The "Great Firewall" only filters information between China and the outside world. It is powerless against domestic network use and easy to skirt for those capable of using foreign proxies.
The new regulations imply to me that the Chinese government is relatively powerless. They're trying to push the network to regulate itself at the local level. Instead of strengthening the capabilities of the center to regulate user behavior, they're decentralizing network administration. Exactly the opposite of the Echelon strategy, actually.
I think it's more interesting to see that we're getting this kind of policy out of the MII at all. Last I heard, the agency was set to be radically overhauled and Wu Jichuan's aggressive control policies were losing out. Does this indicate a return to strict control over user behavior, or does the obvious weaknesses of the policy suggest that the CPP *is* slowly liberalizing its policy on network use, and that this is a bone for the hardcore element of the MII?
Commercial software can't be critical software? I wasn't aware of that.
Sounds like a nice way to create barriers to entry in the software-engineering market, and thereby drive up the wages of programmer. I can't imagine a system more prone to moral hazard and more likely to produce MORE bad programmers than further increases in the average wage rates of 'licensed' professionals.
OpenOSX uses Fink to produce a salable good. Where's the problem???
Christoph Pfisterer wants credit for work other people do using free software. That's like insisting that anyone who uses KWord to write reports or GIMP to make graphics needs to explicitly say so. Push this logic to the extreme and every binary produced by G++ would require a similar notice.
If this complainant has a problem with people using free software freely, he's the one in the wrong. Oh, and to cover my ass (in case I'm wrong about the GPL) I wrote this message in Netscape 6 under Linux.
I expect you're right. The works that last are doubtless going to be the intelligent ones, not the ones that simply revel in imagination.
What is really enjoyable about those books (at least the first three) is the way they're intelligently philosophical. And the question? Where shall we go for lunch?
The Diamond Age has a shot at it... but probably not Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon.
Has anyone mentioned Martin Amis (Time's Arrow) or Terence Green (Barking Dogs, A Witness to Life)?
Re:Mushy thinking, hard to push away
on
Globalization
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· Score: 1
You believe that terrorism is a rational political strategy under certain circumstances. Katz suggests that it is a cultural response to the unwinding social fabric of globalization.
I fail to see how you can afford to be so dismissive of Katz, or consider that resorting to ad hominem attacks somehow increases the persuasiveness of your view over Katz's.
But aside from Qui-Gon becoming a double-ended shish-kebab (and forgetting to become one with The Force), Obi-Wan was only briefly disarmed, before picking up Qui-Gon's sabre and finishing the job.
The parallel is to ESB. The "pit" is bad news in any symbolic reading (falls from grace, death, etc). By rising out of it to confront Darth Maul (who allegorically represents the evil within), Obi Wan becomes a "true" Jedi Knight (he gets a green lightsaber). Symbolically, Obi-Wan passes the test that Luke failed in ESB when Luke refused to accept that Vadar was his father (and thereby confront the fact that the potential for evil existed in him as well).
Neither really gave up their weapons. And the whole battle was eventually resolved when Anakin fluked the destruction of the control ship (man, they had light-speed travel, but didn't know about redundancy) using a Naboo ship he'd borrowed.
Absoutely. But ANH also showed us a victory built on violence - and look where it went. Its end ceremony explicitly quotes Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will". The new film is equally skeptical on a symbolic level. Victory WAS accidental, and it WAS based on violence and not the kind of conscious moral decision (Luke's) that triggers victory in ROTJ. And so we end with day falling to night (good --> evil) in a funeral ceremony clouded with fear and uncertainty. Not exactly a happy ending.
I suspect that you're reading just a little bit too much intentional sub-plot into the movie.
I understand your skepticism, but I'd respectfully suggest that you're not giving Lucas enough credit. Why does the new film keep referencing Ben Hur? Why are we continuously given suggestive Christian images associated with the fall from Paradise? Why is all of the color symbolism consistently negative with regards to our "heroes" (Amidala wears red and black!!)? Why such emphasis on "masks" and doubles? Why the shift in emphasis from the sun to the moon, paternal to maternal relations?
As much as some of its features (like Jar Jar) may be offputting to some, it is hard to ignore the incredible complexity of the film as a whole.
I'm disappointed that slashdot is endorsing this ridiculous petition to Lucas. Especially since the new title makes perfect sense.
The Phantom Menace refers to the underlying theme of the SW films: evil lies within. It showed its characters embracing violence (Amidala), deceit (Qui-Gon) and anger (Obi-Wan) in order to do what they considered to be the right thing. Intelligent film-watchers who have seen ROTJ should be aware of this. It is only when Luke renounces violence at the end of ROTJ that the tables turn and the "good" side wins. Coincidence???
Consider the end of TPM. All three contingents are effectively "disarmed" (sometimes forcibly) before they achieve victory. And the moment they give up their weaponry -- they win.
But what does this all have to do with clones? Thematically, TPM is full of "doubled images" (handmaidens, Sidious/Palpatine, droids) which are associated with order falling apart. Even the planet Naboo is split into two halves (the ego and the id - diplomats and warriors), etc. And so if you actually bother to reflect on it, the new title makes perfect sense. These bad decisions our "protagonists" will make (out of - no doubt - a desire to do good) will begin to backfire on them badly.
As much as people may dislike Jar Jar (I found his presence objectionable myself), doing idiotic things like signing this petition is just foolish.
It is paternalizing for *nix advocates to argue that (God forbid) Windows users SHOULD be released from the kinds of technical limitations (socket restrictionsm, etc) that make Win9x such an unattractive development environment.
Would these same people support crippling Linux if it became a truly mainstream operating system??? Hardly.
Regardless of the underlying software infrastructure one uses, these kinds of software vulnerabilities scale with the system. The solution is NOT to revise low-level software, but rather to add higher-level software filters based on commonly accepted software protocols and methods. The problem with the American market is that - unless dominated by one company (say Microsoft) - no firm has the clout to IMPOSE these kinds of higher-level standards on the mass market (look how long it has taken for PKI to become ineffectual in private-sector email...).
Is this a case of competition undermining the "best interests" of the American software industry? Or are a couple of email viruses a decent price to pay for competition in higher-level software provision???
Yeah. I'm not convinced by this guy's methodology either.
He looks at the hiring pattern of firms like Microsoft to determine demand for programmers. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the vast demand for software programmers does not take place in leading-edge companies like Microsoft and Oracle, but in more "backwater" firms who need programmers to support their own systems. If Microsoft could supply the vast majority of software programming needed, the software industry would NOT be a growth industry. It could be serviced by perhaps 10,000 workers.
Realistically, Microsoft can afford to be intensely critical of the people it hires. So can other leading edge firms that are excellent to work at. I highly doubt that it is more profitable for them to attract foreigners to work at "lower wages" AND spend billions lobbying Congress through industry associations an it is just to pay the going American wage rate.
This study is also chocked-full of questionable concluons about the macro-economics of internatonal labour markets. Such as his argument that true labour mobility would hurt the real income of Americans, but that's another story....
It is illegal in China for stores to set up stores offering "electronic gaming" within about 500 meters of a local school. This is the reason for the crackdown.
Americans may not agree with this, but there are similar laws on the books in many Western countries. Let's try to avoid distorting the picture of what is actually going on in China.
Yes. It's not a statistically robust experiment at all, which makes it a shame they weren't able to pump-up their sample size (n > 35??) and make some mathematically defensible estimates of the true standard deviation. In their defense,each of their "system tests" looks to have taken over a day....
But I also don't understand why they chose to test the "variance" of two operating systems using the SETI program. What they are comparing is the run-time reliability of two completely different binaries. Even if they're compiled from the same source code, a large part of the variance can presumably be explained by the integrity of the compiler.
Slashdot Mirror
It indicates to me the opposite.
The "Great Firewall" only filters information between China and the outside world. It is powerless against domestic network use and easy to skirt for those capable of using foreign proxies.
The new regulations imply to me that the Chinese government is relatively powerless. They're trying to push the network to regulate itself at the local level. Instead of strengthening the capabilities of the center to regulate user behavior, they're decentralizing network administration. Exactly the opposite of the Echelon strategy, actually.
I think it's more interesting to see that we're getting this kind of policy out of the MII at all. Last I heard, the agency was set to be radically overhauled and Wu Jichuan's aggressive control policies were losing out. Does this indicate a return to strict control over user behavior, or does the obvious weaknesses of the policy suggest that the CPP *is* slowly liberalizing its policy on network use, and that this is a bone for the hardcore element of the MII?
Commercial software can't be critical software? I wasn't aware of that.
Sounds like a nice way to create barriers to entry in the software-engineering market, and thereby drive up the wages of programmer. I can't imagine a system more prone to moral hazard and more likely to produce MORE bad programmers than further increases in the average wage rates of 'licensed' professionals.
Voodoo coding....
If you read it carefully, you'll note that the question is answered at the end of the first book.
"Where shall we go for lunch?"
OpenOSX uses Fink to produce a salable good. Where's the problem???
Christoph Pfisterer wants credit for work other people do using free software. That's like insisting that anyone who uses KWord to write reports or GIMP to make graphics needs to explicitly say so. Push this logic to the extreme and every binary produced by G++ would require a similar notice.
If this complainant has a problem with people using free software freely, he's the one in the wrong. Oh, and to cover my ass (in case I'm wrong about the GPL) I wrote this message in Netscape 6 under Linux.
I expect you're right. The works that last are doubtless going to be the intelligent ones, not the ones that simply revel in imagination.
What is really enjoyable about those books (at least the first three) is the way they're intelligently philosophical. And the question? Where shall we go for lunch?
The Diamond Age has a shot at it... but probably not Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon.
Has anyone mentioned Martin Amis (Time's Arrow) or Terence Green (Barking Dogs, A Witness to Life)?
You believe that terrorism is a rational political strategy under certain circumstances. Katz suggests that it is a cultural response to the unwinding social fabric of globalization.
I fail to see how you can afford to be so dismissive of Katz, or consider that resorting to ad hominem attacks somehow increases the persuasiveness of your view over Katz's.
The parallel is to ESB. The "pit" is bad news in any symbolic reading (falls from grace, death, etc). By rising out of it to confront Darth Maul (who allegorically represents the evil within), Obi Wan becomes a "true" Jedi Knight (he gets a green lightsaber). Symbolically, Obi-Wan passes the test that Luke failed in ESB when Luke refused to accept that Vadar was his father (and thereby confront the fact that the potential for evil existed in him as well).
Absoutely. But ANH also showed us a victory built on violence - and look where it went. Its end ceremony explicitly quotes Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will". The new film is equally skeptical on a symbolic level. Victory WAS accidental, and it WAS based on violence and not the kind of conscious moral decision (Luke's) that triggers victory in ROTJ. And so we end with day falling to night (good --> evil) in a funeral ceremony clouded with fear and uncertainty. Not exactly a happy ending.
I understand your skepticism, but I'd respectfully suggest that you're not giving Lucas enough credit. Why does the new film keep referencing Ben Hur? Why are we continuously given suggestive Christian images associated with the fall from Paradise? Why is all of the color symbolism consistently negative with regards to our "heroes" (Amidala wears red and black!!)? Why such emphasis on "masks" and doubles? Why the shift in emphasis from the sun to the moon, paternal to maternal relations?
As much as some of its features (like Jar Jar) may be offputting to some, it is hard to ignore the incredible complexity of the film as a whole.
The Phantom Menace refers to the underlying theme of the SW films: evil lies within. It showed its characters embracing violence (Amidala), deceit (Qui-Gon) and anger (Obi-Wan) in order to do what they considered to be the right thing. Intelligent film-watchers who have seen ROTJ should be aware of this. It is only when Luke renounces violence at the end of ROTJ that the tables turn and the "good" side wins. Coincidence???
Consider the end of TPM. All three contingents are effectively "disarmed" (sometimes forcibly) before they achieve victory. And the moment they give up their weaponry -- they win.
But what does this all have to do with clones? Thematically, TPM is full of "doubled images" (handmaidens, Sidious/Palpatine, droids) which are associated with order falling apart. Even the planet Naboo is split into two halves (the ego and the id - diplomats and warriors), etc. And so if you actually bother to reflect on it, the new title makes perfect sense. These bad decisions our "protagonists" will make (out of - no doubt - a desire to do good) will begin to backfire on them badly.
As much as people may dislike Jar Jar (I found his presence objectionable myself), doing idiotic things like signing this petition is just foolish.
Would these same people support crippling Linux if it became a truly mainstream operating system??? Hardly.
Regardless of the underlying software infrastructure one uses, these kinds of software vulnerabilities scale with the system. The solution is NOT to revise low-level software, but rather to add higher-level software filters based on commonly accepted software protocols and methods. The problem with the American market is that - unless dominated by one company (say Microsoft) - no firm has the clout to IMPOSE these kinds of higher-level standards on the mass market (look how long it has taken for PKI to become ineffectual in private-sector email...).
Is this a case of competition undermining the "best interests" of the American software industry? Or are a couple of email viruses a decent price to pay for competition in higher-level software provision???
You decide... I'll stick with Linux. /. !
He looks at the hiring pattern of firms like Microsoft to determine demand for programmers. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the vast demand for software programmers does not take place in leading-edge companies like Microsoft and Oracle, but in more "backwater" firms who need programmers to support their own systems. If Microsoft could supply the vast majority of software programming needed, the software industry would NOT be a growth industry. It could be serviced by perhaps 10,000 workers.
Realistically, Microsoft can afford to be intensely critical of the people it hires. So can other leading edge firms that are excellent to work at. I highly doubt that it is more profitable for them to attract foreigners to work at "lower wages" AND spend billions lobbying Congress through industry associations an it is just to pay the going American wage rate.
This study is also chocked-full of questionable concluons about the macro-economics of internatonal labour markets. Such as his argument that true labour mobility would hurt the real income of Americans, but that's another story....
Americans may not agree with this, but there are similar laws on the books in many Western countries. Let's try to avoid distorting the picture of what is actually going on in China.
Gun control doesn't involve "out-lawing" guns. It just places social limitations on their trafficing.
But I also don't understand why they chose to test the "variance" of two operating systems using the SETI program. What they are comparing is the run-time reliability of two completely different binaries. Even if they're compiled from the same source code, a large part of the variance can presumably be explained by the integrity of the compiler.
Don't be so hard on academics though... ;)