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User: bwcbwc

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  1. Re:WTF? on WSJ Says Gov't Money Injection Won't Help Broadband · · Score: 1

    Under a balanced budget, the government does not put less money into the economy than it takes out. The money that the government doesn't use to fund projects for the states and other organizations is paid to government employees. Who spend it in the economy. The effect of a dollar used by the government is comparable to the effect of a dollar used by any other entity. It's probably better in fact, because the government isn't paying wages to sweatshop workers in overseas factories.

    The real issue is that the government is taking money out of the future economy (debt) to subsidize the current economy. If the stimulus helps the economy grow faster than it would otherwise, then there's no problem: the gain in GDP due to the accelerated growth counteracts the loss in GDP required to service the debt. The money that the government spends to pay interest is the real danger, because that money generally goes to China nowadays, just like most of our consumer dollars. But at least the consumer dollars bounce around between McDonald's, Best Buy and Walmart a couple of times before they leave the country.

  2. Re:Cognitive dissonance... on WSJ Says Gov't Money Injection Won't Help Broadband · · Score: 1

    Correction: We USED to have that in the US. It went away during Bush 2.0. The incumbent telcos claimed the regulation forced them to sell bandwidth to their competitors at below cost. To which the response should've been: "So? We gave you guys billions to expand your capacity. Where's the capacity?".

    Back when the carriers were forced to share their channel, we at least had more competition, even if the price didn't vary that much between the vendors. You didn't have to jump through so many hoops to get bare DSL service with the independent providers. If the FTC had stepped in with an anti-trust lawsuit against the incumbent providers, they might have stopped the game-playing about connects, disconnects and repairs.

  3. Re:They aren't investors on Microsoft Accused of Squandering Billions On R&D · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, how much money did Bell Labs ever make from its transistor patents? In the end, the Alcatel-Lucent shareholders forced it to change its research focus to "marketable products" with the same arguments they're bringing against MS.

  4. Re:Bill Gates? on Microsoft Accused of Squandering Billions On R&D · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah if they're going to yell about squandered money they should look at some of the bad business decisions in terms of bringing products to market (MSN? XBox? all losing money), rather than R&D.

  5. WTF? on How To Track the Bug-Trackers? · · Score: 1

    Why the heck is your company allowing every project manager to roll their own bug-tracking system in the first place? Everyone probably has their own fscked revision control and change management packages too. Get a robust tracking system (or even a CRM system) that allows tracking of issues, bugs and changes for multiple projects all in one database. Even a small business (10-20 employees) can benefit from this kind of consolidation in the long run.

    If you don't have the resources or inclination to do a consolidated environment, at least get all the projects on the same platform, so that everyone is using the same software within their environment. It saves training costs, customer confusion, and will save time when the time comes to actually do a consolidated environment.

  6. Not just stupid...chilling on New Law Will Require Camera Phones To "Click" · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now the cops will know when you are taking pictures of them beating on the current object of their wrath. Now the guy in the next cube will know that the whistle-blower is taking pictures for some reason.

    There's an ulterior motive here disguised as protecting the women and children from voyeurs.

  7. Re:Not good enough. on 6 Pennsylvania Teens Face Child Porn Charges For Pics of Selves · · Score: 1

    Not to mention the legal double-standard here:
    The girls are being prosecuted as adults, but for the purposes of the charges, they are considered minors.

    Maybe the way out of this kind of mess is to make the sex-offender registries meaningless. Broaden their scope so that (nearly) everyone is a sex offender. Putting all parents of children born out of wedlock on the list would be a great start in that direction. Plus it would provide a great boost to the paternity testing industry in these troubled economic times.

  8. Re:Not good enough. on 6 Pennsylvania Teens Face Child Porn Charges For Pics of Selves · · Score: 1

    ...well nowadays it's more "porn degrades women as sex objects" rather than "porn encourages immoral behavior".

  9. Re:A thank-you! (and some questions) on Seagate Firmware Update Bricks 500GB Barracudas · · Score: 1

    If the problem was analyzed so well, why is the update so f-ed up? This is a failure of both the SCM and SQA processes and possibly in the professionalism of the firmware development and test teams, if this new error was caused by a failure to follow process.

    If they don't get it right on the third try, heads should roll. The original defect you describe sounds suspiciously like an untested boundary condition (or more accurately a double-boundary condition - the last log file in the circular queue, combined with a reboot), which is the type of test condition that should be covered by any professional test plan.

    That said, I have to give credit where credit is due. They've responded quickly and at least seem to have a handle on the root causes of the successive problems. We've all run into situations where the defect turns out to be an onion, with layers upon layers of bad code.

  10. St. Cloud... on Wireless Internet Access Uses Visible Light, Not Radio Waves · · Score: 1

    Note that this St. Cloud is in Minnesota and not Florida. That makes a big difference, especially this time of year.

  11. Re:One more thought on How Best To Deal With WiFi Interference? · · Score: 1

    If he's going to be running wire to the APs at all corners of his apartment, wouldn't it make sense to move most of his computers to wired connections in the first place? We're talking an apartment (presumably under 1400 sq. ft.) here, not an office space.

  12. Re:Buy a European AP on How Best To Deal With WiFi Interference? · · Score: 1

    Should note that use of those channels (and japanese channel 14) is illegal in the US. That's why the firmware is different in the first place. If you interfere with a legal user of those channels, your ass is theirs.

  13. Re:802.11a, 5ghz on How Best To Deal With WiFi Interference? · · Score: -1

    With nine access points, for example, is it better to have three APs each on 1, 6 and 11, so that each completely overlaps with only two others. Or is it best to distribute those APs across nine channels such that they only partially overlap others (but potentially overlap more APs in total)?

    Dude, if you're running 9 APs in your apartment, YOU'RE the one causing the interference. I'm running a single AP from the router and it covers my whole house. You won't get any performance gains from multiple APs, just better coverage of the building, unless you have multiple wireless users running simultaneously.

    If you have multiple users, don't duplicate channels unless you have MIMO capability at both the AP and the client. Otherwise they just interfere with each other. (And even with MIMO, I'm not sure duplicating channels actually gains you anything).

    It sounds like your real problem is that you have several people downloading torrents and video and chewing up all your bandwidth. That isn't a neighborly interference problem, that's a band capacity problem in your spectrum. The solution to that is to switch some of the connections to wired. It reduces congestion on the wireless and gives better throughput for the wired. Using wireless N is also an option, but that probably involves a hardware upgrade. If you have 9 APs, you've already paid enough money to the hardware vendors. Cat 5 or 6 cable is cheaper.

  14. Re:Cairo on Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't describe Guantanamo as a mere "jail". Not with the level of coercion going on there.

  15. Re:Cairo on Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal · · Score: 1

    Well most of the legal action in our civil courts so far has been to challenge the claim that they WERE enemy combatants (legal or otherwise).

  16. Re:Cairo on Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal · · Score: 1

    The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not.

    No, that's the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution legalized slavery for 90 years or so, which obviously denied rights to many residents of the country. Further, there ARE certain rights granted to citizens that are not granted to "the people", notably the right to vote.

  17. Re:Double-edged sword... on Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld · · Score: 1

    Yeah, there should probably be a lower-penalty range between .08% and .10% BAC.

  18. Re:Double-edged sword... on Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld · · Score: 1

    Well if the accuracy affects the 7th decimal point, the jury can decide whether a 1 in a million discrepancy constitutes reasonable doubt. Also, if the discrepancy is smaller than the rated detection tolerance of the device, it doesn't matter anyway, because the "reasonable doubt" would apply to the rated tolerance, not to the software bug.

    Defense will have to find conditions where the software can cause inaccurate readings that fall outside of the documented tolerances of the breathalyzer.

  19. Re:Hahahaha. on Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld · · Score: 1

    Actually, in order for defense to document that there is exculpatory DNA evidence, they would have to put an expert witness (geneticist) on the stand, or provide an affidavit from such an expert that can explain to the jury exactly what the evidence is and why it's exculpatory.

    Same thing the CSI docs have to do for the cops on the prosecution side.

  20. Re:Good luck with that! on Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld · · Score: 1

    Actually, if they are running a sobriety checkpoint where they pull over every nth driver (or whatever the legal standard is), there's a fair chance they will be giving random breathalyzer tests to the "participants".

  21. Re:Good luck with that! on Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, if you actually ARE drunk it might be pretty hard for you to restrain yourself from yakking away.

  22. Re:Good luck with that! on Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's not just the code that does the calculation. It's the firmware that gathers the analog data from the sensors and converts it to digital. It's the software that is used to perform the calibration. It's the display software that interprets the results and puts them onscreen. Heck, it's even the control menus that the cops use to identify the test they want to perform.

    There are multiple possible points of failure in the breathalyzer that could affect the displayed reading, and given the typical QC of most software projects, it wouldn't surprise me if the defense finds at least one software defect that can give false positives under certain conditions.

  23. Re:At last... on Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld · · Score: 1

    Proving once again that correct use of case is extremely important. A "...sentence of eight years of bush..." would be something completely different.

  24. Re:What's the German Word for "Boned?" on Tricked Into Buying OpenOffice.org? · · Score: 1

    I write proprietary software for my job. I use code licensed as open source. I make available the source to my customer and they pay my company quite well so that we can adopt and add to that code to specifically suite their needs. It's fairly close to 'software as a service.' Now, assuming I used some library (I can't think of anything off of OO.o that I would use) but my company's law-talkin' guys would be scared as hell if it said I couldn't charge money for it ... because maybe it's an integral part of our product?

    Wait, you give them the original source code from the open source product, but not the source code for your customizations? That would be a GPL violation right there. I hope you're distributing stuff that is BSD or Apache-licensed.

  25. Re:In port... on Internet Communications While At Sea? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that probably means running to an internet cafe or else incurring international roaming charges on a cellphone.

    I'm surprised they don't give you the opportunity to pay extra for additional access rather than just cutting you off.