. It doesn't tell you anything, and it makes user's lives miserable when they can't get something to work.
Other technologies about which we should exercise caution include VOIP, Bluetooth, open source, automated patching, RFIDs and biometrics.{Emphasis mine}
It would be nice if he could give us a concrete reason why we should "exercise caution" with open source. Does he really have a valid point, or is he just propogating the "open source is less secure because crackers can see the code" myth?
How will this be any different from the way it is now? Right now we probably have a significant proportion of the voting population that feels this way...but they don't get politically active. You're just moving the whole scenario to a smaller location...you're not actually changing anything.
I won't mention how this is illegal, of course. For a precedent, try, oh, the Civil War. Or the Militias out west.
Then, of course, you have to realize that the 20,000 people you are going to get are going to have about 5,000 different ideas about how to run this "free state." Geeks are not good at compromise...we're used to doing things the Right Way. Unfortuantely, government is not as cut and dry as code (and hell, code isn't that cut and dry, either).
Frankly, this whole things strikes me as a stupid idea originating from people who have no clue regarding politics, history, human nature, or just how damn lucky the U.S. was to have the amazing (and, yes, flawed, I know) leaders that we had when we started up. Look at what happened in France.
/begin TREK_GEEK
I was always under the impression that the Bird of Prey was a Romulan design, as first revealed in the TOS episode "Balance of Terror". I don't recall the Klingon version appearing until "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock", and the canonical explanation was that the Romulans and Klingons had entered into a sort-of free-trade agreement for sharing technology..../end TREK_GEEK
Well, I hate to show the true horrifying depths of my fanboyism...but, the Klingons developed it first, and sold the Romulans older designs. I believe that the Klingons got the cloaking device in return...
You have to get approval of directors/dept. heads first of course, but I have certainly showed up at some of my sites at 6 AM, shut down the server, put a red cardboard flame on it, and waited 'till my staff showed up.
This is quite simply the most idiotic thing that I have ever heard. To suggest that turning off a server is an acceptable way to test your disaster recovery plans is the most irresponsible way to run a ship that I have ever heard of. That your supervisors let you do this amazes me to no end.
When you test disaster recovery plans, you do just that, test them. You do not actually create a disaster. You simply tell everyone that the server is down, and then ask "What do we do now?"
Perhaps you work in a company where the loss of a server for half a day is not a big deal, but I would warn you against "testing" you disaster recovery plans in this way anywhere else. Unless you're sick of working there.
I think this might be the reason that nlslookup is not mentioned:
[tj@pheonix tj]$ nslookup
Note: nslookup is deprecated and may be removed from future releases.
Consider using the `dig' or `host' programs instead. Run nslookup with
the `-sil[ent]' option to prevent this message from appearing.
> exit
dig is much better, IMHO, once you get used to it.
I think software engineering is more like research and development than hardware engineering. You know what your ultimate goal is, and you can SOMETIMES estimate how long it will take, but usually, you're doing something that you've never done before. So, for large scale projects, it's VERY difficult to estimate with any degree of accuracy how long a software project is going to take.
This is why code re-use is so great. It makes software engineering more like hardware engineering, allowing more of a construction method of building software than a research "how-am-I-going-to-do-this" method.
Ban encryption, ban guns, ban knives, forks...
on
Blaming Encryption
·
· Score: 1
This is absolutely asinine. Is anyone shouting for
the banning of box cutters? How about banning airplanes?
Those, too, were tools that we used for evil.
Do we see Congress trying to ban guns? But THOUSANDS
are killed every YEAR by them? Or, could it be it's not the
guns, but it's the people who USE THEM.
The reason that encryption is being singled out is
that, unlike the gun lobby, there is no large and
well-funded group out there to "persuade"
(read: buy) Congress that it's the people they
should go after, not the tools.
Slashdot Mirror
In my opinion, this is a terrible way to build the system, and "debugging" methods like this are the reason so much code sucks.
You're not developing the project for a "master user," you're developing it for normal users. Debugging code while in the "master" mode will do nothing more than give you a false sense of whether your code is buggy or not.
It's like installing an app, and then testing it as root. It doesn't tell you anything, and it makes user's lives miserable when they can't get something to work.
Other technologies about which we should exercise caution include VOIP, Bluetooth, open source, automated patching, RFIDs and biometrics.{Emphasis mine}
It would be nice if he could give us a concrete reason why we should "exercise caution" with open source. Does he really have a valid point, or is he just propogating the "open source is less secure because crackers can see the code" myth?
I won't mention how this is illegal, of course. For a precedent, try, oh, the Civil War. Or the Militias out west.
Then, of course, you have to realize that the 20,000 people you are going to get are going to have about 5,000 different ideas about how to run this "free state." Geeks are not good at compromise...we're used to doing things the Right Way. Unfortuantely, government is not as cut and dry as code (and hell, code isn't that cut and dry, either).
Frankly, this whole things strikes me as a stupid idea originating from people who have no clue regarding politics, history, human nature, or just how damn lucky the U.S. was to have the amazing (and, yes, flawed, I know) leaders that we had when we started up. Look at what happened in France.
Well, I hate to show the true horrifying depths of my fanboyism...but, the Klingons developed it first, and sold the Romulans older designs. I believe that the Klingons got the cloaking device in return...
When you test disaster recovery plans, you do just that, test them. You do not actually create a disaster. You simply tell everyone that the server is down, and then ask "What do we do now?"
Perhaps you work in a company where the loss of a server for half a day is not a big deal, but I would warn you against "testing" you disaster recovery plans in this way anywhere else. Unless you're sick of working there.
I think this might be the reason that nlslookup is not mentioned:
[tj@pheonix tj]$ nslookup
Note: nslookup is deprecated and may be removed from future releases.
Consider using the `dig' or `host' programs instead. Run nslookup with
the `-sil[ent]' option to prevent this message from appearing.
> exit
dig is much better, IMHO, once you get used to it.
I think software engineering is more like research and development than hardware engineering. You know what your ultimate goal is, and you can SOMETIMES estimate how long it will take, but usually, you're doing something that you've never done before. So, for large scale projects, it's VERY difficult to estimate with any degree of accuracy how long a software project is going to take.
This is why code re-use is so great. It makes software engineering more like hardware engineering, allowing more of a construction method of building software than a research "how-am-I-going-to-do-this" method.
This is absolutely asinine. Is anyone shouting for
the banning of box cutters? How about banning airplanes?
Those, too, were tools that we used for evil.
Do we see Congress trying to ban guns? But THOUSANDS
are killed every YEAR by them? Or, could it be it's not the
guns, but it's the people who USE THEM.
The reason that encryption is being singled out is
that, unlike the gun lobby, there is no large and
well-funded group out there to "persuade"
(read: buy) Congress that it's the people they
should go after, not the tools.