Whether it is a weather application being used on live television, or a computer being used in an operating room, Microsoft has shown that Windows is not a proper steward of serious systems programming.
Heh. Go to any major airport with nice big screen monitors showing flight information and some percentage of them will have Windows dialogue box on them informing you of some problem...
For what? This was an antivirus scan and the report itself doesn't mention an OS. Furthermore, this crash brought down the whole system. If developers are writing their software to utilize drivers, they ought to make sure those drivers aren't so buggy that the mere stopping of data will tank the entire system...especially a system that should be as close to "bulletproof" as bulletproof can be in the technological sense of the word.
Alternatively, only certify the software to run on hardware they provide and configure; since there is no way that can anticipate what else will be running on a non-certified machine. Even with a certified machine, unless you make it impossible to load anything else someone will find a way to load a program that crashes yours. I had that happen on a server we installed to run a specific program; despite clear warnings not to install any software on it someone did and crashed our program. their excuse, "We saw it had some HD space so we decided to install it on this machine;" proving nothing is fool proof because even fools can be ingenious.
As someone who has had to deal with such material and has been constantly briefed on it by the FBI and the DIA I can tell you right now that it does not matter WHAT classification the material bears. If you look at it and know, or should know that the material is classified then you must treat it as such.
The problem is the over classification of material makes it hard to really know what is classified or not. For example, at one point the Navy classified the 2cd law of thermodynamics. In theory, my discussing it outside of a secure area or sending a copy to someone would be a security violation. Even a classified document can contain classified and unclassified information, a noted by line classification markings. So while I agree that if you know something is classified, even absent markings, you need to take action; to expect someone too be able to tell something should be classified given the often confusing guidance and disagreement between agencies over what is actually classified is unworkable in practice.
There are also harsh criminal penalties for unauthorized transmission of data from a secured network designed for classified data to a public network. So even if the material was not classified and never would be classified, she may have run afoul of those rules.
Apparently it was common practice at State to not use the secure network for transmission and to backchannel information. I'm not surprised, given how much I saw that done as well as the sometimes problematic access to a secure network.
there is no upside for either side to drag this into court
So you're saying it's only illegal if you or I do it, but if you're high enough in the government it suddenly becomes legal?
Good to know.
No, just that both political parties will make a cold calculated political decision on the benefits independent of the legality or illegality of the act. Right or wrong ha nothing to do with it, it's about winning and losing.
Email addresses on servers they did not control. The difference, which people like yourself want to minimize is that it was HER server (not AOL, Not Hotmail, not Yahoo!, and not Google. It was her private email server. And it was clearly designed to get around the Open Records requirements that were passed because of Republican versions of private email addresses that happened previously.
And, you're functionally saying "Two wrongs make it okay", rather than addressing the real concerns.
The big concern the Republicans keep raising is "classified" material, which makes whose non-governmental server it resides on irrelevant since any server would be open to compromise; although it appears none of the material was classified at the time it was sent but has been deemed classified later. Given she turned over the emails and much of the traffic would have been available anyway since it originated from a government server the whole issue is nothing but a cheap political attack.
But the only person who "manufactured" this scandal is one Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The reason that she isn't being indicted isn't because she's some innocent little angel, but because she has the leverage over the current administration and the so-called "independent" attorney general has given her a get-out-of-indictment free card.
In addition, government officials form both parties have used private email addresses as well, so there is no upside for either side to drag this into court.
As for Trump, his biggest challenge will be raising funds.
Will it? After all this scaremongering about Trump, not reporting his every move and comment is letting good headlines go to waste. Also, people who hate Trump will continue dissing him, which simply increases a protest candidate's popularity.
However, just because a base of supporters likes you even more doesn't mean they can or will, cough up the cash needed to run a national campaign. That takes big money donors and bundlers, many of whom may just decide to skip the presidential election and concentrate on down ticket races which have suddenly become even more important. They may also view Hillary as a more predictable, and reliable, choice over Trump, even if she would not be their first choice; and thus decide not to waste money better spent elsewhere.
The issue with reactors is that if the salt solidifies the reactor won't cool properly when restarted and can go into meltdown if not properly moderated. With molten salt solar plants it's not much of an issue since the heat just re-liquefies the salt and if the tower somehow gets too hot you just angle the mirrors away from it, and even if that fails at worst you have a nasty but not terribly dangerous fire.
While reactor cooling is an issue the problem with molten salt is once it solidifies throughout a loop it is very hard to re-liquefy the loop. The Soviets rocked up 4 of their Alpha class submarines, despite their best efforts to keep the salt liquid. As for a fire, the Na-H2O reaction can be quite nasty.
It doesn't rain in Dubai. Also these solar plants generally use molten sodium to store the energy, which then use it to create steam to run generators.
How many molten sodium plants are operational? There are lots of issues with using molten sodium as a heat transfer mechanism, given it's reactivity with water, and the inevitable corrosion and leakage from running hot liquids through steel pipes. The US and Soviet navies had nuke subs that ran such a plant but gave up on the problem due to the technical issues; one of which is the need to always keep the coolant hot to avoid is solidifying and thus rendering the plant inoperative. I would get the Emirates would use some other storage mechanisms, such as batteries, compressed air storage or even pumped storage on the mountain they plan to build to increase rainfall.
Where does this take us? Trump is going to score well in conservative White districts, and Clinton (yes, I like Sanders, but he doesn't have the delegates) is going to score well enough to beat him with less conservative Whites and everyone else. I don't know if enough people would have voted for Clinton without someone who inspires people to vote against him like Trump.
Trump's fundamental problem is there simply isn't enough of the conservative, white, mostly male voters to get him elected. He'd need to basically get 70% of the white male vote to win which no candidate has ever done. He will, I agree, do well in some areas but that won't be enough to win, IMHO.
But even people who would in another situation never have voted for Clinton will cast votes against Trump. Clinton just got handed the White House. Game over.
It sure makes her road to the White House a lot less bumpy. No matter what her negatives are Trump trumps them with ease; he seems to want to keep giving people reasons not to vote for him as he panders to a small segment of the population. The debate should be interesting; I'd love to see Hillary make little jabs at his insecurities whenever he gives her an opening; and drive him over the edge. Hell, she could use some variant of the "I've known men with big fingers. Bill has big fingers. You sir, have small fingers..." The election may not match Nixon's landslide over McGovern but may come close.
What really troubles me is what happens after the election. 40 years of anti-intellectualism and pandering to prejudice and we got a significant part of the country voting for someone who really would not have been good for the country. The historical parallels are obvious. What do we do now?
The Republicans tried, after the last election, to change their fundamental approach to winning and become a broader, more inclusive party. Unfortunately, they have not been able to purge their far right nutcase because they need them to win maintain majorities in the House and Senate. Until they decide to force them out and suffer a few defats as a result, in order to build a party that is viable in the long term, they will become a minority party with no real chance at governing. They need to continue to defeat far right candidates in primaries so moderate republicans don't have to pander to the far right in order to win primaries. As long as compromise is a bad word I'm afraid that will not happen. That is sad, because we need two strong parties to keep each other in check and limit the damage nut cases on either side can do.
It will be interesting to see what the rest of the GOP do now. After a year of trashing Trump, calling him all sorts of things, they are either going to have to eat several courses of humble pie or rip the party apart by continuing to oppose their official candidate.
The polls suggest that Trump will find it hard to beat Hillary, because despite some popularity he also has a higher disapproval rating than anyone in the history of politics. Then again you can never rule anyone out in a two horse race. For me a Trump win would be a nightmare scenario, but I'm also kind of curious to see how the rest of the world would react.
My guess is candidates in areas where Trump polls well will get behind him to help their shot at wing election or reelection. In more purple areas they will ignore him and tout their records and distance themselves from his craziness. The leadership has to be focusing on down ticket impacts to try to prevent Trump from causing them to lose the majority in the Senate; so I suspect you'll see a lot of "Reelect or elect me to prevent Hillary from having a rubber stamp on Supreme Court nominees..." with candidates running against Hillary and avoiding mentioning Trump.
Any republican seriously considering a presidential run in 4 years has to be thrilled with Trump becoming the nominee. They will be free to distance themselves from Hillary and run in 4 years confident the Republican party won't let another Trump derail their candidacy.
As for Trump, his biggest challenge will be raising funds. If he tries to self fund he will be outspent badly, something the establishment Republicans and big donors may actually prefer because it helps keep his craziness off the air. When one of the Koch brothers muses that Hillary would be preferable to Donald you have to wonder where he'll get the cash needed to make a serious run. He already loaned his campaign cash that, IIR election laws correctly, needs to be repaid prior to the start of the general election; I wonder if he is willing to write off that cash and pay off any outstanding bills or takes it and loans it to his general campaign. If he plays true to form and doesn't listen to anyone but the voices inside his own head he may find it a lot harder to get the same type of airtime and come under a lot more scrutiny since ehe is now the candidate. He will, of course, bad mouth anyone who disagrees with him and use the National Enquirer as his primary source of information. So sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the show...
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the public, especially in areas such as the EU that have come out strongly against GMO foodstuffs. Will they accept completely synthetically produced food? I would imagine farmers would oppose this simply because it threatens their very existence; with some producing "real" food at expensive prices so that having a real steak becomes a luxury item.
Cigarettes make absolutely lousy ignition sources. You can flick lit cigarettes into a bucket of gasoline all day without ever getting a flame. You can use a puddle of gasoline to put your cigarette out if you want to.
True, it's the vapor that is the inflammable state. However, the idea that no regulation of a service that could conceivably allow gas vapor to accumulate in a closed space such as a garage while fueling is problematic.
Call me a statist all you like, but I am 100% for regulation of the equivalent of gas tanker trucks meandering neighborhoods and commercial parks topping off people's cars, and having taxes on that service in order to fund the regulation, because I don't want to see some 20-something communications major driving around every day with a U-Haul full of jerry cans tied down with bungee cords. I say this even though I am 100% behind having the service available, because I'd find it amazingly useful.
While I also think it is useful some regulation is clearly needed. One problem I see is how do you overcome someone else's stupidity? For example, people know you don't smoke near a gas pump, but someone walking around the corner with a lit cigarette could easily and unknowingly flick it near where you have gas fumes; so some sort of vapor capture system is a must. In addition, the fuel storage and handling equipment must have some minimum safety standard to meet to be used. Portable fuel trucks exist and are in use at airports everywhere so the design standards are already known and just need to be applied to a new use. Driver training, as you point out, is critical as well. This idea could be a lot more disruptive than people anticipated...
Can't we make a deal? We push over the UK to the US and we get Canada in return. We are used to multi-lingual countries.
That way everybody will be happy.
Sorry, the UK tried twice to stay a pert of us and we turned them down. Canada might go for it since they turned down our generous attempt to get them to join us, but France might object to having to learn Canadian French, eh?
The bottom line is countries do what they feel is needed to catch up with the rest of the world. That's not to say the US wasn't innovation but even so they used various means to get an advantage by taking other countries ideas and copying them, and ultimately improving them.
The difference is that there wasn't a global economy during those times (at least not on the scale we have today). During those times, If a company in Germany developed a very robust widget and an American company directly copied it, the impact wasn't catastrophic to the German company. Now, with R&D done in one country and manufacturing done in another, if your manufacturer goes rogue, he can cause real and potentially fatal harm to your business.
There was a pretty robust global economy,it just took longer to ship stuff than today but the industrial,reveloutionnusheredcinna new era in global trade as countries industrialized and began mass production of previously hand made items.
How are you going to compete with that? They do almost zero R&D, and then make cheap copies of existing products using the existing R&D of some other firm. When we get to the point of China making everything and all other companies are out of business, expect to see no innovation for decades that follow.
Thats pretty much standard for any country trying to catch up to more advanced industrial nations. The US did it when we began industrializing and once we had enough homegrown companies developing technology we all of a sudden became big fans of patent and copyright protection. Once people start stealing form China they'll come around as well.
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Whether it is a weather application being used on live television, or a computer being used in an operating room, Microsoft has shown that Windows is not a proper steward of serious systems programming.
Heh. Go to any major airport with nice big screen monitors showing flight information and some percentage of them will have Windows dialogue box on them informing you of some problem...
For what? This was an antivirus scan and the report itself doesn't mention an OS. Furthermore, this crash brought down the whole system. If developers are writing their software to utilize drivers, they ought to make sure those drivers aren't so buggy that the mere stopping of data will tank the entire system...especially a system that should be as close to "bulletproof" as bulletproof can be in the technological sense of the word.
Alternatively, only certify the software to run on hardware they provide and configure; since there is no way that can anticipate what else will be running on a non-certified machine. Even with a certified machine, unless you make it impossible to load anything else someone will find a way to load a program that crashes yours. I had that happen on a server we installed to run a specific program; despite clear warnings not to install any software on it someone did and crashed our program. their excuse, "We saw it had some HD space so we decided to install it on this machine;" proving nothing is fool proof because even fools can be ingenious.
As someone who has had to deal with such material and has been constantly briefed on it by the FBI and the DIA I can tell you right now that it does not matter WHAT classification the material bears. If you look at it and know, or should know that the material is classified then you must treat it as such.
The problem is the over classification of material makes it hard to really know what is classified or not. For example, at one point the Navy classified the 2cd law of thermodynamics. In theory, my discussing it outside of a secure area or sending a copy to someone would be a security violation. Even a classified document can contain classified and unclassified information, a noted by line classification markings. So while I agree that if you know something is classified, even absent markings, you need to take action; to expect someone too be able to tell something should be classified given the often confusing guidance and disagreement between agencies over what is actually classified is unworkable in practice.
There are also harsh criminal penalties for unauthorized transmission of data from a secured network designed for classified data to a public network. So even if the material was not classified and never would be classified, she may have run afoul of those rules.
Apparently it was common practice at State to not use the secure network for transmission and to backchannel information. I'm not surprised, given how much I saw that done as well as the sometimes problematic access to a secure network.
Eh? Austria is in Europe. Maybe you were thinking of Australia?
The white Lipizaner kangaroos hoping around the ring probably threw him off
You're welcome
there is no upside for either side to drag this into court
So you're saying it's only illegal if you or I do it, but if you're high enough in the government it suddenly becomes legal?
Good to know.
No, just that both political parties will make a cold calculated political decision on the benefits independent of the legality or illegality of the act. Right or wrong ha nothing to do with it, it's about winning and losing.
private email address is different than a private email server..
Yea, it could actually be more secure than Gmail/AOL/Outlook/et. al...
Email addresses on servers they did not control. The difference, which people like yourself want to minimize is that it was HER server (not AOL, Not Hotmail, not Yahoo!, and not Google. It was her private email server. And it was clearly designed to get around the Open Records requirements that were passed because of Republican versions of private email addresses that happened previously.
And, you're functionally saying "Two wrongs make it okay", rather than addressing the real concerns.
The big concern the Republicans keep raising is "classified" material, which makes whose non-governmental server it resides on irrelevant since any server would be open to compromise; although it appears none of the material was classified at the time it was sent but has been deemed classified later. Given she turned over the emails and much of the traffic would have been available anyway since it originated from a government server the whole issue is nothing but a cheap political attack.
I agree with don't count on it.
But the only person who "manufactured" this scandal is one Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The reason that she isn't being indicted isn't because she's some innocent little angel, but because she has the leverage over the current administration and the so-called "independent" attorney general has given her a get-out-of-indictment free card.
In addition, government officials form both parties have used private email addresses as well, so there is no upside for either side to drag this into court.
Will it? After all this scaremongering about Trump, not reporting his every move and comment is letting good headlines go to waste. Also, people who hate Trump will continue dissing him, which simply increases a protest candidate's popularity.
However, just because a base of supporters likes you even more doesn't mean they can or will, cough up the cash needed to run a national campaign. That takes big money donors and bundlers, many of whom may just decide to skip the presidential election and concentrate on down ticket races which have suddenly become even more important. They may also view Hillary as a more predictable, and reliable, choice over Trump, even if she would not be their first choice; and thus decide not to waste money better spent elsewhere.
The issue with reactors is that if the salt solidifies the reactor won't cool properly when restarted and can go into meltdown if not properly moderated. With molten salt solar plants it's not much of an issue since the heat just re-liquefies the salt and if the tower somehow gets too hot you just angle the mirrors away from it, and even if that fails at worst you have a nasty but not terribly dangerous fire.
While reactor cooling is an issue the problem with molten salt is once it solidifies throughout a loop it is very hard to re-liquefy the loop. The Soviets rocked up 4 of their Alpha class submarines, despite their best efforts to keep the salt liquid. As for a fire, the Na-H2O reaction can be quite nasty.
There's lots of issues with using coal, but somehow that doesn't count in this equation?
Not sure what is your point. What does coal have to do with finding a way to store excess solar production for use when solar isn't generating power?
It doesn't rain in Dubai. Also these solar plants generally use molten sodium to store the energy, which then use it to create steam to run generators.
How many molten sodium plants are operational? There are lots of issues with using molten sodium as a heat transfer mechanism, given it's reactivity with water, and the inevitable corrosion and leakage from running hot liquids through steel pipes. The US and Soviet navies had nuke subs that ran such a plant but gave up on the problem due to the technical issues; one of which is the need to always keep the coolant hot to avoid is solidifying and thus rendering the plant inoperative. I would get the Emirates would use some other storage mechanisms, such as batteries, compressed air storage or even pumped storage on the mountain they plan to build to increase rainfall.
Wait a second...
Rafael Cruz AND Glen Beck both said Ted Cruz was "anointed by god" to be the next president. How could god have gotten it so wrong??
He was just joking.
Where does this take us? Trump is going to score well in conservative White districts, and Clinton (yes, I like Sanders, but he doesn't have the delegates) is going to score well enough to beat him with less conservative Whites and everyone else. I don't know if enough people would have voted for Clinton without someone who inspires people to vote against him like Trump.
Trump's fundamental problem is there simply isn't enough of the conservative, white, mostly male voters to get him elected. He'd need to basically get 70% of the white male vote to win which no candidate has ever done. He will, I agree, do well in some areas but that won't be enough to win, IMHO.
But even people who would in another situation never have voted for Clinton will cast votes against Trump. Clinton just got handed the White House. Game over.
It sure makes her road to the White House a lot less bumpy. No matter what her negatives are Trump trumps them with ease; he seems to want to keep giving people reasons not to vote for him as he panders to a small segment of the population. The debate should be interesting; I'd love to see Hillary make little jabs at his insecurities whenever he gives her an opening; and drive him over the edge. Hell, she could use some variant of the "I've known men with big fingers. Bill has big fingers. You sir, have small fingers..." The election may not match Nixon's landslide over McGovern but may come close.
What really troubles me is what happens after the election. 40 years of anti-intellectualism and pandering to prejudice and we got a significant part of the country voting for someone who really would not have been good for the country. The historical parallels are obvious. What do we do now?
The Republicans tried, after the last election, to change their fundamental approach to winning and become a broader, more inclusive party. Unfortunately, they have not been able to purge their far right nutcase because they need them to win maintain majorities in the House and Senate. Until they decide to force them out and suffer a few defats as a result, in order to build a party that is viable in the long term, they will become a minority party with no real chance at governing. They need to continue to defeat far right candidates in primaries so moderate republicans don't have to pander to the far right in order to win primaries. As long as compromise is a bad word I'm afraid that will not happen. That is sad, because we need two strong parties to keep each other in check and limit the damage nut cases on either side can do.
It will be interesting to see what the rest of the GOP do now. After a year of trashing Trump, calling him all sorts of things, they are either going to have to eat several courses of humble pie or rip the party apart by continuing to oppose their official candidate.
The polls suggest that Trump will find it hard to beat Hillary, because despite some popularity he also has a higher disapproval rating than anyone in the history of politics. Then again you can never rule anyone out in a two horse race. For me a Trump win would be a nightmare scenario, but I'm also kind of curious to see how the rest of the world would react.
My guess is candidates in areas where Trump polls well will get behind him to help their shot at wing election or reelection. In more purple areas they will ignore him and tout their records and distance themselves from his craziness. The leadership has to be focusing on down ticket impacts to try to prevent Trump from causing them to lose the majority in the Senate; so I suspect you'll see a lot of "Reelect or elect me to prevent Hillary from having a rubber stamp on Supreme Court nominees..." with candidates running against Hillary and avoiding mentioning Trump.
Any republican seriously considering a presidential run in 4 years has to be thrilled with Trump becoming the nominee. They will be free to distance themselves from Hillary and run in 4 years confident the Republican party won't let another Trump derail their candidacy.
As for Trump, his biggest challenge will be raising funds. If he tries to self fund he will be outspent badly, something the establishment Republicans and big donors may actually prefer because it helps keep his craziness off the air. When one of the Koch brothers muses that Hillary would be preferable to Donald you have to wonder where he'll get the cash needed to make a serious run. He already loaned his campaign cash that, IIR election laws correctly, needs to be repaid prior to the start of the general election; I wonder if he is willing to write off that cash and pay off any outstanding bills or takes it and loans it to his general campaign. If he plays true to form and doesn't listen to anyone but the voices inside his own head he may find it a lot harder to get the same type of airtime and come under a lot more scrutiny since ehe is now the candidate. He will, of course, bad mouth anyone who disagrees with him and use the National Enquirer as his primary source of information. So sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the show...
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the public, especially in areas such as the EU that have come out strongly against GMO foodstuffs. Will they accept completely synthetically produced food? I would imagine farmers would oppose this simply because it threatens their very existence; with some producing "real" food at expensive prices so that having a real steak becomes a luxury item.
You were never a teen-aged boy, were you?
Cigarettes make absolutely lousy ignition sources. You can flick lit cigarettes into a bucket of gasoline all day without ever getting a flame. You can use a puddle of gasoline to put your cigarette out if you want to.
True, it's the vapor that is the inflammable state. However, the idea that no regulation of a service that could conceivably allow gas vapor to accumulate in a closed space such as a garage while fueling is problematic.
people know you don't smoke near a gas pump
You've never filled up at a gas station before have you?
Yea, and in some cases you just can't fix stupid...
Call me a statist all you like, but I am 100% for regulation of the equivalent of gas tanker trucks meandering neighborhoods and commercial parks topping off people's cars, and having taxes on that service in order to fund the regulation, because I don't want to see some 20-something communications major driving around every day with a U-Haul full of jerry cans tied down with bungee cords. I say this even though I am 100% behind having the service available, because I'd find it amazingly useful.
While I also think it is useful some regulation is clearly needed. One problem I see is how do you overcome someone else's stupidity? For example, people know you don't smoke near a gas pump, but someone walking around the corner with a lit cigarette could easily and unknowingly flick it near where you have gas fumes; so some sort of vapor capture system is a must. In addition, the fuel storage and handling equipment must have some minimum safety standard to meet to be used. Portable fuel trucks exist and are in use at airports everywhere so the design standards are already known and just need to be applied to a new use. Driver training, as you point out, is critical as well. This idea could be a lot more disruptive than people anticipated...
Can't we make a deal? We push over the UK to the US and we get Canada in return. We are used to multi-lingual countries.
That way everybody will be happy.
Sorry, the UK tried twice to stay a pert of us and we turned them down. Canada might go for it since they turned down our generous attempt to get them to join us, but France might object to having to learn Canadian French, eh?
Note the the original patent laws denied protection for foreign patents. For further reading here are two sources:
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20130228/01324622146/yes-us-industrial-revolution-was-built-piracy-fraud.shtml
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-02-01/piracy-and-fraud-propelled-the-u-s-industrial-revolution
The bottom line is countries do what they feel is needed to catch up with the rest of the world. That's not to say the US wasn't innovation but even so they used various means to get an advantage by taking other countries ideas and copying them, and ultimately improving them.
Very true. The deaths from war pale compared to those from natural causes such as heart disease and other natural but preventable causes.
The difference is that there wasn't a global economy during those times (at least not on the scale we have today). During those times, If a company in Germany developed a very robust widget and an American company directly copied it, the impact wasn't catastrophic to the German company. Now, with R&D done in one country and manufacturing done in another, if your manufacturer goes rogue, he can cause real and potentially fatal harm to your business.
There was a pretty robust global economy,it just took longer to ship stuff than today but the industrial,reveloutionnusheredcinna new era in global trade as countries industrialized and began mass production of previously hand made items.
How are you going to compete with that? They do almost zero R&D, and then make cheap copies of existing products using the existing R&D of some other firm. When we get to the point of China making everything and all other companies are out of business, expect to see no innovation for decades that follow.
Thats pretty much standard for any country trying to catch up to more advanced industrial nations. The US did it when we began industrializing and once we had enough homegrown companies developing technology we all of a sudden became big fans of patent and copyright protection. Once people start stealing form China they'll come around as well.