I just had the same discussion with my girlfriend. The sentencing is ridiculously thought out, although I can see the idea of a longer (one or two years)jail sentence for a repeat or premeditated offender. Someone doing a DOS as part of a business strategy for example.
I'm probably a bit stiffer about it than you though. I don't think it's a bad idea to make it a criminal offense. I think ranging from a stiff fine to maybe a few days or weeks in jail might be a good idea, to make the activity something kids are genuinely afraid to to do. But for your average hacker, a couple weeks or even days in jail is already a pretty terrifying concept. The same thing goes for the idea of having a criminal record.
Doesn't it seem like the sherriff of nottingham is running the US (and our laptop the UK) these days?
It's your duty as a member of a democracy to inform yourself. Do some reading. We're talking about spending 5-20 hours or so to determine your country's (and since the US had such a large global footprint, to some extent the world's) outcome.
You're never going to find a candidate that you agree with completely, so try to decide what issues are most important to you, and evaluate the candidate's based on those criteria.
Since we are unfortunate enough to live in a country where we generally have only two choices for any particular post, an efficient algorithm presents itself: First go www.opensecrets.org, and look up the incumbents voting record. For interest you might want to look at his campain funding record as well. Does he/she seem to vote in the interest of his/her constituents? or does he/she vote against the constituents in favor of his/her fundres? How does his/her voting record jibe with what you would have voted? This process should kill 2 or 3 hours.
Then look at the consitutents web page and see what they are promising. Does it 1) match what you are looking for, focusing on your highest priorities? and 2) does it match with how that candidate is actually voting?
Once you know this, you just have to look at the opponent's web page and see what they are promising, and try to make an estimate of how much they mean what they say. (good luck with that one). You are always taking a chance when voting for a non-incumbant, but usually the incumbants are such bastards it's worth taking the chance. That's what makes opensecrets so useful.
If you do this much, you will be better informed than the average voter, and will only have spent one full workday per voting cycle (2 years!) to fulfill your duties as a citizen. If you think that's too much to ask, well, that makes me sad and angry, and it's my personal opinion that people who are unwilling to accept such a small amount of responsibility are the most harmful eroders of democracy.
Now the above post is pretty politically neutral, and just my opinion on how to be a good citizen. I'm going to present a more inflamatory algorithm that I nonethless believe in quite strongly, but it's a little off topic to the question.
First, never vote Republican. The current Republican administration embraces corruption, deceit and unacountability. If you can avoid voting democrat, then do so. The 2 party system is incredibly harmful and really reduces the quality and breadth of political choice and debate in the United States. Eliminating parties would be nice but a couple more additional parties would be an improvement, and a more realistic scenario. Even if your candidate doesn't win, you're improving the odds for third party candidates in the next election, and improving the odds that a third party candidate will be able to participate in debates. If you don't have a sane third party choice, then you're probably stuck with the Dems for now. Of course exceptions to these rules exist, but in lieu of real research the above algorithm will probably serve you well.
Even though the OP's workplaces and tasks have not been terribly challenging or technical, this doesn't have to slow down your progress as a programmer.
As the parent says, find tasks at work that can be automated, that will give you a certain amount of training. If you really want to improve your skills, shop around for books or websites that discuss programming techniques and strategies you are interested in, which you think would make you a better programmer, and seek to apply these techniques to problems that you have to work on, including those assigned to you. When programming you usually have a million different ways you can solve any problem. If your goal is to get the programming task finished as quickly as possible, you wind up using the same toolbox for all problems. If you have the time though, study on your own, and try to apply what you learn to your work problems.
I studied physics and later computational physics. I had a few programming classes, but nothing too terribly sophisticated. I'm still working in my field, and I have purchased most of the 'C++ in depth' series of books (template metaprogramming, exceptional c++, c++ coding standards, etc). When I'm reading these books, or browsing programming websites or reading c++ newsgroups, I look out for ideas and strategies that might pertain to problems I am currently tackling, or will soon be tackling. Sometimes I deliberately research new strategies for a particular problem becuase I know my current toolbase isn't ideal for the task. I'm a much stronger programmer than I was last year thanks to to this, but I will adimit that there is a small performance penalty. On the other hand, at some point you get a return on that investment, especially if you try to learn things that will benefit you or your code down the line.
When faced with a task, including boilerplate stuff that I've done a hundred times before, if I have the time I try to think of several ways of handling the proble, analyse the best way and implement that. If I can think of new or more interesting approach that lets me develop my skills and doesn't penalize my coding then I choose that method.
This is a no brainer in my book, but apparently not in everyones. Making it difficult or illegal to discuss racisim certainly doesn't remove it.
The best strategy is to create an environment where being a racist is 'uncool' (for lack of a better word). This is one arena where the rest of world can, I think, learn quite a bit from the United States. Although the U.S. still has a huge racial problem, it has improved vastly since 1950. Maybe it's getting worse again under the new administration, I don't know. Anyone still in the U.S. have a comment about that?
In the U.S. you can spout whatever racial crap you want to. Free speech isn't attacked. Rather, the laws address concrete areas where racism directly affects minorities. If you are at home with your buddies, or writing a blog, you can call blacks niggers and the law won't do anything about it. Do it in the workplace, where it could bother a co-worker though, and bam, down comes the stick. Not a bad strategy.
Say somone writes a blog where they critisize the administration for censoring racist blogs. It wouldn't be outside of the realm of possiblity for this to be taken down for being pro-racist as well.
I think the best example of censorship failing is modern Germany, where right wing, pseudo neo-nazism http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spie gel/0,1518,357628,00.html (it isn't as bad as it sounds, but it's creepy enough) is getting trendier in Germany. It's become cool because it's anti establishment. As soon as you start censoring something, a large population is going to get curious about it. If racism is really an inferior point of view (and I believe it is), then it will lose out in the marketplace of ideas.
It's like Noam Chomsky says, freedom of speech means freedom to say things we don't like to hear. Even Stalin gave people the freedom to say things he liked to hear. It's our tolerance for unpleasant ideas that measures the degree to which we have freedom of speech.
Your post, and many of the comments along this line, completely ignore the possibility that the guys decision making might have been motivated by something other than money. My girlfriend's dad could make a lot more money by selling his farm than he will by milking the cows every morning at six, and every evening at six, for the rest of his life... but the guy really likes his work. Maybe the author's just dont want to lose control of their creation.
When I made the comment i did, i didn't count killing in war, I guess just out of convention. But I take no exception to doing so.
I did meet one guy I'm pretty sure have killed someone in Vietname, while I lived in Valdez Alaska. It was really interesting. People in Valdez drive to Anchorage pretty often to go shopping or what not. For some time people would come back to town and say something like 'dude, I saw a naked guy walking along the road from Glenallen. He was carrying a cart made out of two trees and a barrel (small trees). The guy walked like that all the way form Glenallen to Valdez (about 200 km). Who knows where he started from.
When he got to Valdez he was wearing clothes. He took his barrel cart around town and cleaned up the streets and parking lots. When he did the parking lot of the restaurant I was working at, I asked him a few questions. I asked what he was doing, and he said he was trying to make up for things he did in Vietnam. I swear to god I'm not making this up. I used to have a picture of the guy, but I lost it in an apartment fire. I asked him if he wanted any money since I would have had to clean that lot up if he didn't. He said he wouldn't take payment for the work he did, but he would accept gifts. He was really quiet and polite, but didn't talk beyond answering whatever questions you posed. When I think back about it, it's incredible how well he avoided conversation without ever being rude or refusing to talk about something. Some questions he just gave evasive answers, but never evasive enough you were motivated to chase him down on something. Then one day he walked away again. I never got any reports about him past glenallen, so I guess he headed somewhere in the Yukon.
Not that any of this has anything to do with your post (-1 offtopic), but I thought you might find it interesting.
And by the way, if you think the previous sentence lacked supporting evidence, get used to it, because that's the level of research that is found (or not found) throughout Why Software Sucks.
That's a great line.
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I'm starting to think that the only solution is to abolish copyright completely - any copyright model, no matter how reasonably seeming, will inevitably creep towards draconic. "Just say no to copyright" - you may quote me on that.
I'm not going to argue whether any copyright concept should be abolished, that's a long and different debate. I just want to argue with your reasoning here, which crops up all too often.
Something 'inevitably' drifting to draconian doesn't mean it is preferable to do away with it all together. It just means that you have to a system in place to protect against that occuring. The founders of the constitution attemped to do this by placing a system of checks and balances in place, but sane political analyses shows they were unsuccessful, and some modfications are needed.
Same thing with copyright. Severe modifications are needed, I'll grant you. Maybe doing away with it alltogether is prefereable, but I personally kind of doubt that. It's pretty tough to create any kind of a security system (in comptuers, in national or emotional security, whatever) that will work against any assault. People are clever and will always try to find a way to twist a system to their advantage. What's needed is a populace that's alert and motivated enough to guard against this. Tough sure, but that's life.
Actually, if we go back to the start of this conversation (fitness of the death penalty), the real question is, if 95% won't reoffend, clearly we should execute all of them? It's worth killing 95 guys who won't ever be a threat to get rid of the five who will?
I'm amazed that all you people know enough killers to be able to make a statistical conclusion like "most people who kill have serious problems", or "plenty of these murderers feel justified in their actions".
I think I've maybe met 2 people who killed people. One felt guilty (and should) and one claimed not to (and probably was correct in not feeling guilty, long story). And I always thought I knew a hell of a lot of fucked up people. But clearly the slashdot crowd routinely socializes with large numbers of killers.
Unless of course they are pulling their opinions out of their ass or based on what they see in movies and on the TV (always fantastic sources of unbiased, unfiltered, statistically representative sources of information!)...
Wow, it's such a stupid post I have to comment on it. There is so much room for curbing our waste and emissions without impacting nanotechnology research at all... Nanotech research isn't producing huge amounts of greenhouse gasses... thankfully it's modded to 0
Actually, and I've done a longer post on this so please read it if you are interested, the reason quantum teleportation is called teleportation is becuase the process occurs faster than the speed of light. It occurs instantaneously, which is why Einstein referred to is as "spooky action at a distance".
If I had to guess at what's happening in this particular experiment, you take an atom, excite it, measure the spin, allow the atom to relax and emit a photon. Now at that point the atom and the photon are entangled. They have net angular momentum which you have previously measured, but you don't know if the photon is spin up or spin down so you don't know what the net spin of the atom is.
The moment you measure the state of either the photon or the atom, you instantaneously determine the spin of its entangled partner becuase angular momentum conservation trumps the theory of relativity. The wave front collapses and both systems are defined. Previous experiments were done on couple atoms or photons. Now they've entangled both.
The wave front collapse is instaneous. The travel of the photon, is of course not. But once the photon reaches point B, regardless how far point A (the location of the atom) is, at the same moment you measure the one, the other has a defined spin. That's the wierd world of QM for you.
I'm going to give it a shot, but I'll probably be full of inacuracies. The article itself is not a scientific one and is full of misleading language. I am a physicist, but I work on computational techniques for modelling light interactions with matter, so I don't do work in that field. A couple years ago I read some papers (real scientific ones) to understand this field a little, and I'm operating now froma an unreliable memory. If someone knows what they are talking about I appreciate any corrections.
What I think I can say truly is this: teleportation is a hugely misleading term for a process whereby information can be transmitted instantly from one one particle to another, the classicle example being spin on a photon. The idea of quantum teleportation was originally put forth by a group of scientists, Einstein, Podalsky and Rosen, who were opposed to some of the tenets of what is often called the copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Einstein was deeply offended by by some of the implications of quantum mechanicsBasically they constructed a 'gedanken experiment' (thought experiment) where they showed that it was possible to produce two photons which must have paired spin (to conserver angular momentum). The copenhagen interpretation dictates that until you measure or perturb these photons, they are in an state where they are simulataneously both spin up and spin down. When you measure one photon, it will be spin up, and then, instantaneously, in order to conserve angular momentum. Einstein called this "spooky action at a distance", and it was one of the more disturbing aspects of QM philosphically. This phenomenon became known as the "EPR paradox".
Well, technology progressed, and a research team (I think at IBM?) was able to do the experiment, and they showed that this phenomena happened, sorry Einstein. They called it 'quantum teleportation' becuase it's a sexy name, because the information is being transmitted instantaneously , and becuase having a sexy name increases your chances of getting funding and press recognition.
So when they talk about teleportation between two atoms, they are talking about instantaneous transmission of some kind of state between two atoms. A more correct way of saying it is collapsing the wave function between two entangled atoms, but that doesn't sound as sexy as teleportation, and both terms are equally meaningless to a layman.
So what this means is, in a pretty restricted way, information can be teleportaed, as the spin of an atom contains information. Bridging from this to matter teleportation isn't even theoretical yet. They only share a word, and the word was chosen no doubt to evoke some sense of excitement.
The article is of course devoid of any really scientic content, but from what I can tell, what this group of researches has succeded in doing is entangling a photon with some atoms and then demonstrating quantum teleportation. A less sexy way of saying this is to say they have demonstrated instantaneous simultaneous wave collapse on a system consisting of a photon and several atoms. But that would certainly generate less media attention wouldn't it?
Just to make a point: This is pretty cool and interesting research. I don't fault scientists for trying to give their research a sexy spin (ouch, terrible pun-- spin, get it?). I think it's a positive thing for science to get a little more limelight. I just emphasise the etymology behind teleportation becuase there is a lot of misconception in the public eye regarding q-teleportation.
But what about innovation? If we cry foul that monopolies stifle innovation, then we should also be decrying standards that may not adapt easily to future problems.
The grandparent would seem to be a reasonably well masked troll, since the counterpoints to this statement are obvious and well rehearsed here on slashdot. But I'll throw my 2 cents into the pot.
In addition to the other fine comments regarding standards, let us not forget that this proposes an exchange standard. There's nothing stopping anyone from using propietary MS Word formats all the way until they need to send the document to someone in the French (and hopefully later the EU ) government. Well, there's nothing stopping anyone as long as MS implements the standard. Do they?
The problem with the current situation is the presence of de-facto propietary standard. Other word processors can't compete because everyone already has Word, and thus people buying new software want ot be able to read and write the latest propietary Word documents. MS exploits this, using it as a tool to ensure the eventual adoptation of it's newer version releases. This is good short term business strategy, but it's harmful for the rest of us. In that sense one can see this as the workings of the free market. If MS were a more benevolent monopolist, allowing open access to its document standards so other OS's and Word Processor developers could follow their standards, there would almost certainly be less anti-monopoly activity against them. One could say they are following, in tradtional corporate strategy, a greedy algorithm to formulate its strategy.
That was well thought out and well written response. Thanks for the thought provoking comments.
We seem to differ on a couple of prime assumptions. You seem to take the assumption that tarrifs are always harmful as a given. History and politics are something I read and study as I think they are important things for a responsible citizen to understand, but my professional field (physics) takes up most of my concentration and leaves me precious little to investigate other fields in the depth I would like.
Since you seem quite rational and intelligent, I wanted to point out a few things. The economist is an excellent magazine. It used to be on my regular reading list when I had a buddy who subscribed, but he's since relocated to london. Maybe I have to arrange a subscription myself. Making a gross simplification, I find it difficult to find American journals that don't have a bias pro or con administration policy (or left and right, although I despise these terms). The Economist is great as they are firmly capitalist yet highly critical of establishment doctrine when they see it as harmful. Their pro-globalisation and privatisation bias can't be ignored however, and it's important to understand when it is affecting their presentation of the facts. So it's important to balance a subscription to the Economist with something with a different bias, and attempt to glean the truth therefrom. A difficult process to be sure.
I certainly don't disagree that legislation is capable of screwing things up royally. I think it's easier to find examples of egregiously harmful legislation than it is to find examples of good legislation. Some people take this to an extreme and say 'let the free market solve everything'. But the fact that good legislation is hard to craft doesn't mean we should give up.
The globalisation problem is a difficult one. It's a mechanism for change, and that change can be positive or negative. I think it's both reasonable and necessary to have discussions about how we can guide that change so that it's beneficial rather than harmful. For me this means considering workers rights (which I consider to be a fundamental part of human rights). In order to do this we can't give up apriori.
Of course it's important to consider failed policies. But to resort to a cliche, we musn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's look at the failures, understand the mechanisms of the failures, and use these to craft better plans than the ones that failed. Sure we might screw up too, but if we do nothing then the people who only care about their greed will continue to control the process, and globalisation becomes synonymous with oppressing workers.
A neutral eye will find that sometimes trade restriction help, and sometimes they harm, and it depends heavily on how you define help and harm, as well as the specific conditions of the restrictions and the circumstances in which they exist. It's my thesis that the restriction on capital flow have been removed too quickly, and without any concern on the effects on workers rights. Perhaps through scaling back the removal of these restrictions, or at least slowing the process down, we can attempt to guide the process better, and in the interests of the masses rather than the wealthy few. I agree that this will be a tricky process, and the process is made trickier by the wealth power and craft of the advantage who quite naturally seek to maintain or increase their advantage. Whether I am right or wrong in my thesis is a difficult question that has to be analyzed. It just isn't as simple as "look, trade restriction failed here in example 1,2,3... therefore trade restrictions are always bad."
Though I would love to see increased human rights today, restricting trade will not bring those benefits in my mind. If the WTO changed the requirements, it would only take a few major countries to set up a viable alternative without those restrictions. The US is in a shady place for human rights violations ri
I rather suspect you didn't carefully read my post, since you just came out with the standard globalisation dogma, most of which had little relevance to the contents of my post.
It's unacceptable to make a claim like
Firstly, there has never been any point in history that these sorts of tariffs have worked.
without citing some thorough research. Being able to find an instance where tariffs fail is not the same as proving that tariffs never work. As an example, I've been working in Switzerland for the last couple of years; they seem to have a very strong, robust economy, and they quite believe in protecting their industries from outside comptetition. An excellent example is their preservation of the small family farm. As far as I can tell they have a completely unique and well functioning system for this, diametrically opposed to the systems in place in the EU and the US which tend to favor large corporate farms, and accomplish little more than preventing poorer farmers in foreign countries from compteting fairly.
It's been a while since I studied American history, but I seem to recall some examples wher tariffs were used to protect fledging industries, as it was considered important for the nation to be self sufficient and not reliant on imports. Do we have any amateur historians who can help out with this?
Coming back to the Swiss, what seems to work well for them is actually analyzing situations point by point, attempting to make reasonable models, making incremental test changes, and then making plans based on rational thinking rather than rhetoric. I haven't been here long enough to become an expert on their politics, but there does seem to be, alas, a movement into the same piss poor politics one finds in the U.S. (I like to call it team based politics, but I'm getting off topic).
I never claimed that globalization is a bad thing. I think overall it can be very positive, and if you re-read my post, you'll note that I expressed some favorable sentiments regarding what's happening in India. But at the moment the globalisation process is heavily dominated by people who are in favor a strong wealth disparity, which I personally am strongly against, but don't wish to discuss as it is getting off topic. To try to keep on topic, it's being used to circumnavigate beneficial changes that have taken place in developed countries, like work safety, sane working hours, etc. etc. and we should try to find methods to have globalisation serve goals that help us, rather than helping the wealthy elite and hurting the average joe.
As an example, why do we have a government that simultaneously supports free trade and using the DMCA to crack down on people trying to circumvent region codes on DVD's and video games?
What I was trying to suggest is making compliance with certain human rights minimums a price-for-admission to the global economy. I think rather than making it a black and white system, a more continuous one in which your trade penalty is proportional to your lack of compliance with certain human rights minimums is favorable. nations to gradually improve their standing, and thus gaining more favorable trade conditions. This would offset the outsourcing slavery aspect of offshoring, while still providing the benefits of globalization.
On one point we certainly agree: this would have to be a global thing, and it wouldn't work if it were only the US doing it. But if the U.S. were to propose some strategy (maybe there's a better one than what I've suggested) for this goal, I am confident the EU would go along with it, as the public pressure in this direction is pretty high. But it's only because of pressure from the WTO and the US that the EU doesn't do more in this direction. As far as I can see, this simply isn't a concern of the current policy makers who really only care about how much wealthier they can make their wealthy buddies.
As an alternative, the WTO routinely makes requirments for entry. Why not make compliance with the universal bill of human rights a requirement?
Well, this might have happened in more than one country, but I recall that some bozo (Holland's version of Bloecher) wanted to pass such a law sometime in the last year or two. Sure to do wonders for any countries tourist industry.
Well, one thing seems to be improving at least: the quality of discourse on offshoring.
I want to raise a counterpoint to your point 2:
2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees.
I'm not sure I agree with this, although I think that protective measures would have to be carefully thought out. What you are ignoring, is America is a HUGE consumer nation, and through this and other mechanisms has a tremendous impact on the strategies of other countries. I don't see the "we can't compete with other countries" as a valid argument. I have a hard enough time understanding the argument that I find it difficult to argue against. What's the competition? What's the metric for who's winning? Is it who's economy is biggest? I'd rather have a smooth and well functioning economy than a big one, but maybe I'm unusual...
Anyway, I see offshoring production (be it intelectual or labor oriented) as having 3 pretty significant problems.
1. Is ethical, since offshoring is basically the practice of maintaining a slave class, just not within the borders of own country. Okay, I'll grant you that's something of an overstatement in the case of India, where conditions seem to be improving as money flows there. But in the case of China, Malaysia, and other sweatshop countries where we get our cheap clothing from it holds quite true.
2. The second issue is, if you keep offshoring everything, what the hell are people in the U.S. going to do? You'll have a 2 class system, the wealthy and the service industry. The wealthy will enjoy a tremendous standard of living, which they can afford because goods (shipped in from mesa-slaver countries overseas) are insanely cheap, and so's labor, since no one can get a decent manufacturing job. And the service sector will be a kind of second class system.
I think anyone with open eyes can see this process taking place. Gated communities are, imo, a symptom of this.
3. Is tightly coupled to 2. I think it is desirable for a country to have many opportunities for its citizens. So if you are someone who enjoys manual labor, who enjoys intelectual labor, who enjoys servicing people, who enjoys producing art, you should be able to find a job doing what it is you love. This, more than just raw wealth, has a greater impact on overall happiness, but unfortunately does not get calculated into "standard of living" indices.
So I think some kinds of legislation to mitigate these points could be worked out. In broad strokes, what I think is needed is some kind of penalization on the flow of capitol to, and the flow of goods from, countries whos working conditions are poorer than ours. Hourly pay wouldn't be a good indicator, but pay as a ration of the cost of living in that country would work (yes, some thought would have to be put into this formula). More important, things like safe working conditions, sane work weeks, and espcially child welfare laws should rank heavily into the system. It wouldn't have to be a binary system where yes we trade, no we don't, rather a system that indexes how much we tax transactions to and fro, based on an index computed once or twice a year, based on compliance with a set of guidelines ideally provided through the U.N.
Not that it would fix everything, but it ought to help. Does anyone know of a good existing proposal out there?
Well, atually, yeah, that's kind of what quantum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum means, although it's a little bit subtler than I indicate. The etymology (sp?) comes from Planck, when he wanted to express that the blackbody radiation models could be unified if we assume that energy is 'quantized', divided up into small packets which can't be divided any further...
But I'm not talking about the word quantum. I'm speaking about the phrase 'quantum leap' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_leap, which describes how electrons have specific energy levels, and they must 'leap' from one level to the next, without any intermediate energy level. Thus, a 'quantum leap' is the smallest possible jump in energy an electron can make. Or at least that's what it means in physics.
But hey, what do I know? I'm just a blithering idiot.
I actually do research in optical computing, but the problems aren't unique to that field. I'm always getting pressured to use words/phrases like "novel", "highly accurate", "unique", etc (basically just non quantitative positive adjectives) to make the titles of my talks or publications more sexy or provocative.
It's annoying becuase they are just noise words. If something is really unique, a breakthrough, etc, those adjectives will be applied to your product (research, idea technology, choose your noun here) by others. Your job as an engineer or scientist should be to report the facts on your (noun here) in an unbiased and neutral fashion, giving meaningful benchmark figures regarding what it allows you to do. It's okay to focus on the strengths, but provide quantitative data, not meaningless adjectives and buzzwords. Fortunately more and more journals are stating not to use such meaningless drivel in their guidelines.
In my research, whenever I see phrases like "good/excellent agreement with...", instead of "this shows a standard deviation of X%", I automatically assume someone is just putting a shine on lame results. This prejudice is pretty accurate, but of course not 100% so. I'd estimate 90% or so.
The problem of course is the overly strong influence marketing has on us. Richard Feynman had a pretty good rant about this stuff. We really need to start punishing people/institutions for insulting our intelligence with this noise. He was more concerned with advertising campaigns which insult our intelligence, but the same trend has broadened itself.
In the end, I think it's important we become more cognisant, thus more resistant, to transparent marketing techniques. When an institution is singing its own praises, be skeptical.
On a tangent, if someone tells you "this is a quantum leap in XXX!", reply "so you mean to say it's the smallest possible change you can make?"
I think slashdot needs a "-1 taking a good to mediocre joke and running it into the ground " modifier. Yeah, I know, -1 off topic...
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yeah, good point. HTML is a no brainer. Wonder why they didn't support it? Still, I think "nearly useless" is far too strong a comment. Gutenberg text can be just as easily viewed as a text or pdf file.
Slashdot Mirror
I just had the same discussion with my girlfriend. The sentencing is ridiculously thought out, although I can see the idea of a longer (one or two years)jail sentence for a repeat or premeditated offender. Someone doing a DOS as part of a business strategy for example.
I'm probably a bit stiffer about it than you though. I don't think it's a bad idea to make it a criminal offense. I think ranging from a stiff fine to maybe a few days or weeks in jail might be a good idea, to make the activity something kids are genuinely afraid to to do. But for your average hacker, a couple weeks or even days in jail is already a pretty terrifying concept. The same thing goes for the idea of having a criminal record.
Doesn't it seem like the sherriff of nottingham is running the US (and our laptop the UK) these days?
It's your duty as a member of a democracy to inform yourself. Do some reading. We're talking about spending 5-20 hours or so to determine your country's (and since the US had such a large global footprint, to some extent the world's) outcome.
You're never going to find a candidate that you agree with completely, so try to decide what issues are most important to you, and evaluate the candidate's based on those criteria.
Since we are unfortunate enough to live in a country where we generally have only two choices for any particular post, an efficient algorithm presents itself: First go www.opensecrets.org, and look up the incumbents voting record. For interest you might want to look at his campain funding record as well. Does he/she seem to vote in the interest of his/her constituents? or does he/she vote against the constituents in favor of his/her fundres? How does his/her voting record jibe with what you would have voted? This process should kill 2 or 3 hours.
Then look at the consitutents web page and see what they are promising. Does it 1) match what you are looking for, focusing on your highest priorities? and 2) does it match with how that candidate is actually voting?
Once you know this, you just have to look at the opponent's web page and see what they are promising, and try to make an estimate of how much they mean what they say. (good luck with that one). You are always taking a chance when voting for a non-incumbant, but usually the incumbants are such bastards it's worth taking the chance. That's what makes opensecrets so useful.
If you do this much, you will be better informed than the average voter, and will only have spent one full workday per voting cycle (2 years!) to fulfill your duties as a citizen. If you think that's too much to ask, well, that makes me sad and angry, and it's my personal opinion that people who are unwilling to accept such a small amount of responsibility are the most harmful eroders of democracy.
Now the above post is pretty politically neutral, and just my opinion on how to be a good citizen. I'm going to present a more inflamatory algorithm that I nonethless believe in quite strongly, but it's a little off topic to the question. First, never vote Republican. The current Republican administration embraces corruption, deceit and unacountability. If you can avoid voting democrat, then do so. The 2 party system is incredibly harmful and really reduces the quality and breadth of political choice and debate in the United States. Eliminating parties would be nice but a couple more additional parties would be an improvement, and a more realistic scenario. Even if your candidate doesn't win, you're improving the odds for third party candidates in the next election, and improving the odds that a third party candidate will be able to participate in debates. If you don't have a sane third party choice, then you're probably stuck with the Dems for now. Of course exceptions to these rules exist, but in lieu of real research the above algorithm will probably serve you well.
Even though the OP's workplaces and tasks have not been terribly challenging or technical, this doesn't have to slow down your progress as a programmer.
As the parent says, find tasks at work that can be automated, that will give you a certain amount of training. If you really want to improve your skills, shop around for books or websites that discuss programming techniques and strategies you are interested in, which you think would make you a better programmer, and seek to apply these techniques to problems that you have to work on, including those assigned to you. When programming you usually have a million different ways you can solve any problem. If your goal is to get the programming task finished as quickly as possible, you wind up using the same toolbox for all problems. If you have the time though, study on your own, and try to apply what you learn to your work problems.
I studied physics and later computational physics. I had a few programming classes, but nothing too terribly sophisticated. I'm still working in my field, and I have purchased most of the 'C++ in depth' series of books (template metaprogramming, exceptional c++, c++ coding standards, etc). When I'm reading these books, or browsing programming websites or reading c++ newsgroups, I look out for ideas and strategies that might pertain to problems I am currently tackling, or will soon be tackling. Sometimes I deliberately research new strategies for a particular problem becuase I know my current toolbase isn't ideal for the task. I'm a much stronger programmer than I was last year thanks to to this, but I will adimit that there is a small performance penalty. On the other hand, at some point you get a return on that investment, especially if you try to learn things that will benefit you or your code down the line.
When faced with a task, including boilerplate stuff that I've done a hundred times before, if I have the time I try to think of several ways of handling the proble, analyse the best way and implement that. If I can think of new or more interesting approach that lets me develop my skills and doesn't penalize my coding then I choose that method.
This is a no brainer in my book, but apparently not in everyones. Making it difficult or illegal to discuss racisim certainly doesn't remove it.
The best strategy is to create an environment where being a racist is 'uncool' (for lack of a better word). This is one arena where the rest of world can, I think, learn quite a bit from the United States. Although the U.S. still has a huge racial problem, it has improved vastly since 1950. Maybe it's getting worse again under the new administration, I don't know. Anyone still in the U.S. have a comment about that?
In the U.S. you can spout whatever racial crap you want to. Free speech isn't attacked. Rather, the laws address concrete areas where racism directly affects minorities. If you are at home with your buddies, or writing a blog, you can call blacks niggers and the law won't do anything about it. Do it in the workplace, where it could bother a co-worker though, and bam, down comes the stick. Not a bad strategy.
Even that is subject to abuse though. For example a teacher suffered http://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/archives/2002/0 9/03/american_political_correctness_the_word_nigga rdly.html for teaching her children the word 'niggardly'.
Say somone writes a blog where they critisize the administration for censoring racist blogs. It wouldn't be outside of the realm of possiblity for this to be taken down for being pro-racist as well.
I think the best example of censorship failing is modern Germany, where right wing, pseudo neo-nazism http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spie gel/0,1518,357628,00.html (it isn't as bad as it sounds, but it's creepy enough) is getting trendier in Germany. It's become cool because it's anti establishment. As soon as you start censoring something, a large population is going to get curious about it. If racism is really an inferior point of view (and I believe it is), then it will lose out in the marketplace of ideas.
It's like Noam Chomsky says, freedom of speech means freedom to say things we don't like to hear. Even Stalin gave people the freedom to say things he liked to hear. It's our tolerance for unpleasant ideas that measures the degree to which we have freedom of speech.
Your post, and many of the comments along this line, completely ignore the possibility that the guys decision making might have been motivated by something other than money. My girlfriend's dad could make a lot more money by selling his farm than he will by milking the cows every morning at six, and every evening at six, for the rest of his life... but the guy really likes his work. Maybe the author's just dont want to lose control of their creation.
Great comment. I completely agree with you.
When I made the comment i did, i didn't count killing in war, I guess just out of convention. But I take no exception to doing so.
I did meet one guy I'm pretty sure have killed someone in Vietname, while I lived in Valdez Alaska. It was really interesting. People in Valdez drive to Anchorage pretty often to go shopping or what not. For some time people would come back to town and say something like 'dude, I saw a naked guy walking along the road from Glenallen. He was carrying a cart made out of two trees and a barrel (small trees). The guy walked like that all the way form Glenallen to Valdez (about 200 km). Who knows where he started from. When he got to Valdez he was wearing clothes. He took his barrel cart around town and cleaned up the streets and parking lots. When he did the parking lot of the restaurant I was working at, I asked him a few questions. I asked what he was doing, and he said he was trying to make up for things he did in Vietnam. I swear to god I'm not making this up. I used to have a picture of the guy, but I lost it in an apartment fire. I asked him if he wanted any money since I would have had to clean that lot up if he didn't. He said he wouldn't take payment for the work he did, but he would accept gifts. He was really quiet and polite, but didn't talk beyond answering whatever questions you posed. When I think back about it, it's incredible how well he avoided conversation without ever being rude or refusing to talk about something. Some questions he just gave evasive answers, but never evasive enough you were motivated to chase him down on something. Then one day he walked away again. I never got any reports about him past glenallen, so I guess he headed somewhere in the Yukon.
Not that any of this has anything to do with your post (-1 offtopic), but I thought you might find it interesting.
Something 'inevitably' drifting to draconian doesn't mean it is preferable to do away with it all together. It just means that you have to a system in place to protect against that occuring. The founders of the constitution attemped to do this by placing a system of checks and balances in place, but sane political analyses shows they were unsuccessful, and some modfications are needed.
Same thing with copyright. Severe modifications are needed, I'll grant you. Maybe doing away with it alltogether is prefereable, but I personally kind of doubt that. It's pretty tough to create any kind of a security system (in comptuers, in national or emotional security, whatever) that will work against any assault. People are clever and will always try to find a way to twist a system to their advantage. What's needed is a populace that's alert and motivated enough to guard against this. Tough sure, but that's life.
I think I've maybe met 2 people who killed people. One felt guilty (and should) and one claimed not to (and probably was correct in not feeling guilty, long story). And I always thought I knew a hell of a lot of fucked up people. But clearly the slashdot crowd routinely socializes with large numbers of killers.
Unless of course they are pulling their opinions out of their ass or based on what they see in movies and on the TV (always fantastic sources of unbiased, unfiltered, statistically representative sources of information!)...
Sometimes people learn from mistakes. In that case they are less likely to make the same mistake a second time.
Wow, it's such a stupid post I have to comment on it. There is so much room for curbing our waste and emissions without impacting nanotechnology research at all... Nanotech research isn't producing huge amounts of greenhouse gasses... thankfully it's modded to 0
On the other hand, there are plenty of MS zealots out there, for a variety of wierd reasons. So who knows?
Actually, and I've done a longer post on this so please read it if you are interested, the reason quantum teleportation is called teleportation is becuase the process occurs faster than the speed of light. It occurs instantaneously, which is why Einstein referred to is as "spooky action at a distance".
If I had to guess at what's happening in this particular experiment, you take an atom, excite it, measure the spin, allow the atom to relax and emit a photon. Now at that point the atom and the photon are entangled. They have net angular momentum which you have previously measured, but you don't know if the photon is spin up or spin down so you don't know what the net spin of the atom is.
The moment you measure the state of either the photon or the atom, you instantaneously determine the spin of its entangled partner becuase angular momentum conservation trumps the theory of relativity. The wave front collapses and both systems are defined. Previous experiments were done on couple atoms or photons. Now they've entangled both.
The wave front collapse is instaneous. The travel of the photon, is of course not. But once the photon reaches point B, regardless how far point A (the location of the atom) is, at the same moment you measure the one, the other has a defined spin. That's the wierd world of QM for you.
I'm going to give it a shot, but I'll probably be full of inacuracies. The article itself is not a scientific one and is full of misleading language. I am a physicist, but I work on computational techniques for modelling light interactions with matter, so I don't do work in that field. A couple years ago I read some papers (real scientific ones) to understand this field a little, and I'm operating now froma an unreliable memory. If someone knows what they are talking about I appreciate any corrections.
What I think I can say truly is this: teleportation is a hugely misleading term for a process whereby information can be transmitted instantly from one one particle to another, the classicle example being spin on a photon. The idea of quantum teleportation was originally put forth by a group of scientists, Einstein, Podalsky and Rosen, who were opposed to some of the tenets of what is often called the copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Einstein was deeply offended by by some of the implications of quantum mechanicsBasically they constructed a 'gedanken experiment' (thought experiment) where they showed that it was possible to produce two photons which must have paired spin (to conserver angular momentum). The copenhagen interpretation dictates that until you measure or perturb these photons, they are in an state where they are simulataneously both spin up and spin down. When you measure one photon, it will be spin up, and then, instantaneously, in order to conserve angular momentum. Einstein called this "spooky action at a distance", and it was one of the more disturbing aspects of QM philosphically. This phenomenon became known as the "EPR paradox".
Well, technology progressed, and a research team (I think at IBM?) was able to do the experiment, and they showed that this phenomena happened, sorry Einstein. They called it 'quantum teleportation' becuase it's a sexy name, because the information is being transmitted instantaneously , and becuase having a sexy name increases your chances of getting funding and press recognition.
So when they talk about teleportation between two atoms, they are talking about instantaneous transmission of some kind of state between two atoms. A more correct way of saying it is collapsing the wave function between two entangled atoms, but that doesn't sound as sexy as teleportation, and both terms are equally meaningless to a layman.
So what this means is, in a pretty restricted way, information can be teleportaed, as the spin of an atom contains information. Bridging from this to matter teleportation isn't even theoretical yet. They only share a word, and the word was chosen no doubt to evoke some sense of excitement.
The article is of course devoid of any really scientic content, but from what I can tell, what this group of researches has succeded in doing is entangling a photon with some atoms and then demonstrating quantum teleportation. A less sexy way of saying this is to say they have demonstrated instantaneous simultaneous wave collapse on a system consisting of a photon and several atoms. But that would certainly generate less media attention wouldn't it?
Just to make a point: This is pretty cool and interesting research. I don't fault scientists for trying to give their research a sexy spin (ouch, terrible pun-- spin, get it?). I think it's a positive thing for science to get a little more limelight. I just emphasise the etymology behind teleportation becuase there is a lot of misconception in the public eye regarding q-teleportation.
Hope that helped.
The grandparent would seem to be a reasonably well masked troll, since the counterpoints to this statement are obvious and well rehearsed here on slashdot. But I'll throw my 2 cents into the pot.
In addition to the other fine comments regarding standards, let us not forget that this proposes an exchange standard. There's nothing stopping anyone from using propietary MS Word formats all the way until they need to send the document to someone in the French (and hopefully later the EU ) government. Well, there's nothing stopping anyone as long as MS implements the standard. Do they?
The problem with the current situation is the presence of de-facto propietary standard. Other word processors can't compete because everyone already has Word, and thus people buying new software want ot be able to read and write the latest propietary Word documents. MS exploits this, using it as a tool to ensure the eventual adoptation of it's newer version releases. This is good short term business strategy, but it's harmful for the rest of us. In that sense one can see this as the workings of the free market. If MS were a more benevolent monopolist, allowing open access to its document standards so other OS's and Word Processor developers could follow their standards, there would almost certainly be less anti-monopoly activity against them. One could say they are following, in tradtional corporate strategy, a greedy algorithm to formulate its strategy.
We seem to differ on a couple of prime assumptions. You seem to take the assumption that tarrifs are always harmful as a given. History and politics are something I read and study as I think they are important things for a responsible citizen to understand, but my professional field (physics) takes up most of my concentration and leaves me precious little to investigate other fields in the depth I would like.
Since you seem quite rational and intelligent, I wanted to point out a few things. The economist is an excellent magazine. It used to be on my regular reading list when I had a buddy who subscribed, but he's since relocated to london. Maybe I have to arrange a subscription myself. Making a gross simplification, I find it difficult to find American journals that don't have a bias pro or con administration policy (or left and right, although I despise these terms). The Economist is great as they are firmly capitalist yet highly critical of establishment doctrine when they see it as harmful. Their pro-globalisation and privatisation bias can't be ignored however, and it's important to understand when it is affecting their presentation of the facts. So it's important to balance a subscription to the Economist with something with a different bias, and attempt to glean the truth therefrom. A difficult process to be sure.
I certainly don't disagree that legislation is capable of screwing things up royally. I think it's easier to find examples of egregiously harmful legislation than it is to find examples of good legislation. Some people take this to an extreme and say 'let the free market solve everything'. But the fact that good legislation is hard to craft doesn't mean we should give up.
The globalisation problem is a difficult one. It's a mechanism for change, and that change can be positive or negative. I think it's both reasonable and necessary to have discussions about how we can guide that change so that it's beneficial rather than harmful. For me this means considering workers rights (which I consider to be a fundamental part of human rights). In order to do this we can't give up apriori.
Of course it's important to consider failed policies. But to resort to a cliche, we musn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's look at the failures, understand the mechanisms of the failures, and use these to craft better plans than the ones that failed. Sure we might screw up too, but if we do nothing then the people who only care about their greed will continue to control the process, and globalisation becomes synonymous with oppressing workers.
A neutral eye will find that sometimes trade restriction help, and sometimes they harm, and it depends heavily on how you define help and harm, as well as the specific conditions of the restrictions and the circumstances in which they exist. It's my thesis that the restriction on capital flow have been removed too quickly, and without any concern on the effects on workers rights. Perhaps through scaling back the removal of these restrictions, or at least slowing the process down, we can attempt to guide the process better, and in the interests of the masses rather than the wealthy few. I agree that this will be a tricky process, and the process is made trickier by the wealth power and craft of the advantage who quite naturally seek to maintain or increase their advantage. Whether I am right or wrong in my thesis is a difficult question that has to be analyzed. It just isn't as simple as "look, trade restriction failed here in example 1,2,3... therefore trade restrictions are always bad."
It's unacceptable to make a claim like
without citing some thorough research. Being able to find an instance where tariffs fail is not the same as proving that tariffs never work. As an example, I've been working in Switzerland for the last couple of years; they seem to have a very strong, robust economy, and they quite believe in protecting their industries from outside comptetition. An excellent example is their preservation of the small family farm. As far as I can tell they have a completely unique and well functioning system for this, diametrically opposed to the systems in place in the EU and the US which tend to favor large corporate farms, and accomplish little more than preventing poorer farmers in foreign countries from compteting fairly. It's been a while since I studied American history, but I seem to recall some examples wher tariffs were used to protect fledging industries, as it was considered important for the nation to be self sufficient and not reliant on imports. Do we have any amateur historians who can help out with this?Coming back to the Swiss, what seems to work well for them is actually analyzing situations point by point, attempting to make reasonable models, making incremental test changes, and then making plans based on rational thinking rather than rhetoric. I haven't been here long enough to become an expert on their politics, but there does seem to be, alas, a movement into the same piss poor politics one finds in the U.S. (I like to call it team based politics, but I'm getting off topic).
I never claimed that globalization is a bad thing. I think overall it can be very positive, and if you re-read my post, you'll note that I expressed some favorable sentiments regarding what's happening in India. But at the moment the globalisation process is heavily dominated by people who are in favor a strong wealth disparity, which I personally am strongly against, but don't wish to discuss as it is getting off topic. To try to keep on topic, it's being used to circumnavigate beneficial changes that have taken place in developed countries, like work safety, sane working hours, etc. etc. and we should try to find methods to have globalisation serve goals that help us, rather than helping the wealthy elite and hurting the average joe.
As an example, why do we have a government that simultaneously supports free trade and using the DMCA to crack down on people trying to circumvent region codes on DVD's and video games?
What I was trying to suggest is making compliance with certain human rights minimums a price-for-admission to the global economy. I think rather than making it a black and white system, a more continuous one in which your trade penalty is proportional to your lack of compliance with certain human rights minimums is favorable. nations to gradually improve their standing, and thus gaining more favorable trade conditions. This would offset the outsourcing slavery aspect of offshoring, while still providing the benefits of globalization.
On one point we certainly agree: this would have to be a global thing, and it wouldn't work if it were only the US doing it. But if the U.S. were to propose some strategy (maybe there's a better one than what I've suggested) for this goal, I am confident the EU would go along with it, as the public pressure in this direction is pretty high. But it's only because of pressure from the WTO and the US that the EU doesn't do more in this direction. As far as I can see, this simply isn't a concern of the current policy makers who really only care about how much wealthier they can make their wealthy buddies.
As an alternative, the WTO routinely makes requirments for entry. Why not make compliance with the universal bill of human rights a requirement?
Well, this might have happened in more than one country, but I recall that some bozo (Holland's version of Bloecher) wanted to pass such a law sometime in the last year or two. Sure to do wonders for any countries tourist industry.
Am I the only one who's embarassed that OUR country is running around asking everyone else to give people less privacy? I miss being the good guy.
I want to raise a counterpoint to your point 2: 2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees. I'm not sure I agree with this, although I think that protective measures would have to be carefully thought out. What you are ignoring, is America is a HUGE consumer nation, and through this and other mechanisms has a tremendous impact on the strategies of other countries. I don't see the "we can't compete with other countries" as a valid argument. I have a hard enough time understanding the argument that I find it difficult to argue against. What's the competition? What's the metric for who's winning? Is it who's economy is biggest? I'd rather have a smooth and well functioning economy than a big one, but maybe I'm unusual...
Anyway, I see offshoring production (be it intelectual or labor oriented) as having 3 pretty significant problems.
1. Is ethical, since offshoring is basically the practice of maintaining a slave class, just not within the borders of own country. Okay, I'll grant you that's something of an overstatement in the case of India, where conditions seem to be improving as money flows there. But in the case of China, Malaysia, and other sweatshop countries where we get our cheap clothing from it holds quite true.
2. The second issue is, if you keep offshoring everything, what the hell are people in the U.S. going to do? You'll have a 2 class system, the wealthy and the service industry. The wealthy will enjoy a tremendous standard of living, which they can afford because goods (shipped in from mesa-slaver countries overseas) are insanely cheap, and so's labor, since no one can get a decent manufacturing job. And the service sector will be a kind of second class system.
I think anyone with open eyes can see this process taking place. Gated communities are, imo, a symptom of this.
3. Is tightly coupled to 2. I think it is desirable for a country to have many opportunities for its citizens. So if you are someone who enjoys manual labor, who enjoys intelectual labor, who enjoys servicing people, who enjoys producing art, you should be able to find a job doing what it is you love. This, more than just raw wealth, has a greater impact on overall happiness, but unfortunately does not get calculated into "standard of living" indices.
So I think some kinds of legislation to mitigate these points could be worked out. In broad strokes, what I think is needed is some kind of penalization on the flow of capitol to, and the flow of goods from, countries whos working conditions are poorer than ours. Hourly pay wouldn't be a good indicator, but pay as a ration of the cost of living in that country would work (yes, some thought would have to be put into this formula). More important, things like safe working conditions, sane work weeks, and espcially child welfare laws should rank heavily into the system. It wouldn't have to be a binary system where yes we trade, no we don't, rather a system that indexes how much we tax transactions to and fro, based on an index computed once or twice a year, based on compliance with a set of guidelines ideally provided through the U.N.
Not that it would fix everything, but it ought to help. Does anyone know of a good existing proposal out there?
But I'm not talking about the word quantum. I'm speaking about the phrase 'quantum leap' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_leap, which describes how electrons have specific energy levels, and they must 'leap' from one level to the next, without any intermediate energy level. Thus, a 'quantum leap' is the smallest possible jump in energy an electron can make. Or at least that's what it means in physics.
But hey, what do I know? I'm just a blithering idiot.
I actually do research in optical computing, but the problems aren't unique to that field. I'm always getting pressured to use words/phrases like "novel", "highly accurate", "unique", etc (basically just non quantitative positive adjectives) to make the titles of my talks or publications more sexy or provocative.
It's annoying becuase they are just noise words. If something is really unique, a breakthrough, etc, those adjectives will be applied to your product (research, idea technology, choose your noun here) by others. Your job as an engineer or scientist should be to report the facts on your (noun here) in an unbiased and neutral fashion, giving meaningful benchmark figures regarding what it allows you to do. It's okay to focus on the strengths, but provide quantitative data, not meaningless adjectives and buzzwords. Fortunately more and more journals are stating not to use such meaningless drivel in their guidelines.
In my research, whenever I see phrases like "good/excellent agreement with...", instead of "this shows a standard deviation of X%", I automatically assume someone is just putting a shine on lame results. This prejudice is pretty accurate, but of course not 100% so. I'd estimate 90% or so.
The problem of course is the overly strong influence marketing has on us. Richard Feynman had a pretty good rant about this stuff. We really need to start punishing people/institutions for insulting our intelligence with this noise. He was more concerned with advertising campaigns which insult our intelligence, but the same trend has broadened itself.
In the end, I think it's important we become more cognisant, thus more resistant, to transparent marketing techniques. When an institution is singing its own praises, be skeptical.
On a tangent, if someone tells you "this is a quantum leap in XXX!", reply "so you mean to say it's the smallest possible change you can make?"
I think slashdot needs a "-1 taking a good to mediocre joke and running it into the ground " modifier. Yeah, I know, -1 off topic...
yeah, good point. HTML is a no brainer. Wonder why they didn't support it? Still, I think "nearly useless" is far too strong a comment. Gutenberg text can be just as easily viewed as a text or pdf file.