here are a few. (Nice post, btw - briefly covered the current state of titanium supply industry).
If this electrolytic refining technology foreseen in the Economist article is realized, some changes will occur. Toothpaste and white paint might get more expensive as titanium metal gets less costly (as metal refining starts to compete with dioxide, the price of titanium dioxide will have to rise).
But the major changes will likely proceed from a combination of technologies. One might note that several have remarked that titanium is tough and this means its hard to machine. What if you could create titanium parts without significant tooling?
What if you could form a part out of a titanium dioxide/alloy paste on a 3-dimensional 'printer' and then use an electrolytic process to finish it as a completely formed titanium alloy part? Cool?
You betcha! That's where the article is pointing.
China won't be left behind in such a transition - they'll simply shift from (labor intensive) sponge production to new electrolytic processes and parts manufacture - to designs specified real-time. And they'll use unicode-enabled Linux (TurboLinux? or their own ripoff of same) to drive 3D "printers."
Years ago, I toured the Wah Chang plant in Albany, Oregon. Their product was Zirconium, back then...
I basically agree with you - most people have no real need for a 1 Ghz processor, DDR/RDR RAM, or awesome graphics cards. However, Slashdot does attract (no flamebait intended) the '133t haX0r juveniles (and aging arrested-development g33k5), so there's a weird lust for bleeding-edge chips. (I share that edgy hardware lust, so I must be one of the latter sort of technophiles).
However, _most_ college students just want to get connected to the campus-net, write their papers, communicate with their professors and assistants, and get through school. They don't focus on the coolest/fastest stuff ('cause Dad - unless he's a geek - isn't going to replace it every semester).
Last Fall I gave my daughter a Sony VAIO notebook for school. Campus tech-support couldn't get it to connect to their net. This year, she bought a different PCMCIA NIC, and it works! It's just a notebook, but that is just what many students have now.
So, only students who believe, wrongly, high-end hardware will impress professors, will pressure parents for latest systems.
[Here's the "I walked 10 miles through snowdrifts to school" story.] When I was in college, I did _type_ all my papers on an Olympus portable (that was a typewriter, for those unfamiliar with them) and I managed to communicate. However, there was an IBM 1401 in the computer center. It took Fortran punch-cards. There was also a commercial service-bureau down the hill (that also used the punch-card regime, plus OCR), and I worked there as a "night operator" for a while, in the early '70s.
That little datacenter processed the billings for Evergreen Air (the CIA airlift contractor during the Vietnam war). I've never seen so much money flow through any system since then - add millions of dollars per day, multiply by months, and - as Everett Dirkson said - pretty soon it adds up to real money!
Back to the topic. Intel is in trouble! They aren't capable of releasing any competitive products, lately. The P4 is delayed, as is their wrong-designed Itanimium, and now... Timna is canceled - will Intel sell a lot of suspect overclocked P3 chips this year?
Think about this for a moment. Which outcome will likely provide more income for Rehnquist's son? A Microsoft victory in the DoJ Antitrust case? Or a loss leading to massive litigation?
I think it's possible that Rehnquist is setting Microsoft up for a big fall (and, by the way, ensuring his son's very profitable and lifetime employment defending Microsoft against waves of private antitrust suits - for several decades).
Note his final comment, where he expresses valid concern that an equally divided Supreme Court could _affirm_ a lower court decision (presumably in Microsoft's favor, given bias already shown) by default. Rehnquist is actually leaving the door open for himself to cast the deciding vote _against_ Microsoft! He should be applauded for this, rather than subjected to foolish criticism.
Sometimes I think Slashdot should be renamed to "Kneejerk."
after all the most capable and reputable academic institutions refused to submit to DoJ conditions for a so-called "unbiased, independent" review.
So, of course, now a couple of third-rate schools beholden to DARPA grants or hoping for publicity step up to "review" (read rubber-stamp) the FBI's Carnivore system. Their credibility in doing so will be below merely suspect, given that DoJ restrictions to control and edit their findings effectively foreclose any critical questioning. And, they have the technical and legal reviews at two different institutions. How very amusing....
Not that anyone should be surprised, after Janet Reno and Louis Freeh defended their persecution, harassment, and long unjust incarceration of Win Ho Lee, whom they targeted unfairly and so badly abused _for a year_ before finally releasing him.
Thomas Jefferson believed in revolutions every 20 years or so. It's been 200+ years since then....
First, ask yourself why they (the PHB's) want you to manage a technical group, rather than being a valued senior technician. Is the product design hopelessly flawed? Are they missing schedules? Unless you can say "No" to both these questions, you might be the latest fall-guy for management.
OTOH, if your management is great, then you might enjoy joining them. Do what feels most right....
until they can do 1024 X 768. Their claim about 19" monitor resolution is just marketing hype at this point. C'mon, 800 x 600 SVGA is old stuff! They should match our normal 19" monitor screen dimensions, or not claim parity with big screens....
As long as you don't _rebroadcast_ (redistribute on a mass basis) any TV show you recieve, the Audio Home Recording Act (extended to cover TV) covers you. Tivo is just a fancy VCR, and... though the MPAA fought those tooth and nail - they lost... VCR's are legal to use, and Videotape sales have been _highly_ profitable for the movie studios (i.e., MPAA members).
Digital TV recording _for private use_ will likely fall under the AHRA, just like VCRs. But... the crucial difference is that digital media are just... data. TV programs in digital form face the same grassroots distribution threat as music. So, the Napster case is real important and we'll see more rearguard lawsuits - this time from the broadcast media - regarding TV recording....
You _used_ to work for them, right? They can't force you to claim an "invention" you don't recognize as one. If you know of prior art or can clearly express the excessive breadth of their intended claims, you can tell them so.
Yes, but I'd mention that mp3.com settled with all the other major labels. They will now resume streaming all those titles through the my.mp3.com service but _not_ any music put out by Universal. Reasonable, but also a payback in spades to UMG.
It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on Universal's CD sales. One would doubt it, but it might have an impact.
Universal might rethink and actually settle with mp3.com. Hmmm, five years of appeals to receive $118 million versus $20 million for licensing per year, say 6% interest, looks like close to a wash to me in terms of net present value. Universal's potential marketing losses over the five years might make a deal attractive. They're sure not going to be very successful with their pay-to-download model.
Since the big music labels are nothing if not highly competitive with one another, it would not greatly surprise me to see Universal _buy_ mp3.com to regain parity in Internet presence. In that case, one would hope that the board of mp3.com would have the sense to make Universal pay at least $118 million (plus all their legal fees) _more_ than mp3.com is reasonably worth.
One would hope so. Seriously, I wonder whether anyone competent at the relevent calculations has ever assessed our odds of a major asteroid/comet impact versus the death of the Sun. Small odds, I would think offhand, but it _is_ an interesting question. I mean, how much time do we have to get off this nice rock? It seems important...
If statistics give us a few thousand years, then we might make it. But the hard reality is that our Sun _will_ eventually blow and destroy Earth. (Yes, that's a long ways in the future, but it _will_ eventually happen, and we should plan to survive that event.)
Really... "operational by 2015"... these people are clueless! The privately-funded SETI project will be far ahead of them, by then. They should spend their moneys on more immediate concerns...
Yeah, but look at the real melt-down scandal with the LAPD Rampart CRASH cops. This is going to cost LA millions to make it finally go away. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file cops just want their latest Chief to go away (he's been imposing bullshit 10-day suspensions without pay for things like not-wearing-badge-on-coat and failing-to-give-business-card-to-contactee.) Not an issue if one doesn't live in SoCal, but from _here_ it looks like a political/cops implosion. It seems we're getting a military PD, in LA.
(I _drove through_ the Rodney King riots. But I'm much more scared of LA gub'mint excesses.)
OK, so the DoJ makes a phone call and DoD trots out a "well-known Internet designer" to say soothing things like "trust them" and "no one needs to see the code." I don't know whether Cerf worked directly for DARPA, or indirectly by way of DARPA grants. If he worked directly for DoD, then it's very possible that he still does.
(Many former Federal employees are still on-call as needed; I once met a HS girlfriend's "retired" father at a job fair, behind the CIA recruiting table; a former coworker who was a "retired" SEAL regularly disappeared from work,... for several months.)
The point is that government "Of the People, By the People, and For the People" is at stake here.
This is why we have Open Meetings laws (and the Judiciary enforces these when they're flouted). As a parallel, it seems that what we need now are Open Source laws. Strong ones, with teeth.
Any citizen should be allowed to read the source code of any/every government information system, without barriers, fees, or harrassment. This is simply an extension of existing practices that laws, court decisions, and government rules and regulations must be published for all to see.
Since government IT systems actually _implement_ regulations, it seems not only fair but even imperative that the public should have access to review the logic actually used by government entities, i.e., the rules coded in their software systems. The IRS quickly comes to mind, here....
If such laws had been in place several years ago, the California DMV might have thought twice about _selling_ information from their databases of licensed drivers to commercial interests. They got their hands slapped for that one, but not before they'd already done it for quite a while. People had to _infer_ that they were doing that.
Believe it. (Ask Kevin Mitnick if _he_ believes it.)
Law enforcement agencies (incl. FBI) can apply for court orders to:
* read your mail
* bug your home/business/car/meeting-place
* wiretap your phone and public pay phones
* track and tap your cellphone
and now, add...
* read all your data traffic (not just email) - this will be extended to wireless traffic, too.
They don't need permission to record what anyone says in public, since there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public.
(BTW, you'll recall that they caught Mitnick by tracking his cellphone.)
According to the Constitution, all they have to do is convince a Judge that their intended "search" is not unreasonable. They can usually do this by showing that they have "reason to believe" a crime has been committed or is being planned. IANAL, but it seems a broad standard.
The real danger of Carnivore is that it could easily be abused to collect/scan/analyze _all_ data traffic _all_ the time, as NSA's Echelon is reported to have been doing for quite some time.
Replying to myself - but not a problem, unless I find myself answering....
Doesn't your University Hospital have some really _big_ systems? Most, if not all, do. You should be looking to that existing IT infrastructure for some answers to your high Microsoft-driven costs.
It's likely that your MS-based departmental systems are 3-tier architectures backed by mainframe transaction systems and relational databases. If that's the case, then you can easily cut out the high-cost MS middleman and access those very reliable databases more directly. IBM provides WebSphere with direct links to CICS/MQ transactional and DB2 database services. They'll also do this using Linux....
Despite the title, I'll try to be supportive here. The reason for the question is that comp-sci is comparable to medicine in depth.
You might find this project takes quite a while (longer than your current semester or even year), given existing infrastructure (Windows 98/NT), people/politics (MS techs and their MS-oriented managers), and everyone's steep learning-curve to understand / install / configure / survive / thrive using *nix systems. Are you a soon to be frocked doctor or an IT professional?
If you're the former, you'll be better served to push for your laudable goals from the powerbase you'll acquire as a doctor.
Other suggestions in this thread have some value: get your school's Comp-Sci Department involved - they'll know how to do proof-of-concept on the basic stuff (Web-server, backend DBs). They should also have some better ideas about Systems Management than the present MS-systems IT admins.
But don't lose your vision or continue to accept high costs and poor service-levels. Your site should deliver reliable 24x7 service with 99.5% demonstrated uptime. If they can't do that with NT boxes, throw them out, try *nix (whatever fits). If that doesn't work, use a mainframe.
In any case, I doubt you'll be able to give this the _years_ it will take to resolve, given major political and tech-knowledge barriers you _will_ encounter. However, I wish you the best of fortunes in your most ambitious medical IT initiative.
Yeah, they are. Intel just _recalled_ their 1.13 Ghz P3 chips that they'd announced and _tried_ to ship merely because AMD is shipping solid 1.1 Ghz Athlon chips. AMD's kicking Intel's butt lately and this looks likely to continue for some time.
And it gets worse for Intel. Their "Pentium 4" chip (they blanched at "Sexium" and could not quite leap to "Septium" for whatever reasons), is a 20-stage pipeline (versus 10 stages in the P3), and it won't run faster than the P3 in real life. AMD's upscale Athlons will bury the P4, for sure.
Moreover, Intel's Merced/Itantium 64-bit chip is so badly designed that they'll likely not produce it! Again, AMD's Hammer chips have a much more legacy 32-bit friendly architecture and they will surely leave Intel's lame new "recompile every program" Itanium scheme far down, in the gutter. AMD will _own_ the high-end PC CPU market, with Intel a lame second.
Yes, AMD has their sh*t together, Intel doesn't. Intel's recent chipset glitches and Rambus crap won't help them. Since they can't execute, AMD appears poised to become the leading CPU source, despite Intel's greater manufacturing capacity. I mean, who cares if you can build 100 million chips, if the demand has dropped to half that? Intel's dead unless they wise up, real soon.
These are all cogent, well-advised. Do you have any practical avenues for individuals to _act_ upon these suggestions?
Here are some (but I haven't done the homework yet, so don't have URLs, phone numbers, etc.):
* Call the RIAA and _politely_ request a list of
their member companies, along with their mail
and internet email addresses. Proceed to send
the RIAA _and_ all their members your protests
against their oppressive business practices.
Take your cues from the Napster defense brief.
* Build the best summary you can and send it in
to your local newspaper, counter-culture rag,
and Penny-Saver(tm) commercial news-excuse, it
being the idea to broaden awareness of the IP
issues and why they will affect all consumers.
* Write to your Congress-critters, Senators, and
State reps. Tell them, in no uncertain terms,
but again politely, that your future support
may well hinge on their stances - and voting
records - regarding IP freedom vs RIAA, DMCA.
Stating you will actively work to defeat them
unless they see the light could be effective.
* Write to the Courts. Yeah, it will have no
formal standing, as the deadline for Friend of
the Court briefs has passed. However, a good
letter that reaches the Clerk might get read
by the Judges too. Good Clerks have influence
for passing upwards any well-written opinions.
* Send a few bucks to Napster to help them with
their legal costs. If needed, tell United Way
that you "gave from my conscience." Hmm....?
* Buy a couple of CDs that you really do like.
The fact that CD sales are climbing while the
RIAA is screaming "Ripoff" is most persuasive,
for Napster. Keep those CD sales climbing....
Dog: "Why does Bucky do these things? I mean,
the plant didn't do anything to him."
Man: "Well, you have to understand that Bucky
comes from a long line of proud and very
stubborn ancestors."
Dog: "Geez, I didn't know Bucky was French."
Man: "No, no, he's a cat! A cat, do you hear?"
An aside - France will probably manage to prevent European Common Market growth for about 10 years. They're so conflicted that they'll be tripping on their own shoelaces for at least the next decade.
As for China and India/Pakistan, they're so into ripping off American software that there's not a chance they'll develop native language software. Yeah, they'll translate stuff, but all their good coders read/write english - it's required there. Don't forget, they have to sell any new software back to the moneyed world - usually in english.
The article author is indulging in wishful and self-serving thinking, but it's not happening...
Well, one thing seems obvious: whatever tech the MPAA and RIAA can agree upon and implement _will_ be anticipated and "transcended" (to use asshole Sony CIO Steve Heckler's term) by better coders.
First, SDMI is getting nowhere fast. They can't even agree on definitions for specifications for technology, so SDMI likely won't see any reality. (Part of this has to do with the fact that many of the members play both sides of the street - like Sony, player maker _and_ a music company.)
Second, there _can't_ be any technology that both survives decoding without significant degradation of signal _and_ is retrievable from ripped files. By definition, the digital "watermark" _has_ to be stripped by playing - otherwise it will have to distort the audio/video output. Yeah, it can be done, but who would buy crippled CDs or DVDs? Better technology will increasingly favor freedom, not continued indentured servitude of artists and their consumers to obsolete, bloodsucking media conglomerate pimps, despite their @%*#$ lawyers!
Sony was off my vendor list last year, because they don't provide any PCMCIA Socket Drivers for anything but Windows (no Linux, no OS/2, just MS) but this seals it: I'll never pay Sony another dime for anything. Same goes for the rest of the MPAA and RIAA. Free movies and music, forever... or, at least, until they back down and get real.
Now I recall what I heard about Steve Heckler, several years ago. When he took over as CIO at PacTel Cellular (later AT&T Cellular, now its Verizon), a mainframe upgrade had been ordered and shipped by IBM. When it arrived, he had it sent back, then he forced conversion of PacTel Cellular's data center to an all-DEC VAX shop. (This was in the early 90's, when DEC was truly desperate to stay afloat, not too long before Compaq bought what little remained at the end.)
PacTel Cellular bought a lot of Digital hardware. So much hardware that they had crates and crates of DASD piled up in their back hallways, no one knew what they might possibly use it all for....
Meanwhile, this particular "wonder boy" was seen making regular trips to Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, or somewhere similar. It doesn't take much to figure out what was going on at PacTel.
Let's see, IBM, Lorimar, PacTel, HealthNet, Sony. Of these five, only IBM and Sony still exist as independent companies. The others "got acquired" following financial difficulties. At least one basically went bankrupt. One may speculate about how much Mr. Heckler's corrupt mismanagement had to do with this string of spectacular business failures, but - based on this track record - Sony has exactly the right guy to blow their feet off.
Slashdot Mirror
here are a few. (Nice post, btw - briefly covered the current state of titanium supply industry). If this electrolytic refining technology foreseen in the Economist article is realized, some changes will occur. Toothpaste and white paint might get more expensive as titanium metal gets less costly (as metal refining starts to compete with dioxide, the price of titanium dioxide will have to rise). But the major changes will likely proceed from a combination of technologies. One might note that several have remarked that titanium is tough and this means its hard to machine. What if you could create titanium parts without significant tooling? What if you could form a part out of a titanium dioxide/alloy paste on a 3-dimensional 'printer' and then use an electrolytic process to finish it as a completely formed titanium alloy part? Cool? You betcha! That's where the article is pointing. China won't be left behind in such a transition - they'll simply shift from (labor intensive) sponge production to new electrolytic processes and parts manufacture - to designs specified real-time. And they'll use unicode-enabled Linux (TurboLinux? or their own ripoff of same) to drive 3D "printers." Years ago, I toured the Wah Chang plant in Albany, Oregon. Their product was Zirconium, back then...
I basically agree with you - most people have no real need for a 1 Ghz processor, DDR/RDR RAM, or awesome graphics cards. However, Slashdot does attract (no flamebait intended) the '133t haX0r juveniles (and aging arrested-development g33k5), so there's a weird lust for bleeding-edge chips. (I share that edgy hardware lust, so I must be one of the latter sort of technophiles).
However, _most_ college students just want to get connected to the campus-net, write their papers, communicate with their professors and assistants, and get through school. They don't focus on the coolest/fastest stuff ('cause Dad - unless he's a geek - isn't going to replace it every semester).
Last Fall I gave my daughter a Sony VAIO notebook for school. Campus tech-support couldn't get it to connect to their net. This year, she bought a different PCMCIA NIC, and it works! It's just a notebook, but that is just what many students have now.
So, only students who believe, wrongly, high-end hardware will impress professors, will pressure parents for latest systems.
[Here's the "I walked 10 miles through snowdrifts to school" story.] When I was in college, I did _type_ all my papers on an Olympus portable (that was a typewriter, for those unfamiliar with them) and I managed to communicate. However, there was an IBM 1401 in the computer center. It took Fortran punch-cards. There was also a commercial service-bureau down the hill (that also used the punch-card regime, plus OCR), and I worked there as a "night operator" for a while, in the early '70s.
That little datacenter processed the billings for Evergreen Air (the CIA airlift contractor during the Vietnam war). I've never seen so much money flow through any system since then - add millions of dollars per day, multiply by months, and - as Everett Dirkson said - pretty soon it adds up to real money!
Back to the topic. Intel is in trouble! They aren't capable of releasing any competitive products, lately. The P4 is delayed, as is their wrong-designed Itanimium, and now... Timna is canceled - will Intel sell a lot of suspect overclocked P3 chips this year?
Think about this for a moment. Which outcome will likely provide more income for Rehnquist's son? A Microsoft victory in the DoJ Antitrust case? Or a loss leading to massive litigation?
I think it's possible that Rehnquist is setting Microsoft up for a big fall (and, by the way, ensuring his son's very profitable and lifetime employment defending Microsoft against waves of private antitrust suits - for several decades).
Note his final comment, where he expresses valid concern that an equally divided Supreme Court could _affirm_ a lower court decision (presumably in Microsoft's favor, given bias already shown) by default. Rehnquist is actually leaving the door open for himself to cast the deciding vote _against_ Microsoft! He should be applauded for this, rather than subjected to foolish criticism.
Sometimes I think Slashdot should be renamed to "Kneejerk."
Huh?
after all the most capable and reputable academic institutions refused to submit to DoJ conditions for a so-called "unbiased, independent" review.
So, of course, now a couple of third-rate schools beholden to DARPA grants or hoping for publicity step up to "review" (read rubber-stamp) the FBI's Carnivore system. Their credibility in doing so will be below merely suspect, given that DoJ restrictions to control and edit their findings effectively foreclose any critical questioning. And, they have the technical and legal reviews at two different institutions. How very amusing....
Not that anyone should be surprised, after Janet Reno and Louis Freeh defended their persecution, harassment, and long unjust incarceration of Win Ho Lee, whom they targeted unfairly and so badly abused _for a year_ before finally releasing him.
Thomas Jefferson believed in revolutions every 20 years or so. It's been 200+ years since then....
First, ask yourself why they (the PHB's) want you to manage a technical group, rather than being a valued senior technician. Is the product design hopelessly flawed? Are they missing schedules? Unless you can say "No" to both these questions, you might be the latest fall-guy for management.
OTOH, if your management is great, then you might enjoy joining them. Do what feels most right....
until they can do 1024 X 768. Their claim about 19" monitor resolution is just marketing hype at this point. C'mon, 800 x 600 SVGA is old stuff! They should match our normal 19" monitor screen dimensions, or not claim parity with big screens....
As long as you don't _rebroadcast_ (redistribute on a mass basis) any TV show you recieve, the Audio Home Recording Act (extended to cover TV) covers you. Tivo is just a fancy VCR, and... though the MPAA fought those tooth and nail - they lost... VCR's are legal to use, and Videotape sales have been _highly_ profitable for the movie studios (i.e., MPAA members).
Digital TV recording _for private use_ will likely fall under the AHRA, just like VCRs. But... the crucial difference is that digital media are just... data. TV programs in digital form face the same grassroots distribution threat as music. So, the Napster case is real important and we'll see more rearguard lawsuits - this time from the broadcast media - regarding TV recording....
You _used_ to work for them, right? They can't force you to claim an "invention" you don't recognize as one. If you know of prior art or can clearly express the excessive breadth of their intended claims, you can tell them so.
Yes, but I'd mention that mp3.com settled with all the other major labels. They will now resume streaming all those titles through the my.mp3.com service but _not_ any music put out by Universal. Reasonable, but also a payback in spades to UMG.
It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on Universal's CD sales. One would doubt it, but it might have an impact.
Universal might rethink and actually settle with mp3.com. Hmmm, five years of appeals to receive $118 million versus $20 million for licensing per year, say 6% interest, looks like close to a wash to me in terms of net present value. Universal's potential marketing losses over the five years might make a deal attractive. They're sure not going to be very successful with their pay-to-download model.
Since the big music labels are nothing if not highly competitive with one another, it would not greatly surprise me to see Universal _buy_ mp3.com to regain parity in Internet presence. In that case, one would hope that the board of mp3.com would have the sense to make Universal pay at least $118 million (plus all their legal fees) _more_ than mp3.com is reasonably worth.
Hey, chill... accept that you're nonfunctional...
This will rate a "Flamebait" or other negative karma, but I don't care.
Go back to smoking bad crack or guzzling booze, either/both of which may have inspired your post.
Better yet, just pass out...
One would hope so. Seriously, I wonder whether anyone competent at the relevent calculations has ever assessed our odds of a major asteroid/comet impact versus the death of the Sun. Small odds, I would think offhand, but it _is_ an interesting question. I mean, how much time do we have to get off this nice rock? It seems important...
If statistics give us a few thousand years, then we might make it. But the hard reality is that our Sun _will_ eventually blow and destroy Earth. (Yes, that's a long ways in the future, but it _will_ eventually happen, and we should plan to survive that event.)
Really... "operational by 2015"... these people are clueless! The privately-funded SETI project will be far ahead of them, by then. They should spend their moneys on more immediate concerns...
Yeah, but look at the real melt-down scandal with the LAPD Rampart CRASH cops. This is going to cost LA millions to make it finally go away. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file cops just want their latest Chief to go away (he's been imposing bullshit 10-day suspensions without pay for things like not-wearing-badge-on-coat and failing-to-give-business-card-to-contactee.) Not an issue if one doesn't live in SoCal, but from _here_ it looks like a political/cops implosion. It seems we're getting a military PD, in LA.
(I _drove through_ the Rodney King riots. But I'm much more scared of LA gub'mint excesses.)
The first question is whether it's competently written. Here are some _initial_ questions:
- Does it just capture emails to/from a specific email address, or does it trace _all_ traffic to/from a designated IP address?
- If the former, can it capture email traffic that doesn't use the ISP's mailserver, but another one?
- To intercept logins (ISP/mail), it would have to access ISP authentication; does this mean that it has the entire ISP database?
- If the latter, does it adjust for varying DHCP (dialup/cable/DSL) leases?
- Might it scarf traffic from _innocent_ users who acquire a previously targeted DHCP address?
- Could _innocent_ users be confused with the target?
These are serious issues that deserve public scrutiny. Otherwise, things could get out of hand.
OK, so the DoJ makes a phone call and DoD trots out a "well-known Internet designer" to say soothing things like "trust them" and "no one needs to see the code." I don't know whether Cerf worked directly for DARPA, or indirectly by way of DARPA grants. If he worked directly for DoD, then it's very possible that he still does.
(Many former Federal employees are still on-call as needed; I once met a HS girlfriend's "retired" father at a job fair, behind the CIA recruiting table; a former coworker who was a "retired" SEAL regularly disappeared from work,... for several months.)
The point is that government "Of the People, By the People, and For the People" is at stake here.
This is why we have Open Meetings laws (and the Judiciary enforces these when they're flouted). As a parallel, it seems that what we need now are Open Source laws. Strong ones, with teeth.
Any citizen should be allowed to read the source code of any/every government information system, without barriers, fees, or harrassment. This is simply an extension of existing practices that laws, court decisions, and government rules and regulations must be published for all to see.
Since government IT systems actually _implement_ regulations, it seems not only fair but even imperative that the public should have access to review the logic actually used by government entities, i.e., the rules coded in their software systems. The IRS quickly comes to mind, here....
If such laws had been in place several years ago, the California DMV might have thought twice about _selling_ information from their databases of licensed drivers to commercial interests. They got their hands slapped for that one, but not before they'd already done it for quite a while. People had to _infer_ that they were doing that.
Government source should be open for all to view.
I sort of took it for granted that Mitnick was doing Bad Things. Sorry, should've mentioned it.
Believe it. (Ask Kevin Mitnick if _he_ believes it.)
Law enforcement agencies (incl. FBI) can apply for court orders to:
* read your mail
* bug your home/business/car/meeting-place
* wiretap your phone and public pay phones
* track and tap your cellphone
and now, add...
* read all your data traffic (not just email) - this will be extended to wireless traffic, too.
They don't need permission to record what anyone says in public, since there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public.
(BTW, you'll recall that they caught Mitnick by tracking his cellphone.)
According to the Constitution, all they have to do is convince a Judge that their intended "search" is not unreasonable. They can usually do this by showing that they have "reason to believe" a crime has been committed or is being planned. IANAL, but it seems a broad standard.
The real danger of Carnivore is that it could easily be abused to collect/scan/analyze _all_ data traffic _all_ the time, as NSA's Echelon is reported to have been doing for quite some time.
Replying to myself - but not a problem, unless I find myself answering....
Doesn't your University Hospital have some really _big_ systems? Most, if not all, do. You should be looking to that existing IT infrastructure for some answers to your high Microsoft-driven costs.
It's likely that your MS-based departmental systems are 3-tier architectures backed by mainframe transaction systems and relational databases. If that's the case, then you can easily cut out the high-cost MS middleman and access those very reliable databases more directly. IBM provides WebSphere with direct links to CICS/MQ transactional and DB2 database services. They'll also do this using Linux....
Despite the title, I'll try to be supportive here. The reason for the question is that comp-sci is comparable to medicine in depth.
You might find this project takes quite a while (longer than your current semester or even year), given existing infrastructure (Windows 98/NT), people/politics (MS techs and their MS-oriented managers), and everyone's steep learning-curve to understand / install / configure / survive / thrive using *nix systems. Are you a soon to be frocked doctor or an IT professional?
If you're the former, you'll be better served to push for your laudable goals from the powerbase you'll acquire as a doctor.
Other suggestions in this thread have some value: get your school's Comp-Sci Department involved - they'll know how to do proof-of-concept on the basic stuff (Web-server, backend DBs). They should also have some better ideas about Systems Management than the present MS-systems IT admins.
But don't lose your vision or continue to accept high costs and poor service-levels. Your site should deliver reliable 24x7 service with 99.5% demonstrated uptime. If they can't do that with NT boxes, throw them out, try *nix (whatever fits). If that doesn't work, use a mainframe.
In any case, I doubt you'll be able to give this the _years_ it will take to resolve, given major political and tech-knowledge barriers you _will_ encounter. However, I wish you the best of fortunes in your most ambitious medical IT initiative.
""what AMD is currently doing to Intel.""
"Are they?"
Yeah, they are. Intel just _recalled_ their 1.13 Ghz P3 chips that they'd announced and _tried_ to ship merely because AMD is shipping solid 1.1 Ghz Athlon chips. AMD's kicking Intel's butt lately and this looks likely to continue for some time.
And it gets worse for Intel. Their "Pentium 4" chip (they blanched at "Sexium" and could not quite leap to "Septium" for whatever reasons), is a 20-stage pipeline (versus 10 stages in the P3), and it won't run faster than the P3 in real life. AMD's upscale Athlons will bury the P4, for sure.
Moreover, Intel's Merced/Itantium 64-bit chip is so badly designed that they'll likely not produce it! Again, AMD's Hammer chips have a much more legacy 32-bit friendly architecture and they will surely leave Intel's lame new "recompile every program" Itanium scheme far down, in the gutter. AMD will _own_ the high-end PC CPU market, with Intel a lame second.
Yes, AMD has their sh*t together, Intel doesn't. Intel's recent chipset glitches and Rambus crap won't help them. Since they can't execute, AMD appears poised to become the leading CPU source, despite Intel's greater manufacturing capacity. I mean, who cares if you can build 100 million chips, if the demand has dropped to half that? Intel's dead unless they wise up, real soon.
These are all cogent, well-advised. Do you have any practical avenues for individuals to _act_ upon these suggestions?
Here are some (but I haven't done the homework yet, so don't have URLs, phone numbers, etc.):
* Call the RIAA and _politely_ request a list of
their member companies, along with their mail
and internet email addresses. Proceed to send
the RIAA _and_ all their members your protests
against their oppressive business practices.
Take your cues from the Napster defense brief.
* Build the best summary you can and send it in
to your local newspaper, counter-culture rag,
and Penny-Saver(tm) commercial news-excuse, it
being the idea to broaden awareness of the IP
issues and why they will affect all consumers.
* Write to your Congress-critters, Senators, and
State reps. Tell them, in no uncertain terms,
but again politely, that your future support
may well hinge on their stances - and voting
records - regarding IP freedom vs RIAA, DMCA.
Stating you will actively work to defeat them
unless they see the light could be effective.
* Write to the Courts. Yeah, it will have no
formal standing, as the deadline for Friend of
the Court briefs has passed. However, a good
letter that reaches the Clerk might get read
by the Judges too. Good Clerks have influence
for passing upwards any well-written opinions.
* Send a few bucks to Napster to help them with
their legal costs. If needed, tell United Way
that you "gave from my conscience." Hmm....?
* Buy a couple of CDs that you really do like.
The fact that CD sales are climbing while the
RIAA is screaming "Ripoff" is most persuasive,
for Napster. Keep those CD sales climbing....
Ciao,
R
OK, here's a Sunday cartoon:
Dog: "Why does Bucky do these things? I mean,
the plant didn't do anything to him."
Man: "Well, you have to understand that Bucky
comes from a long line of proud and very
stubborn ancestors."
Dog: "Geez, I didn't know Bucky was French."
Man: "No, no, he's a cat! A cat, do you hear?"
An aside - France will probably manage to prevent European Common Market growth for about 10 years. They're so conflicted that they'll be tripping on their own shoelaces for at least the next decade.
As for China and India/Pakistan, they're so into ripping off American software that there's not a chance they'll develop native language software. Yeah, they'll translate stuff, but all their good coders read/write english - it's required there. Don't forget, they have to sell any new software back to the moneyed world - usually in english.
The article author is indulging in wishful and self-serving thinking, but it's not happening...
Well, one thing seems obvious: whatever tech the MPAA and RIAA can agree upon and implement _will_ be anticipated and "transcended" (to use asshole Sony CIO Steve Heckler's term) by better coders.
First, SDMI is getting nowhere fast. They can't even agree on definitions for specifications for technology, so SDMI likely won't see any reality. (Part of this has to do with the fact that many of the members play both sides of the street - like Sony, player maker _and_ a music company.)
Second, there _can't_ be any technology that both survives decoding without significant degradation of signal _and_ is retrievable from ripped files. By definition, the digital "watermark" _has_ to be stripped by playing - otherwise it will have to distort the audio/video output. Yeah, it can be done, but who would buy crippled CDs or DVDs? Better technology will increasingly favor freedom, not continued indentured servitude of artists and their consumers to obsolete, bloodsucking media conglomerate pimps, despite their @%*#$ lawyers!
Sony was off my vendor list last year, because they don't provide any PCMCIA Socket Drivers for anything but Windows (no Linux, no OS/2, just MS) but this seals it: I'll never pay Sony another dime for anything. Same goes for the rest of the MPAA and RIAA. Free movies and music, forever... or, at least, until they back down and get real.
Now I recall what I heard about Steve Heckler, several years ago. When he took over as CIO at PacTel Cellular (later AT&T Cellular, now its Verizon), a mainframe upgrade had been ordered and shipped by IBM. When it arrived, he had it sent back, then he forced conversion of PacTel Cellular's data center to an all-DEC VAX shop. (This was in the early 90's, when DEC was truly desperate to stay afloat, not too long before Compaq bought what little remained at the end.)
PacTel Cellular bought a lot of Digital hardware. So much hardware that they had crates and crates of DASD piled up in their back hallways, no one knew what they might possibly use it all for....
Meanwhile, this particular "wonder boy" was seen making regular trips to Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, or somewhere similar. It doesn't take much to figure out what was going on at PacTel.
Let's see, IBM, Lorimar, PacTel, HealthNet, Sony. Of these five, only IBM and Sony still exist as independent companies. The others "got acquired" following financial difficulties. At least one basically went bankrupt. One may speculate about how much Mr. Heckler's corrupt mismanagement had to do with this string of spectacular business failures, but - based on this track record - Sony has exactly the right guy to blow their feet off.