If I say to you "There's a neat picture in this book Y on page Z" and you go grab book Y and flip to page Z without reading the rest of it, are you somehow redistributing? Are you in violation of copyright? NOT.
Copyright does not enter here as no COPY is made. You are providing a signpost or link (driving directions, a page reference, nothing more) that tells someone where some content is. How you describe that content (if at all) is up to you, but you certainly are NOT redistributing it NOR are you COPYING it.
The visitor must actually visit the other site and the OWNER's web server distributes any information. Therefore how the heck could you be violating a COPYright? Can't can't can't!
I can see objections to mirroring. I _can't_ see this kind of BS attorney-drive goonery as it pertains to linking. There IS no COPY therfore no infringement of COPYright.
Think of another equivalent. I've built a house with murals on all the outside walls. You drive by... I've told you "Gee, the mural on the left wall is neat!" so you go look at it. You don't make a copy.... the only information is provided by the original source. But suddenly you're violating (or so is the bogus claim) copyright because you didn't look at the front wall first?
I think you need to understand what is actually occuring here and understand the actual nature of copyright law to understand why such tactics boil down to lawyer-aided thuggery.
Yes, but I think disclosing them might leak information that (literally) impacts market value of several of these companies. So I'd best not be terribly specific. Let's just say I know folks building DSLAMs that tried putting together a lot of their architecture using Perl. It was good in some ways - got them 2 years of development in 6 months. But once deployed, stability/robustness/maintainability issues in both Perl and Linux caused them to eventually re-write in C/C+ and put them on Solaris platforms. Perl gave them fast development, a product to advertise, and some customers, then C/C++ offered them a long-term viability they weren't getting from the Perl code.
I've heard it said Perl is like Duct Tape, mighty useful to stick a lot of stuff together fairly quickly. However, you don't use Duct Tape to build a suspension bridge.
Perl is a powerful tool, but (wince) with great power comes great responsibility, and that really isn't enforced much in Perl. Perl is one of those languages where a function pretty much depends on the programmer doing the right thing.
In C++, you give someone the keys to your house but you check to see who it is coming in and don't let him in if it isn't the right guy or a close relative. In Perl, you sort of assume the guy wandering around inside your house was meant to be there.
Now, can you write good Perl code? Sure. Good Perl code is approximately as readable and maintainable as good code in other languages. You can write Good Perl code probably as easily as writing Good Java or a bit easier than Good C++.
On the other hand, you can write BAD Perl code pretty easily, more easily even than Bad Java or Bad C++ and Bad Perl is attrocious to maintain or understand.
Perl (even with a graft for a bit of an object model) is a language for hackers - and by that I mean people who don't like to be constrained. It's a language that encourages you to dig into your toolbox, pull out a tool, and have at it. Perl reminds me of the old adage that in times of stress, all tools are a hammer.
But if you want something to run with some stability for large scale deployments of mission critical systems, Perl would be a rather insane choice. It has been done, it has also graphically failed several times in the telecoms world that I'm aware of. And where did the people end up? C/C++. Why? Stability, robustness, etc. and speed.
Perl has its place in the programming Pantheon, but anyone trying to build skyscrapers or suspension bridges with it (or their programmatic equivalents) scares me....:)
D'oh! I knew that! (CSE != Canadian Security Establishment). I did say they were NSA-like, as I believe comms intercept is one of their jobs. And I know they scare the crap out of some people in the RCMP:)
you make a good point about security being process related and the usual weakness being human. A $5K crack on the local secretary is more effective than a $50K crack on the network and far cheaper. Not only might you get security info, but you might get important info on where things are stored and what is stored.
Another oft forgotten part of security is auditing - not just knowing that you've been compromised, but knowing how badly and for how long. That can be as important (well, nearly) as defending against the (probably inevitable) crack anyway. At least then you know what was compromised and can take mitigating steps that are targeted. If all you know is you've been hacked, you don't know a lot. If you have to change every aspect of your process, that's a huge expense. Having mechanisms in place to help identify what was accessed in an intrusion is more than slightly useful!
I agree that what you say does happen. But, where then are the upper level managers? Are they not calling these "rotating bosses" to accountability? At some level, someone gets called to account by shareholders or owners and they OFTEN find their heads rolling if they don't have a productive, profitable, growing firm. So why are they not bringing the subordinate level of managers to heel? This is a corporate culture problem. Well run firms DO demand accountablility from the top to the bottom. And not just of management.
One of the biggest management failings, at the same time, is expecting accountability from people without any sort of buy-in or involvement. I can't very well (or shouldn't) be kicking a programmers butt for not getting something done if he didn't have a clearly defined task, good resource support, and a chance to get his input into the timeline. IT projects overrun all the time (God knows I've been on some doozies) but sometimes (like the best project I was ever on) the coders/architects get some say in the timeline and thus the timelines are realistic. I don't mean "easy" or "lax" just reflective of reality. And they aren't developed until AFTER the specifications are fully understood/agreed upon. And feature creep isn't allowed or is allowed only with commensurate injections of time during the development process. In these cases, things come in on time, on budget, and with quality.
It's just too damn sad that people never spend time to reflect on old projects and learn why they worked or failed and how to repeat success and not repeat failure.
Wish I had some mod points to give you. That's right on. Promotion to just beyond your level of competence. But then, people often want to be promoted for more money, prestige, etc. or as a defence against having a dunderhead promoted ahead of them who will then screw things up. I don't actually know that anything can be done about this....
Now THAT'S a load of crap. The OLDEST excuse in the book.
Yep, that's why I said "In theory....".
How many IT jobs have you had?
Four. I've been working in the field for seven years plus 8 years of part time work beforehand. I've worked in a 200 person company, a 1200 person company, a 50 person company, and an 11 person company.
Managers never loose. If they get fired or laid off, they'll have a new managment job somewhere else.
Sorry, my experience differs. I've seen managers fired and have very difficult times finding replacement work. Repeatedly. But of course, I wouldn't claim to know more than what my own experience is and that of those I've spoken with. Perhaps you would?
Managers simply don't HAVE TO care. They'll land on their feet anyways. Always.
More often than they should, but not always. This generalization is worth exactly what was paid for it...
And who takes the blame an' gets laid off an' has to spend months getting a new job? Us coders, that's who!
I daren't speculate how good you are at your job, but my experience has been that companies that are in dire trouble often (not always, but often) look to how they can sort out the bottom line. Part of that is addressing salaries (so highly paid people get a good looking at) and value-added. Quite often (from what I've seen) middle management and middle level coders (both of which get paid a lot and are relatively dispensable to a company in trouble) get the toe.
Of course, YMMV. And an attitude like yours will probably end up fulfilling your outlook on expendability quite frequently.
When I was working with the RCMP (via a System Integrator), they were undergoing a complete evaluation of the security of the various public wireless providers that they planned to deploy their police mobile products upon. This required extensive reviews of communications protocols, physical and procedural aspects of security, who was getting access to what/when/how was it controlled, auditing, and physical security of the various locales.
The guys the RCMP had do it were experienced, knowledgeable, and had ties/backgrounds that included work with the Canadian Security Establishment (Canadian NSA) and the Canadian Military. One of the guys I worked with had just finished some serious security work for CSE. I know enough about crypto and comms protocols myself to know when (as far as security)I meet people who are "the real deal". These guys were it. And they opened the eyes of some of the public wireless providers in a big way.
They can be found via the info at the bottom of this link here.
I believe computers and hence computer science has fundamentally changed the way we think about things.
I concur. Though I think this comment in general can apply to any material display of ingenuity. Any tool we create, we do so to expand our capability, sometimes far more than we imagine. The incremented capability then allows us to consider more complex problems and unveils new areas of inquiry. The computer is not alone in that.
The cylinder and piston is not the point - the science it inspired is.
Whereas I appreciate the sentiment, to some extent you equally miss the point. The science is important, but science without an implementation has never fed the hungry, put a roof over anyone's head, nor has it given man more capability. That is dependent on the implementation which in this case is the computer.
The computer IS just a glorified adding machine, and it only does things we could (in a longer time and with great pains) do ourselves without it. However, as a glorified adding machine, it lets us attack larger problems (and more complex ones) faster, thus opening new questions to consideration and allowing us to attack problems formerly beyond attack due to their raw size and the mortality of man. The computer is a tool, and only a tool. But tools *are* significant, as they are the multipliers that we affix to the human intelligence and capability we bear.
My boss (our VP and I think CTO) is the developer of utmost Deep Magic. But of course, we're a relatively small company.
But to take the other side of the coin up, I know of developers who made more than their managers (as one of my classmates ascended to management, I know several of the lead developers were making significantly more than he was).
There are two or three GOOD reasons why managers make the big bucks. In theory, they are the RESPONSIBLE ones. The buck stops there. Programmers can often excuse problems as being the result of other people's work, their deadlines, etc. But a manager has no such refuge. That responsibility should be commensurately rewarded.[1]
Also note that some highly paid programmers who make more than their management treat their management like inferiors. I've seen this. At the end of the day, some of the geek community only respect salary or other raw displays of power and authority. Sad but true.
Lastly, good managers are worth their weight in gold and do significantly benefit a project. They coordinate people, resources, and customers. They manage customer expectations, attend to the wellbeing of their managed, and ensure that all required resources are forseen and in place when required.[1].
So even though the comment about programmers not getting paid more than managers has exceptions, there are some good reasons for things to be as they are.
[1] - I know very damn well that the theory often doesn't match practice. For some reason, many companies keep inept management in place, I suspect because the next management level up is equally inept. I've had precisely three fair to okay managers, 1 really great manager, and several of the nightmarishly inept variety. But why companies keep incompetent managers in positions of power despite all the damage this causes is an utterly separate issue from the reasons why managers are paid more than programmers. Valid, but different.
I'll disagree. You're answering the question as a Physicist. That's not the way to look at it (entirely).
Maybe our intelligence and covert operations agencies and the various monitoring agencies all (collectively) are more effective than we think. Or maybe the people who can get access to these things are more concerned with the impact of their actions and repercussions than we think.
I don't think we should take the threat and treat it as a triviality, but _if_it_is_so_easy_, why_hasn't_it_happened?. The technology to do it is not all that new, and the US borders are quite penetrable especially from the Canadian side. Or so it *seems*. Maybe our 'men in black' do a better job than we suspect?
As for the harbours, I'd bet almost every major harbour in the US now has an active harbour defense (many Canadian ones do with more coming on line) and they are making a real point to look at what is coming in. Won't stop everything, but might make this avenue of attack significantly less likely.
And whatever the case, fearmongering, paranoia, and hysteria solve little. Yes the threat exists. It might kill a few thousand folks one day. OTOH, cancer, starvation, genocide are killing a hell of a lot of people worldwide today, so in perspective we shouldn't spend every $$$ we have to target these kind of threats... we've got other more pressing business. And life is and always has been full of risk. One good defence is not to piss off everyone else in the world....
I'm thinking we got into space with their help. I'm thinking we built some skyscrapers that we might not have built, and some other types of machines. We've executed at least one mathematical proof by exhaustive cases that I imagine we could not have managed without them. I'm thinking too that Quake 3 would be damn hard to play with paper and pencil.
Of course, since they execute instructions and implement algorithms, we generally have to be able to describe a situation, which means we have some idea how to solve it. This often means it could be done another way. But that's like saying the wheel lets us move stuff from A to B and we could've done that without it. Which is true, but not a useful statement. The real thing that computers do is let us do many things more easily, which is true of many machines that we have created (which is all a computer really is until they get true intelligence from one).
And worldwide, I suppose it is debatable at this point which has the greatest impact... the US Constitution (which is probably a bit over-rated) or the Computer (similarly so). Given 200 or 300 years, I think the answer will clearly be on the Computer's (and its descendants) side.
Of course, I'd need a really powerful computer to do any kind of accurate projection.... *grin*
Thanks. I hadn't considered that Polar orbits will cross Equatorial ones in a rather ugly fashion. Yeah, no doubt about it.... you'd really want to time that one right.... a T-bone at 15K mph would leave a fair sized dent... "That's gotta hurt"...
That's one of the most useful explanations of the danger I've seen yet. Kind of like the old Hot Wheels Criss-Cross-Crash track. Things moving in the same difference at the same speed are no threat, but junk crossing fast on an oblique course can really ruin your day. Merci buckets for the good post!
Your assumption that space travel will be a huge industry assumes:
1) There is any economic or political or military benefit to a manned presence
2) The problems (risks) of space travel are overcome
In both cases, you are talking about non-trivial cases.
If UberCorps can't even find a way to make wireless or broadband pay off, then space is so far from being viable economically that it isn't funny. And as for tourism.... if a trip to orbit eats up a day or two, subjects me to multiple gravities of acceleration and has me vomiting in zero-G, plus exposes me to other health risks and other risks to life and limb (not all of us are astronaut material boys and girls!), then am I real likely to want to shell out $20K or more (assuming super cheap space transport) for it? I mean people other than us few Star Wars junkies?
I don't think most of us will see affordable space tourism or economic exploitation of space within our lifetimes. I'd imagine the former is at least 40-75 years away, and the latter at least as long in any kind of large scale fasion.
But it is nice to sit around and daydream about it, just like the guys in the 50s who predicted we'd be living on moon cities by 2000.... and about as likely....
...is this: Yes a bullet moving 15000 mph could do some damage (to the limit of the materials in the bullet). But isn't the shuttle (in the same orbit) moving at the same (or near same) speed, ergo no real differential?
If so, isn't the danger window then only entering or leaving orbit, or changing orbit because of the delta vee between currently orbiting debris and the shuttle?
Or am I missing something fundamental about how these debris are a menace?
Whereas I don't entirely disagree with your point, I will say: 1) The only nuclear weapons ever delivered against a hostile nation were by plane. 2) That was a long time ago.
You say it is quite easy to destroy a satellite interceptor system. That makes a number of assumptions such as their inability to defend themselves versus countermeasures, our inability to identify countermeasures launches and undertake alternate measures of our own, and the inability of said satellites to manouver. Also, it assumes we don't have a whacking lot of them up there, thus making degrading the system possible but not eliminating it. Right now, any and all opinion on how easy or hard this is all falls under the category speculation. No one has deployed an interceptor system and no one has demonstrated countermeasures to such a system. So we're all just shooting the breeze.
As for the ease of deploying nuclear attacks other than ICBMs, I think you will find current developments in point, zone, and theatre defense will make plane and low-level missile attacks less effectual. And suitcase nukes, despite how allegedly easy they are to deploy, have NEVER been detonated in a population center or upon a military target to my knowledge. Perhaps this isn't as easy as you think?
Not saying the money couldn't be spent elsewhere, nor that this isn't likely to be Pork Barrel city, but almost everything about space warfare is conjectural at this point. Only time and tactical deployment of some of these systems will truly prove the point.
If access to orbit somehow became cheap enough to be afforable to those who operate under different motivations and priorities,
Who had you in mind? NGOs or political or religious groups perhaps? People who put ideology first, often beyond well-being? Hmmm.... seems to me I might be fairly happy leaving space in the hands of on-going governments (who have some interest in not allowing too many destructive shenanigans to go on) and business (for whom a profit motive and public outcry are powerful controls).
I'm not looking forward to the day that space becomes so accessible that any splinter group with an oddball ideology can get there. Something tells me our currently not terribly stable world will then become significantly less stable. And safe.
Re:What is broken in the publishing industry?
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Dog Bites Website
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· Score: 2
Let us say I probably agree with you. Not all books are "classic" enough to retain sales over decades.
However, let us then ask, whence goeth Just-In-Time Production and Delivery? The theory of JIT is that you don't overproduce nor overdeliver. Is the publishing world simply unaware of this kind of product management activity? Or is there some great underlying difficulty that isn't apparent to the outside world? If this works for other types of businesses, why not publishing?
I'm simply suggesting that some of the "realities" of the publishing business perhaps need not be so if things were re-thought.
Quoting: Svend Robinson, the NDP Foreign Affairs critic, also criticized the government. "If ever there were any evidence needed that Canadian troops should not be in Afghanistan under United States command we have seen the tragic evidence of that," Mr. Robinson told a news conference.
"If Canadian troops cannot be certain that they're not going to be fired on by Americans we have no business being there."
This just shows how far from reality Svend Robinson is. Military operations (even training) are inherently risky. Co-operative operations with nations that operate usually with different equipment, protocols, and ROE are even more risky.
There has never been a military operation where one group of troops could be certain that they would not be fired on by another group. And it is usually the infantry on the short end of the stick. That doesn't make it right, but right doesn't have a lot to do with war.
And the day a nation becomes so averse to casualties taken (for any reason), it ceases to be able to exert itself even in the cause of peace or stability.
What is broken in the publishing industry?
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Dog Bites Website
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Amazon and other on-line booksellers are being targeted for their strategy of selling used books. (Reminds me of the MPAA/RIAA style of problem solving). Their argument seems to be that advertising used versions of the original book will hit authors in their pocketbooks.
Is this something new? Hasn't this always been the case with used books? Why is it now a newsflash?
And while we're on the topic, what other industry has more than 50% of its products returned to the manufacturer? This seems to suggest something wrong with the whole deal. I'd think that this suggests that publishers over-publish (relative to demand). Apparently market reasearch isn't a strong point of authors or publishers.
The rising cost of books has been driving people to be far more selective. I know I am, when I'm paying $11 Cdn for a novel and $35-45 Cdn for a hardcover new release (the latte obviously much moreso).
And yet, at the same time, I see the web as a vast and powerful marketing tool with low cost (relative to newspaper or TV ads) and I see modern micropublishing capabilities as one way to cut costs.
I saw a special on PBS from Australia that let people publish a few hundred page hardcover in runs of 100 copies for as cheap as Aus $1000 if they were willing to do their own typesetting/formatting. This was a very basic book (black and white, no or few illos), but if I can do small print runs for such a cheap price ($550 USD for 100 copies), then surely there is something very broken about the conventional publishing scene, no?
And is it any wonder when students buying a textbook end up paying $120 for something they use two chapters out of get ticked off? What hapened to some of the initiatives to do chapter-wise production of texts? I know plenty of books I'd like a chapter or two out of, but won't spend $50-150 for! So instead of the author getting something (and the publisher too I guess), they get Nada/Nothing/Zip/Zilch/Squat/No $$$.
Instead of running around hammering Amazon for its book selling strategy, trying to defend IP via vampiric legalism, or jacking the prices of books to insane levels, why don't the authors and publishers start looking at more innovative ways to deliver cost-effective services and services which meet the actual needs/desires rather than those they (in an out-of-touch fashion) seem to imagine to be the case? Or would that require more work and more cranial sweat?
Denmark isn't the only place where something is awry.... conventional publishing seems to be more than a bit broken to my mind....
Irony so thick you can taste it
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On Hacktivism
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· Score: 2
The guy who is decrying the free speech crowd is posting as an AC.... could their be a greater irony?
Out of curiosity, at exactly what points are "rights being killed"? Your argument seems to be that if the entire free world doesn't come to an end with chaos in the streets, that a particular trend in society isn't anything to worry about.
The right to personal privacy and the right to free speech are perhaps ill-understood and used as an excuse to justify crapulent behaviour, but that doesn't change the fact that those rights are the cornerstone of quality of life in a civilized country. Rights can be destroyed all at once (Communist invasion of Czechoslovakia fer instance) or eaten away at gradually (recent trends in the G8). The end result (given enough time) will be fundamentally indistinguishable if the brakes aren't put on.
Maybe you'd prefer to examine your rights in the context of "things I can identify because I used to have them", but I'd rather not....
They should play it backwards
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On Hacktivism
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· Score: 2
Then they'll get the hidden message in the random data.;)
Like playing Ann Murray's Snowbird backwards and getting the message about the impending Canadian invasion...
What were you doing publishing it someplace publicly accessible if that wasn't your intention?
If there is nothing to link to on your server, or you don't run a web server on your machine, not much bandwidth will be consumed. If you need it for some internal use, setup a VPN or otherwise block unauthorized access.
... and yet you spout off things like "I bet I've had a harder life than most people here." Just how the &Y#% would you know? That's one hell of an assumption. The mature person doesn't make assumptions.
In talking about someone beating you down, you indicate you find ways to make it difficult for it to happen again... let me guess, you life in a G8 country right? Try that in some of the more unhappy little places in the world. Buying a weapon isn't an option and you really don't have role models nor options. Getting your ass kicked may pretty much be your ONLY option.
And if you think life can't be made hellacious enough that any release (even if there is no afterlife, which you claim most educated people don't believe in, another obvious sign of your maturity...) is an improvement, then you haven't seen enough suffering. Does that mean these people are weak? That's an assigned definition, so you could say so. But it is also meaningless. At some point, every human being breaks. If you haven't found where you break yet, then you just haven't lived enough. Some people never do and go through life thinking there is no point at which they will break. Hah! Maturity my arse!
We're all human beings. Every human being has a weakness, a vulnerability that can be exploited to hurt them. At some point, everyone will cave in, if even just from exhaustion and emotional and mental fatigue. If you don't think so, you're not half as wise as you believe....
Slashdot Mirror
If I say to you "There's a neat picture in this book Y on page Z" and you go grab book Y and flip to page Z without reading the rest of it, are you somehow redistributing? Are you in violation of copyright? NOT.
Copyright does not enter here as no COPY is made. You are providing a signpost or link (driving directions, a page reference, nothing more) that tells someone where some content is. How you describe that content (if at all) is up to you, but you certainly are NOT redistributing it NOR are you COPYING it.
The visitor must actually visit the other site and the OWNER's web server distributes any information. Therefore how the heck could you be violating a COPYright? Can't can't can't!
I can see objections to mirroring. I _can't_ see this kind of BS attorney-drive goonery as it pertains to linking. There IS no COPY therfore no infringement of COPYright.
Think of another equivalent. I've built a house with murals on all the outside walls. You drive by... I've told you "Gee, the mural on the left wall is neat!" so you go look at it. You don't make a copy.... the only information is provided by the original source. But suddenly you're violating (or so is the bogus claim) copyright because you didn't look at the front wall first?
I think you need to understand what is actually occuring here and understand the actual nature of copyright law to understand why such tactics boil down to lawyer-aided thuggery.
Yes, but I think disclosing them might leak information that (literally) impacts market value of several of these companies. So I'd best not be terribly specific. Let's just say I know folks building DSLAMs that tried putting together a lot of their architecture using Perl. It was good in some ways - got them 2 years of development in 6 months. But once deployed, stability/robustness/maintainability issues in both Perl and Linux caused them to eventually re-write in C/C+ and put them on Solaris platforms. Perl gave them fast development, a product to advertise, and some customers, then C/C++ offered them a long-term viability they weren't getting from the Perl code.
I've heard it said Perl is like Duct Tape, mighty useful to stick a lot of stuff together fairly quickly. However, you don't use Duct Tape to build a suspension bridge.
:)
Perl is a powerful tool, but (wince) with great power comes great responsibility, and that really isn't enforced much in Perl. Perl is one of those languages where a function pretty much depends on the programmer doing the right thing.
In C++, you give someone the keys to your house but you check to see who it is coming in and don't let him in if it isn't the right guy or a close relative. In Perl, you sort of assume the guy wandering around inside your house was meant to be there.
Now, can you write good Perl code? Sure. Good Perl code is approximately as readable and maintainable as good code in other languages. You can write Good Perl code probably as easily as writing Good Java or a bit easier than Good C++.
On the other hand, you can write BAD Perl code pretty easily, more easily even than Bad Java or Bad C++ and Bad Perl is attrocious to maintain or understand.
Perl (even with a graft for a bit of an object model) is a language for hackers - and by that I mean people who don't like to be constrained. It's a language that encourages you to dig into your toolbox, pull out a tool, and have at it. Perl reminds me of the old adage that in times of stress, all tools are a hammer.
But if you want something to run with some stability for large scale deployments of mission critical systems, Perl would be a rather insane choice. It has been done, it has also graphically failed several times in the telecoms world that I'm aware of. And where did the people end up? C/C++. Why? Stability, robustness, etc. and speed.
Perl has its place in the programming Pantheon, but anyone trying to build skyscrapers or suspension bridges with it (or their programmatic equivalents) scares me....
D'oh! I knew that! (CSE != Canadian Security Establishment). I did say they were NSA-like, as I believe comms intercept is one of their jobs. And I know they scare the crap out of some people in the RCMP :)
you make a good point about security being process related and the usual weakness being human. A $5K crack on the local secretary is more effective than a $50K crack on the network and far cheaper. Not only might you get security info, but you might get important info on where things are stored and what is stored.
Another oft forgotten part of security is auditing - not just knowing that you've been compromised, but knowing how badly and for how long. That can be as important (well, nearly) as defending against the (probably inevitable) crack anyway. At least then you know what was compromised and can take mitigating steps that are targeted. If all you know is you've been hacked, you don't know a lot. If you have to change every aspect of your process, that's a huge expense. Having mechanisms in place to help identify what was accessed in an intrusion is more than slightly useful!
I agree that what you say does happen. But, where then are the upper level managers? Are they not calling these "rotating bosses" to accountability? At some level, someone gets called to account by shareholders or owners and they OFTEN find their heads rolling if they don't have a productive, profitable, growing firm. So why are they not bringing the subordinate level of managers to heel? This is a corporate culture problem. Well run firms DO demand accountablility from the top to the bottom. And not just of management.
One of the biggest management failings, at the same time, is expecting accountability from people without any sort of buy-in or involvement. I can't very well (or shouldn't) be kicking a programmers butt for not getting something done if he didn't have a clearly defined task, good resource support, and a chance to get his input into the timeline. IT projects overrun all the time (God knows I've been on some doozies) but sometimes (like the best project I was ever on) the coders/architects get some say in the timeline and thus the timelines are realistic. I don't mean "easy" or "lax" just reflective of reality. And they aren't developed until AFTER the specifications are fully understood/agreed upon. And feature creep isn't allowed or is allowed only with commensurate injections of time during the development process. In these cases, things come in on time, on budget, and with quality.
It's just too damn sad that people never spend time to reflect on old projects and learn why they worked or failed and how to repeat success and not repeat failure.
Wish I had some mod points to give you. That's right on. Promotion to just beyond your level of competence. But then, people often want to be promoted for more money, prestige, etc. or as a defence against having a dunderhead promoted ahead of them who will then screw things up. I don't actually know that anything can be done about this....
Now THAT'S a load of crap. The OLDEST excuse in the book.
Yep, that's why I said "In theory....". How many IT jobs have you had?
Four. I've been working in the field for seven years plus 8 years of part time work beforehand. I've worked in a 200 person company, a 1200 person company, a 50 person company, and an 11 person company.
Managers never loose. If they get fired or laid off, they'll have a new managment job somewhere else.
Sorry, my experience differs. I've seen managers fired and have very difficult times finding replacement work. Repeatedly. But of course, I wouldn't claim to know more than what my own experience is and that of those I've spoken with. Perhaps you would?
Managers simply don't HAVE TO care. They'll land on their feet anyways. Always.
More often than they should, but not always. This generalization is worth exactly what was paid for it...
And who takes the blame an' gets laid off an' has to spend months getting a new job? Us coders, that's who!
I daren't speculate how good you are at your job, but my experience has been that companies that are in dire trouble often (not always, but often) look to how they can sort out the bottom line. Part of that is addressing salaries (so highly paid people get a good looking at) and value-added. Quite often (from what I've seen) middle management and middle level coders (both of which get paid a lot and are relatively dispensable to a company in trouble) get the toe.
Of course, YMMV. And an attitude like yours will probably end up fulfilling your outlook on expendability quite frequently.
When I was working with the RCMP (via a System Integrator), they were undergoing a complete evaluation of the security of the various public wireless providers that they planned to deploy their police mobile products upon. This required extensive reviews of communications protocols, physical and procedural aspects of security, who was getting access to what/when/how was it controlled, auditing, and physical security of the various locales.
The guys the RCMP had do it were experienced, knowledgeable, and had ties/backgrounds that included work with the Canadian Security Establishment (Canadian NSA) and the Canadian Military. One of the guys I worked with had just finished some serious security work for CSE. I know enough about crypto and comms protocols myself to know when (as far as security)I meet people who are "the real deal". These guys were it. And they opened the eyes of some of the public wireless providers in a big way.
They can be found via the info at the bottom of this link here.
I believe computers and hence computer science has fundamentally changed the way we think about things.
I concur. Though I think this comment in general can apply to any material display of ingenuity. Any tool we create, we do so to expand our capability, sometimes far more than we imagine. The incremented capability then allows us to consider more complex problems and unveils new areas of inquiry. The computer is not alone in that.
The cylinder and piston is not the point - the science it inspired is.
Whereas I appreciate the sentiment, to some extent you equally miss the point. The science is important, but science without an implementation has never fed the hungry, put a roof over anyone's head, nor has it given man more capability. That is dependent on the implementation which in this case is the computer.
The computer IS just a glorified adding machine, and it only does things we could (in a longer time and with great pains) do ourselves without it. However, as a glorified adding machine, it lets us attack larger problems (and more complex ones) faster, thus opening new questions to consideration and allowing us to attack problems formerly beyond attack due to their raw size and the mortality of man. The computer is a tool, and only a tool. But tools *are* significant, as they are the multipliers that we affix to the human intelligence and capability we bear.
My boss (our VP and I think CTO) is the developer of utmost Deep Magic. But of course, we're a relatively small company.
But to take the other side of the coin up, I know of developers who made more than their managers (as one of my classmates ascended to management, I know several of the lead developers were making significantly more than he was).
There are two or three GOOD reasons why managers make the big bucks. In theory, they are the RESPONSIBLE ones. The buck stops there. Programmers can often excuse problems as being the result of other people's work, their deadlines, etc. But a manager has no such refuge. That responsibility should be commensurately rewarded.[1]
Also note that some highly paid programmers who make more than their management treat their management like inferiors. I've seen this. At the end of the day, some of the geek community only respect salary or other raw displays of power and authority. Sad but true.
Lastly, good managers are worth their weight in gold and do significantly benefit a project. They coordinate people, resources, and customers. They manage customer expectations, attend to the wellbeing of their managed, and ensure that all required resources are forseen and in place when required.[1].
So even though the comment about programmers not getting paid more than managers has exceptions, there are some good reasons for things to be as they are.
[1] - I know very damn well that the theory often doesn't match practice. For some reason, many companies keep inept management in place, I suspect because the next management level up is equally inept. I've had precisely three fair to okay managers, 1 really great manager, and several of the nightmarishly inept variety. But why companies keep incompetent managers in positions of power despite all the damage this causes is an utterly separate issue from the reasons why managers are paid more than programmers. Valid, but different.
I'll disagree. You're answering the question as a Physicist. That's not the way to look at it (entirely).
Maybe our intelligence and covert operations agencies and the various monitoring agencies all (collectively) are more effective than we think. Or maybe the people who can get access to these things are more concerned with the impact of their actions and repercussions than we think.
I don't think we should take the threat and treat it as a triviality, but _if_it_is_so_easy_, why_hasn't_it_happened?. The technology to do it is not all that new, and the US borders are quite penetrable especially from the Canadian side. Or so it *seems*. Maybe our 'men in black' do a better job than we suspect?
As for the harbours, I'd bet almost every major harbour in the US now has an active harbour defense (many Canadian ones do with more coming on line) and they are making a real point to look at what is coming in. Won't stop everything, but might make this avenue of attack significantly less likely.
And whatever the case, fearmongering, paranoia, and hysteria solve little. Yes the threat exists. It might kill a few thousand folks one day. OTOH, cancer, starvation, genocide are killing a hell of a lot of people worldwide today, so in perspective we shouldn't spend every $$$ we have to target these kind of threats... we've got other more pressing business. And life is and always has been full of risk. One good defence is not to piss off everyone else in the world....
I'm thinking we got into space with their help. I'm thinking we built some skyscrapers that we might not have built, and some other types of machines. We've executed at least one mathematical proof by exhaustive cases that I imagine we could not have managed without them. I'm thinking too that Quake 3 would be damn hard to play with paper and pencil.
Of course, since they execute instructions and implement algorithms, we generally have to be able to describe a situation, which means we have some idea how to solve it. This often means it could be done another way. But that's like saying the wheel lets us move stuff from A to B and we could've done that without it. Which is true, but not a useful statement. The real thing that computers do is let us do many things more easily, which is true of many machines that we have created (which is all a computer really is until they get true intelligence from one).
And worldwide, I suppose it is debatable at this point which has the greatest impact... the US Constitution (which is probably a bit over-rated) or the Computer (similarly so). Given 200 or 300 years, I think the answer will clearly be on the Computer's (and its descendants) side.
Of course, I'd need a really powerful computer to do any kind of accurate projection.... *grin*
Thanks. I hadn't considered that Polar orbits will cross Equatorial ones in a rather ugly fashion. Yeah, no doubt about it.... you'd really want to time that one right.... a T-bone at 15K mph would leave a fair sized dent... "That's gotta hurt"...
That's one of the most useful explanations of the danger I've seen yet. Kind of like the old Hot Wheels Criss-Cross-Crash track. Things moving in the same difference at the same speed are no threat, but junk crossing fast on an oblique course can really ruin your day. Merci buckets for the good post!
Your assumption that space travel will be a huge industry assumes:
1) There is any economic or political or military benefit to a manned presence
2) The problems (risks) of space travel are overcome
In both cases, you are talking about non-trivial cases.
If UberCorps can't even find a way to make wireless or broadband pay off, then space is so far from being viable economically that it isn't funny. And as for tourism.... if a trip to orbit eats up a day or two, subjects me to multiple gravities of acceleration and has me vomiting in zero-G, plus exposes me to other health risks and other risks to life and limb (not all of us are astronaut material boys and girls!), then am I real likely to want to shell out $20K or more (assuming super cheap space transport) for it? I mean people other than us few Star Wars junkies?
I don't think most of us will see affordable space tourism or economic exploitation of space within our lifetimes. I'd imagine the former is at least 40-75 years away, and the latter at least as long in any kind of large scale fasion.
But it is nice to sit around and daydream about it, just like the guys in the 50s who predicted we'd be living on moon cities by 2000.... and about as likely....
...is this: Yes a bullet moving 15000 mph could do some damage (to the limit of the materials in the bullet). But isn't the shuttle (in the same orbit) moving at the same (or near same) speed, ergo no real differential?
If so, isn't the danger window then only entering or leaving orbit, or changing orbit because of the delta vee between currently orbiting debris and the shuttle?
Or am I missing something fundamental about how these debris are a menace?
Whereas I don't entirely disagree with your point, I will say: 1) The only nuclear weapons ever delivered against a hostile nation were by plane. 2) That was a long time ago.
You say it is quite easy to destroy a satellite interceptor system. That makes a number of assumptions such as their inability to defend themselves versus countermeasures, our inability to identify countermeasures launches and undertake alternate measures of our own, and the inability of said satellites to manouver. Also, it assumes we don't have a whacking lot of them up there, thus making degrading the system possible but not eliminating it. Right now, any and all opinion on how easy or hard this is all falls under the category speculation. No one has deployed an interceptor system and no one has demonstrated countermeasures to such a system. So we're all just shooting the breeze.
As for the ease of deploying nuclear attacks other than ICBMs, I think you will find current developments in point, zone, and theatre defense will make plane and low-level missile attacks less effectual. And suitcase nukes, despite how allegedly easy they are to deploy, have NEVER been detonated in a population center or upon a military target to my knowledge. Perhaps this isn't as easy as you think?
Not saying the money couldn't be spent elsewhere, nor that this isn't likely to be Pork Barrel city, but almost everything about space warfare is conjectural at this point. Only time and tactical deployment of some of these systems will truly prove the point.
... at least under the terms you mention.
If access to orbit somehow became cheap enough to be afforable to those who operate under different motivations and priorities,
Who had you in mind? NGOs or political or religious groups perhaps? People who put ideology first, often beyond well-being? Hmmm.... seems to me I might be fairly happy leaving space in the hands of on-going governments (who have some interest in not allowing too many destructive shenanigans to go on) and business (for whom a profit motive and public outcry are powerful controls).
I'm not looking forward to the day that space becomes so accessible that any splinter group with an oddball ideology can get there. Something tells me our currently not terribly stable world will then become significantly less stable. And safe.
Let us say I probably agree with you. Not all books are "classic" enough to retain sales over decades.
However, let us then ask, whence goeth Just-In-Time Production and Delivery? The theory of JIT is that you don't overproduce nor overdeliver. Is the publishing world simply unaware of this kind of product management activity? Or is there some great underlying difficulty that isn't apparent to the outside world? If this works for other types of businesses, why not publishing?
I'm simply suggesting that some of the "realities" of the publishing business perhaps need not be so if things were re-thought.
Quoting:
Svend Robinson, the NDP Foreign Affairs critic, also criticized the government. "If ever there were any evidence needed that Canadian troops should not be in Afghanistan under United States command we have seen the tragic evidence of that," Mr. Robinson told a news conference.
"If Canadian troops cannot be certain that they're not going to be fired on by Americans we have no business being there."
This just shows how far from reality Svend Robinson is. Military operations (even training) are inherently risky. Co-operative operations with nations that operate usually with different equipment, protocols, and ROE are even more risky.
There has never been a military operation where one group of troops could be certain that they would not be fired on by another group. And it is usually the infantry on the short end of the stick. That doesn't make it right, but right doesn't have a lot to do with war.
And the day a nation becomes so averse to casualties taken (for any reason), it ceases to be able to exert itself even in the cause of peace or stability.
Amazon and other on-line booksellers are being targeted for their strategy of selling used books. (Reminds me of the MPAA/RIAA style of problem solving). Their argument seems to be that advertising used versions of the original book will hit authors in their pocketbooks.
Is this something new? Hasn't this always been the case with used books? Why is it now a newsflash?
And while we're on the topic, what other industry has more than 50% of its products returned to the manufacturer? This seems to suggest something wrong with the whole deal. I'd think that this suggests that publishers over-publish (relative to demand). Apparently market reasearch isn't a strong point of authors or publishers.
The rising cost of books has been driving people to be far more selective. I know I am, when I'm paying $11 Cdn for a novel and $35-45 Cdn for a hardcover new release (the latte obviously much moreso).
And yet, at the same time, I see the web as a vast and powerful marketing tool with low cost (relative to newspaper or TV ads) and I see modern micropublishing capabilities as one way to cut costs.
I saw a special on PBS from Australia that let people publish a few hundred page hardcover in runs of 100 copies for as cheap as Aus $1000 if they were willing to do their own typesetting/formatting. This was a very basic book (black and white, no or few illos), but if I can do small print runs for such a cheap price ($550 USD for 100 copies), then surely there is something very broken about the conventional publishing scene, no?
And is it any wonder when students buying a textbook end up paying $120 for something they use two chapters out of get ticked off? What hapened to some of the initiatives to do chapter-wise production of texts? I know plenty of books I'd like a chapter or two out of, but won't spend $50-150 for! So instead of the author getting something (and the publisher too I guess), they get Nada/Nothing/Zip/Zilch/Squat/No $$$.
Instead of running around hammering Amazon for its book selling strategy, trying to defend IP via vampiric legalism, or jacking the prices of books to insane levels, why don't the authors and publishers start looking at more innovative ways to deliver cost-effective services and services which meet the actual needs/desires rather than those they (in an out-of-touch fashion) seem to imagine to be the case? Or would that require more work and more cranial sweat?
Denmark isn't the only place where something is awry.... conventional publishing seems to be more than a bit broken to my mind....
The guy who is decrying the free speech crowd is posting as an AC.... could their be a greater irony?
Out of curiosity, at exactly what points are "rights being killed"? Your argument seems to be that if the entire free world doesn't come to an end with chaos in the streets, that a particular trend in society isn't anything to worry about.
The right to personal privacy and the right to free speech are perhaps ill-understood and used as an excuse to justify crapulent behaviour, but that doesn't change the fact that those rights are the cornerstone of quality of life in a civilized country. Rights can be destroyed all at once (Communist invasion of Czechoslovakia fer instance) or eaten away at gradually (recent trends in the G8). The end result (given enough time) will be fundamentally indistinguishable if the brakes aren't put on.
Maybe you'd prefer to examine your rights in the context of "things I can identify because I used to have them", but I'd rather not....
Then they'll get the hidden message in the random data. ;)
Like playing Ann Murray's Snowbird backwards and getting the message about the impending Canadian invasion...
What were you doing publishing it someplace publicly accessible if that wasn't your intention?
If there is nothing to link to on your server, or you don't run a web server on your machine, not much bandwidth will be consumed. If you need it for some internal use, setup a VPN or otherwise block unauthorized access.
... and yet you spout off things like "I bet I've had a harder life than most people here." Just how the &Y#% would you know? That's one hell of an assumption. The mature person doesn't make assumptions.
In talking about someone beating you down, you indicate you find ways to make it difficult for it to happen again... let me guess, you life in a G8 country right? Try that in some of the more unhappy little places in the world. Buying a weapon isn't an option and you really don't have role models nor options. Getting your ass kicked may pretty much be your ONLY option.
And if you think life can't be made hellacious enough that any release (even if there is no afterlife, which you claim most educated people don't believe in, another obvious sign of your maturity...) is an improvement, then you haven't seen enough suffering. Does that mean these people are weak? That's an assigned definition, so you could say so. But it is also meaningless. At some point, every human being breaks. If you haven't found where you break yet, then you just haven't lived enough. Some people never do and go through life thinking there is no point at which they will break. Hah! Maturity my arse!
We're all human beings. Every human being has a weakness, a vulnerability that can be exploited to hurt them. At some point, everyone will cave in, if even just from exhaustion and emotional and mental fatigue. If you don't think so, you're not half as wise as you believe....