...as long as the data is only mangled within the capibility of the error-recovery system to reconstruct it, there is no error.
This is true in some limited contexts, where the ECC works and you only care about the current result, not the robustness of the system. But, it is merely pedantic to distinguish between a correct data transmission and an erroneous data transmission that was corrected.
It definitely matters to people who are not already familiar with the phrase, and especially to non-native speakers, whose greatest difficulty with English is the idiom.
These people effectively lack the error-correction capability that you describe. They have no way to know that "...intensive purposes..." is really a mangled version of "... intents and purposes...". When they read our sloppy writer's text (or need to ask him to repeat himself), the communication fails.
There is no way for them to figure out the meaning from the written text, and the speaker cannot give the correct meaning because he doesn't know it (he'll have to give a description or some other phrase to convey his meaning).
So, I suppose that if you speak only to a set of people who are already fully familiar with idiomatic English and context, and can correct errors on the fly, it matters little. But, if you want to talk to people in a larger context, or to write well and avoid unintentionally jarring the reader, it does matter. And of course, it also maters to us pedantic types;)
I completely agree that it would be VERY boring if everyone spoke like lawyers in contracts, and I'm certainly not expecting that (ugh).
In this example, the question is whether the people making this error ("intents and purposes" typed as "intensive purposes") actually know the meaning of the phrase.
This significant an error is not merely a typo, but an indication that the person knows nothing more than a string of syllables, which they are MIS-assembling into the wrong words. They are unthinkingly parroting this string of syllables into this context where they guess it might fit. The fact that you and I can deduce what the original phrase that they might-have-intended-to-use-if-they-had-a-clue does NOT mean that they actually knew the meaning of the phrase.
Note that this is not only a character or syllable substitution, but a substitution of one word for two and different parts of speech. This error also completely changes the meaning of the phrase. The expression "...for all intents and purposes..." carries a meaning that emphasizes the practical finality or completeness of the rest of the sentence. In contrast, "...for all intensive purposes...", would refer to some specific subset of purposes, or something. Very differnt meanings. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how they actually know the meaning if they type something this far off.
In the larger context, we completely agree that people have differnt experiences and perspectives, and that language must be used both formally and casually, literally and figuratively, etc.
However, this is not an excuse to be sloppy. It is the very reason that we must be clear and establish common contexts and meanings for our utterances, usually by successive approximation across those gaps. Without care to establish common meanings, we are not communicating, but merely babbling in close proximity to others. With care to maintain common meanings, we can truly communicate across incredible chasms of experience and context.
Just because they spell out a homonym, dosen't mean they knew it and just made a typographical error. I fail to see how anyone who knows the meaning of the phrase "intents and purposes" could mistype it as "intensive purposes". These are completely different sets of words.
Another one that I find very irritating is ignorance of the difference between 'Affect' and 'Effect'. However, this one-character substitution might enjoy the benefit of the doubt, if their other usage is good.
I remember growing up being frequently annoyed at my mother's continual corrections of my errors, but I find that I'm now grateful for it almost every day. Language, like code, is a tool, and should be used correctly if it is used at all.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." -- (Attrib. to Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain, and others)
Obviously, these idiot police are not looking out to protect and serve the freedom of the people that hire them, only to make some visible part of their jobs easier -- in short, petty people wanting more control.
This will simply engender another hack by the criminals, which will leave them immune, but the general public ever more subject to excess police control.
Soooo, best to find good car from the 90s that you like, in good condition, and start maintaining it for the long term....
Of coruse, the real fun begins when we hack into the system so we can control it. The cops would need to leave this enabled on their cars, for the cases where someone steals a police car... so who needs radar detectors and jammers when we can just slow the pursuing police car?
... that perhaps you just discovered the origins of your conversational frustration, and that the only thing to do dedicate yourself to improving it so that your (future) kids never feel the same way.
(from one who is still working on it and who has friends who succeeded)
Good Luck
Old idea, inappropriate context -- DON'T DO IT !
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Source Code Escrow
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· Score: 2, Interesting
As a small software vendor, I've used escrow a number of times to solve the problem of 'what if you go out of business?', when selling packged products. In this 'shrink-wrap' context, it is very appropriate. The customer is getting the benefit of the lower prices associated with repeat/volume sales of a packaged product, and needs some kind of solid assurance that they will not be screwed if a small shop goes out of biz, is bought/merged, etc, since the SW will be used to run the customer's business.
In contrast, we always gave the code to customers in custom jobs / work-for-hire situations, so escrow wasn't an issue.
Most of the Indian shops are explicitly work-for hire -- custom jobs writen for internal apps or apps that the customer will be selling as packaged products. In this case, I would NEVER EVEN CONSIDER letting them keep the code. If they continue to discuss it for more than about two minutes, the conversation is over and we're down the street to their competitors. Period.
That is just my attitude based on the principle of the thing -- we are buying custom code and it is ours. Add to that my experience with at least one Indian shop. They were to produce code for a specific module with a well specified interface to other modules. After several months of back-and-forth, a piece of work that looked good (UI) was produced, but it had bugs. Attempting to integrate it without source code would have been impossible. As it was, once we really examined the source, we rejected the project and trashed the code. We rewrote it outselves in less than a month with a new hire fronm MIT with 2 years experience.
Would I ty outsourcing to India again? Yes, with the right circumstances and even more tightly defined specs (heck with their 'dedicated project managers' and consultants), and frequent intermideate source code review.
But, it is my considerd opinion that any manager that agrees to let those guys hang onto code, even with escrow, is seriously breaching his or her duty to protect the company and its employees.
Just pointing a reporter to a valid technical article, treatise or discussion will not necessarily result in their understanding the issues. Reporters are under extreme deadlines and getting the story done without egregious errors is often more imporant than getting it right. They will probably need help in sorting out the core issues from the peripheral sidelights.
Also, remember that reporters tend to seek good 'sound bites' to use as key elements in their stories. There are a number of good reasons for this, starting with the reporter's need to encapsulate a lot of info in a short space, grab the reader's scarce attention, meet deadlines, etc. In my experience, both direct and through friends, the quotes you give will be accurate, but they may or may not be illustrative of the true context. Most reporters ARE really trying to get the context right, and will take what help you can offer, within their very limited time budget.
This means that you MUST prepare when offering help; don't just wing it. Do the work of thinking up with a _concise_ explanation of the key points, filtering out ALL non-critical details, and 90% of the critical ones. Only 1 in 1000 of the details make it into the story, so YOU decide which one (i.e., don't just throw a pile of details at the reporter and then complain when (s)he picks the 'wrong' one).
Another way to think about this is that it is social engineering, not technical engineering. We are trying to sway public opinion, not create a machine that reliably performs a task. One pithy comment or analogy will outweigh 1000 pages of perfect technical 'proof'. We should be a source of those comments -- one of them just might stick.
I didn't mean to imply that the act forbade PRIVATE use of the SSN. I should have been more clear on the context. The law only regulates public functions, not private business contracts, a rather basic right in our society. As a private business I could demand your SSN, Driver's license, the number of every ccard you own, and all your children's ages and shoe sizes in order to do business with me. You can freely tell me to screw off, or not, depending on your assessment of the benefits my buiness offers. This is a good thing, until monopoly power comes into play.
I don't have the citations for the original SS Act, but I believe that the 1974 law updates the original act by requiring and/or allowing specific actions by the govt agencies, rather than just the original general limitation. Note that the first item in the FAQ is that the agency must have specific authoriation to use the SSN; i.e., use is forbidden unless it is specifically authoried.
I do not know the specific law that controls use in the medical/insurance industry, but their behavior clearly indicates compliance with such a regulation.
Interesting that you found that the court was out of compliance with the law. I wonder what they'd do if you forgot your SSN, or if you refused payment?
When the Social Security Act was originally passed in the 30s, there was a significant concern that the SSN would become a de-facto Citizen ID. To allay this concern, the law contained specific provisions making it ILLEGAL to require the use of the SSN for any use not directly related to its purpose in identifying income and determining benefits. In other words, if you are not being paid, or having the opportunity to earn interest, they cannot require you to divulge your sSSN
The two primary examples of this use are the medical profession adn the Motor Vehicles establishment, both of whom seem to think the SSN is a handy Unique ID. Obviously, this magnifies the security risk for anyone who complies. Here's how to deal with both.
When you sign up for health insurance, fill in the SSN field with the phrase "assign ID". Sometimes they will just do it, but usually some clerk will complain that you haven't completed the form, they can't process it, etc. Firmly explain (often several times) that this is illegal, and that their companies have procedures to handle this, and that they need to speak to their manager. They will soon return with a sheepish demeanor, and you will get an ID in the SSN format.
Now, whenever you go to ANY doctor, dentist, hospital, or whatever, fill in this assigned ID as your SSN on their form. If asked whether this is your SSN, simply respond that "This is the correct ID.", and do not let pressure you into revealing your SSN.
The DMV and police may be easier or more difficult to deal with. The DMV should have a checkbox on the form which allows you to decline using the SSN, usually with some corresponding inconvenience. E.g., some states will require you to come in for renewed licenses, whereas they will mail them if your SSN is in their system. If your state doesn't have this option and you cannot argue them out of it, transposing a few digits might not be a bad idea.
When dealing with the police (e.g., in a speeding ticket situation), I've found it is best not to tell them that their request for your SSN is illegal. Best to just say that you don't remember it. Of course you don't want to give false information, right?
These tactics will obviously not close all vulnerabilities, but they will eliminate two major potential sources of identity theft. Good Luck.
A number of posters here have mentioned issues of low quality, conflict of interest, time zone and cultural differences, etc. That is the view from the trenches.
Now, it is starting to be seen at the fringes of management, as seen in the current article below from Red Herring. Yes, this is for the advance guard investor audience, but it is still the begnning of the pendulum swinging the other way.
The right tool for the right job, in this case...
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PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
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· Score: 2, Interesting
... stupid presentations.
from the article "Perhaps PowerPoint is uniquely suited to our modern age of obfuscation -- where manipulating facts is as important as presenting them clearly. If you have nothing to say, maybe you need just the right tool to help you not say it."
"If people were told they were going to have to sit through an incredibly dense presentation, [...] they wouldn't want it."
While the point has been made that 'it isn't the tool it is the user, the issue here is not that it is POSSIBLE to create a rich, clear, and concise presentation with PowerPoint, but that it encourages exactly the opposite behavior, i.e., gutted data sets, obfuscation, and inaproppriate brevity.
Is this Microsoft's fault? While, IMHO, they have perpetrated many outrages, this is not one of them. They simply sold what the customers wanted.
The much scarier prospect is that schools are starting to teach PowerPoint as a basic skill/tool.
I had thought that the status of US Currency as "Legal Tender For All Debts Public and Private" would help us by at least providing a constitutional basis for refusing such a requirement and continuing to use cash.
However a bit of checking revealed that not only does Legal Tender not have a constitutional basis, it is actually probably unconstitutional from any reasonably strict reading.
One of the first references I found (no vouching for cred.) http://www.libertyhaven.com/regulationandpropertyr ights/bankingmoneyorfinance/illegalitylegal.shtml points out that the first Supreme Court decision went against its constitutional status, and the second ruling for it was by a court by Grant and containing a significant overturnable error.
Thus, my read on the bottom line is that, for now, the Legal Tender laws are officially constitutional. Even though these laws are questionable, it is in the govt's interest to support them, and so they will remain constitutional for now. However, when the govt sees it no longer in its interest to maintain cash as Legal Tender, it would not be all that hard to overturn. So, this potential requirement for RFID implants to replace cash is actaully more of a risk than we might have first thought.
I understand that it may take a few absurd verdicts to generate sufficient outrage to stop such stupidity. It is a cost we have to bear.
At least make the offended idiot go to the trouble of finding a lawyer that will take such a low-probability case, take the time to proecute it, etc. I don't really expect any judge to accept an argument that a common technical term, properly used in context, will cause any tortious damage, especially on appeal. However, I know that more outlandish verdicts have been made, so it is an actual risk.
But this potential defense and loss is a better cost than capitulation in advance.
This capitulation is GUARANTEED to increase the costs for all taxpayers. Not only are tax-paid employees wasting time on this BS, they are also causing bidding vendors to do the work of making specious changes to their specifications, and probably causing smart vendors to not even offer their services.
This is almost textbook stupidity; it causes losses on others, without any real gain to the person taking the action (see www.truestupidity.com/basic.htm for a fun read).
So, according to you, when there is some hardship or risk, it is OK to do the wrong thing?
It is easy to do the right thing when there is no threat or difficulty. Real character is shown by what people actually do in difficult or threatening circumstances.
Your argument just makes my point more strongly -- you apparently agree that these people failed to do the right thing, you just give the excuse that there may be some vague tort threat, and that the people in these offices are generally paranoid.
SO WHAT? Officers of the government are immune from personal suit for actions in office; the worst consequence is that they lose the next election (tho I think someone doing the right thing would win in a landslide). These so called "leaders" need to STOP SAVING THEIR JOBS AND START DOING THEIR JOBS.
That said, I do agree with you that we need some kind of tort reform, and the English rule of loser pays might be one effective method, but that's another topic.
Where were the so called "leaders" in this county organization to stand up to this offended idiot?
To state the obvious, the right response is to educate the ignorant person that this is correct technical usage, having nothing to do with racism, and that moreover, slavery has nothing to do with race, and tell them to get back to work. So why was this not obvious to any of the elected county offciials? Or to the saps that elected them?
For annoying paper spam, one thing you can do is to increase their costs. Return the Business Reply Mail envelope (after removing anything that might identify you). The sender is required by law to pay the return postage.
For the truly offensive, such as scam artists, return something more substantial. Find some lead sheet or flashing (good source is Home Depot in the roofing dept) and cut out some envelope-sized pieces, as much as you can fit in the BRM envelope. Tape it so it won't shift and tear the envelope. This reply mail alone won't cost them enough to go broke, but it at least provides some satisfaction, and if even a small percentage of people did it....
Its the FUNCTION not the TOOL
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Does IT Matter?
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· Score: 1
IT and IT spending itself doesn't matter. It is what new, advantageous FUNCTIONS you can produce for what cost in dollars and time that matter.
If the projects and equipment you invest in provide your company an advantage in the marketplace (better product, faster delivery, more convenience to the customer, lower sales costs, whatever), or produce a net reduction in costs (other dept's costs are reduced by more than you spend), IT is doing its job.
If you can do this by identifying new equipment and software that can be deployed to your organization's advantage awsome. If you can do this by better utilizing old equipment, great. If you are just buying stuff because you're stuck in a maintenance agremment, or without verifying that it will actually help people, you aren't diong your job.
Notice this doesn't mention any particular technology or product, It is ITs job to identify those, whether it be the latest supercoputer or a flock of carrier pigeons -- the job of IT is to find the best tool for the job and implement it well.
Moreover, and this is done far too infrequently, the job of IT is to identify strategic opportunities created by new technologies and offer those as a way to give their organization a strategic advantage. Too many IT folks just think of themselves as plumbers and then wonder why they don't have a seat at the exec table.
Wer'e definitely on the same page here,a dn thx for your discussion. Somehow, governments, even those based in freedom, seem to continually encroach on the freedoms of its citizens. Ususally this is in the name of safety/security, etc., but there is also the underlying bureaucratic urge to expand the domain. I completely agree about the absurdity of many of the laws we have. My casual observation of other countries indicates that each has some stuff right, and other stuff all wrong.
Like you, I feel that the only solution may be a restart with a clean sheet, as was done 227 years ago in this country. My main quandry right now is whether we are at the point where it is necessary, or if it is even possible if it were necessary.
Meanwhile, we need to pick our battles and fight against the infringements on our freedom that we find most offensive, and fight in the best way we can. It sucks that we must, but such is life.
In this posting, you plan to continue to resist even if this particular battle is lost. You will be one of many who continue despite any ruling and risking accusations of lawbreaking/terrorism, hoping to be one of many that make this particular un-freedom too costly for society to enforce.
There are many forms of resistance, and not everyone can be on the front lines (the military even has a term of art for this, the "tooth to tail ratio"). This may be all we can do, since we cannot all go running down and filing briefs with the court. We also agree that the resistance or fight need not be violent.
The important thing is to recognize the issue and to be willing to bear the price of your freedom, in this case, the risk of arrest and/or civil suit.
This causes society to bear a cost in enforcing this particular un-freedom. They are hoping that the potential cost will cause you to censor our own actions and not act freely. We agree that we won't do this.
Our apparent disagreement may be one of semantics. You say that "We are always free...even though society may not always be...". My perspective is that this is true only in a limited context. For me, the question is whether we are free to do X without any fear of penalty or reprisal. If so, we are free. If not, we are still free to take the action (unless we're talking about breaking laws of physics), but must also recognize and be willing to resist, bear the potential penalty, etc.
Why not just say that this particular lack of freedom in society is wrong, and that we are willing fight it?
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. " -- Thomas Jefferson
This applies to all freedoms.
You state "... this isn't about war, it's about freedom...and you have to remember that if you exercise your own freedom effectively, war is not necessary."
This lovely sentiment is only true until someone comes along and tries to take that freedom.
Then, you either decide that peace is more important than freedom and let them have it, or you fight for that freedom.
The requirement to defend any freedom is is simply part of the human condition.
Absence of a need to defend your freedom is only evidence of living in a lucky time; it is not evidence of the absence of the requirement to defend that freedom.
We may be unlucky to have this SCO crowd attempt to kill GPL, but I thnk it is inevitable; if not them it would be someone else. OS is too powerful an idea for those corporate power types to leave alone. If you don't want to fight, fine, but quit whining and snivelling!
Consider the consequences of univeral use of whitelists.
Spam initally becomes almost completely ineffective (good), and it becomes difficult to contact people initially without an introduction.
So, how do we solve the problem of contacting someone who does not have my address on their whitelist, e.g., a researcher who just published something of interest?
We'd need to start a way of traversing overlapping "buddy networks". This may spawn something like the 'Six Degrees of Separation' experiment/game, as in "I need to get this message to Mr. X, could you please forward it to someone who might be closer to him?".
This could have ineresting social consequences. Increasing bonds by increasing communications and traded favors? Increasing annoyance among friends? I don't think spam could penetrate such a filter, since it would have to convince multiple people that it is a genuine message.
...and make some sarcastic remark or straw-man argument. But, it is better to actually think.
The point is that the law itself REQUIRES JUDGEMENT and flexibility. Even any attorney or legislator worth his or her salt will tell you that the law is only an over-simplistic approximation. If you were smart, you would also compare laws in other countries and see that in some areas they do better than us, and in others our laws are better; the botom line is that they are all imperfect.
The issue here is that adding this kind of absolutist/big brother type technology to laws ACTUALLY CHANGES THE LAW without even the benefit to legislative or judicial process.
To be more specific, speed laws are only there because they are the simplest thing to measure, and easily generate town revenue. Speed is actually at best a secondary consideration if you really think about safety in most instances (and, no, this is NOT meant to imply that speed in residential or urban areas is reasonable).
Consider highway traffic, where the *relative* speed of cars is VASTLY more important than any car's absolute speed. I regularly commute around Boston, where at certain hours the dense traffic is *averaging* over 80mph, and one is consistently passed by others when driving 85+. Anyone actually driving under the 65mph speed limit, especially in a left lane, would create a far greater hazard than anyone driving with the pack. We drive past numerous state and local cops directly observing this. Why don't they start handing out tickets? Because they would CAUSE wrecks just by turning on their lights; even if no one braked too hard, the accordian effect would likely cause a big wreck. Notice that, while the ACTUAL law has not changed, the EFFECTIVE law has changed, and rightly so.
There are plenty of other examples where speed is a secondary consideration, and/or where a simple fixed rule cannot adequately describe the situation.
Current laws are tolerable because they have the inherent flexibility of human judgement and even failings (e.g., cops can't be everywhere at once). This is what makes them livable.
If we simply add technological enforcement to current laws, WE CHANGE THE EFFECTIVE LAW, and convert our society into something far more rigid than even the most ardent police-state Nazi could ever dream.
Please THINK about the assumptions and implications before you implement or support applying technology somewhere.
(and, no I am not a luddite; I've been CTO of several successful tech companies, but also have a philosophy degree)
There are a lot of people here saying that 'this is no problem if you are within the law, just drive slower'.
This logic is damn scary.
It ASSUMES that the law is sensible, realistic and actually suitable for the situation. In fact, laws are only RARELY ANY OF THESE. It assumes that police and prosecutors will never bend the situation in their favor to further their careers at the expense of the accused. Perhaps we should discuss a bridge I have for sale...
The laws do not consider any variations in levels of skill or preparation of the car. There are many of situations where an unskilled driver in a rattletrap car is unsafe at 30mph, a skilled driver in a good car and tyres is safe at 60, and a qualified racer in a prepared street car (to say nothing of formula cars) would be *slow* at 90.
Does the law consider any of this? NO. Would the prosecutors consider any of this? NO.
Sure, in this case, the offence seems particularly egregious, and the device only records a few seconds. But this is where it all starts down the slippery slope. Pretty soon, it is minor accidents, or generic offences, then the devices are used to record more, and report.
Note that this is just the airbag sensor, there are already much more sophisticated sensors and recording being installed in the engine management and other systems (check out OBD-II and OBD-III).
What is most scary about this is that this is a forum for the supposedly technologically sophisticated. These are exactly the people who should be most inclined to consider the ASSUMPTIONS. Yet many posts just assume the law and procecutors would be fine.
Scary by itself. Worse yet, what does it say about the code and products these people build?
"In this case, if someone can prove they created a similar combination of program(s) prior to October 17, 1994, that would stand a much better chance of invalidating the patent. A mockup done in 2003 likely will not."
This IS a mockup of stuff any competent Notes R3 developer was doing in 1993, in an environment typical of the time. I lead the creation of a suite of business apps on the same platform and using this linking and embedding technology, and was demoing this capability to customers that year.
To spell it out, the point is that it took them 15 minutes to re-create a demo that demonstrates the 1993 availability of the exact kind of features described in the patent.
... if you are making ONLY the narrow point that published fraud figures don't usually make the best useful distinctions between 'unauthorized use' (e.g., 'borrowing' by a household member), straight ccard fraud (double charges, using info off a carbon slip, etc.). and full 'Identity Theft' (where the SSN and other core info is used to get new accounts, etc.). then we agree. It would be nicer to have better data. I cna even agree that the ccard companies probably fudge the distinctions to sell more 'protection' products, which is smarmy behaviour in their interest.
We also agree that we cannot protect the stupid from themselves, and I would not want to (Go Darwin!). So that all seems a relatively minor point.
In contrast, your presentation seems to imply more than that, i.e., that Identity theft itself isn't much of a problem. If so, then we strongly disagree. Identity theft does not require only dumpster diving or social engineering. RXC's example used mail theft and pointed out egregious failures of the govt to protect our data. The rampant overuse of SSN as a UNID is a horrific security flaw in our society, promulaged by lazy IT managers, who don't ant to think or resist this request.
If we are going to have master keys to our identities, then they need to be MUCH better protected from abuse than are SSNs.
Slashdot Mirror
...as long as the data is only mangled within the capibility of the error-recovery system to reconstruct it, there is no error.
;)
This is true in some limited contexts, where the ECC works and you only care about the current result, not the robustness of the system. But, it is merely pedantic to distinguish between a correct data transmission and an erroneous data transmission that was corrected.
It definitely matters to people who are not already familiar with the phrase, and especially to non-native speakers, whose greatest difficulty with English is the idiom.
These people effectively lack the error-correction capability that you describe. They have no way to know that "...intensive purposes..." is really a mangled version of "... intents and purposes...". When they read our sloppy writer's text (or need to ask him to repeat himself), the communication fails.
There is no way for them to figure out the meaning from the written text, and the speaker cannot give the correct meaning because he doesn't know it (he'll have to give a description or some other phrase to convey his meaning).
So, I suppose that if you speak only to a set of people who are already fully familiar with idiomatic English and context, and can correct errors on the fly, it matters little. But, if you want to talk to people in a larger context, or to write well and avoid unintentionally jarring the reader, it does matter. And of course, it also maters to us pedantic types
Happy New Year.
I completely agree that it would be VERY boring if everyone spoke like lawyers in contracts, and I'm certainly not expecting that (ugh).
In this example, the question is whether the people making this error ("intents and purposes" typed as "intensive purposes") actually know the meaning of the phrase.
This significant an error is not merely a typo, but an indication that the person knows nothing more than a string of syllables, which they are MIS-assembling into the wrong words. They are unthinkingly parroting this string of syllables into this context where they guess it might fit. The fact that you and I can deduce what the original phrase that they might-have-intended-to-use-if-they-had-a-clue does NOT mean that they actually knew the meaning of the phrase.
Note that this is not only a character or syllable substitution, but a substitution of one word for two and different parts of speech. This error also completely changes the meaning of the phrase. The expression "...for all intents and purposes..." carries a meaning that emphasizes the practical finality or completeness of the rest of the sentence. In contrast, "...for all intensive purposes...", would refer to some specific subset of purposes, or something. Very differnt meanings. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how they actually know the meaning if they type something this far off.
In the larger context, we completely agree that people have differnt experiences and perspectives, and that language must be used both formally and casually, literally and figuratively, etc.
However, this is not an excuse to be sloppy. It is the very reason that we must be clear and establish common contexts and meanings for our utterances, usually by successive approximation across those gaps. Without care to establish common meanings, we are not communicating, but merely babbling in close proximity to others. With care to maintain common meanings, we can truly communicate across incredible chasms of experience and context.
...if they did, they would spell it correctly.
Just because they spell out a homonym, dosen't mean they knew it and just made a typographical error. I fail to see how anyone who knows the meaning of the phrase "intents and purposes" could mistype it as "intensive purposes". These are completely different sets of words.
Another one that I find very irritating is ignorance of the difference between 'Affect' and 'Effect'. However, this one-character substitution might enjoy the benefit of the doubt, if their other usage is good.
I remember growing up being frequently annoyed at my mother's continual corrections of my errors, but I find that I'm now grateful for it almost every day. Language, like code, is a tool, and should be used correctly if it is used at all.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." -- (Attrib. to Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain, and others)
Obviously, these idiot police are not looking out to protect and serve the freedom of the people that hire them, only to make some visible part of their jobs easier -- in short, petty people wanting more control.
... so who needs radar detectors and jammers when we can just slow the pursuing police car?
This will simply engender another hack by the criminals, which will leave them immune, but the general public ever more subject to excess police control.
Soooo, best to find good car from the 90s that you like, in good condition, and start maintaining it for the long term....
Of coruse, the real fun begins when we hack into the system so we can control it. The cops would need to leave this enabled on their cars, for the cases where someone steals a police car
... that perhaps you just discovered the origins of your conversational frustration, and that the only thing to do dedicate yourself to improving it so that your (future) kids never feel the same way.
(from one who is still working on it and who has friends who succeeded)
Good Luck
As a small software vendor, I've used escrow a number of times to solve the problem of 'what if you go out of business?', when selling packged products. In this 'shrink-wrap' context, it is very appropriate. The customer is getting the benefit of the lower prices associated with repeat/volume sales of a packaged product, and needs some kind of solid assurance that they will not be screwed if a small shop goes out of biz, is bought/merged, etc, since the SW will be used to run the customer's business.
In contrast, we always gave the code to customers in custom jobs / work-for-hire situations, so escrow wasn't an issue.
Most of the Indian shops are explicitly work-for hire -- custom jobs writen for internal apps or apps that the customer will be selling as packaged products. In this case, I would NEVER EVEN CONSIDER letting them keep the code. If they continue to discuss it for more than about two minutes, the conversation is over and we're down the street to their competitors. Period.
That is just my attitude based on the principle of the thing -- we are buying custom code and it is ours. Add to that my experience with at least one Indian shop. They were to produce code for a specific module with a well specified interface to other modules. After several months of back-and-forth, a piece of work that looked good (UI) was produced, but it had bugs. Attempting to integrate it without source code would have been impossible. As it was, once we really examined the source, we rejected the project and trashed the code. We rewrote it outselves in less than a month with a new hire fronm MIT with 2 years experience.
Would I ty outsourcing to India again? Yes, with the right circumstances and even more tightly defined specs (heck with their 'dedicated project managers' and consultants), and frequent intermideate source code review.
But, it is my considerd opinion that any manager that agrees to let those guys hang onto code, even with escrow, is seriously breaching his or her duty to protect the company and its employees.
Just pointing a reporter to a valid technical article, treatise or discussion will not necessarily result in their understanding the issues. Reporters are under extreme deadlines and getting the story done without egregious errors is often more imporant than getting it right. They will probably need help in sorting out the core issues from the peripheral sidelights.
Also, remember that reporters tend to seek good 'sound bites' to use as key elements in their stories. There are a number of good reasons for this, starting with the reporter's need to encapsulate a lot of info in a short space, grab the reader's scarce attention, meet deadlines, etc. In my experience, both direct and through friends, the quotes you give will be accurate, but they may or may not be illustrative of the true context. Most reporters ARE really trying to get the context right, and will take what help you can offer, within their very limited time budget.
This means that you MUST prepare when offering help; don't just wing it. Do the work of thinking up with a _concise_ explanation of the key points, filtering out ALL non-critical details, and 90% of the critical ones. Only 1 in 1000 of the details make it into the story, so YOU decide which one (i.e., don't just throw a pile of details at the reporter and then complain when (s)he picks the 'wrong' one).
Another way to think about this is that it is social engineering, not technical engineering. We are trying to sway public opinion, not create a machine that reliably performs a task. One pithy comment or analogy will outweigh 1000 pages of perfect technical 'proof'. We should be a source of those comments -- one of them just might stick.
I didn't mean to imply that the act forbade PRIVATE use of the SSN. I should have been more clear on the context. The law only regulates public functions, not private business contracts, a rather basic right in our society. As a private business I could demand your SSN, Driver's license, the number of every ccard you own, and all your children's ages and shoe sizes in order to do business with me. You can freely tell me to screw off, or not, depending on your assessment of the benefits my buiness offers. This is a good thing, until monopoly power comes into play.
I don't have the citations for the original SS Act, but I believe that the 1974 law updates the original act by requiring and/or allowing specific actions by the govt agencies, rather than just the original general limitation. Note that the first item in the FAQ is that the agency must have specific authoriation to use the SSN; i.e., use is forbidden unless it is specifically authoried.
I do not know the specific law that controls use in the medical/insurance industry, but their behavior clearly indicates compliance with such a regulation.
Interesting that you found that the court was out of compliance with the law. I wonder what they'd do if you forgot your SSN, or if you refused payment?
The two primary examples of this use are the medical profession adn the Motor Vehicles establishment, both of whom seem to think the SSN is a handy Unique ID. Obviously, this magnifies the security risk for anyone who complies. Here's how to deal with both.
When you sign up for health insurance, fill in the SSN field with the phrase "assign ID". Sometimes they will just do it, but usually some clerk will complain that you haven't completed the form, they can't process it, etc. Firmly explain (often several times) that this is illegal, and that their companies have procedures to handle this, and that they need to speak to their manager. They will soon return with a sheepish demeanor, and you will get an ID in the SSN format.
Now, whenever you go to ANY doctor, dentist, hospital, or whatever, fill in this assigned ID as your SSN on their form. If asked whether this is your SSN, simply respond that "This is the correct ID.", and do not let pressure you into revealing your SSN.
The DMV and police may be easier or more difficult to deal with. The DMV should have a checkbox on the form which allows you to decline using the SSN, usually with some corresponding inconvenience. E.g., some states will require you to come in for renewed licenses, whereas they will mail them if your SSN is in their system. If your state doesn't have this option and you cannot argue them out of it, transposing a few digits might not be a bad idea.
When dealing with the police (e.g., in a speeding ticket situation), I've found it is best not to tell them that their request for your SSN is illegal. Best to just say that you don't remember it. Of course you don't want to give false information, right?
These tactics will obviously not close all vulnerabilities, but they will eliminate two major potential sources of identity theft. Good Luck.
Now, it is starting to be seen at the fringes of management, as seen in the current article below from Red Herring. Yes, this is for the advance guard investor audience, but it is still the begnning of the pendulum swinging the other way.
Top 10 trends: Outsourcing backlash
from the article
"Perhaps PowerPoint is uniquely suited to our modern age of obfuscation -- where manipulating facts is as important as presenting them clearly. If you have nothing to say, maybe you need just the right tool to help you not say it."
"If people were told they were going to have to sit through an incredibly dense presentation, [...] they wouldn't want it."
While the point has been made that 'it isn't the tool it is the user, the issue here is not that it is POSSIBLE to create a rich, clear, and concise presentation with PowerPoint, but that it encourages exactly the opposite behavior, i.e., gutted data sets, obfuscation, and inaproppriate brevity.
Is this Microsoft's fault? While, IMHO, they have perpetrated many outrages, this is not one of them. They simply sold what the customers wanted.
The much scarier prospect is that schools are starting to teach PowerPoint as a basic skill/tool.
I had thought that the status of US Currency as "Legal Tender For All Debts Public and Private" would help us by at least providing a constitutional basis for refusing such a requirement and continuing to use cash.
r ights/bankingmoneyorfinance/illegalitylegal.shtml
However a bit of checking revealed that not only does Legal Tender not have a constitutional basis, it is actually probably unconstitutional from any reasonably strict reading.
One of the first references I found (no vouching for cred.) http://www.libertyhaven.com/regulationandproperty
points out that the first Supreme Court decision went against its constitutional status, and the second ruling for it was by a court by Grant and containing a significant overturnable error.
Thus, my read on the bottom line is that, for now, the Legal Tender laws are officially constitutional. Even though these laws are questionable, it is in the govt's interest to support them, and so they will remain constitutional for now. However, when the govt sees it no longer in its interest to maintain cash as Legal Tender, it would not be all that hard to overturn. So, this potential requirement for RFID implants to replace cash is actaully more of a risk than we might have first thought.
Any more detailed or accurate info available?
No complaints here.
I understand that it may take a few absurd verdicts to generate sufficient outrage to stop such stupidity. It is a cost we have to bear.
At least make the offended idiot go to the trouble of finding a lawyer that will take such a low-probability case, take the time to proecute it, etc. I don't really expect any judge to accept an argument that a common technical term, properly used in context, will cause any tortious damage, especially on appeal. However, I know that more outlandish verdicts have been made, so it is an actual risk.
But this potential defense and loss is a better cost than capitulation in advance.
This capitulation is GUARANTEED to increase the costs for all taxpayers. Not only are tax-paid employees wasting time on this BS, they are also causing bidding vendors to do the work of making specious changes to their specifications, and probably causing smart vendors to not even offer their services.
This is almost textbook stupidity; it causes losses on others, without any real gain to the person taking the action (see www.truestupidity.com/basic.htm for a fun read).
So, according to you, when there is some hardship or risk, it is OK to do the wrong thing?
It is easy to do the right thing when there is no threat or difficulty. Real character is shown by what people actually do in difficult or threatening circumstances.
Your argument just makes my point more strongly -- you apparently agree that these people failed to do the right thing, you just give the excuse that there may be some vague tort threat, and that the people in these offices are generally paranoid.
SO WHAT? Officers of the government are immune from personal suit for actions in office; the worst consequence is that they lose the next election (tho I think someone doing the right thing would win in a landslide). These so called "leaders" need to STOP SAVING THEIR JOBS AND START DOING THEIR JOBS.
That said, I do agree with you that we need some kind of tort reform, and the English rule of loser pays might be one effective method, but that's another topic.
... is that good men do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
Where were the so called "leaders" in this county organization to stand up to this offended idiot?
To state the obvious, the right response is to educate the ignorant person that this is correct technical usage, having nothing to do with racism, and that moreover, slavery has nothing to do with race, and tell them to get back to work. So why was this not obvious to any of the elected county offciials? Or to the saps that elected them?
For annoying paper spam, one thing you can do is to increase their costs. Return the Business Reply Mail envelope (after removing anything that might identify you). The sender is required by law to pay the return postage.
For the truly offensive, such as scam artists, return something more substantial. Find some lead sheet or flashing (good source is Home Depot in the roofing dept) and cut out some envelope-sized pieces, as much as you can fit in the BRM envelope. Tape it so it won't shift and tear the envelope. This reply mail alone won't cost them enough to go broke, but it at least provides some satisfaction, and if even a small percentage of people did it....
IT and IT spending itself doesn't matter. It is what new, advantageous FUNCTIONS you can produce for what cost in dollars and time that matter.
If the projects and equipment you invest in provide your company an advantage in the marketplace (better product, faster delivery, more convenience to the customer, lower sales costs, whatever), or produce a net reduction in costs (other dept's costs are reduced by more than you spend), IT is doing its job.
If you can do this by identifying new equipment and software that can be deployed to your organization's advantage awsome. If you can do this by better utilizing old equipment, great. If you are just buying stuff because you're stuck in a maintenance agremment, or without verifying that it will actually help people, you aren't diong your job.
Notice this doesn't mention any particular technology or product, It is ITs job to identify those, whether it be the latest supercoputer or a flock of carrier pigeons -- the job of IT is to find the best tool for the job and implement it well.
Moreover, and this is done far too infrequently, the job of IT is to identify strategic opportunities created by new technologies and offer those as a way to give their organization a strategic advantage. Too many IT folks just think of themselves as plumbers and then wonder why they don't have a seat at the exec table.
Wer'e definitely on the same page here,a dn thx for your discussion. Somehow, governments, even those based in freedom, seem to continually encroach on the freedoms of its citizens. Ususally this is in the name of safety/security, etc., but there is also the underlying bureaucratic urge to expand the domain. I completely agree about the absurdity of many of the laws we have. My casual observation of other countries indicates that each has some stuff right, and other stuff all wrong.
Like you, I feel that the only solution may be a restart with a clean sheet, as was done 227 years ago in this country. My main quandry right now is whether we are at the point where it is necessary, or if it is even possible if it were necessary.
Meanwhile, we need to pick our battles and fight against the infringements on our freedom that we find most offensive, and fight in the best way we can. It sucks that we must, but such is life.
Good fortune in your battles too...
In this posting, you plan to continue to resist even if this particular battle is lost. You will be one of many who continue despite any ruling and risking accusations of lawbreaking/terrorism, hoping to be one of many that make this particular un-freedom too costly for society to enforce.
There are many forms of resistance, and not everyone can be on the front lines (the military even has a term of art for this, the "tooth to tail ratio"). This may be all we can do, since we cannot all go running down and filing briefs with the court. We also agree that the resistance or fight need not be violent.
The important thing is to recognize the issue and to be willing to bear the price of your freedom, in this case, the risk of arrest and/or civil suit.
This causes society to bear a cost in enforcing this particular un-freedom. They are hoping that the potential cost will cause you to censor our own actions and not act freely. We agree that we won't do this.
Our apparent disagreement may be one of semantics. You say that "We are always free...even though society may not always be...". My perspective is that this is true only in a limited context. For me, the question is whether we are free to do X without any fear of penalty or reprisal. If so, we are free. If not, we are still free to take the action (unless we're talking about breaking laws of physics), but must also recognize and be willing to resist, bear the potential penalty, etc.
Why not just say that this particular lack of freedom in society is wrong, and that we are willing fight it?
This applies to all freedoms.
You state "... this isn't about war, it's about freedom...and you have to remember that if you exercise your own freedom effectively, war is not necessary."
This lovely sentiment is only true until someone comes along and tries to take that freedom. Then, you either decide that peace is more important than freedom and let them have it, or you fight for that freedom.
The requirement to defend any freedom is is simply part of the human condition.
Absence of a need to defend your freedom is only evidence of living in a lucky time; it is not evidence of the absence of the requirement to defend that freedom.
We may be unlucky to have this SCO crowd attempt to kill GPL, but I thnk it is inevitable; if not them it would be someone else. OS is too powerful an idea for those corporate power types to leave alone. If you don't want to fight, fine, but quit whining and snivelling!
Consider the consequences of univeral use of whitelists.
Spam initally becomes almost completely ineffective (good), and it becomes difficult to contact people initially without an introduction.
So, how do we solve the problem of contacting someone who does not have my address on their whitelist, e.g., a researcher who just published something of interest?
We'd need to start a way of traversing overlapping "buddy networks". This may spawn something like the 'Six Degrees of Separation' experiment/game, as in "I need to get this message to Mr. X, could you please forward it to someone who might be closer to him?".
This could have ineresting social consequences. Increasing bonds by increasing communications and traded favors? Increasing annoyance among friends? I don't think spam could penetrate such a filter, since it would have to convince multiple people that it is a genuine message.
Thoughts?
...and make some sarcastic remark or straw-man argument. But, it is better to actually think.
The point is that the law itself REQUIRES JUDGEMENT and flexibility. Even any attorney or legislator worth his or her salt will tell you that the law is only an over-simplistic approximation. If you were smart, you would also compare laws in other countries and see that in some areas they do better than us, and in others our laws are better; the botom line is that they are all imperfect.
The issue here is that adding this kind of absolutist/big brother type technology to laws ACTUALLY CHANGES THE LAW without even the benefit to legislative or judicial process.
To be more specific, speed laws are only there because they are the simplest thing to measure, and easily generate town revenue. Speed is actually at best a secondary consideration if you really think about safety in most instances (and, no, this is NOT meant to imply that speed in residential or urban areas is reasonable).
Consider highway traffic, where the *relative* speed of cars is VASTLY more important than any car's absolute speed. I regularly commute around Boston, where at certain hours the dense traffic is *averaging* over 80mph, and one is consistently passed by others when driving 85+. Anyone actually driving under the 65mph speed limit, especially in a left lane, would create a far greater hazard than anyone driving with the pack. We drive past numerous state and local cops directly observing this. Why don't they start handing out tickets? Because they would CAUSE wrecks just by turning on their lights; even if no one braked too hard, the accordian effect would likely cause a big wreck. Notice that, while the ACTUAL law has not changed, the EFFECTIVE law has changed, and rightly so.
There are plenty of other examples where speed is a secondary consideration, and/or where a simple fixed rule cannot adequately describe the situation.
Current laws are tolerable because they have the inherent flexibility of human judgement and even failings (e.g., cops can't be everywhere at once). This is what makes them livable.
If we simply add technological enforcement to current laws, WE CHANGE THE EFFECTIVE LAW, and convert our society into something far more rigid than even the most ardent police-state Nazi could ever dream.
Please THINK about the assumptions and implications before you implement or support applying technology somewhere.
(and, no I am not a luddite; I've been CTO of several successful tech companies, but also have a philosophy degree)
There are a lot of people here saying that 'this is no problem if you are within the law, just drive slower'.
This logic is damn scary.
It ASSUMES that the law is sensible, realistic and actually suitable for the situation. In fact, laws are only RARELY ANY OF THESE. It assumes that police and prosecutors will never bend the situation in their favor to further their careers at the expense of the accused. Perhaps we should discuss a bridge I have for sale...
The laws do not consider any variations in levels of skill or preparation of the car. There are many of situations where an unskilled driver in a rattletrap car is unsafe at 30mph, a skilled driver in a good car and tyres is safe at 60, and a qualified racer in a prepared street car (to say nothing of formula cars) would be *slow* at 90.
Does the law consider any of this? NO. Would the prosecutors consider any of this? NO.
Sure, in this case, the offence seems particularly egregious, and the device only records a few seconds. But this is where it all starts down the slippery slope. Pretty soon, it is minor accidents, or generic offences, then the devices are used to record more, and report.
Note that this is just the airbag sensor, there are already much more sophisticated sensors and recording being installed in the engine management and other systems (check out OBD-II and OBD-III).
What is most scary about this is that this is a forum for the supposedly technologically sophisticated. These are exactly the people who should be most inclined to consider the ASSUMPTIONS. Yet many posts just assume the law and procecutors would be fine.
Scary by itself. Worse yet, what does it say about the code and products these people build?
Cheers.
This IS a mockup of stuff any competent Notes R3 developer was doing in 1993, in an environment typical of the time. I lead the creation of a suite of business apps on the same platform and using this linking and embedding technology, and was demoing this capability to customers that year.
To spell it out, the point is that it took them 15 minutes to re-create a demo that demonstrates the 1993 availability of the exact kind of features described in the patent.
... if you are making ONLY the narrow point that published fraud figures don't usually make the best useful distinctions between 'unauthorized use' (e.g., 'borrowing' by a household member), straight ccard fraud (double charges, using info off a carbon slip, etc.). and full 'Identity Theft' (where the SSN and other core info is used to get new accounts, etc.). then we agree. It would be nicer to have better data. I cna even agree that the ccard companies probably fudge the distinctions to sell more 'protection' products, which is smarmy behaviour in their interest.
We also agree that we cannot protect the stupid from themselves, and I would not want to (Go Darwin!). So that all seems a relatively minor point.
In contrast, your presentation seems to imply more than that, i.e., that Identity theft itself isn't much of a problem. If so, then we strongly disagree. Identity theft does not require only dumpster diving or social engineering. RXC's example used mail theft and pointed out egregious failures of the govt to protect our data. The rampant overuse of SSN as a UNID is a horrific security flaw in our society, promulaged by lazy IT managers, who don't ant to think or resist this request.
If we are going to have master keys to our identities, then they need to be MUCH better protected from abuse than are SSNs.
Cheers.