Why the flamebait mod? The parent has an excellent point. There is more than just the one amalgamated political party in the US. I mean, it's pretty hard to utter the words, "the other political party" without realizing it is a major gaffe. Presumably Taco set the site up with a section to discuss politics because it is a topic he is interested in. It would logically follow that someone, interested enough in politics to set up a discussion board regarding the topic, would be well aware that the US political system isn't strictly based on a two party system. It's a very basic error. What error?W hen was the last time a party other than the Democrats or Republicans won a presidential race? Or even more than 1 or 2 Senatorial or Congressional races? Running for office without winning means nothing in a undemocratic election system like that of the U.S. Only Maine has a real selection for the Electoral College. Every other state is winner take all, meaning most Americans have no say in the selection of President.
The U.S. is a 2 party system as much as Russia is, perhaps even more. The real race for U.S. President happens Tuesday. What happens in November is just for show.
Dr. David Parnas actually succeeded in becoming a Professional Engineer (P.Eng) in Ontario as a "Software Engineer". He showed that there are rigorous ways of designing software so that the tenets of engineering safety can be upheld.
So yes you can be a software engineer in Canada. But not by getting a cereal box certification from Microsoft. Perhaps graduating with a degree in Software Engineering from a University like Waterloo or Toronto, which do have software engineering courses.
You are proving the statement true. You get a return on your investment in employee loyalty and productivity. Businesses make investment decisions in different ways, You have decided that your employees are worth investing in, so you get a better employee and therefore more long term profit.
If you did it but employees started leaving in greater numbers because of it (thinking it "unbusinesslike" say), would you continue?
I most certainly do think that business does a lot of good. But it doesn't do it out of anything other than a way of maximizing profit in the long term.
As well, individual businesses will do good in the short term because they are controlled by people who want to do good. But in a truly competitive market, only businesses that look to the bottom line survive. Doing good can help profits as long as the "goodwill" value exceeds the expense. If it doesn't, they won't do it.
Actually, I think resigning from the OLPC project is probably going to harm Intel more than help them. They are now in the position of having AMD being seen as the most viable supplier of processors for educational laptops. Instead of getting the high end sales in Peru for secondary schools, they get no sales and piss off their customers. Intel has alienated so many possible customers, they will have great difficulty increasing sales at all.
AMD may not be making a profit on OLPC, but it is getting free advertising that increases its sales at the expense of Intel.
One problem is that there are so few people out there like Mr. Negroponte in the business world
In my experience, there are tons of people in the business world like Mr. Negroponte. We don't hear about them for two reasons. First, they tend to be small business owners. Second, they tend not to do heinous things. The news goes for interesting stories, which excludes the small fry doing something nice for someone else.
There is a third reason. They don't stay in business very long.
Business is not based on good or evil but profit and loss. One should never expect business to do anything but maximize its profits. To control byuiness, one needs laws that make it profitable to do good and unprofitable to do evil. That means costs for business should include the externalities, such as production of greenhouse gases, now subsidized by government.
The real problem with American Presidential votes is not just first past the post voting, but the fact that it is first past the post PER STATE. Instead of the Electoral College votes being proportional to the state vote or being by congressional district + proportional for the 2 electors for senators, it generally gives (Maine is an exception) all Electoral College to votes to whoever wins the plurality of the states votes. It is as if Congress were elected by states so only one party ever represented a state, getting rid of districts.
Although the Republicans have benefited most from this (witness 2000 election), it is also Republicans from large states that get hurt most. Instead of Republicans in California having an influence on who gets elected President, California Republicans lose their vote because the Democrats consistently win the California Presidential vote. No wonder there is such a low turnout, since your vote only really matters in swing states.
On most Windows systems, the user is running as Administrator, so you do not even have to ask the user to install software. That is the main problem. Vista changes this (at last), but until Vista (or an updated XP) is the norm, then Windows is easier to Trojan.
Mac OS-X is almost as easy since the.dmg files are so common for so many things from document updates to kernel installs that users are almost sure to type in password for installation.
Linux requires more work because most Linux users have a separate root and user account with different passwords and sudo is thereby more restricted.
Dont just trow a rock, explain why the export of SSL (certificates) is weak? Until the 21st century, no U.S. company, such as Netscape, was allowed to export software that used more than 40 bit keys. So SSL was useless outside of U.S. and Canada (which was treated as domestic, even though it did not forbid export).
From Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography_export):
SSL-encrypted messages used the RC4 cipher, and used 128-bit keys. U.S. government export regulations would not permit crypto systems using 128-bit keys to be exported. At this stage Western governments had, in practice, a split personality when it came to encryption; policy was made by the military cryptanalysts, who were solely concerned with preventing their 'enemies' accquiring secrets, but that policy was then communicated to commerce by officials whose job was to support industry. Some of the proposals made at this time, for instance, that government should be provided with every strong crypto key used by industry, seem laughable when viewed from the point of view of 2005.
The longest key size allowed for export without individual license proceedings was 40 bits, so Netscape developed two versions of its web browser. The "U.S. edition" had the full 128-bit strength. The "International Edition" had its effective key length reduced to 40 bits by revealing 88 bits of the key in the SSL protocol. Acquiring the 'U.S. domestic' version turned out to be sufficient hassle that most computer users, even in the U.S., ended up with the 'International' version[citation needed], whose weak 40-bit encryption could be broken in a matter of days using a single personal computer. Much the same thing happened with Lotus Notes and for the same reasons.
Legal challenges by Peter Junger and other civil libertarians and privacy advocates, the widespread availability of encryption software outside the U.S., and the perception by many companies that adverse publicity about weak encryption was limiting their sales and the growth of e-commerce, led to a series of relaxations in US export controls, culminating in 1996 in the effective elimination of export controls on mass-market "shrinkwrap" and open source software containing cryptography (which, in any case, a "rogue state" could have downloaded, and subsequently verified, from file sharing networks or servers outside the US).
OEM does not just apply to hardware. Base software such as operating systems are treated just like hardware in law. Selling other companies software as part of a equipment package is exactly what Microsoft is doing. It is using Novell as the supplier for stuff that they are selling to their customers. They are selling packaged systems that include Novell SUSE as part of the equipment.
I was talking to a Novell sales support person this evening. I asked him what the effect had been of the Novell/Microsoft deal and he replied that Microsoft is now Novell's biggest OEM partner, he said that Microsoft have sold ~60,000 SUSE licenses with support, at about $5,000 each. $300 million is not a laughing matter.
Microsoft has realized that there are some things that Linux does better than Windows, especially in the server area, and wanted to guarantee a piece of the action. So far they seem to have succeeded. Novell gets the support business, Microsoft gets to keep a customer..
I bought a Macbook this month so that I would be eligible for Leopard upgrade, although I received my computer with Tiger installed. The Tiger version of OS-X had Airport wireless support that was broken and would not connect to my SMC wireless modem. I uses Wireshark to trace the conversation and it was definitely the OS software not responding. The actual wireless modem was receiving all the packets. I installed Leopard last Tuesday after receiving the update DVD. It fixed the wireless problem. So instead of hindering me, the update actually fixed a significant problem
Yes, placing an item into the mouth of a seizure victim is potentially fatal. But the very fact that the person "knew" a remedy for epilepsy proves that they believed that they had "expert" knowledge. Putting the spoon in the mouth was an a non-obvious rescue act, so not one a "Good Samaritan" with only layman's knowledge would be expected to know. That fact that is is "incorrect" folk medicine still shows that the person claimed to have medical knowledge.
Phishers can't operate as readily if the banking site can be identified by proper two way TSL certificates. That is, the banking certificate is given to the user by the bank branch directly so that all transactions with the bank are encrypted with the bank's public key and a shared key that only the bank knows. The user's password only unlocks the PKI certificate so even if the phisher's get the password, they will not have the actual certificate to be able to transact business with the bank.
The problem is that bank's would rather lose a few dollars to phishers than pay for proper security for online transactions.
In the late 90s my bank required a separate Entrust certificate process to run to be able to do business. But they lost business to banks that used the simpler (and less secure) one way SSL connection with a password that they changed to SSL themselves. As long as banks don't suffer the consequences of inadequate security and consumers don't require good security, we will still have problems.
. that it supposedly legitimizes something that was actually perfectly legal in the first place (personal and private copying being supposedly exempt from copyright infringement). Unfortunately, personal and private copying is NOT legal in Canada. The concept of "fair use", which American copyright law has, does not exist in Canadian law. It is even illegal to provide speech translations for blind people without paying for a copy. See http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/copyright/pdf/per ceptual_disability.pdf for details.
Copyright law is not the same from one country to another. The United States has fairly lenient laws about private copying, but strong laws against sharing with others. Canada prohibits copying (you are supposed to pay for each copy, even that photocopy that enlarges the print so you can read it).
So the levy in Canada is a way to allow personal copying without changing the general prohibition against copying.
Good experienced programmers read far more code than writing it. Most actual programming is either modifying existing software or replacing existing software by nw software. Both of these activities require reading code to understand what actually happens in the existing system,
Good systems have code that allows easy modifications and makes few assumptions. Design decisions are either transparent in the code or well documented in comments. So reading other people's code helps you write good code, since you know what kind of code is easy to read and modify and what kind of code is sludge in the engine of progress.
If CS is such a narrow speciality that it should not include anything but math, what is its use? If it is a science, then what does it research?
A good article on what CS should cover is in this months CACM.
Yes HCI and CS are NOW different disciplines, but that is part of the problem. We really need to have a better integration of both. You need the basic underpinning of what is now taught in CS, but you also need to be taught a lot more about HCI. You seem to have got that mix, which makes ou much more valuable that either a pure HCI or a pure CS graduate.
Too many people go through a CS program without spending enough study of human computer factors (I was one). Computer Science implies using the scientific method to observe and understand how to use and extend the power of computers. Science is based on experiments and observations as well as mathematics. Overwhelming the CS curriculum with too much theory and not enough observation causes graduates to make assumptions of their and others abilities that create interfaces such as on the 757.
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The U.S. is a 2 party system as much as Russia is, perhaps even more. The real race for U.S. President happens Tuesday. What happens in November is just for show.
Dr. David Parnas actually succeeded in becoming a Professional Engineer (P.Eng) in Ontario as a "Software Engineer". He showed that there are rigorous ways of designing software so that the tenets of engineering safety can be upheld.
So yes you can be a software engineer in Canada. But not by getting a cereal box certification from Microsoft. Perhaps graduating with a degree in Software Engineering from a University like Waterloo or Toronto, which do have software engineering courses.
Actually I am installing a new version of TeX WHILE watching the SuperBowl . There are so many commercials it gives lots of time to use the keyboards.
If there is God, then Her teachings would be seen in the universe She created, in its structure and laws.
So the only reasonable Word of God is not the Bible but science.
Evolution is a much better expression of the true "Word of God" than the Bible.
Please show me where in the Bible it talks of the Trinity?
That doctrine has no biblical support at all. It comes from the Council of Nicea n the 5th century, not the Bible.
You are proving the statement true. You get a return on your investment in employee loyalty and productivity. Businesses make investment decisions in different ways, You have decided that your employees are worth investing in, so you get a better employee and therefore more long term profit.
If you did it but employees started leaving in greater numbers because of it (thinking it "unbusinesslike" say), would you continue?
I most certainly do think that business does a lot of good. But it doesn't do it out of anything other than a way of maximizing profit in the long term.
As well, individual businesses will do good in the short term because they are controlled by people who want to do good. But in a truly competitive market, only businesses that look to the bottom line survive. Doing good can help profits as long as the "goodwill" value exceeds the expense. If it doesn't, they won't do it.
Actually, I think resigning from the OLPC project is probably going to harm Intel more than help them. They are now in the position of having AMD being seen as the most viable supplier of processors for educational laptops. Instead of getting the high end sales in Peru for secondary schools, they get no sales and piss off their customers. Intel has alienated so many possible customers, they will have great difficulty increasing sales at all.
AMD may not be making a profit on OLPC, but it is getting free advertising that increases its sales at the expense of Intel.
In my experience, there are tons of people in the business world like Mr. Negroponte. We don't hear about them for two reasons. First, they tend to be small business owners. Second, they tend not to do heinous things. The news goes for interesting stories, which excludes the small fry doing something nice for someone else.
There is a third reason. They don't stay in business very long.Business is not based on good or evil but profit and loss. One should never expect business to do anything but maximize its profits. To control byuiness, one needs laws that make it profitable to do good and unprofitable to do evil. That means costs for business should include the externalities, such as production of greenhouse gases, now subsidized by government.
The real problem with American Presidential votes is not just first past the post voting, but the fact that it is first past the post PER STATE. Instead of the Electoral College votes being proportional to the state vote or being by congressional district + proportional for the 2 electors for senators, it generally gives (Maine is an exception) all Electoral College to votes to whoever wins the plurality of the states votes. It is as if Congress were elected by states so only one party ever represented a state, getting rid of districts.
Although the Republicans have benefited most from this (witness 2000 election), it is also Republicans from large states that get hurt most. Instead of Republicans in California having an influence on who gets elected President, California Republicans lose their vote because the Democrats consistently win the California Presidential vote. No wonder there is such a low turnout, since your vote only really matters in swing states.
On most Windows systems, the user is running as Administrator, so you do not even have to ask the user to install software. That is the main problem.
.dmg files are so common for so many things from document updates to kernel installs that users are almost sure to type in password for installation.
Vista changes this (at last), but until Vista (or an updated XP) is the norm, then Windows is easier to Trojan.
Mac OS-X is almost as easy since the
Linux requires more work because most Linux users have a separate root and user account with different passwords and sudo is thereby more restricted.
There already is a 10.5.1 and it is should be on any machine that does a regular software update check.
So SSL was useless outside of U.S. and Canada (which was treated as domestic, even though it did not forbid export).
From Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography_export): SSL-encrypted messages used the RC4 cipher, and used 128-bit keys. U.S. government export regulations would not permit crypto systems using 128-bit keys to be exported. At this stage Western governments had, in practice, a split personality when it came to encryption; policy was made by the military cryptanalysts, who were solely concerned with preventing their 'enemies' accquiring secrets, but that policy was then communicated to commerce by officials whose job was to support industry. Some of the proposals made at this time, for instance, that government should be provided with every strong crypto key used by industry, seem laughable when viewed from the point of view of 2005.
The longest key size allowed for export without individual license proceedings was 40 bits, so Netscape developed two versions of its web browser. The "U.S. edition" had the full 128-bit strength. The "International Edition" had its effective key length reduced to 40 bits by revealing 88 bits of the key in the SSL protocol. Acquiring the 'U.S. domestic' version turned out to be sufficient hassle that most computer users, even in the U.S., ended up with the 'International' version[citation needed], whose weak 40-bit encryption could be broken in a matter of days using a single personal computer. Much the same thing happened with Lotus Notes and for the same reasons.
Legal challenges by Peter Junger and other civil libertarians and privacy advocates, the widespread availability of encryption software outside the U.S., and the perception by many companies that adverse publicity about weak encryption was limiting their sales and the growth of e-commerce, led to a series of relaxations in US export controls, culminating in 1996 in the effective elimination of export controls on mass-market "shrinkwrap" and open source software containing cryptography (which, in any case, a "rogue state" could have downloaded, and subsequently verified, from file sharing networks or servers outside the US).
OEM does not just apply to hardware. Base software such as operating systems are treated just like hardware in law. Selling other companies software as part of a equipment package is exactly what Microsoft is doing. It is using Novell as the supplier for stuff that they are selling to their customers. They are selling packaged systems that include Novell SUSE as part of the equipment.
I was talking to a Novell sales support person this evening. I asked him what the effect had been of the Novell/Microsoft deal and he replied that Microsoft is now Novell's biggest OEM partner, he said that Microsoft have sold ~60,000 SUSE licenses with support, at about $5,000 each. $300 million is not a laughing matter.
Microsoft has realized that there are some things that Linux does better than Windows, especially in the server area, and wanted to guarantee a piece of the action. So far they seem to have succeeded. Novell gets the support business, Microsoft gets to keep a customer..
Funny, the part of OS-X (Darwin) that does file copying is open source, so I guess you have already found the bug and told given Apple the fix.
Source Code being open is no guarantee against bugs, it just means that more people can search for them.
I bought a Macbook this month so that I would be eligible for Leopard upgrade, although I received my computer with Tiger installed.
The Tiger version of OS-X had Airport wireless support that was broken and would not connect to my SMC wireless modem. I uses Wireshark to trace the conversation and it was definitely the OS software not responding. The actual wireless modem was receiving all the packets.
I installed Leopard last Tuesday after receiving the update DVD. It fixed the wireless problem. So instead of hindering me, the update actually fixed a significant problem
That is statute not statue. Check a dictionary for difference.
So does public education. But I suppose you prefer ignorance instead.
Health care decisions would be fine in individual hands if each individual was guaranteed the means to pay for any choice.
You can have government run medical insurance without taking choice out of individual's hands.
Phishers can't operate as readily if the banking site can be identified by proper two way TSL certificates. That is, the banking certificate is given to the user by the bank branch directly so that all transactions with the bank are encrypted with the bank's public key and a shared key that only the bank knows. The user's password only unlocks the PKI certificate so even if the phisher's get the password, they will not have the actual certificate to be able to transact business with the bank.
The problem is that bank's would rather lose a few dollars to phishers than pay for proper security for online transactions.
In the late 90s my bank required a separate Entrust certificate process to run to be able to do business. But they lost business to banks that used the simpler (and less secure) one way SSL connection with a password that they changed to SSL themselves. As long as banks don't suffer the consequences of inadequate security and consumers don't require good security, we will still have problems.
See
http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/copyright/pdf/pe
Copyright law is not the same from one country to another. The United States has fairly lenient laws about private copying, but strong laws against sharing with others. Canada prohibits copying (you are supposed to pay for each copy, even that photocopy that enlarges the print so you can read it).
So the levy in Canada is a way to allow personal copying without changing the general prohibition against copying.
Good experienced programmers read far more code than writing it. Most actual programming is either modifying existing software or replacing existing software by nw software. Both of these activities require reading code to understand what actually happens in the existing system,
Good systems have code that allows easy modifications and makes few assumptions. Design decisions are either transparent in the code or well documented in comments. So reading other people's code helps you write good code, since you know what kind of code is easy to read and modify and what kind of code is sludge in the engine of progress.
See The ACM and IEEE-CS Guidelines for Undergraduate CS Education .
Notice that the emphasis is now much more on "liberal arts" versus mathematics, showing the growing awareness of what CS is really about.
Yes HCI and CS are NOW different disciplines, but that is part of the problem. We really need to have a better integration of both. You need the basic underpinning of what is now taught in CS, but you also need to be taught a lot more about HCI. You seem to have got that mix, which makes ou much more valuable that either a pure HCI or a pure CS graduate.
Too many people go through a CS program without spending enough study of human computer factors (I was one). Computer Science implies using the scientific method to observe and understand how to use and extend the power of computers. Science is based on experiments and observations as well as mathematics. Overwhelming the CS curriculum with too much theory and not enough observation causes graduates to make assumptions of their and others abilities that create interfaces such as on the 757.