Hmm, I actually reviewed the law I know about before posting, California Business Codes 17538.4 and 17538.45. And while I will admit to not being a lawyer (who is on/.) I didn't see anything that stated that I could personally pursue a spammer or the company for violating the subject line restrictions. Maybe I am wrong, on am looking in the wrong law. Could you provide more info?
Price dropping to satisfy customer demands if a very big reason for a lot of isp's going belly up. In order to attract customers, they have to practically give away service, hoping that quantity will eventually make up for it, but it rarely works out.
This is part and parcel to the way business works in the US. If you can't make a profit, you either raise prices or cut costs.
Of course people want better stuff cheaper, this is the whole driving force behind competition. Why do you think people shop around before buying something? Its not for the enjoyment of it, its so that they get the best value for their dollar. This is also why companies that innovate tend to win, their innovation usually provides a similar or superior product at a lower cost.
It's not a matter of free markets, it's a matter of pull your heads out of your rears and realize that to improve service, improve reliability, make it all faster, make it all better, it costs more, but people want this more expensive service for even cheaper, ever cheaper.
Congratulations, you have now identified the problem faced by businesses since the times of Babalyon. Oh and by the way, your proctologist called, he found your head.
I was suddenly reminded of my own "support" experience with Verizon DSL.
Having fied up mozilla, I recognized really quickly that I couldn't get to the internet. So, assuming that my router was being bitchy again I browsed into it and checked to see if it had an IP address. It didn't, so I went to the logs and looked at what was going on. It turns out that the router is sending out DHCP Requests and not getting anything back. Ok, fine, probably the DSL modem, check it. Hmm, one of the lights is out (sadly, this is the most troublshooting I can do on this thing.) Cycle power, nope blinky light still out.
I called Verizon's "tech" support to ask if there was a line outage. The first thing they ask me is, have you changed anything on your computer recently?
Now, how exactly, is changing my computer configuration going to keep an external DSL modem from authenticating on their network? Moreover, the tech wanted to check my internet settings. Um, its not the computer having an issue, its the DSL modem.
Have you looked into the services offered by the satalite TV companies (e.g. DirectTV/DishNetwork). Last time I checked the cost for Internet and TV came out pretty close. This, of course, assumes that you get cable TV currently. Also, the pesky problem of one way only was pretty much sorted out, and both DirecTV and EchoStar had options for 2 way high speed satalite internet.
Just a thought, as I don't know how it compares. When I was looking at it, I didn't get cable TV anyhow, so the price was very steep. And just before I decided to cave in and get TV/Internet from one of the providers, DSL became available in my area and I went that way.
I just wish that they law had allowed private citizens to go after the spammers and their masters for this type of thing as well. Imagine if, for every piece of spam you received (from a CA based company or spammer) you could go to small claims court and get $500 bucks out of a company. It'd be an easy case to prove, simply bring a copy of the email with subject line and associated headers. This could be a way to make a good bit of extra cash. As it is I own and operate my own mail server, all I would have to do is set up a mailbox and address, set up a filter to delete anything that has the right subject tags on it, start posting on chat boards and the like with my email address exposed and wait for the spam to start rolling in. Then spend a couple of hours each night sifting through the junk looking for companies/spammers that I can be pretty sure are in CA and then take them to small claims court. It'd be the next "get rich quick" scheme of the internet.
No, we have a law on the books here in CA which allows the State to go after spammers, if they don't have an "ADV:" or "ADLTADV:" at the beginning of the subject line. And with Gray Davis running the State into the dirt, we need to find money somewhere. So, we'll use the law as a way to tax the spammers to death.
If you assume that one has to use Dell, you can still get a system with:
- P4 2.0Ghz
- 256MB DDR RAM
- 30GB ATA/100 7200RPM HD
- 48x/24x/48x CD-RW
- 17" Flat Panel Monitor
- Win XP Pro (never get Home, its junk)
- MS Office Small Business
- 1yr Nortan AV
- 2yr Tech Support
- Keyboard
- Optical Mouse
Price: ~$1300 Retail.
And I know from personal experience that companies and the like, who buy in quantity, can get systems at a discount. This is, of course, about half the cost that the "expert" in the article quoted. And I would expect that Gateway may be able to come in below this cost. I will agree with the original article that compters are more expensive today than they were two years ago, which incedentally would be right around the time of the eMachine craze. If you step a couple of years further back, you'd notice that computers were more expensive. Like most articles of this kind the author is simply spreading propaganda. Whether its for *nix, Windows or anything else, that's what it is. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, its probably pretty tasty in an ornge sauce.
Thank god, I was beginning to think that I was the only one to have picked up on this. The minute I saw that line in the article I pretty much dismissed the who thing as a propaganda article.
While admitadlly, using Windows does make one tend towards the client/server model, if you are going to do a TCO type comparison you should at least compare the same type of arcitecture.
Also, one question that I have had for some time now about Unix/Linux: What level of desktop security does a Unix/Linux network provide? To what level can an administrator control the actions of the users? I'm talking about things like program installation, disk access, running programs etc.? I'm not familiar at all with the *nix environment and am curious.
As a fun antecdote along these lines. The company I work for produces computer based physical security systems. (i.e. those cards you carry at work to get through the doors, they are for more than the CEO to identify you by).
We had a server come back to us for maintainance one time, and as I was picking thorugh the registry, I came across the entries for Diablo 2. Now, it occured to me that Diablo 2 generally runs in full screen mode, so how exactly was the guard monitoring the security system while playing?
Moreover, why in the world did the guard have access to the CD-ROM drive? There is no need for him to have it, the box itself should have been locked up, with the cables for the keyboard, monitor, and mouse coming out.
In the end, I sent the system administrator an email asking him to tell the guards to leave the game files on the system next time they send it in, so that I can play while I work. (They had deleted the files) Never did get a response, but I imagine that the SysAdmin wasn't happy.
No need, you can boot it directly off the Win2k CD. And for those cases where you've hosed a server, its a nice tool for getting things back to a basic state of functionality. I've even used it once to switch from the multi-processor kernel to the single processor kernel.
Sounds like my copy of XP Pro, I went to a MS OEM System Builders seminar and they gave everyone a copy of XP Pro. This was a week or or two before it hit stores. Considering that I was running a copy of Windows ME at the time (also garnered from a MS seminar) I installed XP just to escape ME. So far, I find this the best way to get new MS operating systems, is to get into their programs and go to their seminars. (Also got a copy of Small Business Server 2000). You occasionally get some good info as well.
Was I that thick as a kid, a teenager, and in my twenties to beleive that the USA stood for freedom and liberty? Or was it that way and now it's all changing?
No you were just taken in by the propaganda which is taught in our schools today. Don't be ashamed, we all fell for it, it has been spewed at us since we were very young, and we are only now seeing the evidence to counteract the years of brain-washing. For a similar example, look at the children who were put through the Hitler's Youth programs. They were fanatical followers of Hitler, and would even turn their own parents over to the Gastapo. However, in time, most of them were able to be shown exactly how bad Hitler really was.
While I won't say that the US government is anywhere near the level the Nazi's, it does employ the same tactics to indoctrinate the youth. Consider for a moment the sceans, which I know I was shown in school, perhaps you were too, of the children of Germany marching around the room, holding a Nazi flag and shouting "Heil Hitler". And we were taught that this was one of the bad things that Hitler did. It was an exercise to re-enforce patriotism and loyalty to a govenment. Now compare that to children saying the "Pledge of Allegience" every morning. Its really not that different, it still a method for re-enforcing patriotism and loyalty. But it OK because its for the USA, and not Hitler. Don't blame yourself for not knowing, you were brain-washed from birth to belive that the US is better than everywhere else, its good to see that you are now questioning that assertion.
Secret arrests? Secret searches? Secret trials? These were horror stories held up to me in grade school to make me thankful I didn't live in the USSR. And now my elected representatives are even considering doing that? The definition of who this can be done to is so arbitrarily broad that I have to worry that even posting a "dissenting" view like this could get me on a list somewhere. Am I missing something? Is this a dream?
Nope, our government is just as bad as any other, they just used to hide it better. Go hit Google and search for things such as "Japanesse Concentraion Camps" (hint: they were in the US). Look for some of the programs the military has been allowed to do, such as implanting civilians with radioactive materials without the knowledge of the subject. Look at how US citizens who believed in communism were treated in the 50's. Sure, the government may apologize later, but its usually upwards of 50 years later, and under threat of a huge public backlash. And certainly far too late to make a differnce in the lives they have destroyed. I'm sorry if I am the first one to tell you this, but the US govenment is not as nice as they have trained you to believe. You don't have to go very far back in history to see examples of it trampling the rights of its own people.
This is one of the reasons the Second Amedment was put in place. Its not for hunting, that is just a straw man, which is put in place to be knocked down. If you research the arguments, put forth by the authors of the Constitution, for that right to be in there, they usually state that it is intended such that a militia, of all the abled bodied males, will be able to rise up should the government become tryanical.
Do I think we are at that point yet? No, that we are able to have this discusion in a public forum is proof enough that the govenment has not become such a tyrany. Though I do think that any sort of secret arrests, searches and trials are a step towards that. Add to that the idea that somone can be stripped of citizen ship, and now we start moving towards a tyrany.
Mind you, this is all my own opinion, don't take it as fact, even the things I put forth as facts, go look them up and prove it to yourself.
But they don't lace their computers with a highly addictive substance.
Yes they do, they are just called minesweeper and pinball. Those two little games can be damn addictive. And even if you uncheck the Games box during install, they are still put on the computer, you just don't have the ready to use shortcuts in the start menu.
I have to disagree. If we assume that one engineer was giving out warning, but at the same time, the rest of the engineers in the room were saying that everything would be ok, who do you believe? All of them are well trained, and all of them should have a good grasp of what is going on. I think part of the problem we have with this is now is that hind-sight is always 20/20. Its easy for us to sit here now and second guess the choices that were made, which lead to the disaster, but we have the advantage of knowing the outcome already. The engineers making the decisions at the time were working on guesses. Imagine trying to gather enough data on the left wing while on orbit. Its not like you could just grab an X-Ray machine and look inside the wing to see if any fractures had occured. Nor could you really get a good look at the wing to check the smoothness. As for the tiles, you're stuck relying on what camera angles you have, and can't look at it from another angle, and that assumes that the reason for the failure was large enough to be visable. It would be like trying to solve a set of 4 equations with 5 unknowns. At some point you would have to make some guesses, if you guess right, everything is ok, if you guess wrong people die.
That the crew and orbiter were lost is sad. I'm sure if the engineers at NASA had a second go at it, they would have done something different, but they don't. They only had the one go at it, based on the data available, and their best guess. And sitting here playing armchair quarterback, after the fact, and before we really know the cause of the accident, is just silly. Blaming the engineers for failing to find a problem, which is only theroetical at this point, is simply horrible, and ignores the complexity of the situation. Personally, I think the best we can do right now is give the investigators the time to figure out what actually happened, and not get in their way.
Ok, so its not FUD, its just that you don't seem to be very good at running/installing a MSSQL database.
The company I work for has been putting out apps which run with/on MSSQL databases for several years now. While, I don't think we have databases which are quite as large as 5GB on a regular basis (we do have a couple), we do have databases which are forced to process hundereds of transactions per minute during peak usage. And our uptimes are comparable to the Oracle numbers you quote. The only time we really have any problems is when inept administrators start monkeying around with a system.
To me this is one of the biggest problems with MS products, the people running them. Sadly, there are too many paper MCSE/MCDBA's running around crashing systems left and right. Whereas, there tends to be fewer people people running around crahsing Oracle or other products. It all comes down to knowing the product you are working with. And from what you said, I would guess that you are not very good with MSSQL, so quit using it. You seem to know Oracle, so stick to that.
I'm not saying that at all, what I am saying is that there should be some level of due process before the police can request this information. Otherwise known as a warrant or subpeona.
If a person is caught, in the act of commiting a crime, that is one thing. But its entierly different for the police to be able to go on fishing expeditions in databases like these. Again, I urge you to go look at the historical examples we have of police forces that were allowed to monitor people in any way that they wanted. And tell me, were the people whom they watched better off for it?
I didn't mean that the judges should force a change in policy, rather that they would hopefully find that the information garnerd from such a request is inadmissable in court.
As for data protection laws. No, not really. Its a current sticking point for some of us here, and there are some attempts to change this, but its happenening slowly. Unfortunatly, at the moment, the US has the best legislature that money can buy. And companies are the ones with the money to buy it. In my opinion, a lot of the problem stems from the fact that we have carear politicians. They manage to get into office, and then stay there. They sell out to a couple of companies for "campagin contributions" And use that money to get re-elected. And sadly, with the sheep we have voting today, money is a huge factor in who gets elected. Any person who does manage to get elected that isn't a coporate sell-out usually can't get much accomplished. The way I see it, this prolem will only get fixed when one of two things happens.
1) We finally push term limits through for all elected positions. This will keep them from establishing power bases. And will help flush the bad ones out on a regular basis.
2) Enough of the bad congresscritters die off, and get replaced with people that actually want to serve the people and not the corporations. Luckily, some of the worst offenders are getting on in years, and may not be with us for much longer. And I'll be happy to spit on their graves as they go.
Read the article....
They actually state that PayPal is subject to the same laws as any institution which collects this type of informaiton. They are not allowed to give it out, except when ordered to by a warrant. eBay/Paypal do, however, state that they would be willing to give officers tips, such as, "hey you might want to get a warrant for this guy's account info." Whic is really just as scary.
Sure, if EBay notices you selling goods, which they know are stolen, they have some obligation to report it. That's fine and good.
The problem becomes when they start pandering to law enforcement fishing expeditions. In order to obtain information on a person the police must get a warrant, this protection was put in place so that we can police our police. If we start allowing the police to operate without the oversight of the judicial system, then we have destroyed one of the checks which keeps our government in line.
At the risk of sounding paranoid, the people which we have to fear the most is our own government. Not some terrorists, not some criminal, but the possibility that our own government will reach a point of tyrany. And while it is not even close to that point today, the only way to make sure it never gets there is to keep and eye on it, and to keep certain checks and balances in place. The warrant system is one of the best and most successful checks we have on our govenment. It makes it very difficult for a person or group of people working under the color of law to begin terrorizing private citizens. Does it happen, sure, but it also tends to get found and stopped, because of the paper trails which they are forced to create. We can't let the warrant system be degarded like this, and with any luck the judges in the US will be smart enough to see this erosion of their powers and slam the door on it when they get a chance.
If I inadvertantly gave the stalker directions to this person's house, am I liable?
Actully they addressed this in the ruling. The judges found that things such as Work and Home address are not considered private. As such, there is no liabity for giving out or selling this information.
What they did find to be a problem was calling a person, and using a false pretext (a lie) to get or confirm thier work address. Also, they found that obtaining a persons SSN from a credit report header, then selling it was a violation of privacy, and is therefore cause to bring a civil suit against the information broker.
If you haven't yet, I suggest reading the decision, its a bit heavy, but is very well thought out.
You might want to do a bit of research, but from what I recall there are some really stringent laws in the US about how a company must handle information about minors. If a company has sold or given out information on one of your kids, you may be able to nail them to a wall.
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Hmm, I actually reviewed the law I know about before posting, California Business Codes 17538.4 and 17538.45. And while I will admit to not being a lawyer (who is on /.) I didn't see anything that stated that I could personally pursue a spammer or the company for violating the subject line restrictions. Maybe I am wrong, on am looking in the wrong law. Could you provide more info?
Price dropping to satisfy customer demands if a very big reason for a lot of isp's going belly up. In order to attract customers, they have to practically give away service, hoping that quantity will eventually make up for it, but it rarely works out.
This is part and parcel to the way business works in the US. If you can't make a profit, you either raise prices or cut costs.
Of course people want better stuff cheaper, this is the whole driving force behind competition. Why do you think people shop around before buying something? Its not for the enjoyment of it, its so that they get the best value for their dollar. This is also why companies that innovate tend to win, their innovation usually provides a similar or superior product at a lower cost.
It's not a matter of free markets, it's a matter of pull your heads out of your rears and realize that to improve service, improve reliability, make it all faster, make it all better, it costs more, but people want this more expensive service for even cheaper, ever cheaper.
Congratulations, you have now identified the problem faced by businesses since the times of Babalyon. Oh and by the way, your proctologist called, he found your head.
I was suddenly reminded of my own "support" experience with Verizon DSL.
Having fied up mozilla, I recognized really quickly that I couldn't get to the internet. So, assuming that my router was being bitchy again I browsed into it and checked to see if it had an IP address. It didn't, so I went to the logs and looked at what was going on. It turns out that the router is sending out DHCP Requests and not getting anything back. Ok, fine, probably the DSL modem, check it. Hmm, one of the lights is out (sadly, this is the most troublshooting I can do on this thing.) Cycle power, nope blinky light still out.
I called Verizon's "tech" support to ask if there was a line outage. The first thing they ask me is, have you changed anything on your computer recently?
Now, how exactly, is changing my computer configuration going to keep an external DSL modem from authenticating on their network? Moreover, the tech wanted to check my internet settings. Um, its not the computer having an issue, its the DSL modem.
Have you looked into the services offered by the satalite TV companies (e.g. DirectTV/DishNetwork). Last time I checked the cost for Internet and TV came out pretty close. This, of course, assumes that you get cable TV currently. Also, the pesky problem of one way only was pretty much sorted out, and both DirecTV and EchoStar had options for 2 way high speed satalite internet.
Just a thought, as I don't know how it compares. When I was looking at it, I didn't get cable TV anyhow, so the price was very steep. And just before I decided to cave in and get TV/Internet from one of the providers, DSL became available in my area and I went that way.
I just wish that they law had allowed private citizens to go after the spammers and their masters for this type of thing as well. Imagine if, for every piece of spam you received (from a CA based company or spammer) you could go to small claims court and get $500 bucks out of a company. It'd be an easy case to prove, simply bring a copy of the email with subject line and associated headers. This could be a way to make a good bit of extra cash. As it is I own and operate my own mail server, all I would have to do is set up a mailbox and address, set up a filter to delete anything that has the right subject tags on it, start posting on chat boards and the like with my email address exposed and wait for the spam to start rolling in. Then spend a couple of hours each night sifting through the junk looking for companies/spammers that I can be pretty sure are in CA and then take them to small claims court. It'd be the next "get rich quick" scheme of the internet.
No, we have a law on the books here in CA which allows the State to go after spammers, if they don't have an "ADV:" or "ADLTADV:" at the beginning of the subject line. And with Gray Davis running the State into the dirt, we need to find money somewhere. So, we'll use the law as a way to tax the spammers to death.
If you assume that one has to use Dell, you can still get a system with:
- P4 2.0Ghz
- 256MB DDR RAM
- 30GB ATA/100 7200RPM HD
- 48x/24x/48x CD-RW
- 17" Flat Panel Monitor
- Win XP Pro (never get Home, its junk)
- MS Office Small Business
- 1yr Nortan AV
- 2yr Tech Support
- Keyboard
- Optical Mouse
Price: ~$1300 Retail.
And I know from personal experience that companies and the like, who buy in quantity, can get systems at a discount. This is, of course, about half the cost that the "expert" in the article quoted. And I would expect that Gateway may be able to come in below this cost. I will agree with the original article that compters are more expensive today than they were two years ago, which incedentally would be right around the time of the eMachine craze. If you step a couple of years further back, you'd notice that computers were more expensive. Like most articles of this kind the author is simply spreading propaganda. Whether its for *nix, Windows or anything else, that's what it is. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, its probably pretty tasty in an ornge sauce.
Damn, and I just used the last of my mod points. Otherwise, I'd have given this a +1 Funny.
Thank god, I was beginning to think that I was the only one to have picked up on this. The minute I saw that line in the article I pretty much dismissed the who thing as a propaganda article.
While admitadlly, using Windows does make one tend towards the client/server model, if you are going to do a TCO type comparison you should at least compare the same type of arcitecture.
Also, one question that I have had for some time now about Unix/Linux: What level of desktop security does a Unix/Linux network provide? To what level can an administrator control the actions of the users? I'm talking about things like program installation, disk access, running programs etc.? I'm not familiar at all with the *nix environment and am curious.
As a fun antecdote along these lines. The company I work for produces computer based physical security systems. (i.e. those cards you carry at work to get through the doors, they are for more than the CEO to identify you by).
We had a server come back to us for maintainance one time, and as I was picking thorugh the registry, I came across the entries for Diablo 2. Now, it occured to me that Diablo 2 generally runs in full screen mode, so how exactly was the guard monitoring the security system while playing?
Moreover, why in the world did the guard have access to the CD-ROM drive? There is no need for him to have it, the box itself should have been locked up, with the cables for the keyboard, monitor, and mouse coming out.
In the end, I sent the system administrator an email asking him to tell the guards to leave the game files on the system next time they send it in, so that I can play while I work. (They had deleted the files) Never did get a response, but I imagine that the SysAdmin wasn't happy.
No need, you can boot it directly off the Win2k CD. And for those cases where you've hosed a server, its a nice tool for getting things back to a basic state of functionality. I've even used it once to switch from the multi-processor kernel to the single processor kernel.
So you've used Windows ME for longer than a day too.
Sounds like my copy of XP Pro, I went to a MS OEM System Builders seminar and they gave everyone a copy of XP Pro. This was a week or or two before it hit stores. Considering that I was running a copy of Windows ME at the time (also garnered from a MS seminar) I installed XP just to escape ME. So far, I find this the best way to get new MS operating systems, is to get into their programs and go to their seminars. (Also got a copy of Small Business Server 2000). You occasionally get some good info as well.
Was I that thick as a kid, a teenager, and in my twenties to beleive that the USA stood for freedom and liberty? Or was it that way and now it's all changing?
No you were just taken in by the propaganda which is taught in our schools today. Don't be ashamed, we all fell for it, it has been spewed at us since we were very young, and we are only now seeing the evidence to counteract the years of brain-washing. For a similar example, look at the children who were put through the Hitler's Youth programs. They were fanatical followers of Hitler, and would even turn their own parents over to the Gastapo. However, in time, most of them were able to be shown exactly how bad Hitler really was.
While I won't say that the US government is anywhere near the level the Nazi's, it does employ the same tactics to indoctrinate the youth. Consider for a moment the sceans, which I know I was shown in school, perhaps you were too, of the children of Germany marching around the room, holding a Nazi flag and shouting "Heil Hitler". And we were taught that this was one of the bad things that Hitler did. It was an exercise to re-enforce patriotism and loyalty to a govenment. Now compare that to children saying the "Pledge of Allegience" every morning. Its really not that different, it still a method for re-enforcing patriotism and loyalty. But it OK because its for the USA, and not Hitler. Don't blame yourself for not knowing, you were brain-washed from birth to belive that the US is better than everywhere else, its good to see that you are now questioning that assertion.
Secret arrests? Secret searches? Secret trials? These were horror stories held up to me in grade school to make me thankful I didn't live in the USSR. And now my elected representatives are even considering doing that? The definition of who this can be done to is so arbitrarily broad that I have to worry that even posting a "dissenting" view like this could get me on a list somewhere. Am I missing something? Is this a dream?
Nope, our government is just as bad as any other, they just used to hide it better. Go hit Google and search for things such as "Japanesse Concentraion Camps" (hint: they were in the US). Look for some of the programs the military has been allowed to do, such as implanting civilians with radioactive materials without the knowledge of the subject. Look at how US citizens who believed in communism were treated in the 50's. Sure, the government may apologize later, but its usually upwards of 50 years later, and under threat of a huge public backlash. And certainly far too late to make a differnce in the lives they have destroyed. I'm sorry if I am the first one to tell you this, but the US govenment is not as nice as they have trained you to believe. You don't have to go very far back in history to see examples of it trampling the rights of its own people.
This is one of the reasons the Second Amedment was put in place. Its not for hunting, that is just a straw man, which is put in place to be knocked down. If you research the arguments, put forth by the authors of the Constitution, for that right to be in there, they usually state that it is intended such that a militia, of all the abled bodied males, will be able to rise up should the government become tryanical.
Do I think we are at that point yet? No, that we are able to have this discusion in a public forum is proof enough that the govenment has not become such a tyrany. Though I do think that any sort of secret arrests, searches and trials are a step towards that. Add to that the idea that somone can be stripped of citizen ship, and now we start moving towards a tyrany.
Mind you, this is all my own opinion, don't take it as fact, even the things I put forth as facts, go look them up and prove it to yourself.
But they don't lace their computers with a highly addictive substance.
Yes they do, they are just called minesweeper and pinball. Those two little games can be damn addictive. And even if you uncheck the Games box during install, they are still put on the computer, you just don't have the ready to use shortcuts in the start menu.
I have to disagree. If we assume that one engineer was giving out warning, but at the same time, the rest of the engineers in the room were saying that everything would be ok, who do you believe? All of them are well trained, and all of them should have a good grasp of what is going on. I think part of the problem we have with this is now is that hind-sight is always 20/20. Its easy for us to sit here now and second guess the choices that were made, which lead to the disaster, but we have the advantage of knowing the outcome already. The engineers making the decisions at the time were working on guesses. Imagine trying to gather enough data on the left wing while on orbit. Its not like you could just grab an X-Ray machine and look inside the wing to see if any fractures had occured. Nor could you really get a good look at the wing to check the smoothness. As for the tiles, you're stuck relying on what camera angles you have, and can't look at it from another angle, and that assumes that the reason for the failure was large enough to be visable. It would be like trying to solve a set of 4 equations with 5 unknowns. At some point you would have to make some guesses, if you guess right, everything is ok, if you guess wrong people die.
That the crew and orbiter were lost is sad. I'm sure if the engineers at NASA had a second go at it, they would have done something different, but they don't. They only had the one go at it, based on the data available, and their best guess. And sitting here playing armchair quarterback, after the fact, and before we really know the cause of the accident, is just silly. Blaming the engineers for failing to find a problem, which is only theroetical at this point, is simply horrible, and ignores the complexity of the situation. Personally, I think the best we can do right now is give the investigators the time to figure out what actually happened, and not get in their way.
Ok, so its not FUD, its just that you don't seem to be very good at running/installing a MSSQL database.
The company I work for has been putting out apps which run with/on MSSQL databases for several years now. While, I don't think we have databases which are quite as large as 5GB on a regular basis (we do have a couple), we do have databases which are forced to process hundereds of transactions per minute during peak usage. And our uptimes are comparable to the Oracle numbers you quote. The only time we really have any problems is when inept administrators start monkeying around with a system.
To me this is one of the biggest problems with MS products, the people running them. Sadly, there are too many paper MCSE/MCDBA's running around crashing systems left and right. Whereas, there tends to be fewer people people running around crahsing Oracle or other products. It all comes down to knowing the product you are working with. And from what you said, I would guess that you are not very good with MSSQL, so quit using it. You seem to know Oracle, so stick to that.
I'm not saying that at all, what I am saying is that there should be some level of due process before the police can request this information. Otherwise known as a warrant or subpeona.
If a person is caught, in the act of commiting a crime, that is one thing. But its entierly different for the police to be able to go on fishing expeditions in databases like these.
Again, I urge you to go look at the historical examples we have of police forces that were allowed to monitor people in any way that they wanted. And tell me, were the people whom they watched better off for it?
Been there, done that. I still don't belive in sacrificiing my privacy for an illusion of better protection.
I didn't mean that the judges should force a change in policy, rather that they would hopefully find that the information garnerd from such a request is inadmissable in court.
As for data protection laws. No, not really. Its a current sticking point for some of us here, and there are some attempts to change this, but its happenening slowly. Unfortunatly, at the moment, the US has the best legislature that money can buy. And companies are the ones with the money to buy it. In my opinion, a lot of the problem stems from the fact that we have carear politicians. They manage to get into office, and then stay there. They sell out to a couple of companies for "campagin contributions" And use that money to get re-elected. And sadly, with the sheep we have voting today, money is a huge factor in who gets elected. Any person who does manage to get elected that isn't a coporate sell-out usually can't get much accomplished. The way I see it, this prolem will only get fixed when one of two things happens.
1) We finally push term limits through for all elected positions. This will keep them from establishing power bases. And will help flush the bad ones out on a regular basis.
2) Enough of the bad congresscritters die off, and get replaced with people that actually want to serve the people and not the corporations. Luckily, some of the worst offenders are getting on in years, and may not be with us for much longer. And I'll be happy to spit on their graves as they go.
Read the article....
They actually state that PayPal is subject to the same laws as any institution which collects this type of informaiton. They are not allowed to give it out, except when ordered to by a warrant. eBay/Paypal do, however, state that they would be willing to give officers tips, such as, "hey you might want to get a warrant for this guy's account info." Whic is really just as scary.
Sure, if EBay notices you selling goods, which they know are stolen, they have some obligation to report it. That's fine and good.
The problem becomes when they start pandering to law enforcement fishing expeditions. In order to obtain information on a person the police must get a warrant, this protection was put in place so that we can police our police. If we start allowing the police to operate without the oversight of the judicial system, then we have destroyed one of the checks which keeps our government in line.
At the risk of sounding paranoid, the people which we have to fear the most is our own government. Not some terrorists, not some criminal, but the possibility that our own government will reach a point of tyrany. And while it is not even close to that point today, the only way to make sure it never gets there is to keep and eye on it, and to keep certain checks and balances in place. The warrant system is one of the best and most successful checks we have on our govenment. It makes it very difficult for a person or group of people working under the color of law to begin terrorizing private citizens. Does it happen, sure, but it also tends to get found and stopped, because of the paper trails which they are forced to create. We can't let the warrant system be degarded like this, and with any luck the judges in the US will be smart enough to see this erosion of their powers and slam the door on it when they get a chance.
Go spend some time researching the Stazi, then come back and tell me this again.
If I inadvertantly gave the stalker directions to this person's house, am I liable?
Actully they addressed this in the ruling. The judges found that things such as Work and Home address are not considered private. As such, there is no liabity for giving out or selling this information.
What they did find to be a problem was calling a person, and using a false pretext (a lie) to get or confirm thier work address. Also, they found that obtaining a persons SSN from a credit report header, then selling it was a violation of privacy, and is therefore cause to bring a civil suit against the information broker.
If you haven't yet, I suggest reading the decision, its a bit heavy, but is very well thought out.
You might want to do a bit of research, but from what I recall there are some really stringent laws in the US about how a company must handle information about minors. If a company has sold or given out information on one of your kids, you may be able to nail them to a wall.