An EDS vice president once explained their business model to me. "We hire the middle third," summed it up. The top third (in terms of talent) are too expensive. The bottom third are too problematic. They hired the middle third and rely on a smaller subset of consultants to write expansive procedures and manuals that the bulk of their crew follow slavishly.
In my experience, EDS consultants are very poor at creative solutions. If you need someone to jumpstart 100 Sun servers, sure. If there is a problem with one of the jumpstarts and they need to tweak the image, they'll be on the phone back to home base. That's fine for some scenarios (that's pretty much the Satyam/Tata model), but not when you're paying EDS prices.
No, it doesn't. That is a silly statement. People learn a lot in the Army. People pay money and go to MCSE courses and learn. People become Catholic priests and take vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience and learn. Etc.
Normally when one says "The Vatican says," he is referring to an encyclical by the Pope or a statement by one of the chief offices. This a an astronomer who happens to be a priest speculating. He works as director of an observatory, but it's not like this is Church policy.
You realize, of course, that SourceWatch is about as unbiased as WorldNetDaily...so I take anything I read there with a...on second thought, why bother to read it.
Yes, the US is still a participant in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Why is this so hard to understand? 10 seconds of googling would reveal this simple fact. There are only four countries that are not signatories: Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.
That would mean that the recent nuclear dealings with India and the "bunker buster" program are a violation - plus the old violation of the NATO missile deployments to nations that never signed.
What are you talking about? Have you read the NPT? None of those things are covered. I don't think the NPT says what you think it says.
The USA is not bound by that treaty since they dropped out of it several years ago - but US diplomats would be happy for other countries to sign. You will find in the press a few announcements about ongoing development of a new generation of weapons which would be against the treaty if it still applied. I'll add to this discussion that the "nuclear power causes proliferation" argument is irrelevant because proliferation is happening anyway and civilian nuclear power is usually just a side benefit of weapons programs anyway.
It's not often that someone posts something in which every single sentence is an error of fact. Congrats!
The US has never withdrawn from the NPT
Any weapon modernization program has nothing to do with the NPT. Think about it - most of the major nuclear powers signed in 1968. They've all modernized since then. The US and Russia have obligations under SALT, START, ABM, etc. but the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is, surprisingly enough, about non-proliferation.
There are innumerable countries which use nuclear power but which do not have a weapons program - Japan and Taiwan come immediately to mind.
None of these resolutions say that the big 5 will nuke anyone who attacks a non-nuclear weapons state and they certainly do not say that they must keep nuclear weapons permanently for that purpose. The clear NPT obligations to disarm stand.
and neither of those would result in Iran getting wiped off the map?
I wonder about this. Let's say that Iran did develop some sort of long-range nuclear delivery system and nuked New York City. The US would respond - but would we really nuke Tehran? I'm skeptical because there would be such an outcry over civilian deaths, etc. I would think a conventional invasion might be more likely.
What makes you think it's impossible to craft laws in a way that the citizen can understand when it's possible to craft programs that a hunk of silicon can understand?
I understand that it's illegal to murder someone. But the law regarding murder in my state runs to many pages, and necessarily so...what kind of murder? What are allowed defenses? Circumstances, penalties, etc. It all has to be spelled out in precise detail. And murder is a simple case. Now apply that process to something like rules of evidence, or under what circumstances companies are allowed to deduct expenses from prior years, or how probate is handled when a man dies intestate with a child by his wife and by a girlfriend, or rules for immigration, etc. The law is every bit as complicated as source code because humans are complicated. If you want to be ruled by law, then you need to spell it out to the Nth detail so there are no questions or loopholes...even lawyers who are pros sometimes don't get that right.
I consider the fact that laws are written in language that only the lawyers can understand to be one of the fundamental problems that needs to be put a stop to.
Why do you think legislation is less complicated than, say, source code? Joe Sixpack should be able to tell his computer what to do and it just does it without all the need for this fancy programming, right?
Which will then prove malicious intent; they are government employees but still are lawyers and could risk their careers with such a move.
What on earth are you talking about...editing Wikipedia with a biased viewpoint is a crime? Did I miss the Wikipedia Integrity Act of 2008? Seems to me I can modify Wikipedia all I want to say that black is really white and there's nothing illegal about it.
The problem is that 99% of people are idiots. Not only do very few people have the brains to actually understand what they're voting on, but the ones who do are generally too busy living their lives to read, say, 5,000 pages of a tax bill.
BTW, who is to write all this legislation? Certainly not Joe Sixpack. Lawyers write laws for a reason - it's a complicated undertaking, full of technical language which must be written to survive testing in courts. Letting the general public write laws would quickly swamp the country in unintended consequences.
Don't get me wrong - representative democracy sucks. The reality is that there is no good form of government where humans are involved.
As a way to deal with the information overload, after the baseline system has been established, citizens should be able to nominate a representative to cast their vote on their behalf. Not someone who has chosen to run, but anyone who they feel they trust most. This should be revocable at any time.
Baseline system: constitution in 1789. Representative to cast votes: congressman. Revocable: elections. Your proposal is a distinction from our modern system without much of a difference. If you think what you propose wouldn't quickly descend into a similar system of corruption, lobbying, and abuse, you don't know humans.
More than half the comments so far are "why would you do this? it'd be slow!" or "I don't see the benefit of this" or "I would not recommend this enterprise architecture".
Gaaaa!
People, you're supposed to be nerds. Sometimes nerds do things just for the fun of it. Because they can. Look at the comments from a mere 8 years ago about the HTTPD server written in PostScript (and in shell, and in assembly). What's happened in the meantime? Did you all go get MBAs? Did you all start kissing girls or something?
I doubt there are many people running Linux on true Big Iron.
And you would be wrong. Sure, most mainframes are running z/OS, but a goodly number of them are also running Linux images. I don't know the percentages but the IBM "run Linux on your mainframe" training classes are usually full.
Slashdot Mirror
"We are - and will remain - EDS."
Like that's a good thing.
An EDS vice president once explained their business model to me. "We hire the middle third," summed it up. The top third (in terms of talent) are too expensive. The bottom third are too problematic. They hired the middle third and rely on a smaller subset of consultants to write expansive procedures and manuals that the bulk of their crew follow slavishly.
In my experience, EDS consultants are very poor at creative solutions. If you need someone to jumpstart 100 Sun servers, sure. If there is a problem with one of the jumpstarts and they need to tweak the image, they'll be on the phone back to home base. That's fine for some scenarios (that's pretty much the Satyam/Tata model), but not when you're paying EDS prices.
Learning requires freedom.
No, it doesn't. That is a silly statement. People learn a lot in the Army. People pay money and go to MCSE courses and learn. People become Catholic priests and take vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience and learn. Etc.
Normally when one says "The Vatican says," he is referring to an encyclical by the Pope or a statement by one of the chief offices. This a an astronomer who happens to be a priest speculating. He works as director of an observatory, but it's not like this is Church policy.
You realize, of course, that SourceWatch is about as unbiased as WorldNetDaily...so I take anything I read there with a...on second thought, why bother to read it.
They're in different industries. Microsoft is a software company. Apple is a fashion company.
Yes, the US is still a participant in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Why is this so hard to understand? 10 seconds of googling would reveal this simple fact. There are only four countries that are not signatories: Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.
That would mean that the recent nuclear dealings with India and the "bunker buster" program are a violation - plus the old violation of the NATO missile deployments to nations that never signed.What are you talking about? Have you read the NPT? None of those things are covered. I don't think the NPT says what you think it says.
The USA is not bound by that treaty since they dropped out of it several years ago - but US diplomats would be happy for other countries to sign. You will find in the press a few announcements about ongoing development of a new generation of weapons which would be against the treaty if it still applied. I'll add to this discussion that the "nuclear power causes proliferation" argument is irrelevant because proliferation is happening anyway and civilian nuclear power is usually just a side benefit of weapons programs anyway.
It's not often that someone posts something in which every single sentence is an error of fact. Congrats!
Hardly clear.
Let's not confuse Oliver Stone with reality.
Which is why it's really no coincidence there hasn't been an Arab invasion of Israel since 1973...
I wonder about this. Let's say that Iran did develop some sort of long-range nuclear delivery system and nuked New York City. The US would respond - but would we really nuke Tehran? I'm skeptical because there would be such an outcry over civilian deaths, etc. I would think a conventional invasion might be more likely.
We do. And unlike you, we understand the language it's written in, which is why we understand the difference between "modernizing" and "increasing".
Tell that to the Carthiginians.
Sure, they are the greastest (commercial) supporters of open source. No denying that.
There's plenty of denying that.
What makes you think it's impossible to craft laws in a way that the citizen can understand when it's possible to craft programs that a hunk of silicon can understand?
I understand that it's illegal to murder someone. But the law regarding murder in my state runs to many pages, and necessarily so...what kind of murder? What are allowed defenses? Circumstances, penalties, etc. It all has to be spelled out in precise detail. And murder is a simple case. Now apply that process to something like rules of evidence, or under what circumstances companies are allowed to deduct expenses from prior years, or how probate is handled when a man dies intestate with a child by his wife and by a girlfriend, or rules for immigration, etc. The law is every bit as complicated as source code because humans are complicated. If you want to be ruled by law, then you need to spell it out to the Nth detail so there are no questions or loopholes...even lawyers who are pros sometimes don't get that right.
I consider the fact that laws are written in language that only the lawyers can understand to be one of the fundamental problems that needs to be put a stop to.
Why do you think legislation is less complicated than, say, source code? Joe Sixpack should be able to tell his computer what to do and it just does it without all the need for this fancy programming, right?
Which will then prove malicious intent; they are government employees but still are lawyers and could risk their careers with such a move.
What on earth are you talking about...editing Wikipedia with a biased viewpoint is a crime? Did I miss the Wikipedia Integrity Act of 2008? Seems to me I can modify Wikipedia all I want to say that black is really white and there's nothing illegal about it.
The problem is that 99% of people are idiots. Not only do very few people have the brains to actually understand what they're voting on, but the ones who do are generally too busy living their lives to read, say, 5,000 pages of a tax bill.
BTW, who is to write all this legislation? Certainly not Joe Sixpack. Lawyers write laws for a reason - it's a complicated undertaking, full of technical language which must be written to survive testing in courts. Letting the general public write laws would quickly swamp the country in unintended consequences.
Don't get me wrong - representative democracy sucks. The reality is that there is no good form of government where humans are involved.
As a way to deal with the information overload, after the baseline system has been established, citizens should be able to nominate a representative to cast their vote on their behalf. Not someone who has chosen to run, but anyone who they feel they trust most. This should be revocable at any time.
Baseline system: constitution in 1789. Representative to cast votes: congressman. Revocable: elections. Your proposal is a distinction from our modern system without much of a difference. If you think what you propose wouldn't quickly descend into a similar system of corruption, lobbying, and abuse, you don't know humans.
More than half the comments so far are "why would you do this? it'd be slow!" or "I don't see the benefit of this" or "I would not recommend this enterprise architecture".
Gaaaa!
People, you're supposed to be nerds. Sometimes nerds do things just for the fun of it. Because they can. Look at the comments from a mere 8 years ago about the HTTPD server written in PostScript (and in shell, and in assembly). What's happened in the meantime? Did you all go get MBAs? Did you all start kissing girls or something?
Where I work we have two sun mainframes;
Um, no you don't.
I doubt there are many people running Linux on true Big Iron.
And you would be wrong. Sure, most mainframes are running z/OS, but a goodly number of them are also running Linux images. I don't know the percentages but the IBM "run Linux on your mainframe" training classes are usually full.
You can't honestly expect to provide 100% uptime with only one system
With one typical Unix system. Tandom nonstop? Sure. Mainframe? Done all the time.
How do you know a configuration change hasn't rendered one of your startup scripts ineffective?
Tripwire.
It's not exactly the Bourne Shell
Talk about your back-handed compliments ;-)
However, you get to create that facility
s/get to/must/
Seriously, most people want to sit down and write the logic for their application, not invent (or even copy-paste) memory management schemes.