I am very familiar with the elements of argument. I just have and use other sources than yours.
Other than the infidels.org site you presented, all other descriptions of the two that I have seen, they are synonymous.
And I agree with you and have done so with others in the past: it would be good if there were more real argument and debate on/. as opposed to just contradiction. [Homage to Monty Python goes here.]
No, mr/ms Anonymous Coward, I mean 'begs the question'.
"Begging the question" aka "circular reasoning", in argument, means that you assume that a statement which depends on the conclusion is true, and you use it as proof of your argument.
My rhetorical argument was based entirely on the premise that software engineers must bear responsibility for the errors they introduce, and therefore they are at fault for the errors. The belief that software engineers are responsible implies that they are at fault, therefore the conclusion implies the premise. The logic is falicious, and therefore requires additional verification that the premise is indeed true. If the premise can be shwon to be true through other means, only then can it be validly used in circular reasoning, and even then, it is only generally permitted for contradictory proofs.
You say the protocol has exceptions instead of always being the same. Do you KNOW that the exceptions were put there to get around a bug? How do you KNOW that a fix for the bug existed - maybe that fix was the addition of the protocol exceptions because for technical reasons there wsa no other solution available to the engineer. Do you KNOW that the hardware engineer saw the bug - or even defined it as a bug?
Yes there are two sides, but in this case the other side does not fit any of your reasons. I know from working daily with the teams for years now that the bug was caused by a lazy implementation by that one particular engineer, who has (in an odd form of revenge) been assigned to fix almost every bug related to that problem, until now. The 'exceptions' to the protocol were unneccessary because the design included well-defined methods for adding commands and adding responses, which were not followed. Specifically, rather than add a command, he appended a value that indicates the 'extension', or in another case, prepended undefined error codes, both because he didn't want to wait a few minutes for a recompile.
According to the engineer, the actual thinking for the two communications problems was: "Lets just make the header bigger by one byte for these 'extensions', we'll go in and add new commands for them later", but he never considered that that next byte may be legitimate data in the shorter command since it was to be temporary. The other was "Adding a new response code will require a full rebuild, but this is just a small test for debugging. We'll just prepend a number to one of the other failure codes, just for testing." Both 'temporary' solutions were left in place, and duplicated by a few interns or when they added a few more 'extensions'; his practice of using specific return codes has evolved to a selection of 4 possible return styles. All this because he wanted to avoid a few minutes of compile time!
In this case, it is entirely contained within the flash memory shipped to customers, so we could easily fix it and declare all old versions depricated -- but not until correcting every piece of software, which will take a lot of time.
For now it has evolved into something of a tribute to ad-hoc design: we have either [command][data][crc] or [command][ext][data][crc] where the values in [[ext][data]] is occasionally valid [data] for the basic command, leading to ambiguity: Is it the basic command with 1 or 2 as the first byte, or the extended command? For responses, we have a choice of [command][status] or [command][#][status] or [command][ext][status] or [command][ext][#][status], where [#] is the function-specific error code being returned. The latter is easier to check for than the former, but both are a continual source of flaws.
Similar experience for me, too. It is anecdotal evidence and not proof of the costs(let us not confuse the two). Now some questions to add to your observations: Should the company be liable for an engineer's errors (as is normally done in business)? Or should the individual or team be liable?
Most recently I've been tracking down an error in our system. After nearly a month of trying various things, I found the problem of an error. In this case, two years ago the hardaware engineer building the FPGA and DSP programs didn't bother to fix the [relatively simple] design problem. Rather than give all communications the same format, a few commands differ substantially from all others (different responses in certain circumstances, for example).
The problem made it into the PC software that interfaces with the board. The problem is documented in several [maybe 20?] bugs of the software that works between the PC and the external device. The problem is documented in at least 50 bugs in a port of that PC software. It has been in production for several years, and implemented by external companies (which I feal sorry for, due to the complexity of the communications bug).
Now we're working on a completely new FPGA/DSP board to replace the earlier board. Design changes prevent us from directly implementing the bug in the new design, although otherwise the communication protocols are the same. Implementing the same malformed communications will mean breaking the simple straightforward design and carefully implementing a set of 'design exceptions' (read: 'bugs').
It would have taken one engineer an hour or so to fix this thing when they first saw it. It would have taken both teams a few days to fix it when writing the PC to DSP interface (~1 FTE month). It would have taken a few weeks to fix it when writing the port, requiring changes to the PC software and the DSP (~1 FTE year). If we choose to fix the error now, it will probably result 2+ FTE years of work to just fix everything, and more time for regression testing every old peice of software for this one bug. If we choose to leave it in, we will devote at least that much time in evaluating, implementing, and testing the old errors. Not to mention the continued maintenence work when the eventual bugs are found in the new board.
Now we're forced with a tough financial decision: do we spend a month or more carefully re-creating and testing the 'design exceptions', (probably 3-5 FTE years in total) or do we do it 'the right way' and break both our own and our customers' software? (again, several FTE years, but potentially loosing faith with the customers.)
This particular bug could have been prevented by about $50 of work. It has now cost the company tens of thousands of dollars, and will probably cost a few hundred thousand before all is said and done.
Now, lets throw some financial ethics into the $50 --> $5,000 --> $50,000 --> $500,000+ problem: The engineer was in a hurry to fix the problem before a company imposed deadline. Is that engineer responsible for the enormous financial cost? If so, how much? If not, why not? It can be argued that his negligence cause a half-million dollars in damages. It can be argued that the engineer was responsible for $50 but the team was responsible for allowing it to grow. It can be argued that this is a regular business cost due to falibility of engineers' designs.
This begs the question:
How responsible are any of us for the errors we introduce?
As another note, is nobody bothered by the fact that using the UCSD name in vain is instantly a misdemeanor? Is is usual to create a criminal charge for trademark mis-use?!!
Yes, many people are bothered, no it is not usual, and yes, they are wide open for an Anti-SLAPP suit.
The actual letter is a ceace-and-desist, is interesting. The letter states:
Also, be advised that the use of the name of the University of
California or its initials or the name or initials of any of the
campuses of the University of California, including the University
of California San Diego without the written permission of the UC
Regents is a misdemeanor. In addition, the unauthorized use of the
University's name and the UCSD initials and your failure to comply
with my instructions in this message is also a violation of the UCSD
Student Conduct Code which is applicable to both of you as currently
enrolled UCSD students and such violation may result in disciplinary
action against you.
The 'law' being broken is a state law that simply says that University of California's names or any abbreviation of the names, are owned by the state and cannot be used except when used to describe the school as an employer or describing academic experiences.
Now that isn't a trademark law (as so many have claimed, since UCSD is not trademarked according to USPTO.gov), but it could easily be fought in terms of trademark laws (since they are obviously trying to establish a trademark through state law), or with Anti-SLAPP laws (they are using the letters in connection with their academic experiences), or on fair use and freedom of speech laws.
My guess is that if they fought it in court, they could probably get the law thrown out as being in violation of various laws or even on constitutional grounds.
An Anti-SLAPP suit would easily succeed in this case, especially considering their wording in their nastygram:
Also, be advised that the use of the name of the University of
California or its initials or the name or initials of any of the
campuses of the University of California, including the University
of California San Diego without the written permission of the UC
Regents is a misdemeanor.
Taken verbatim, this means almost everybody who used the initials UCSD or the name of the school, including both you and me, are guilty of a misdemeanor under an undisclosed law. This is a blatent lie, or a gross mis-interpretation of trademark law. Either way, I wish these kids well.
This kind of studies seldom gets it right if they don't take all the important properties of the demographic into account.
In addition to the properties you mentioned, [political correctness police please ignore this] the race of the people should be considered. The normal people in nearby china-town stand at about four-foot-nothing, in the little-mexico neighborhood a few miles away they stand about 5'5" or shorter, and the few other ethnic areas around my city are all generally shorter than the white-european people. The only real exception that I know of is the Tongan community, many those that I've seen look like a cross between a basketball player and a well-muscled bear. But these stereotypical Tongans also work in physical labor jobs that don't command a lot of money.
I'm reminded of a scene that I saw a while ago in a magazine: an American standing on a bullet-train in Japan. There were a bunch of heads from the native japanese population, and an American sticking out above the crowd from his chest up, and hunching over slightly to fit in the train.
I'd love to get my hands on a copy of that study, and read it very carefully.
You should [and probably do] have copies of your NDAs. Read them.
[wait for you to finish reading]
That's what you agreed to. Does it say that you can't mention your tasks, or just that you can't disclose your ideas? Does it say that you cannot discuss ANY work done with the company with ANYBODY who isn't under NDA, or does it have provisions for discussing your work with people not under NDA under a 'need to know' basis? Does it have a time limit? [If not specified, courts have ruled that non-compete agreements expire after a reasonable time, such as 2 or 3 years. Talk to a lawyer and see if it applies in your case for an NDA.] Does it have limitations to 'core business practices' not being disclosed? Did you work as a contractor for an accounting company or in another strictly-regulated field?
Depending on your answers, you might be limited to responses to "Improved database response time by 270%" or you might be able to give good juicy details. If you were working on an external project, you are ethically bound (and possibly legally bound, in some cases) to keep your clients private unless you received permission to talk about them.
You should respect your agreements, and that implies that you should have been very careful about what you agree too. (Did you just sign the NDA's without thought?)
story time
My current company gave me an NDA, release of ideas, and non-compete agreement to sign as terms of employment. As normal, I didn't want to sign it and I visited a lawyer. (except this time he was my friend who was finishing law school and preparing for the bar exam.) He read through it with me, we crossed out about half of the NDA, nearly all of the assignment of ideas agreement, and a few lines of the non-compete agreement. We added an addendum with exceptions for all three, including a huge list of other projects that I have worked on or might have interest in working on. We added an exception for incidental use of company equipment and resources for personal projects.
When the employer saw it, he balked. I talked him through the reasoning for just about everything. The company probably doesn't want to own everything I produce, I argued, because there is [my now lawyer friend told me about it, but I can't find it online] a court case where a disgrundled employee produced human waste and distributed it to the customers as an example of company products. The company fired him and sued, the employee defended their case based on their draconian employment agreements, and the eventaully company settled the lawsuit for a bunch of money, rather than owing the employee a lot more money for wrongful termination and back pay.
After giving that example, my current boss agreed that some of the agreement was 'never going to be enforced that way', but he allowed me to cross off nearly all the items.
Three jobs ago [dot-com era] after going between their lawyers and my lawyers a few times, the company just gave up. In the end we agreed that I would simply not disclose any trade secrets, and no confidential information until three years after termination.
First I would stop any "above and beyond" performance. I would do my job as it was expected of me but I surely wouldn't work weekend or late hours anymore.... Then I would start looking for a new job. Its easier to find a job when you have one.
I beg to differ.
Before leaving a job, I'd work extra hard for the last few weeks. When a new potential employer calls to ask about past job performance, your boss will likely give them a good review of you [like 'He has been finishing projects ahead of schedule.'], rather than the 'legal requirement' version [such as 'he works here and was hired on @date@, and he does his work.']
But you can burn your bridges if you want to...
frob
Interesting article, but counter questions...
on
Longhorn in 2006
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I really liked the comments about where technology isn't. Why doesn't everybody have a handheld computer that links the notes to the slides? Or records the conference and lets you take notes directly on it? Those are good questions.
But then I would return the questions back to the CEO: Once you master the markets, why are you abandoning them? Why does IE still have linear browsing, linear back and forward buttons? Why does IE have so many unfixed bugs, and why isn't it fully W3C compliant? Why do all the Office apps change format with every edition, into something that prior editions cannot read? Why do my new Access databases not work with my old databases, and why does it ask to convert them when opened with the newer versions? Why don't any of the Office apps generate good HTML or XHTML or XML code? Why can't you copy certain complex pages from IE and paste them into Word without Word crashing?
The answer: Once you've made the other systems irrelevent, such as the comment about developers saying "How do we port it to that other operating system -- what was it -- Linux?" when Microsoft gets there, they abandon innovation.
And that, Mr. Balmer, is Microsoft's biggest problem.
Windows file serving has been shown time and time again to be superior to Samba in every way.
Um, care to provide some links to research on that?
Typical misinformed crap from slashdot.... keep reposting these misinformational details, gee I wonder why? Typical.
Rather than posting as an "Anonymous Microsoft Employee", if you have some facts that differ from what is available online at places like samba.org, published independant evaluations such as the topic of this/. article, or even some Microsoft info, then make it known. I was giving an actual experience from my network, which is fact and cannot be denied. If your experiences differ, then go ahead and post them.
A 2.5 x speed advantage can only mean one thing: misconfigured Windows machines.
You might be interested in this article describing the implementations of SMB and Samba, as well as the documentation list at samba.org. Additionally, Microsoft has had many issues with the LMB, DMB, and backup browser implementations, partly due to historical network decisions and old networking bugs and highly visible on volitle networks. Some of the difficulties with SMB include methods of caching the data and cache consistancy, the inconsistant rate of refereshes done within the network, (on windows) the auto-detection and auto-creation of LMB and LMB-backup nodes, and the presumption of the underlying network.
I'll focus on the network cache consistancy problem since that's the one I've had problems with. I don't know about the general speed issue (what speed are you referring to? throughput? Resource availablility? Master Browser updates? connection speed and concurrency under a heavy user load? ) I have experienced all kinds of problems with a highly volitile network, with programmers running multiple OS's inside of virtual machines. These virtual OS's need to be frequently restarted, meaning the network is constantly gaining and droping objects.
A prime example of Microsoft's bad cache coherency problem is that if an object is deleted or removed from the network, the information can take over an hour to propogate through the entire network. The worst case isn't nearly as bad in the pure-Samba implementation, but the difficulty remains. This failure means that newly added resources aren't immediately visible on the network, or recently removed resources take a long time to be removed, and show up as errors when you try to access them. Or the object can be visible on some machines, but not available on others.
When there is a high level of volitility on the network (machines being frequently rebooted or shut down, network re-wiring, etc.) this can really plague any SMB or CIFS network, but is especially hard on Windows boxes, and more so the older your Windows implementation. Problems are exacerbated if either the LMB or LMB-backup system is the one going back up and down, because the Windows boxes will respond less-quickly to the problem; this results in further instability for the SMB network, since critical nodes are not available, propogate incorrect data, and take longer to reconfigure.
As you mentioned, the Samba boxes are faster than the Windows boxes, but not as big of a difference as you experience. You said you have "a LAN full of Win2000/XP boxes", which probably means they are on most or all of the time. Is it unreasonable to assume that the author has a more volitle network, or is otherwise more prone to speed impairment issues?
people should be allowed to stop using software that is known to contain security bugs.
Then those same people should revert to paper and pencil.
If a program is complex enough to act as an Internet server (file sharing, network printing, etc.) then it is going to have security bugs. No OS is immune. If an Internet client program has more than the most basic of features (like a text-based FTP) then it is going to have security bugs. Even text-based FTP programs have had some interesting bugs, like being able to download programs with a filename of a (windows) system device, causing windows to crash.
People discovering security bugs should not keep quiet until a fix is released
The security industry right now says you have an ethical duty contact the company and work with them to get it fixed. If the company either refuses to fix it or delays fixing it, you have an ethical duty to help other consumers to go public with the bug. The most important goal is to inform other users while minimizing chances of attack. If the supplier is willing to help, they should have the opportunity to do so.
You can still keep the old number if you move cross country, The phone is just considered based in the old area code, and roaming may apply. If you live in area code 808 and you moved from and keep the 201 area code, it's only a local call to people in the 201 area code.
What about area codes? Even with number portability, what will happen when we move to another area?
The law is trying to turn it to the same as regular phone lines. If you are moving locally you can keep the number. If you move out of the area, you can't.
I turned off my cell phone over a year ago, due to the garbage plans and over-priced plans.
I have a simple list of what I want, and what I don't need. Plans with parts of what I want are available for fairly cheap ($30/mo) but a plan with all that I want is expensive ($120/mo). Yes, I would like to get [option], but I don't want [30 other options] along with it.
My local Verizon store has been giving me the same date for several weeks, but mentioned that other companies are afraid of losing their current customers.
Until cell phone companies stop acting like cable companies that require you to buy a set or services rather than the pieces you want, and more like traditional service companies, they will lose customers. Currently, you can choose between Plan A (feature 1, feature 2,... feature n) Plan B ( features ) or Plan C (features).
After a little bit of industry shakeup, I expect to see it more like traditional phone lines. In fact, I don't think it will take too long for cell phone order forms to change from Select an overpriced plan to looking like this:
Select options
Minutes:
[] Unmetered use ($)
[] pay-per-use nationwide ($ per minute)
[] pay-per-use local ($ per minute for local, $ per minute long distance)
[] n minutes peak, m minutes off-peak ($)
...
Number of phones on plan: ___ ($ for first phone, $ each additional)
Additional options:
[] feature 1 ($)
[] feature 2 ($)
[] feature 3 ($ per phone)
[] feature 4 ($ per minute)
...
[] featuren n
Total: $
[] 6-month contract (save $$)
[] 1-year contract (save $$)
Maybe it will take a year or two before that becomes the norm, but it is going to happen. When it does, the companies will need to start competing, rather than just saying "Our network is bigger, join us". I will, and probably a lot of us, will be happier with cell phone service.
frob
Re:I'm a regular Ufie, and I'm speachless.
on
Even Grues Get Full
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I think his rating of the book, 8/10 - funny, and the meaning and context of his message makes it fairly clear that this reveiw is a parody or sarcastic.
I mean a comment like "[the title] is a little bit funny. But putting [the title] on the back cover AND on the title page is overkill." is hopefully meant as a joke. I think.
pointing out that in Maryland (where at least the caller resided) it is illegal not to inform both (or all) parties about the recording.... I am sure that the laws of other states (and countries) are different.
Good point, which is why I said for anything more specific, see a lawyer. The federal law follows the rules I outlined above.
The US federal law permits recording by either side if they consent to it, such as me recording my home phone calls, or my employer recording phone calls if they have notified me as part of employement. 17 USC 119.
Section 2511 (2)(d)It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for a person not
acting under color of law to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic
communication where such person is a party to the communication or
where one of the parties to the communication has given prior
consent to such interception
Among other limitations in that section, employers may record employee's calls and network traffic, but may not listen to personal conversations after realizing it's personal. (Unless the employees agreed to a policy of no personal calls or no online chat, giving the business more power.)
As always, a state law may further restrict your rights under law. If you are genuinely concerned, spend thirty bucks and talk with a lawyer for a half hour. Personally, if I recorded somebody on the phone and they sued me on a stricter state law, I would tell the court that I was following the federal law of which I was aware, that I was not aware of the state law, then appeal to common sense abilities like being able to record conversations to refer to it later. I'd argue on the common-sense logic of recording [or printing, if electronic] driving directions without telling them that I'm doing it, or making sure that if a telemarketer calls me under the state or federal DNC laws that I can enforce my rights. Forbidding me to record information directed to me can cause actual monetary damages (not finding a customer's home, for instance) or prevent me from defending my rights (telemarketers could deny calling me).
Finally, I would have to ask -- Does your local 911 center ask you before recording your call?
How is it different from normal archives like web history lists, cookies, or logs of chat rooms(or IM)[?] Is it a type of log or a wire tap[?]... Is it legal to turn it on, without informing the other party or anyone involved in the conversations (if you are doing it to spy on a chat-addicted mate)?
The basic idea behind wiretap and evesdropping laws are:
Alice and Bob are talking. If Alice wants to record the conversation, then she is allowed to. She doesn't need to tell Bob, although it is usually considered polite. [That is why you can record your own phone calls without telling the other side.]
Eve walks by them and begins listening. Anything Eve hears at first is a little bit questionable. The longer she listens without making herself known, the worse her legal position is. Eve interrupts and says "Hey, you two are having an interesting chat. Can I record it?" If they agree then that is not wiretap/evesdropping. If they don't agree and she records anyway, or if she doesn't ask before making a recording, that is illigal.
Online chat rooms don't have 2 talkers, but a bunch of them. Anyone in the chat room can record the chat, since they're participants. The system can log it, since that's part of their MOTD.
Their lawyers probably told them the minor flaw in the lawsuit:
They forget Mac users. And all the other flavors of unix that have CD-player programs. And the Gnu HURD. And Be, our dearly departed multimedia OS. And the CD players that have a 'play' button on the front that you can use to bypass the computer entirely...
... AND if their testers missed testing for well-documented 'features' like this, it's probably so bug ridden that they'll be sued out of existance if they claim that it actually protects the content.
I guess that's why they took a step back and said "uh, we'll be lenient in this case, and not sue to keep us out of bankruptcy and from looking stupid, er keep the STUDENT out of bankruptcy, and make him look smart. Yeah, that's it.... For the good of the criminal. Okay, let's start over. We don't want the STUDENT to go bankrupt. Not that WE would go bankrupt, if we took it to court, but the STUDENT. And we want the STUDENT to not look stupid. Because the STUDENT is supposed to be smart. Not that we're not smart, or anything. Our staff is smart. Our testing team managed to figure out the windows install procedure, after only two months! It takes IT people years to get MSCE certified."
OR MAYBE -- the entire programming staff said "You sue the student and we'll quit since we want to be employable. And you will NEVER be able to hire another programmer again."
I looked at your links, and saw that those were quotes were quotes from further (unlisted) sources.
While I agree that too many high-school grads don't understand basic tenants of science, a survey of 25 students standing in line at one school is hardly a representative sample.
Similarly, from their page "More than half of the US population doesn't know that the earth orbits the sun or how scientists figured out that it does. Almost no one can explain what the phrase "orbits the sun" even means. Worse still, few can distinguish between an evidence-based explanation of how the physical world works and an opinion-based one." is not presented with a source of evidence. How was the survey done? If they called people, when did they call? Who did they talk to? If they called homes in the morning and early afternoon of weekdays, then of course they're not going to get answers from intellegent people -- they're all at work or school.
I think that the information you posted just gives anecdotal evidence to the final claim made in the above quote: you seem to be basing your comments on an opinion-based statement rather than actual data.
[T]he digital divide aspect is something that frankly is more of an example of lack of willpower and effort than anything else.... Persistence and hard work allowed for us to get a C-64 and little TV all from used bins... What are we teaching 6 year olds with a system that "bridges the digital divide" in a decade that you can buy $150 machines that are THOUSANDS of times more powerful than what my old man supplied for me and my brother?
Indeed, but what are we teaching them about money management when the state is expecting a $1.7 billion deficit, and buy 130,000 brand new, laptop computers? Laptops are usually 2 to 4 times more expensive than desktops (depending on what you get), are more prone to breaking, and cannot be replaced or upgraded in a piecemeal fashon. I think you'll agree with my earlier point, that making computers available to the students is the way to go (maybe a 15:1 ratio). With the tools available they can use them extensively if they choose, or sipmly get the skills required by the school. Buying at a 1:1 ratio is a *huge* waste of money in my view.
You had a good lesson of "Exercise willpower and effort, save up, and buy what you can afford." These students are getting the lesson "Don't worry about our existing third-of-a-billion dollar debt, or the fact that our budget is massivly over-spent and we're going to sextuple(!) our debt next year. Abandon your willpower, just go get [fragile] laptop computers with more power than we'll ever need or use."
The sad part is, the waste of money might boost their popularity rating since it looks like they're trying to support education.
I agree with what you say about the digital divide. While others in the class were learning how to type on the macs, one of my friends and I replaced the little pointy mouse fingers graphics with obscene hand gesture graphics.
The digital divide is a real problem, and must be addressed. But I don't think this is the way to go.
My wife is a teacher, my sister-in-law works in an elemetary school computer lab, and many of my neices and nephews are in elementary and jr high schools. (That's my source of info on this post.)
Where I live, each elementry and jr. high has computer labs, and in elementary school, each class spends several hours there each week. jr high has a required class learning various skills on computers. They are given strictly monitored e-mail accounts (cannot send or recieve without being filtered and possibly human read), and have access to the computer labs for a little while before and after school. I think this is a better solution than getting laptops for every kid.
Since they've implemented this computer program, my wife has noticed increased quality of the reports and research that students are able to do, and my sister has said that they occasionaly need to send kids home from the lab. Not for breaking the rules, but because they've spent so long surfing the web looking for facts to put into their homework, and reading about their interests.
I've had a lot of experience with laptops at home, college, and work. Physically, these things would need to be:
rugged enough to fall from a desk or fall out of a backpack
resistant to water and assorted liquids (everything from spilled paint to blood and vomit)
able to have a bunch of textbooks stacked on them
impervious to crayon and pencil shavings, and mechanical pencil lead fragments
No fan vents that kids can hear cool noises when they stick a pencil in
Screens that aren't damaged when they are twisted and poked at "to make cool colors"
CD/DVD trays that can handle lots of abuse while the tray is out, or slot-load drives that can handle paperclips being inserted.
Able to take the abuse of a bully who is going to break somebody's computer just because they can.
There aren't many machines that are that durable. Since these will be networked machines, they will technically need to have:
very tight restrictions and filtering that prevents the flow of viruses, yet loose enough to fill federal regulations.
brilliant admins who can isolate what machine is spewing the newest worm through the ether and infecting all 500 other machines in the school, preventing not only student access, but locking teachers and administrators out of their grading and administration apps.
Lockdown controls strong enough to prevent installation the trendiest warez. ("hey, point your infrared over here!")
Configurable for the students (a stated goal) but still maintainable by the admins. This would be made worse if they can take the things home: nothing would stop a kid from formatting the box and installing [insert OS here]
Enough teacher control to prevent kids from playing their favorite games (or surfing the web, etc.) when they should be learning the basics of algebra, or spelling and grammar.
That, too, would be an interesting feat.
Computers in a computer lab, I say that is great: Machines are never outside of supervision, physical and programatic controls can be enforced, and most importanly, the machines don't distract while forcing facts into their heads. Computers in every student's backpack, or networked and on every desk? I'd quit my job as an admin. If I had to have the laptops and teach kids with ADD or ADHD, I'd probably find a way to put
anyone can say that they are from any IP address. By publishing a set of IP addresses that can be used to send Spam from within a domain, this "solution" simply hands spammers the tools they need to make their spam appear more authentic.
No, not really. The address given in the recieved: field of the headers is added by the mail daemon based on the ip connection to the mail server, and cannot easily be forged. Even if it were forged by adding several fake values, at some point it would have to go through a legitimate server.
Checking each recieved: field for validity *would* work, since eventually you would hit somebody who either a) doesn't publish a list and is therefore suspected of being spam, or b) doesn't exist on the publish list and is therefore known to be using a spoofed address.
The only downside I could imagine is the difficulty of messages going through any of the private internet ranges (10/8, 172.16/12, and 192.168/16) that cannot easily be tracked (although the paper covers it).
I think this is a great method, although it would probably make the spammers turn to anonymous remailers.
I wonder what the people skewering SCO would say if, for instance, it turned out that Windows XP contained 200 lines of GPL'ed code.
The FSF deals with this sort of violations regularly, as posted in many places in the FSF website and other places, (see earlier story on linksys routers)
FSF legal reps have said "Our number one goal in any GPL violation
case is to get proper and full compliance with the license; everything
else is secondary." And it seems that they don't care if the action is to remove the GPL'ed code or to move to the GPL license, since either one brings them into compliance. If Microsoft were in violation on some point, the compliance would still be one of two things: remove infringing code, or put the code under GPL.
I trust that Microsoft would choose the first option. 200 lines of code, probably even a million lines of code, could be easily dealt with by a company that makes more in annual profit than most companies see in total annual cash flow.
Slashdot Mirror
Other than the infidels.org site you presented, all other descriptions of the two that I have seen, they are synonymous.
And I agree with you and have done so with others in the past: it would be good if there were more real argument and debate on /. as opposed to just contradiction. [Homage to Monty Python goes here.]
frob
"Begging the question" aka "circular reasoning", in argument, means that you assume that a statement which depends on the conclusion is true, and you use it as proof of your argument.
My rhetorical argument was based entirely on the premise that software engineers must bear responsibility for the errors they introduce, and therefore they are at fault for the errors. The belief that software engineers are responsible implies that they are at fault, therefore the conclusion implies the premise. The logic is falicious, and therefore requires additional verification that the premise is indeed true. If the premise can be shwon to be true through other means, only then can it be validly used in circular reasoning, and even then, it is only generally permitted for contradictory proofs.
frob
According to the engineer, the actual thinking for the two communications problems was: "Lets just make the header bigger by one byte for these 'extensions', we'll go in and add new commands for them later", but he never considered that that next byte may be legitimate data in the shorter command since it was to be temporary. The other was "Adding a new response code will require a full rebuild, but this is just a small test for debugging. We'll just prepend a number to one of the other failure codes, just for testing." Both 'temporary' solutions were left in place, and duplicated by a few interns or when they added a few more 'extensions'; his practice of using specific return codes has evolved to a selection of 4 possible return styles. All this because he wanted to avoid a few minutes of compile time!
In this case, it is entirely contained within the flash memory shipped to customers, so we could easily fix it and declare all old versions depricated -- but not until correcting every piece of software, which will take a lot of time.
For now it has evolved into something of a tribute to ad-hoc design: we have either [command][data][crc] or [command][ext][data][crc] where the values in [[ext][data]] is occasionally valid [data] for the basic command, leading to ambiguity: Is it the basic command with 1 or 2 as the first byte, or the extended command? For responses, we have a choice of [command][status] or [command][#][status] or [command][ext][status] or [command][ext][#][status], where [#] is the function-specific error code being returned. The latter is easier to check for than the former, but both are a continual source of flaws.
frob
Most recently I've been tracking down an error in our system. After nearly a month of trying various things, I found the problem of an error. In this case, two years ago the hardaware engineer building the FPGA and DSP programs didn't bother to fix the [relatively simple] design problem. Rather than give all communications the same format, a few commands differ substantially from all others (different responses in certain circumstances, for example).
The problem made it into the PC software that interfaces with the board. The problem is documented in several [maybe 20?] bugs of the software that works between the PC and the external device. The problem is documented in at least 50 bugs in a port of that PC software. It has been in production for several years, and implemented by external companies (which I feal sorry for, due to the complexity of the communications bug).
Now we're working on a completely new FPGA/DSP board to replace the earlier board. Design changes prevent us from directly implementing the bug in the new design, although otherwise the communication protocols are the same. Implementing the same malformed communications will mean breaking the simple straightforward design and carefully implementing a set of 'design exceptions' (read: 'bugs').
It would have taken one engineer an hour or so to fix this thing when they first saw it. It would have taken both teams a few days to fix it when writing the PC to DSP interface (~1 FTE month). It would have taken a few weeks to fix it when writing the port, requiring changes to the PC software and the DSP (~1 FTE year). If we choose to fix the error now, it will probably result 2+ FTE years of work to just fix everything, and more time for regression testing every old peice of software for this one bug. If we choose to leave it in, we will devote at least that much time in evaluating, implementing, and testing the old errors. Not to mention the continued maintenence work when the eventual bugs are found in the new board.
Now we're forced with a tough financial decision: do we spend a month or more carefully re-creating and testing the 'design exceptions', (probably 3-5 FTE years in total) or do we do it 'the right way' and break both our own and our customers' software? (again, several FTE years, but potentially loosing faith with the customers.)
This particular bug could have been prevented by about $50 of work. It has now cost the company tens of thousands of dollars, and will probably cost a few hundred thousand before all is said and done.
Now, lets throw some financial ethics into the $50 --> $5,000 --> $50,000 --> $500,000+ problem: The engineer was in a hurry to fix the problem before a company imposed deadline. Is that engineer responsible for the enormous financial cost? If so, how much? If not, why not? It can be argued that his negligence cause a half-million dollars in damages. It can be argued that the engineer was responsible for $50 but the team was responsible for allowing it to grow. It can be argued that this is a regular business cost due to falibility of engineers' designs.
This begs the question:
How responsible are any of us for the errors we introduce?
frob
The actual letter is a ceace-and-desist, is interesting. The letter states:
The 'law' being broken is a state law that simply says that University of California's names or any abbreviation of the names, are owned by the state and cannot be used except when used to describe the school as an employer or describing academic experiences.Now that isn't a trademark law (as so many have claimed, since UCSD is not trademarked according to USPTO.gov), but it could easily be fought in terms of trademark laws (since they are obviously trying to establish a trademark through state law), or with Anti-SLAPP laws (they are using the letters in connection with their academic experiences), or on fair use and freedom of speech laws.
My guess is that if they fought it in court, they could probably get the law thrown out as being in violation of various laws or even on constitutional grounds.
frob
frob
I'm reminded of a scene that I saw a while ago in a magazine: an American standing on a bullet-train in Japan. There were a bunch of heads from the native japanese population, and an American sticking out above the crowd from his chest up, and hunching over slightly to fit in the train.
I'd love to get my hands on a copy of that study, and read it very carefully.
frob
[wait for you to finish reading]
That's what you agreed to. Does it say that you can't mention your tasks, or just that you can't disclose your ideas? Does it say that you cannot discuss ANY work done with the company with ANYBODY who isn't under NDA, or does it have provisions for discussing your work with people not under NDA under a 'need to know' basis? Does it have a time limit? [If not specified, courts have ruled that non-compete agreements expire after a reasonable time, such as 2 or 3 years. Talk to a lawyer and see if it applies in your case for an NDA.] Does it have limitations to 'core business practices' not being disclosed? Did you work as a contractor for an accounting company or in another strictly-regulated field?
Nolo has a good summary of the five key elements in an NDA
Depending on your answers, you might be limited to responses to "Improved database response time by 270%" or you might be able to give good juicy details. If you were working on an external project, you are ethically bound (and possibly legally bound, in some cases) to keep your clients private unless you received permission to talk about them.
You should respect your agreements, and that implies that you should have been very careful about what you agree too. (Did you just sign the NDA's without thought?)
story time
My current company gave me an NDA, release of ideas, and non-compete agreement to sign as terms of employment. As normal, I didn't want to sign it and I visited a lawyer. (except this time he was my friend who was finishing law school and preparing for the bar exam.) He read through it with me, we crossed out about half of the NDA, nearly all of the assignment of ideas agreement, and a few lines of the non-compete agreement. We added an addendum with exceptions for all three, including a huge list of other projects that I have worked on or might have interest in working on. We added an exception for incidental use of company equipment and resources for personal projects.
When the employer saw it, he balked. I talked him through the reasoning for just about everything. The company probably doesn't want to own everything I produce, I argued, because there is [my now lawyer friend told me about it, but I can't find it online] a court case where a disgrundled employee produced human waste and distributed it to the customers as an example of company products. The company fired him and sued, the employee defended their case based on their draconian employment agreements, and the eventaully company settled the lawsuit for a bunch of money, rather than owing the employee a lot more money for wrongful termination and back pay.
After giving that example, my current boss agreed that some of the agreement was 'never going to be enforced that way', but he allowed me to cross off nearly all the items.
Three jobs ago [dot-com era] after going between their lawyers and my lawyers a few times, the company just gave up. In the end we agreed that I would simply not disclose any trade secrets, and no confidential information until three years after termination.
Before leaving a job, I'd work extra hard for the last few weeks. When a new potential employer calls to ask about past job performance, your boss will likely give them a good review of you [like 'He has been finishing projects ahead of schedule.'], rather than the 'legal requirement' version [such as 'he works here and was hired on @date@, and he does his work.']
But you can burn your bridges if you want to...
frob
But then I would return the questions back to the CEO: Once you master the markets, why are you abandoning them? Why does IE still have linear browsing, linear back and forward buttons? Why does IE have so many unfixed bugs, and why isn't it fully W3C compliant? Why do all the Office apps change format with every edition, into something that prior editions cannot read? Why do my new Access databases not work with my old databases, and why does it ask to convert them when opened with the newer versions? Why don't any of the Office apps generate good HTML or XHTML or XML code? Why can't you copy certain complex pages from IE and paste them into Word without Word crashing?
The answer: Once you've made the other systems irrelevent, such as the comment about developers saying "How do we port it to that other operating system -- what was it -- Linux?" when Microsoft gets there, they abandon innovation.
And that, Mr. Balmer, is Microsoft's biggest problem.
frob
I'll focus on the network cache consistancy problem since that's the one I've had problems with. I don't know about the general speed issue (what speed are you referring to? throughput? Resource availablility? Master Browser updates? connection speed and concurrency under a heavy user load? ) I have experienced all kinds of problems with a highly volitile network, with programmers running multiple OS's inside of virtual machines. These virtual OS's need to be frequently restarted, meaning the network is constantly gaining and droping objects.
A prime example of Microsoft's bad cache coherency problem is that if an object is deleted or removed from the network, the information can take over an hour to propogate through the entire network. The worst case isn't nearly as bad in the pure-Samba implementation, but the difficulty remains. This failure means that newly added resources aren't immediately visible on the network, or recently removed resources take a long time to be removed, and show up as errors when you try to access them. Or the object can be visible on some machines, but not available on others.
When there is a high level of volitility on the network (machines being frequently rebooted or shut down, network re-wiring, etc.) this can really plague any SMB or CIFS network, but is especially hard on Windows boxes, and more so the older your Windows implementation. Problems are exacerbated if either the LMB or LMB-backup system is the one going back up and down, because the Windows boxes will respond less-quickly to the problem; this results in further instability for the SMB network, since critical nodes are not available, propogate incorrect data, and take longer to reconfigure.
As you mentioned, the Samba boxes are faster than the Windows boxes, but not as big of a difference as you experience. You said you have "a LAN full of Win2000/XP boxes", which probably means they are on most or all of the time. Is it unreasonable to assume that the author has a more volitle network, or is otherwise more prone to speed impairment issues?
frob
If a program is complex enough to act as an Internet server (file sharing, network printing, etc.) then it is going to have security bugs. No OS is immune. If an Internet client program has more than the most basic of features (like a text-based FTP) then it is going to have security bugs. Even text-based FTP programs have had some interesting bugs, like being able to download programs with a filename of a (windows) system device, causing windows to crash.
The security industry right now says you have an ethical duty contact the company and work with them to get it fixed. If the company either refuses to fix it or delays fixing it, you have an ethical duty to help other consumers to go public with the bug. The most important goal is to inform other users while minimizing chances of attack. If the supplier is willing to help, they should have the opportunity to do so.frob
You can still keep the old number if you move cross country, The phone is just considered based in the old area code, and roaming may apply. If you live in area code 808 and you moved from and keep the 201 area code, it's only a local call to people in the 201 area code.
After a little bit of industry shakeup, I expect to see it more like traditional phone lines. In fact, I don't think it will take too long for cell phone order forms to change from Select an overpriced plan to looking like this:
- Select options
- Minutes:
- [] Unmetered use ($)
- [] pay-per-use nationwide ($ per minute)
- [] pay-per-use local ($ per minute for local, $ per minute long distance)
- [] n minutes peak, m minutes off-peak ($)
...- Number of phones on plan: ___ ($ for first phone, $ each additional)
- Additional options:
- [] feature 1 ($)
- [] feature 2 ($)
- [] feature 3 ($ per phone)
- [] feature 4 ($ per minute)
...- [] featuren n
- Total: $
- [] 6-month contract (save $$)
- [] 1-year contract (save $$)
Maybe it will take a year or two before that becomes the norm, but it is going to happen. When it does, the companies will need to start competing, rather than just saying "Our network is bigger, join us". I will, and probably a lot of us, will be happier with cell phone service.frob
I mean a comment like "[the title] is a little bit funny. But putting [the title] on the back cover AND on the title page is overkill." is hopefully meant as a joke. I think.
frob
The US federal law permits recording by either side if they consent to it, such as me recording my home phone calls, or my employer recording phone calls if they have notified me as part of employement. 17 USC 119.
Among other limitations in that section, employers may record employee's calls and network traffic, but may not listen to personal conversations after realizing it's personal. (Unless the employees agreed to a policy of no personal calls or no online chat, giving the business more power.)As always, a state law may further restrict your rights under law. If you are genuinely concerned, spend thirty bucks and talk with a lawyer for a half hour. Personally, if I recorded somebody on the phone and they sued me on a stricter state law, I would tell the court that I was following the federal law of which I was aware, that I was not aware of the state law, then appeal to common sense abilities like being able to record conversations to refer to it later. I'd argue on the common-sense logic of recording [or printing, if electronic] driving directions without telling them that I'm doing it, or making sure that if a telemarketer calls me under the state or federal DNC laws that I can enforce my rights. Forbidding me to record information directed to me can cause actual monetary damages (not finding a customer's home, for instance) or prevent me from defending my rights (telemarketers could deny calling me).
Finally, I would have to ask -- Does your local 911 center ask you before recording your call?
frob
Alice and Bob are talking. If Alice wants to record the conversation, then she is allowed to. She doesn't need to tell Bob, although it is usually considered polite. [That is why you can record your own phone calls without telling the other side.]
Eve walks by them and begins listening. Anything Eve hears at first is a little bit questionable. The longer she listens without making herself known, the worse her legal position is. Eve interrupts and says "Hey, you two are having an interesting chat. Can I record it?" If they agree then that is not wiretap/evesdropping. If they don't agree and she records anyway, or if she doesn't ask before making a recording, that is illigal.
Online chat rooms don't have 2 talkers, but a bunch of them. Anyone in the chat room can record the chat, since they're participants. The system can log it, since that's part of their MOTD.
Beyond that, see a lawyer.
frob
Their lawyers probably told them the minor flaw in the lawsuit:
They forget Mac users. And all the other flavors of unix that have CD-player programs. And the Gnu HURD. And Be, our dearly departed multimedia OS. And the CD players that have a 'play' button on the front that you can use to bypass the computer entirely...
... AND if their testers missed testing for well-documented 'features' like this, it's probably so bug ridden that they'll be sued out of existance if they claim that it actually protects the content.
I guess that's why they took a step back and said "uh, we'll be lenient in this case, and not sue to keep us out of bankruptcy and from looking stupid, er keep the STUDENT out of bankruptcy, and make him look smart. Yeah, that's it.... For the good of the criminal. Okay, let's start over. We don't want the STUDENT to go bankrupt. Not that WE would go bankrupt, if we took it to court, but the STUDENT. And we want the STUDENT to not look stupid. Because the STUDENT is supposed to be smart. Not that we're not smart, or anything. Our staff is smart. Our testing team managed to figure out the windows install procedure, after only two months! It takes IT people years to get MSCE certified."
OR MAYBE -- the entire programming staff said "You sue the student and we'll quit since we want to be employable. And you will NEVER be able to hire another programmer again."
Just some thoughts...
frob
While I agree that too many high-school grads don't understand basic tenants of science, a survey of 25 students standing in line at one school is hardly a representative sample.
Similarly, from their page "More than half of the US population doesn't know that the earth orbits the sun or how scientists figured out that it does. Almost no one can explain what the phrase "orbits the sun" even means. Worse still, few can distinguish between an evidence-based explanation of how the physical world works and an opinion-based one." is not presented with a source of evidence. How was the survey done? If they called people, when did they call? Who did they talk to? If they called homes in the morning and early afternoon of weekdays, then of course they're not going to get answers from intellegent people -- they're all at work or school.
I think that the information you posted just gives anecdotal evidence to the final claim made in the above quote: you seem to be basing your comments on an opinion-based statement rather than actual data.
frob
You had a good lesson of "Exercise willpower and effort, save up, and buy what you can afford." These students are getting the lesson "Don't worry about our existing third-of-a-billion dollar debt, or the fact that our budget is massivly over-spent and we're going to sextuple(!) our debt next year. Abandon your willpower, just go get [fragile] laptop computers with more power than we'll ever need or use."
The sad part is, the waste of money might boost their popularity rating since it looks like they're trying to support education.
frob
The digital divide is a real problem, and must be addressed. But I don't think this is the way to go.
My wife is a teacher, my sister-in-law works in an elemetary school computer lab, and many of my neices and nephews are in elementary and jr high schools. (That's my source of info on this post.)
Where I live, each elementry and jr. high has computer labs, and in elementary school, each class spends several hours there each week. jr high has a required class learning various skills on computers. They are given strictly monitored e-mail accounts (cannot send or recieve without being filtered and possibly human read), and have access to the computer labs for a little while before and after school. I think this is a better solution than getting laptops for every kid.
Since they've implemented this computer program, my wife has noticed increased quality of the reports and research that students are able to do, and my sister has said that they occasionaly need to send kids home from the lab. Not for breaking the rules, but because they've spent so long surfing the web looking for facts to put into their homework, and reading about their interests.
I've had a lot of experience with laptops at home, college, and work. Physically, these things would need to be:
- rugged enough to fall from a desk or fall out of a backpack
- resistant to water and assorted liquids (everything from spilled paint to blood and vomit)
- able to have a bunch of textbooks stacked on them
- impervious to crayon and pencil shavings, and mechanical pencil lead fragments
- No fan vents that kids can hear cool noises when they stick a pencil in
- Screens that aren't damaged when they are twisted and poked at "to make cool colors"
- CD/DVD trays that can handle lots of abuse while the tray is out, or slot-load drives that can handle paperclips being inserted.
- Able to take the abuse of a bully who is going to break somebody's computer just because they can.
There aren't many machines that are that durable. Since these will be networked machines, they will technically need to have:- very tight restrictions and filtering that prevents the flow of viruses, yet loose enough to fill federal regulations.
- brilliant admins who can isolate what machine is spewing the newest worm through the ether and infecting all 500 other machines in the school, preventing not only student access, but locking teachers and administrators out of their grading and administration apps.
- Lockdown controls strong enough to prevent installation the trendiest warez. ("hey, point your infrared over here!")
- Configurable for the students (a stated goal) but still maintainable by the admins. This would be made worse if they can take the things home: nothing would stop a kid from formatting the box and installing [insert OS here]
- Enough teacher control to prevent kids from playing their favorite games (or surfing the web, etc.) when they should be learning the basics of algebra, or spelling and grammar.
That, too, would be an interesting feat.Computers in a computer lab, I say that is great: Machines are never outside of supervision, physical and programatic controls can be enforced, and most importanly, the machines don't distract while forcing facts into their heads. Computers in every student's backpack, or networked and on every desk? I'd quit my job as an admin. If I had to have the laptops and teach kids with ADD or ADHD, I'd probably find a way to put
frob
The only downside I could imagine is the difficulty of messages going through any of the private internet ranges (10/8, 172.16/12, and 192.168/16) that cannot easily be tracked (although the paper covers it).
I think this is a great method, although it would probably make the spammers turn to anonymous remailers.
FSF legal reps have said "Our number one goal in any GPL violation case is to get proper and full compliance with the license; everything else is secondary." And it seems that they don't care if the action is to remove the GPL'ed code or to move to the GPL license, since either one brings them into compliance. If Microsoft were in violation on some point, the compliance would still be one of two things: remove infringing code, or put the code under GPL.
I trust that Microsoft would choose the first option. 200 lines of code, probably even a million lines of code, could be easily dealt with by a company that makes more in annual profit than most companies see in total annual cash flow.
frob