The reason you would maintain "static" data in the database is for data integrity.
For instance, the list of US states and Canadian provinces does not change very frequently. I think the last Canadian change was about a decade ago, the last US change nearly 50 years ago.
The "full name, abbreviation" name used in most pulldown lists (full name as label, abbreviation as value) can obviously be considered static.
So why keep it in a relational database? Simple - you can use it to provide referential integrity for all "state" fields in the rest of the database.
This isn't a huge deal with states, but it can be very important with domain level enumerations. Your form actions may be well-behaved, but a robust system must account for clowns who feed their own data directly into your action URL.
(As an aside, this isn't a theoretical problem. I've heard stories of people getting an order form for, oh, a laser printer. They capture it, change the price of the printer from $499.99 to $49.99 and submit the order. The action accepted it, and when the company attempted to refute it they lost because it was considered a bona fide negotiation since the web site could/should have been programmed to reject forms with altered prices. They made an offer, the client made a counteroffer, and the company accepted it. This depends on your state, etc. Given the current political climate I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is now considered computer fraud with a 10 year prison sentence.)
I would argue that inconvenient security is not secure. People will find ways around it, sometimes in the worst possible way from a security standpoint.
Good security should be relatively unintrusive. E.g., your security badge includes a java button, you need it and your password to log on. (I'm not sure if jbuttons are wireless, but if not substitute some smart device that is.) Once you're logged in a kerberos TGT is written to your badge. You can then access most secured functions because they quietly get the ticket from your badge. You could set up the system so your tickets (not TGT) only live for 10-15 seconds - you walk away from your desk to go to the bathroom or "coincidently" run into that cutie at the water fountain and the ticket can't be renewed and the applications are disabled (and screen blanked?) until you return. Then you have to repeat your password (since somebody might have taken the badge off your still-warm body) and everything is as you left it.
If you need special rights you provide the password for another TGT, one with a short lifetime. Think 'sudo' as an analogy.
It's far more secure than having to maintain a separate username/password for multiple applications, yet simultaneously far more convenient. Nobody will complain, esp. if badges are required or they're already used to get through doors. Most people won't even understand how the badge around their neck gives them access to their workstation (and possibly others when working with others).
A slightly weaker version uses a USB dongle attached to your keys. Nobody walks away from their car keys for long.
I seem to recall tales of a usenet posting containing +++ATZ (I think) in the early 80s. My first internet accessible account was in 83 or so and (if my memory serves) it was already lore. Definitely before the kremvax hoax.
In those days of lore we did not have DNS and dot naming and all of those other new-fangled contraptions. Everything was UUCP (or bitnet or arpanet or IBM's network protocl) and point-to-point. You routed your mail by hand (usually as fast as possible to the AT&T backbone, e.g., "harpo"), and I think many universities(!) were connected by a single 1200 baud modem that would connect overnight when long distance charges were lowest. Even then some CS departments caught grief over the cost. The usenet "your message may cost thousands of dollars to send" was an exaggeration, but it probably did cost a few dollars when you added up the LD charges for everyone.
(If you think that was bad, the entire country of New Zealand was connected by some 9 track tapes in the cargo hold of the daily flights between Sydney and Auckland!)
The AT&T backbone wouldn't use Hayes modems and knockoffs, but a lot of universities did. UUCP and the other modem protocols in use at the time, as I recall, blindly copied the data.
So you have a message containing a modem disconnect command. The connection is run in the middle of the night when nobody is around. There's the normal usenet and email traffic and suddenly one (or both!) ends go down. The admin is a bit confused, but everything looks okay. Next night, same thing because of automatic retries. And again the next night. People start getting seriously annoyed....
Sometimes I wonder if this was the motivation behind the first protocols that would either encode the payload or at least escape certain sequences.
Calling a unix system localhost could have interesting repercussions due to the ambiguity when resolving names. (Not every configuration file or app will use '127.0.0.1' or '::1' (iirc) instead of 'localhost'.) Worst case scenario isn't that traffic intended for you is lost, it's traffic intended for internal use by other systems is broadcast and/or their applications mysteriously fail.
The canonical warning tale is probably the genius who got the vanity plate NONE. He routinely parked illegally since the ticket would be issued to NONE and the system would kick it out as uncollectable.
Until one fine day when a clerk noticed that someone had registered a car with that vanity plate. He put 2 and 2 together and our genius got hit with tens of thousands of dollars in fines because his tickets caught up with him... and so did tickets for countless abandoned cars.
I don't know if this is just an urban legend, but it's definitely a good warning against being too cute.
"Conspiracy" requires a crime, or at least a clear intent to commit a crime. (E.g., saying I'll kill someone is blowing off steam. Buying a gun and looking up their home address on Mapquest is a lot more serious.)
Giving preferential treatment to your customers isn't a criminal act. Flat out ignoring any site running Apache isn't a criminal act. I'm not even sure they couldn't lie about giving preferential treatment since nothing of value changes hand.
Exactly where did I say that the MS product is inferior to its open source counterpart?
If you actually read my statements, you would realize that I actually said that We Don't Know. We will NEVER know if the only criteria is [acknowledged] vulnerabilities since some of the players have a vested interest in downplaying their vulnerabilities -- precisely because of people who think that a raw count of "vulnerabilities" means anything.
This is why statistics are lies, lies and damn lies. The math is straightforward, but it may be totally unrelated to the real question. That's why understanding and eliminating any "selection effect" is so critical. Self-reporting is notoriously vulnerable to selection bias.
The car you drive is in plain sight. But where you drive with it is not unless somebody goes to a lot of effort to follow you.
Telling Microsoft the applications you're running is like your wife getting a trip report that tells her you went to an adult bookstore.
Giving Microsoft a copy of the documents you have open is like your wife getting a report on the videos you considered renting. You know, the ones involving BSDM and a sheep.
The owner can't withdraw the license of previously published code, but they can certainly change the license on subsequent releases.
(This assumes that the code has a single owner. Code with many significant contributors will need to have all of the contributed code rewritten before it can be relicensed.)
Apache freely issues advisories and patches. It will issue an advisory if even one user faces a minor risk.
Microsoft (and nearly all other proprietary software companies) tries to hide problems to protect their perception in the marketplace. You usually only see advisories for major problems that will become public knowledge anyway, and numerous other fixes are piggybacked on the big ones.
But beyond that advisories don't really address the quality of a product. They're one metric, but nothing more.
You can have a "conspiracy of one" if that person acts in multiple roles.
As an example, let's say that one person is a company's bookkeeper and CFO. (This isn't uncommon in small companies.)
As a bookkeeper she cooks the books to cover her embezzlement.
As CFO she prepares false financial documents for her company and its investors.
One person, criminal acts in two roles, so in many states she can be charged with conspiracy in addition to embezzlement.
BTW, this isn't a "conspiracy" in the legal sense since it's not a crime to give preferential service on the basis of web server. It's sleazy unless it's fully disclosed, but it's not a crime unless they actually sell the search engine as an unbiased tool.
Let me guess, you're only managing your own systems. Maybe a pet system or two at work.
How many other employees depend on your systems to get their work done? How many CUSTOMERS depend on your systems? How many of these systems do you have immediate access to if there's a problem, vs. systems colocated at ISPs so you have thick pipes to the internet?
I know, you referred to "rock solid" stable. You're right about that, but wrong that that's only servers with heavy loads. Anything that others depend on must be "rock solid." That includes user-facing interfaces since the cost of retraining staff can be significant.
That's why "stable" is so important. Live systems aren't set up and then left alone, they're "updated" frequently in order to catch security fixes. Updating 'testing' or 'unstable' means the system is constantly changing and the source of a problem may not be easily identified or fixed. Updating against 'stable' should be safe.
Even with backported security patches packages that are 2-3 year old can cause serious problems. E.g., we can't run the latest version of some of our applications because they depend on a more recent version of perl. But we can't update perl without blowing out half of our packages. Doing that will make the system too unstable for use for the reason mentioned above.
That's why Debian really needs mini-releases on a regular basis, e.g., perhaps on a semiannual basis. Probably <500 packages account for 95% of all installed packages and that's a subset small enough to be frequently tested. The rest of the packages could probably be loaded from 'testing' at little risk.
First, you know the tree by the fruit that falls from it. I don't think anyone thinks fundamentalist don't love their wives, but many of us do have a problem with the "separate but equal" policy promoted by many of them. If they're both happy with him in the workplace and political arena while she focuses on "church, children and kitchen," more power to them.
The problem is when they try to push their beliefs onto the rest of the world. On the flip side I've never seen pressure for women to be required to enter the workplace, just for her to have the right to decide for herself.
Goodwin's Law used to be productive, but making Fascism a bogeyman is dangerous because it prevents legitimate discussion.
The world has seen many fascist regimes, Nazi Germany was only one instance. But even that extreme case had western defenders up to the war - King George, Henry Ford (iirc), the Kennedy father or grandfather (when ambassador to the UK), and more.
A few years ago Free Inquiry published a summary of 14 characteristics of fascist regimes. One copy here. I think you can make a defensible case for 13 of the 14 points, with the final item a false negative.
I suggest reading the full article for details, but for the impatient here's the keynotes:
Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
Supremacy of the Military
Rampant Sexism
Controlled Mass Media
Obsession with National Security
Religion and Government are Intertwined
Corporate Power is Protected
Labor Power is Suppressed
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fraudulent Elections
The main exception I see is the supremacy of the military. This administration talks them up, but its actual treatment of our troops is contemptable. We've all heard of soldiers injured, discharged, then told to repay their enlistment bonus since they didn't complete their term of service. Or told to pay hospital fees while recooperating from loss of limbs. (The argument was that they shouldn't have gotten a food and housing stipend while living on hospital grounds but not in a hospital room, or something equally lame.)
Most disgusting has to be the recent bankruptcy bill. Somebody noticed that it did not include an exception for servicemen forced into bankruptcy as a consequence of being called to duty. N.B., under current law creditors are supposed to forego collections of any national guard troop called up. But the Republicans in control of Congress had some petty rule that they wouldn't accept any amendments to this bill and they gave the shaft to our servicemen.
(P.S., I know that the sexism point is debatable. We have Condi Rice.... but she's from the oil industry. A supertanker is named after her!!! Some people see covert sexism in the policy on birth control, abortions, even the refusal to accept court rulings on Terri Schiavo's desire to avoid a persistent vegetative state.)
It's a matter of scale. You can probably find something that the Clinton administration did that looks kinda similar, but it's done far, far more often by this administration. The flip side is also true - Clinton gave some people a break due to loyalty, but this administration has repeatedly responded to incompetence with promotion.
The media, in an attempt to be "balanced," tries to pretend they're the same. But they're not - I can flick you with a finger once and you won't feel it after 5 seconds. If I and 10,000 of my buddies do it you'll need medical attention.
The original shuttle specs had a two week turnaround, with a launch every week or so. (Modulo my faulty memory since I remember looking at the specs before the first flight.)
It was also scheduled to be retired years ago. Heck, probably a decade ago by now.
Those original specs were never realistic, but a lot of the difficulties are because of the compromises required to serve many masters. E.g., the size of the cargo bay was mandated by the military (to hold their satellites), as was a large "cross-range" langing zone. The original design had a smaller cargo bay and much narrower wings.
As for bureaucratic side of your argument, check out the competition a few years ago. Several companies, including a guerilla team at McDonald Douglas (iirc), were invited to develop prototypes of the next generation shuttle. A lot of people were very enthusiastic about the guerilla effort - it was a basic system built atop proven technology, and it had already had several successful flights with fast turnaround.
NASA went with the sexiest, most unproven design that would require breakthroughs in something like three different technologies. I haven't heard anything about it since the competition.
Isn't this bordering (illegal) restraint of trade? Nobody has a right to impose on a legal contract between two other parties. If they think a crime has been committed, they should go to court and get an order dealing with that specific case.
I know, at this point they're only asking for a "voluntary" agreement. That's why I said "bordering" -- larger ISPs will blow them off since they know the real cost of accepting it. (Hint: it's not a few pissed off customers. It's dealing with the 1,002 other groups with their own "code of conduct" on everything from porn to evolution and "liberalism.")
But smaller ISPs run by chickenshits may worry about the legal costs defending themselves if RIAA plays hardball. Even when, not if, they win they'll still lose because of the expense.
Details definitely vary by state so check with a lawyer, etc., but it's my understanding that in most(?) states anyone can detain anyone else for authorities if they witness a serious crime. In other words, arrest them. Cops are different in that they're authorized to arrest people even if they didn't witness the crime, and they're authorized to use force.
If somebody isn't free to leave, they're under arrest. Even if the store tries to call it something else. But they're under arrest by the manager (or the rent-a-cop), not the police.
Anyway, the point of this is that the police may be "accepting custody" of somebody arrested by the store manager, not doing the initial arrest, when they pick up somebody held by the store. The city may even have this as an explicit policy, to get the cops back on the street instead of getting caught in an argument between the suspect and the rent-a-cops and clerks and who knows who else. The cops take the suspects back to the lockup, they get the papers from the store confirming their desire to press shoplifting charges (or whatever) and the suspect goes to arraignment.
This case was different since the store isn't the one that presses counterfeiting charges... and the basis for their suspicions should have been handled by any competent store manager.
The bottom line is that the buck (almost certainly) stops with the store and the manager. They're the ones who arrested him due to their own ignorance, they're the ones who need a harsh lesson on the consequences of false arrest. It doesn't to be financial or even public, e.g., a notice to the branch manager that calls to that store will have the lowest priority until they can demonstrate that the store's management understands its responsibilities in such situations. (Read: don't let the door hit the manager's ass on his way out the door.)
The feds printed up a bunch of $2 bills within the last few years. I'm not sure why. But that means that you're surprisingly likely to get sequential bills since the bank probably has a new brick of them in the back.
It's not like they're being pulled in from circulation...
That's the theory, then there's the reality. Police and prosecutors have agendas, the average person can't afford a decent defense and public defenders are grossly overworked, there's immense social stigma associated with the mere whiff of involvement, etc.
Then there's the current craze for overcharging. Hit them with dozens of charges so they'll plea bargain down to what you _might_ have been able to get if the case went to trial. The innocent will agree to it because the alternative could be life in prison without parole, the prosecutor loves it because it bumps up their kill rate while freeing them to pursue other cases. Even better, part of a plea bargain is a surrender of all rights to appeal the conviction!
If you want to see a horrid example of this run amuck, look at the Weenachee, Washington child abuse cases. According to the police (a single officer, Lt. Perez, iirc), and the prosecutor a 30+ child abuse ring was uncovered and convicted.
If you listen to the critics, you'll learn that almost everyone charged was poor, hispanic, and accepted a plea bargain because they couldn't afford a defense. They all continue to maintain their innocence. The only couple to get off where rich and white and they took the case to trial. (The critics also point out that Perez appeared to have used improper interrogation techniques for young children and was far more likely to have implanted false memories than to have uncovered true ones. E.g., iirc he had many of his victims live with him while the child's parents were under investigation! He would (subconsciously?) reward them with ice cream and other treats when they were cooperative.)
If you listen to the other courts the city really screwed up and owes millions in dollars in damages. The city is appealing because the judgement will bankrupt the town.
Unfortunately the real victims are the 30+ people convicted of these crimes. The subsequent court rulings introduce massive doubts about the prior convictions and most people could get a new trial. (Then the DA would probably decline to prosecute, freeing them without an admission of wrongdoing on either side.) But they're stuck in prison for 5, 10 or even 20 years because they accepted plea bargains and lost their right of appeal. Their only hope may be a pardon from the governor - and mass pardons for convicted child molesters (regardless of circumstances) is political suicide.
So tell me again how the system bends over backwards to protect the innocence and the falsely accused have nothing to fear.
Here's an analogy - you're going on vacation. Deciding whether to go to Orlando or Cabo is a top-level decision comparable to what a deployer makes. The implementation of the embedded software in the navigation avionics of your flight is comparable to what XDoclet generates. You shouldn't touch it, not without a compelling reason.
Once you accept this the benefits of using XDoclet are obvious. First, you only have to update information once - the configuration file and generated source files will be automatically updated. You don't have to worry about getting called into an urgent meeting and forgetting to update the fourth auxillary file.
Second, the XDoclet tags help document the nature of the fields and how classes are related. E.g., if I see
I know a lot more about the field than "String" alone tells me. It's also another example of "write once" since I don't have to worry about a block comment getting out of sync with a configuration file.
The most important unanswered question: does it discuss XDoclet?
I know, many people like maintaining configuration files manually. Some people also like nailing their tongue to flaming coals.
Personally I prefer using a handful of @hibernate and @spring tags. But I haven't found a decent explanation of how to use the tags (e.g., if you use A you must also use B). It can be annoying - I only recently discovered the @hibernate.joined-subclass tag that permits me to use a common base object (for an integrated 'id' space) without creating a "kitchen sink" monster table.
Different issues. Hibernate does one thing and does it very well - it persists your Java objects to a database in an efficient way. I generally distrust anything that tries to solve multiple unrelated problems.
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The reason you would maintain "static" data in the database is for data integrity.
For instance, the list of US states and Canadian provinces does not change very frequently. I think the last Canadian change was about a decade ago, the last US change nearly 50 years ago.
The "full name, abbreviation" name used in most pulldown lists (full name as label, abbreviation as value) can obviously be considered static.
So why keep it in a relational database? Simple - you can use it to provide referential integrity for all "state" fields in the rest of the database.
This isn't a huge deal with states, but it can be very important with domain level enumerations. Your form actions may be well-behaved, but a robust system must account for clowns who feed their own data directly into your action URL.
(As an aside, this isn't a theoretical problem. I've heard stories of people getting an order form for, oh, a laser printer. They capture it, change the price of the printer from $499.99 to $49.99 and submit the order. The action accepted it, and when the company attempted to refute it they lost because it was considered a bona fide negotiation since the web site could/should have been programmed to reject forms with altered prices. They made an offer, the client made a counteroffer, and the company accepted it. This depends on your state, etc. Given the current political climate I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is now considered computer fraud with a 10 year prison sentence.)
I haven't investigated the claims, but some people are claiming that reputable universities have verified anomolous results with the palladium setup.
Okay. It's either my faulty memory, the faulty memory of the person who told me that, or it simply predates the other.
Now, as for pidgeon-net I understand that it was actually tested. With the expected high latency and data loss due to falcons and confused birds.
I would argue that inconvenient security is not secure. People will find ways around it, sometimes in the worst possible way from a security standpoint.
Good security should be relatively unintrusive. E.g., your security badge includes a java button, you need it and your password to log on. (I'm not sure if jbuttons are wireless, but if not substitute some smart device that is.) Once you're logged in a kerberos TGT is written to your badge. You can then access most secured functions because they quietly get the ticket from your badge. You could set up the system so your tickets (not TGT) only live for 10-15 seconds - you walk away from your desk to go to the bathroom or "coincidently" run into that cutie at the water fountain and the ticket can't be renewed and the applications are disabled (and screen blanked?) until you return. Then you have to repeat your password (since somebody might have taken the badge off your still-warm body) and everything is as you left it.
If you need special rights you provide the password for another TGT, one with a short lifetime. Think 'sudo' as an analogy.
It's far more secure than having to maintain a separate username/password for multiple applications, yet simultaneously far more convenient. Nobody will complain, esp. if badges are required or they're already used to get through doors. Most people won't even understand how the badge around their neck gives them access to their workstation (and possibly others when working with others).
A slightly weaker version uses a USB dongle attached to your keys. Nobody walks away from their car keys for long.
I seem to recall tales of a usenet posting containing +++ATZ (I think) in the early 80s. My first internet accessible account was in 83 or so and (if my memory serves) it was already lore. Definitely before the kremvax hoax.
In those days of lore we did not have DNS and dot naming and all of those other new-fangled contraptions. Everything was UUCP (or bitnet or arpanet or IBM's network protocl) and point-to-point. You routed your mail by hand (usually as fast as possible to the AT&T backbone, e.g., "harpo"), and I think many universities(!) were connected by a single 1200 baud modem that would connect overnight when long distance charges were lowest. Even then some CS departments caught grief over the cost. The usenet "your message may cost thousands of dollars to send" was an exaggeration, but it probably did cost a few dollars when you added up the LD charges for everyone.
(If you think that was bad, the entire country of New Zealand was connected by some 9 track tapes in the cargo hold of the daily flights between Sydney and Auckland!)
The AT&T backbone wouldn't use Hayes modems and knockoffs, but a lot of universities did. UUCP and the other modem protocols in use at the time, as I recall, blindly copied the data.
So you have a message containing a modem disconnect command. The connection is run in the middle of the night when nobody is around. There's the normal usenet and email traffic and suddenly one (or both!) ends go down. The admin is a bit confused, but everything looks okay. Next night, same thing because of automatic retries. And again the next night. People start getting seriously annoyed....
Sometimes I wonder if this was the motivation behind the first protocols that would either encode the payload or at least escape certain sequences.
Calling a unix system localhost could have interesting repercussions due to the ambiguity when resolving names. (Not every configuration file or app will use '127.0.0.1' or '::1' (iirc) instead of 'localhost'.) Worst case scenario isn't that traffic intended for you is lost, it's traffic intended for internal use by other systems is broadcast and/or their applications mysteriously fail.
The canonical warning tale is probably the genius who got the vanity plate NONE. He routinely parked illegally since the ticket would be issued to NONE and the system would kick it out as uncollectable.
Until one fine day when a clerk noticed that someone had registered a car with that vanity plate. He put 2 and 2 together and our genius got hit with tens of thousands of dollars in fines because his tickets caught up with him... and so did tickets for countless abandoned cars.
I don't know if this is just an urban legend, but it's definitely a good warning against being too cute.
"Conspiracy" requires a crime, or at least a clear intent to commit a crime. (E.g., saying I'll kill someone is blowing off steam. Buying a gun and looking up their home address on Mapquest is a lot more serious.)
Giving preferential treatment to your customers isn't a criminal act. Flat out ignoring any site running Apache isn't a criminal act. I'm not even sure they couldn't lie about giving preferential treatment since nothing of value changes hand.
Exactly where did I say that the MS product is inferior to its open source counterpart?
If you actually read my statements, you would realize that I actually said that We Don't Know. We will NEVER know if the only criteria is [acknowledged] vulnerabilities since some of the players have a vested interest in downplaying their vulnerabilities -- precisely because of people who think that a raw count of "vulnerabilities" means anything.
This is why statistics are lies, lies and damn lies. The math is straightforward, but it may be totally unrelated to the real question. That's why understanding and eliminating any "selection effect" is so critical. Self-reporting is notoriously vulnerable to selection bias.
The car you drive is in plain sight. But where you drive with it is not unless somebody goes to a lot of effort to follow you.
Telling Microsoft the applications you're running is like your wife getting a trip report that tells her you went to an adult bookstore.
Giving Microsoft a copy of the documents you have open is like your wife getting a report on the videos you considered renting. You know, the ones involving BSDM and a sheep.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The owner can't withdraw the license of previously published code, but they can certainly change the license on subsequent releases.
(This assumes that the code has a single owner. Code with many significant contributors will need to have all of the contributed code rewritten before it can be relicensed.)
How much of the code was contributed by others?
Apache freely issues advisories and patches. It will issue an advisory if even one user faces a minor risk.
Microsoft (and nearly all other proprietary software companies) tries to hide problems to protect their perception in the marketplace. You usually only see advisories for major problems that will become public knowledge anyway, and numerous other fixes are piggybacked on the big ones.
But beyond that advisories don't really address the quality of a product. They're one metric, but nothing more.
You can have a "conspiracy of one" if that person acts in multiple roles.
As an example, let's say that one person is a company's bookkeeper and CFO. (This isn't uncommon in small companies.)
As a bookkeeper she cooks the books to cover her embezzlement.
As CFO she prepares false financial documents for her company and its investors.
One person, criminal acts in two roles, so in many states she can be charged with conspiracy in addition to embezzlement.
BTW, this isn't a "conspiracy" in the legal sense since it's not a crime to give preferential service on the basis of web server. It's sleazy unless it's fully disclosed, but it's not a crime unless they actually sell the search engine as an unbiased tool.
Let me guess, you're only managing your own systems. Maybe a pet system or two at work.
How many other employees depend on your systems to get their work done? How many CUSTOMERS depend on your systems? How many of these systems do you have immediate access to if there's a problem, vs. systems colocated at ISPs so you have thick pipes to the internet?
I know, you referred to "rock solid" stable. You're right about that, but wrong that that's only servers with heavy loads. Anything that others depend on must be "rock solid." That includes user-facing interfaces since the cost of retraining staff can be significant.
That's why "stable" is so important. Live systems aren't set up and then left alone, they're "updated" frequently in order to catch security fixes. Updating 'testing' or 'unstable' means the system is constantly changing and the source of a problem may not be easily identified or fixed. Updating against 'stable' should be safe.
Even with backported security patches packages that are 2-3 year old can cause serious problems. E.g., we can't run the latest version of some of our applications because they depend on a more recent version of perl. But we can't update perl without blowing out half of our packages. Doing that will make the system too unstable for use for the reason mentioned above.
That's why Debian really needs mini-releases on a regular basis, e.g., perhaps on a semiannual basis. Probably <500 packages account for 95% of all installed packages and that's a subset small enough to be frequently tested. The rest of the packages could probably be loaded from 'testing' at little risk.
First, you know the tree by the fruit that falls from it. I don't think anyone thinks fundamentalist don't love their wives, but many of us do have a problem with the "separate but equal" policy promoted by many of them. If they're both happy with him in the workplace and political arena while she focuses on "church, children and kitchen," more power to them.
The problem is when they try to push their beliefs onto the rest of the world. On the flip side I've never seen pressure for women to be required to enter the workplace, just for her to have the right to decide for herself.
The world has seen many fascist regimes, Nazi Germany was only one instance. But even that extreme case had western defenders up to the war - King George, Henry Ford (iirc), the Kennedy father or grandfather (when ambassador to the UK), and more.
A few years ago Free Inquiry published a summary of 14 characteristics of fascist regimes. One copy here. I think you can make a defensible case for 13 of the 14 points, with the final item a false negative.
I suggest reading the full article for details, but for the impatient here's the keynotes:
The main exception I see is the supremacy of the military. This administration talks them up, but its actual treatment of our troops is contemptable. We've all heard of soldiers injured, discharged, then told to repay their enlistment bonus since they didn't complete their term of service. Or told to pay hospital fees while recooperating from loss of limbs. (The argument was that they shouldn't have gotten a food and housing stipend while living on hospital grounds but not in a hospital room, or something equally lame.)
Most disgusting has to be the recent bankruptcy bill. Somebody noticed that it did not include an exception for servicemen forced into bankruptcy as a consequence of being called to duty. N.B., under current law creditors are supposed to forego collections of any national guard troop called up. But the Republicans in control of Congress had some petty rule that they wouldn't accept any amendments to this bill and they gave the shaft to our servicemen.
(P.S., I know that the sexism point is debatable. We have Condi Rice.... but she's from the oil industry. A supertanker is named after her!!! Some people see covert sexism in the policy on birth control, abortions, even the refusal to accept court rulings on Terri Schiavo's desire to avoid a persistent vegetative state.)
It's a matter of scale. You can probably find something that the Clinton administration did that looks kinda similar, but it's done far, far more often by this administration. The flip side is also true - Clinton gave some people a break due to loyalty, but this administration has repeatedly responded to incompetence with promotion.
The media, in an attempt to be "balanced," tries to pretend they're the same. But they're not - I can flick you with a finger once and you won't feel it after 5 seconds. If I and 10,000 of my buddies do it you'll need medical attention.
The original shuttle specs had a two week turnaround, with a launch every week or so. (Modulo my faulty memory since I remember looking at the specs before the first flight.)
It was also scheduled to be retired years ago. Heck, probably a decade ago by now.
Those original specs were never realistic, but a lot of the difficulties are because of the compromises required to serve many masters. E.g., the size of the cargo bay was mandated by the military (to hold their satellites), as was a large "cross-range" langing zone. The original design had a smaller cargo bay and much narrower wings.
As for bureaucratic side of your argument, check out the competition a few years ago. Several companies, including a guerilla team at McDonald Douglas (iirc), were invited to develop prototypes of the next generation shuttle. A lot of people were very enthusiastic about the guerilla effort - it was a basic system built atop proven technology, and it had already had several successful flights with fast turnaround.
NASA went with the sexiest, most unproven design that would require breakthroughs in something like three different technologies. I haven't heard anything about it since the competition.
Isn't this bordering (illegal) restraint of trade? Nobody has a right to impose on a legal contract between two other parties. If they think a crime has been committed, they should go to court and get an order dealing with that specific case.
I know, at this point they're only asking for a "voluntary" agreement. That's why I said "bordering" -- larger ISPs will blow them off since they know the real cost of accepting it. (Hint: it's not a few pissed off customers. It's dealing with the 1,002 other groups with their own "code of conduct" on everything from porn to evolution and "liberalism.")
But smaller ISPs run by chickenshits may worry about the legal costs defending themselves if RIAA plays hardball. Even when, not if, they win they'll still lose because of the expense.
Details definitely vary by state so check with a lawyer, etc., but it's my understanding that in most(?) states anyone can detain anyone else for authorities if they witness a serious crime. In other words, arrest them. Cops are different in that they're authorized to arrest people even if they didn't witness the crime, and they're authorized to use force.
If somebody isn't free to leave, they're under arrest. Even if the store tries to call it something else. But they're under arrest by the manager (or the rent-a-cop), not the police.
Anyway, the point of this is that the police may be "accepting custody" of somebody arrested by the store manager, not doing the initial arrest, when they pick up somebody held by the store. The city may even have this as an explicit policy, to get the cops back on the street instead of getting caught in an argument between the suspect and the rent-a-cops and clerks and who knows who else. The cops take the suspects back to the lockup, they get the papers from the store confirming their desire to press shoplifting charges (or whatever) and the suspect goes to arraignment.
This case was different since the store isn't the one that presses counterfeiting charges... and the basis for their suspicions should have been handled by any competent store manager.
The bottom line is that the buck (almost certainly) stops with the store and the manager. They're the ones who arrested him due to their own ignorance, they're the ones who need a harsh lesson on the consequences of false arrest. It doesn't to be financial or even public, e.g., a notice to the branch manager that calls to that store will have the lowest priority until they can demonstrate that the store's management understands its responsibilities in such situations. (Read: don't let the door hit the manager's ass on his way out the door.)
The feds printed up a bunch of $2 bills within the last few years. I'm not sure why. But that means that you're surprisingly likely to get sequential bills since the bank probably has a new brick of them in the back.
It's not like they're being pulled in from circulation...
That's the theory, then there's the reality. Police and prosecutors have agendas, the average person can't afford a decent defense and public defenders are grossly overworked, there's immense social stigma associated with the mere whiff of involvement, etc.
Then there's the current craze for overcharging. Hit them with dozens of charges so they'll plea bargain down to what you _might_ have been able to get if the case went to trial. The innocent will agree to it because the alternative could be life in prison without parole, the prosecutor loves it because it bumps up their kill rate while freeing them to pursue other cases. Even better, part of a plea bargain is a surrender of all rights to appeal the conviction!
If you want to see a horrid example of this run amuck, look at the Weenachee, Washington child abuse cases. According to the police (a single officer, Lt. Perez, iirc), and the prosecutor a 30+ child abuse ring was uncovered and convicted.
If you listen to the critics, you'll learn that almost everyone charged was poor, hispanic, and accepted a plea bargain because they couldn't afford a defense. They all continue to maintain their innocence. The only couple to get off where rich and white and they took the case to trial. (The critics also point out that Perez appeared to have used improper interrogation techniques for young children and was far more likely to have implanted false memories than to have uncovered true ones. E.g., iirc he had many of his victims live with him while the child's parents were under investigation! He would (subconsciously?) reward them with ice cream and other treats when they were cooperative.)
If you listen to the other courts the city really screwed up and owes millions in dollars in damages. The city is appealing because the judgement will bankrupt the town.
Unfortunately the real victims are the 30+ people convicted of these crimes. The subsequent court rulings introduce massive doubts about the prior convictions and most people could get a new trial. (Then the DA would probably decline to prosecute, freeing them without an admission of wrongdoing on either side.) But they're stuck in prison for 5, 10 or even 20 years because they accepted plea bargains and lost their right of appeal. Their only hope may be a pardon from the governor - and mass pardons for convicted child molesters (regardless of circumstances) is political suicide.
So tell me again how the system bends over backwards to protect the innocence and the falsely accused have nothing to fear.
Here's an analogy - you're going on vacation. Deciding whether to go to Orlando or Cabo is a top-level decision comparable to what a deployer makes. The implementation of the embedded software in the navigation avionics of your flight is comparable to what XDoclet generates. You shouldn't touch it, not without a compelling reason.
Once you accept this the benefits of using XDoclet are obvious. First, you only have to update information once - the configuration file and generated source files will be automatically updated. You don't have to worry about getting called into an urgent meeting and forgetting to update the fourth auxillary file.
Second, the XDoclet tags help document the nature of the fields and how classes are related. E.g., if I see
@hibernate.property not-null="true" unique="true" length="20"
I know a lot more about the field than "String" alone tells me. It's also another example of "write once" since I don't have to worry about a block comment getting out of sync with a configuration file.
The most important unanswered question: does it discuss XDoclet?
I know, many people like maintaining configuration files manually. Some people also like nailing their tongue to flaming coals.
Personally I prefer using a handful of @hibernate and @spring tags. But I haven't found a decent explanation of how to use the tags (e.g., if you use A you must also use B). It can be annoying - I only recently discovered the @hibernate.joined-subclass tag that permits me to use a common base object (for an integrated 'id' space) without creating a "kitchen sink" monster table.
Different issues. Hibernate does one thing and does it very well - it persists your Java objects to a database in an efficient way. I generally distrust anything that tries to solve multiple unrelated problems.