I seriously doubt that the framers would have supported this extreme view of the right to privacy. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of privacy rights, particularly in the context of making it possible for you to become the target of an investigation based on a match in a database.
For me, fingerprinting a firearm is a lot different that fingerprinting a person, although the dangers of a big national DB of either has similar risks. It is interesting how this is playing out in Congress. A lot of them are just realizing now that they actually live in an urban environment, and they and their families are just as much in the line-of-fire as the rest of the community. A lot of times gun control issue split along urban/rural lines.
The point is to ask whether the situation would be better if a lot of people in the DC suburbs carried firearms. Unless they are all well trained and not hot-heads, I think everyone is safer with the police chasing the criminals. What would/could you do if you saw this guy fire his gun? I know I'd have a lot better odds stopping him with my '88 Crown Vic than a handgun.
I understand about internal and arterial bleeding where this wouldn't be much use, but if you can at least stop most of the superficial bleeding with this stuff, at least it wouldn't be making things even worse. I'm imagining extreme sports in the back country. You buddy has a broken leg with the bone sticking out, and it will be an hour or hours until you can get any help. Doesn't it help a lot to stop as much of the bleeding as you can with a clotting agent, and then use pressure to slow the rest of it until you can trasport to a trauma center? It won't be enough in all cases, but it could be a life saver in a number of them.
Just a quick look at the PingID website tells me that this idea is pretty far along, but I don't think many people are aware of it yet. I have a lot of questions that probably could be answered by further reading at the website, but maybe it would be worthwhile to give an executive summary. Better would be a/. article just on PingID with a link to the executive summary. The picture is pretty good, but I also want to know where the infrastructure needs to be to support this, and how you are doing in getting it widely adopted (i.e. if servers don't support it, what good does it do to have the choice for my favorite clients).
There is a FUD value here, but I wouldn't worry about these things too much. Unless they can prove you were looking at their source while you were coding, they wouldn't have much of a case. Of course, most of us would rather not have MS lawyers beathing down our necks whether they have a case or not.
A more interesting question is what you *can* learn from looking at their code. Probably a lot of negative examples with some evidence of a few talented coders who left their mark. I suppose they try to prevent people who have seen the code from saying anything qualitative about it, but I don't imagine that this could be binding. Anyone 'in the know' that can comment, or at least say why you can't comment?
Unless you have some direct interest in the product, why would anyone want to take the time and effort to understand this code? True open source creates a community of interest around the product, and this can only happen if the community trusts what is going on.
This is a problem with a lot of so-called Open Source projects (e.g. Java). Clearly it's not as bad as MS and the Pasport release, but in essense it is the same. If anyone at Sun is listening, you should pay close attention to this. Give it away under GPL or equivalent terms, and you will be richly rewarded.
Apple should listen too. They would not loose control of their own development programs by releasing under GPL. If external projects went further, they could take the changes in, and if they don't like them, they can keep up their own fork. Naturally, that would eventually mean Apple GUI environments on PC hardware and under Linux, but this would strenghen them, not weaken. Ok, so they have to get more competetive in hardware, but they should be able to keep an edge because with a more controlled hardware platform 'it just works' is easier to achieve. Think about how much easier it would be to get the company to spring for that Apple portable if most of the PCs are running an Apple desktop on Linux.
Note to GPL zealots, this is the kind of idea that promotes software freedom on its own merits, rather that with 'because it's right' arguments. Most people will not be swayed by your religious fervor, and in many cases it will just turn them off.
Microsoft appears to have been circling the ol' financial drain for some time, with shaky bookkeeping, shrinking markets, and admissions that their products cannot compete on technical merits. Perhaps this last week's media blitz is a sign that the execs have offloaded enough of their stock options for us to hear that last *glunk* and see MSFT along side EOG.
Much as I would like to believe this, I haven't seen any public signs that they are hurting. Could this be true? The decision in India has to be a big blow to them, I wonder just how bad the international numbers are at this point. I know they are always trying to spread out their income and losses, but if things really are bad, at some point they will have to take a loss. Any predictions on when this might happen?
I just imagined 10-20 neutron stars, all moving towards each other, but not on a collision course. They're aimed by some supernatural billiards player to miss each other by a few miles within a few seconds of each other.
Well, I'm way beyond my depth in terms of actually trying to do the math. I always did well with the conceptual level because I'm pretty good at getting the big picture. If you keep track of the principes that can't be violated, you know something went wrong with your solution when they are. We know there are all sorts of relativistic effects in any of these problem, but we also know if you actually form a black hole, nothing that went in is getting out (Hawkin radiation stuff excepted). The fact that all the masses are in motion might actually make it possible for them to pass close enough for a black hole to form in a static reference frame, but with all the "relativistic frame-dragging effects" as you say, I'd say all bets are off.
I suppose that it is likely that enough energy would escape as gravatational waves just from the bodies coming close to slow things down enough for the BH to actually form.
It is really interesting to read/listen to people who understand this well enough to both do the math and explain it well. The overall path of the comments on this story are pretty funny. First the wave of people all posting withing 3 or 4 minutes trying to explain the different sizes involved, and others coming in later to say they are wrong. (Event horizon at several times the solar system seemed pretty large to me.)/. moderators are probably way out of their own depth for the most part, so you can't rely on mod points to guess who has the correct information. Maybe we need an expert panel of moderators for science stories;-)
There probably isn't much settled ground in black hole theory. If such a globular cluster were possible I don't think it would be a matter of a quick change from 'normal' to beyond the event horizon space. In some sense, the space inside is negative, so some things that are normally always false would be true (what? flow of time, speed of light, ??? I'm not a physicist). Can there be multiple singularities inside? Does everything quickly get sucked into the singularity once it crosses the event horizon (still quite some time for galaxy BHs)? Does everything end up at the speed of light at some point (at, or after crossing EH)?
At some level it will probably always be a mystery. It's a 'world' boundary since information can't get out (can it get in or is information crushed out at some point?). Ultimately it is a physical phenominon, not a mathematical model, so the reality may be quite a bit different than any mathematical model. If you could fly about the galaxy SF style you would probably learn a lot more about the actual structure of the universe from experiments related to this and other black holes.
It's pretty amazing what can be learned this far out. I thought I heard a mention on the NPR report on this about a star headed for the EH. The universe is always running experiments for us if we have the instraments in place to watch closely. Try following the link to the natural nuclear reactors and follow the link under the picture about the constancy of cosmological constants. Very cool instraments... High res. spectroscopy allows them to look back in time and try to figure out why/how these constants might adjust. The Hubble is cool, but we are going to need an array of flexible instraments above the atmosphere to get at the really interesting questions.
I thought the conventional thought about the Earths core involved radioactive decay slowing the general cooling trend. I didn't see any reference to this. What about all the individual things the theory claims to have a better explaination for? I guess I'm asking how solid is the conventional model? Regardless of the merits of this theory, is it possible that there are concentrations deep in the Earth?
Or, more to the point, those that might complain to the FCC stop listening. Most enforcement agencies don't go looking for things to do, they work on problems where someone is actually complaining.
The problem I'm thinking about is people who think it is funny to try to get as much profanity as they can into any communications channel for no reason. If it was really uncontrolled, someone could fill the entire channel with this crap making in unusable. Even if it isn't profanity that the FCC would shut you down for, it could make it useless for anyone else.
Yes, you can figure it out from the source, and I think the court would have a hard time if the description was part of the patch (i.e. a comment) to claim that the comment violated the DMCA.
The point isn't even that anyone would be charged under the DMCA, but that under the language of the law, they could be. The underlying point is that disclosing security vulnerabilities and keeping current with their announcements are extremely common activities for any security professional doing his/her job.
That said, the whole exercise seems a bit lame and the article more or less says that straight out after leading in with a bit of sarcasm. It's not even the dumbest part of this law, but that's another story already beaten to death on/.
If it's 'hands off', how are you going to keep trolls from calling and using every banned word to try to get your license yanked? You know they will be there, so you have to have some kind of moderation to delete some messages.
Stopping blood loss can the the most important thing in a lot of trauma situations. Particularly in situations where you can't get to a real medical facility very quickly. Anyone working in the field would want this in their medical kit if it is really effective and save.
There are a lot of things on the list that probably shouldn't be tried and/or could not possible work. Some like this one clearly require more details to even be considered a real suggestion, dubious or not. On the other hand, there are a good number of things on the list that I have acually used duct tape for. I only have a few minor variants not on the list.
You are right on with respect to professional ethics. The review also mentions the point that accessable websites are actually easier to code than inaccessable ones. Standards are critical no matter what the MS wannabes say. Embrace and extend hurts everyone, and anyone who says otherwise is buying into the ethics of MS marketing. The only way you can do this is to leave your professional ethics at the door. IE is not the only browser even if that is what the maketdroid down the hall says. If you have to have a lot of flashing UI interaction stuff, then you had better do your homework on what works and where.
Just try it some time. There are a lot of sites that don't respect font preferences, and some that don't scale well when you use the zoom function.
My problem is way too common to really be considered a disability. I'm in my early 40s and starting to lose depth of field. I can't move closer like I used to in order to see things better. Sure, I'll probably have bifocals to help correct this before long, but that is besides the point.
Web designers that don't get this are hurting themselves and their customers, and it is just plain unprofessional. If you don't have the time or inclination to do this right, then get out of the business and leave it to those who do care.
My vision isn't that bad (at least with my glasses), but I find that many sites are almost unusable for these reasons. I have a medium resolution "17 monitor, and many sites have fonts way to small to be usable. Things are easier now that I switched to Galeon which has a nice zoom feature with a control right on the nav bar by default. Even then, sometime when I bump the magnification up to a usable level, some things start to run over each other (text on text, or text over image).
Don't these people do any testing? If you want an example, just check out the link for the Lulu Tech Circus here on/. This site just sucks.
You can't take away the technical capability to encrypt because this is already widely distributed code. Even when it was illegal to export strong encryption, people just based any software product that did this someplace else. It's a global neighborhood, at least when it comes to tech savy groups.
As a practical matter, basic encryption needs to be part of a lot of emerging systems. There is so much going on in digital wireless, and it isn't going to stop soon. With processors getting faster each year, you have to up the number of bits in your encryption just to stay ahead of what can be broken with commodity hardware and dumb software (brute force).
The government will always have access to the means to decrypt codes that wouldn't be practical for anyone else. The question becomes whether it makes any sense to limit most uses of crypto to a level between what is easy, and what the government can decrypt with some effort. They don't seem to be doing too well catching people who aren't using any crypto, so what's the point.
IMHO, the only thing that can be accomplished is to hurt commerce and individual privacy. It is often just a matter of setting parameters to set the length of keys and such, and they are going to make companies who do anything with encryption do extra paperwork and such to track it. And god forbid you want to user GnuPG for anything. I'm sure they want to outlaw that completely.
Obviously this is still at a research stage, but I have to wonder what will be involved in making structures out of it. The alternate dipping process sounds like a bit of a hack, but it probably can be adapted for creating macro structures. There was a time when carbon fibers were so exotic that you weren't allowed to use them in American Cup yachts, and now it's everywhere. I wonder if you could combine the two components by spraying them from seperate nozzles, or something. Then maybe you could coat a mold with the componite much like they spray chopped strand and poly resin into boat molds.
They don't give much detail on anything. They seem to be saying the material is both strong and stiff, but you might be able to play with the properties
Re:Too much slack is as bad as too little
on
Slack
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· Score: 2
Ahhh, but what are you doing with your slack time? You can always just use up all the slack you have accumulated, but there are always creative ways to use slack and get even more slack at the same time.
Most company executives and top level management are very overpaid when compared even to the pay of middle management. Look how many CEO's got large BONUSES for running a company into bankruptcy after putting lower level workers through pay cuts and layoffs.
Don't bother arguing further with the anonymous cowards (maybe all the same person?). My last job was my first small step onto the management ladder, and it ended when the VP that hired me decided I was not working out. This guy wouldn't know slack if it ran him over, but the "peter principle" being what it is he was in a position to do what he did.
Come to think about it, slack is a good way to explain what happened. I was the team lead of a group of about 8 or so developers, and we were getting towards delivery time for a pretty aggressive round of new product features. I was the only one suggesting that the schedule was too agressive, so that was being ignored. Some form of risk management to put more slack in the schedule would have gone a long way. The VP also had the habbit of using up any slack we might have had with three times weekly meetings where he always went over pretty much the same list of points. He also has no idea how much slack just disappears when you fire someone for no reason and dump all the remaining work on the rest of the team. It is all really unfortunate because I really liked the company and the job, and I still thought we had a chance of making all the important stuff happen.
Now, had the CEO had the forsight to can the VP when he suggested I needed to go, there would have been all sorts of slack to go around. Part of the reason I was blindsided by this guy was that I was busy working extra hours trying to make up for lost slack. I was planning on talking to various people about the problems that were developing after we got the release out.
One last word to the wise. If nobody above you in the organization sees the need for more slack, then you'd better start making plans to leave. Keep in mind that slack is much more than just time in the schedule or flexibility to do things a better way, or even time to experiment or just shoot the breeze. Slack is also the confidence and trust someone has in you that allows you to get more slack in the first place. If you have organizational slack, but some of your managers don't have any slack, get them to read this book (buy it for them). Slack is anything that gives you the wiggle room to get what you really need/want.
Ok, so maybe I got carried away already, but I want to also mention how this relates to freeloading and such. One of the objections you are going to see to slack in organizations is that it encourages people to be lazy, and you can end up with a very pleasant environment where nothing ever gets done. The key to slack is to use it in ways that increase the available slack. If you use it all up playing minesweeper, showing up late and posting/reading/., then you won't have any when you need it. When you have plenty of slack, you can spread it around and generally increase the amount of slack in the neighborhood.
Read the whole comment instead of knee-jerk responding to every reply you get. It is a matter of choice. You can't prove that your proposal is better, so you have no right to push it on everyone. I even agree with the idea that maximal sharing through minimal or even no copy protection might be good for everyone, including the claimed benificiaries of copyright, but you can't just claim this on face value and expect everyone to go along.
That is the way of Marxism as exemplified by Russia and China, and I find people who promote free software in this absolutist way to be dangerous both to the long term success of this movement, and even more so if you ever had the power to enforce your beliefs. It's about giving people (individuals) the right to choose whether you like their choice or not. Your approach will not convince anyone.
You should read the original article (link thoughfully supplied by another slashdotter in a comment). The judge addresses this point directly. The example statements you make amount to deciding the case before the evidence is in. This is clearly bad, and JPJ sees it as such.
Like I said, read the article, he presents a well reasoned case for judges being more forthcoming in some cases. He even addresses the concern that public comment could be made to gather media fame, but that should not stop him from commenting in all cases.
The tenor of the argument is addressed directly to his fellow judges, and in particular to the appelate court that saw fit to rebuke him in a most public way and with direct terms calling into question his judgement. He is right, and they are wrong (in my opinion).
Obviously you aren't made aware of these when signing your monthly agreement, are you?
It's pretty obvious that the technology could be used this way, but it is also best if it isn't common knowledge. You will still be able to track some dumb criminals anyway. Even the terrorists don't realize immediately that if you transmit, you can be tracked, and least not until the media tells them (or maybe it's the missles that arrive shortly after they get off the phone).
To those who think that it helps to get the phone in some annonymous way (prepaid cash, or coersion of phone company people), this only makes it harder. If you track cell phone activity to a location where there are known targets, you now know what phone they are using. You can probably even get the warrents written in such a way to permit this, although this is more of a legal issue for police trying to arrest people than for intelligence agencies trying to stop terrorists.
Slashdot Mirror
For me, fingerprinting a firearm is a lot different that fingerprinting a person, although the dangers of a big national DB of either has similar risks. It is interesting how this is playing out in Congress. A lot of them are just realizing now that they actually live in an urban environment, and they and their families are just as much in the line-of-fire as the rest of the community. A lot of times gun control issue split along urban/rural lines.
The point is to ask whether the situation would be better if a lot of people in the DC suburbs carried firearms. Unless they are all well trained and not hot-heads, I think everyone is safer with the police chasing the criminals. What would/could you do if you saw this guy fire his gun? I know I'd have a lot better odds stopping him with my '88 Crown Vic than a handgun.
I understand about internal and arterial bleeding where this wouldn't be much use, but if you can at least stop most of the superficial bleeding with this stuff, at least it wouldn't be making things even worse. I'm imagining extreme sports in the back country. You buddy has a broken leg with the bone sticking out, and it will be an hour or hours until you can get any help. Doesn't it help a lot to stop as much of the bleeding as you can with a clotting agent, and then use pressure to slow the rest of it until you can trasport to a trauma center? It won't be enough in all cases, but it could be a life saver in a number of them.
Just a quick look at the PingID website tells me that this idea is pretty far along, but I don't think many people are aware of it yet. I have a lot of questions that probably could be answered by further reading at the website, but maybe it would be worthwhile to give an executive summary. Better would be a /. article just on PingID with a link to the executive summary. The picture is pretty good, but I also want to know where the infrastructure needs to be to support this, and how you are doing in getting it widely adopted (i.e. if servers don't support it, what good does it do to have the choice for my favorite clients).
A more interesting question is what you *can* learn from looking at their code. Probably a lot of negative examples with some evidence of a few talented coders who left their mark. I suppose they try to prevent people who have seen the code from saying anything qualitative about it, but I don't imagine that this could be binding. Anyone 'in the know' that can comment, or at least say why you can't comment?
This is a problem with a lot of so-called Open Source projects (e.g. Java). Clearly it's not as bad as MS and the Pasport release, but in essense it is the same. If anyone at Sun is listening, you should pay close attention to this. Give it away under GPL or equivalent terms, and you will be richly rewarded.
Apple should listen too. They would not loose control of their own development programs by releasing under GPL. If external projects went further, they could take the changes in, and if they don't like them, they can keep up their own fork. Naturally, that would eventually mean Apple GUI environments on PC hardware and under Linux, but this would strenghen them, not weaken. Ok, so they have to get more competetive in hardware, but they should be able to keep an edge because with a more controlled hardware platform 'it just works' is easier to achieve. Think about how much easier it would be to get the company to spring for that Apple portable if most of the PCs are running an Apple desktop on Linux.
Note to GPL zealots, this is the kind of idea that promotes software freedom on its own merits, rather that with 'because it's right' arguments. Most people will not be swayed by your religious fervor, and in many cases it will just turn them off.
Much as I would like to believe this, I haven't seen any public signs that they are hurting. Could this be true? The decision in India has to be a big blow to them, I wonder just how bad the international numbers are at this point. I know they are always trying to spread out their income and losses, but if things really are bad, at some point they will have to take a loss. Any predictions on when this might happen?
What is EOG?
Well, I'm way beyond my depth in terms of actually trying to do the math. I always did well with the conceptual level because I'm pretty good at getting the big picture. If you keep track of the principes that can't be violated, you know something went wrong with your solution when they are. We know there are all sorts of relativistic effects in any of these problem, but we also know if you actually form a black hole, nothing that went in is getting out (Hawkin radiation stuff excepted). The fact that all the masses are in motion might actually make it possible for them to pass close enough for a black hole to form in a static reference frame, but with all the "relativistic frame-dragging effects" as you say, I'd say all bets are off.
I suppose that it is likely that enough energy would escape as gravatational waves just from the bodies coming close to slow things down enough for the BH to actually form.
It is really interesting to read/listen to people who understand this well enough to both do the math and explain it well. The overall path of the comments on this story are pretty funny. First the wave of people all posting withing 3 or 4 minutes trying to explain the different sizes involved, and others coming in later to say they are wrong. (Event horizon at several times the solar system seemed pretty large to me.) /. moderators are probably way out of their own depth for the most part, so you can't rely on mod points to guess who has the correct information. Maybe we need an expert panel of moderators for science stories ;-)
At some level it will probably always be a mystery. It's a 'world' boundary since information can't get out (can it get in or is information crushed out at some point?). Ultimately it is a physical phenominon, not a mathematical model, so the reality may be quite a bit different than any mathematical model. If you could fly about the galaxy SF style you would probably learn a lot more about the actual structure of the universe from experiments related to this and other black holes.
It's pretty amazing what can be learned this far out. I thought I heard a mention on the NPR report on this about a star headed for the EH. The universe is always running experiments for us if we have the instraments in place to watch closely. Try following the link to the natural nuclear reactors and follow the link under the picture about the constancy of cosmological constants. Very cool instraments ... High res. spectroscopy allows them to look back in time and try to figure out why/how these constants might adjust. The Hubble is cool, but we are going to need an array of flexible instraments above the atmosphere to get at the really interesting questions.
I thought the conventional thought about the Earths core involved radioactive decay slowing the general cooling trend. I didn't see any reference to this. What about all the individual things the theory claims to have a better explaination for? I guess I'm asking how solid is the conventional model? Regardless of the merits of this theory, is it possible that there are concentrations deep in the Earth?
The problem I'm thinking about is people who think it is funny to try to get as much profanity as they can into any communications channel for no reason. If it was really uncontrolled, someone could fill the entire channel with this crap making in unusable. Even if it isn't profanity that the FCC would shut you down for, it could make it useless for anyone else.
The point isn't even that anyone would be charged under the DMCA, but that under the language of the law, they could be. The underlying point is that disclosing security vulnerabilities and keeping current with their announcements are extremely common activities for any security professional doing his/her job.
That said, the whole exercise seems a bit lame and the article more or less says that straight out after leading in with a bit of sarcasm. It's not even the dumbest part of this law, but that's another story already beaten to death on /.
If it's 'hands off', how are you going to keep trolls from calling and using every banned word to try to get your license yanked? You know they will be there, so you have to have some kind of moderation to delete some messages.
Stopping blood loss can the the most important thing in a lot of trauma situations. Particularly in situations where you can't get to a real medical facility very quickly. Anyone working in the field would want this in their medical kit if it is really effective and save.
There are a lot of things on the list that probably shouldn't be tried and/or could not possible work. Some like this one clearly require more details to even be considered a real suggestion, dubious or not. On the other hand, there are a good number of things on the list that I have acually used duct tape for. I only have a few minor variants not on the list.
You are right on with respect to professional ethics. The review also mentions the point that accessable websites are actually easier to code than inaccessable ones. Standards are critical no matter what the MS wannabes say. Embrace and extend hurts everyone, and anyone who says otherwise is buying into the ethics of MS marketing. The only way you can do this is to leave your professional ethics at the door. IE is not the only browser even if that is what the maketdroid down the hall says. If you have to have a lot of flashing UI interaction stuff, then you had better do your homework on what works and where.
My problem is way too common to really be considered a disability. I'm in my early 40s and starting to lose depth of field. I can't move closer like I used to in order to see things better. Sure, I'll probably have bifocals to help correct this before long, but that is besides the point.
Web designers that don't get this are hurting themselves and their customers, and it is just plain unprofessional. If you don't have the time or inclination to do this right, then get out of the business and leave it to those who do care.
Don't these people do any testing? If you want an example, just check out the link for the Lulu Tech Circus here on /. This site just sucks.
As a practical matter, basic encryption needs to be part of a lot of emerging systems. There is so much going on in digital wireless, and it isn't going to stop soon. With processors getting faster each year, you have to up the number of bits in your encryption just to stay ahead of what can be broken with commodity hardware and dumb software (brute force).
The government will always have access to the means to decrypt codes that wouldn't be practical for anyone else. The question becomes whether it makes any sense to limit most uses of crypto to a level between what is easy, and what the government can decrypt with some effort. They don't seem to be doing too well catching people who aren't using any crypto, so what's the point.
IMHO, the only thing that can be accomplished is to hurt commerce and individual privacy. It is often just a matter of setting parameters to set the length of keys and such, and they are going to make companies who do anything with encryption do extra paperwork and such to track it. And god forbid you want to user GnuPG for anything. I'm sure they want to outlaw that completely.
Looks like it is already there.
They don't give much detail on anything. They seem to be saying the material is both strong and stiff, but you might be able to play with the properties
Ahhh, but what are you doing with your slack time? You can always just use up all the slack you have accumulated, but there are always creative ways to use slack and get even more slack at the same time.
Don't bother arguing further with the anonymous cowards (maybe all the same person?). My last job was my first small step onto the management ladder, and it ended when the VP that hired me decided I was not working out. This guy wouldn't know slack if it ran him over, but the "peter principle" being what it is he was in a position to do what he did.
Come to think about it, slack is a good way to explain what happened. I was the team lead of a group of about 8 or so developers, and we were getting towards delivery time for a pretty aggressive round of new product features. I was the only one suggesting that the schedule was too agressive, so that was being ignored. Some form of risk management to put more slack in the schedule would have gone a long way. The VP also had the habbit of using up any slack we might have had with three times weekly meetings where he always went over pretty much the same list of points. He also has no idea how much slack just disappears when you fire someone for no reason and dump all the remaining work on the rest of the team. It is all really unfortunate because I really liked the company and the job, and I still thought we had a chance of making all the important stuff happen.
Now, had the CEO had the forsight to can the VP when he suggested I needed to go, there would have been all sorts of slack to go around. Part of the reason I was blindsided by this guy was that I was busy working extra hours trying to make up for lost slack. I was planning on talking to various people about the problems that were developing after we got the release out.
One last word to the wise. If nobody above you in the organization sees the need for more slack, then you'd better start making plans to leave. Keep in mind that slack is much more than just time in the schedule or flexibility to do things a better way, or even time to experiment or just shoot the breeze. Slack is also the confidence and trust someone has in you that allows you to get more slack in the first place. If you have organizational slack, but some of your managers don't have any slack, get them to read this book (buy it for them). Slack is anything that gives you the wiggle room to get what you really need/want.
Ok, so maybe I got carried away already, but I want to also mention how this relates to freeloading and such. One of the objections you are going to see to slack in organizations is that it encourages people to be lazy, and you can end up with a very pleasant environment where nothing ever gets done. The key to slack is to use it in ways that increase the available slack. If you use it all up playing minesweeper, showing up late and posting/reading /., then you won't have any when you need it. When you have plenty of slack, you can spread it around and generally increase the amount of slack in the neighborhood.
That is the way of Marxism as exemplified by Russia and China, and I find people who promote free software in this absolutist way to be dangerous both to the long term success of this movement, and even more so if you ever had the power to enforce your beliefs. It's about giving people (individuals) the right to choose whether you like their choice or not. Your approach will not convince anyone.
Like I said, read the article, he presents a well reasoned case for judges being more forthcoming in some cases. He even addresses the concern that public comment could be made to gather media fame, but that should not stop him from commenting in all cases.
The tenor of the argument is addressed directly to his fellow judges, and in particular to the appelate court that saw fit to rebuke him in a most public way and with direct terms calling into question his judgement. He is right, and they are wrong (in my opinion).
It's pretty obvious that the technology could be used this way, but it is also best if it isn't common knowledge. You will still be able to track some dumb criminals anyway. Even the terrorists don't realize immediately that if you transmit, you can be tracked, and least not until the media tells them (or maybe it's the missles that arrive shortly after they get off the phone).
To those who think that it helps to get the phone in some annonymous way (prepaid cash, or coersion of phone company people), this only makes it harder. If you track cell phone activity to a location where there are known targets, you now know what phone they are using. You can probably even get the warrents written in such a way to permit this, although this is more of a legal issue for police trying to arrest people than for intelligence agencies trying to stop terrorists.