I just don't think you need to go this far. Go ahead and do your DHCP logging. Go ahead and enable WEP encryption. It's so easy and so prepackaged to crack WEP and spoof MACs that I think you get the benefit of the deniability without the problem of intent ("I removed... I disabled...").
I agree 100%. I've been trying to explain this. People think you are obliged to use WEP, as if WEB means that no unauthorized person can use your network. I believe the author understands that WEB and MAC filtering are a joke; but, rather than try to explain that to Comcast or anyone else, it's easier to say that anyone could have easily used his network without his knowing about it. In fact, I think disabling DHCP logging was more important to his point than WEP or MAC filtering, since he wants to also say he has know way of knowing if someone used his wireless network, versus a virus, for instance, where you might be expected to prove that it caused the downloads.
A network admin who is running a wide open WEP is going to have to explain WTF he was thinking when he didn't lock his WEP down.
When you say WEP, you mean WAP.
WAP = Wireless Access Point
WEP = Wired Equivalent Privacy
Thus, you use WEP to "secure" your WAP.
The thing is, WEP is breakable, and the vulnerability is in the way WAPs communicate with the wireless cards to establish enrypted communications. Thus, WEP is NOT truly secure. It simply keeps non-hackers or hackers that don't have the motivation to hack your network out.
MAC addresses, another tequnique to protect your wireless network, can be easily spoofed.
Between the two problems, virtually every 802.11b wireless network can be hacked today. The author, I believe, understands this. He realizes, however, that its easier to explain that someone could have used his network without his knowing about it if he doesn't have to explain how WEP and MAC security are vulnerable.
Actually, WEP can be easily broken. I read a paper a couple years ago by a college student explaining how it can be broken due to a flaw in the design. This means, there is NO way to secure your 802.11b connection with WEP. WEP simply keeps average users and hackers that don't have the time to crack your connection out.
I think part of the author's arguement is that the computer is already insecure. You cannot guarantee some virus or hacker isn't downloading copyrighted material. Thus, he simply makes it easier to explain that he had no way of knowing whether or not someone was connected to his network. He's saying that since it's already insecure, he'll go all the way so it will be easier to explain how someone could have used his IP.
This distinction was created by ISPs to generate more revenue. It has no basis in law, except contractual.
Before the internet became dominated by corporations, it was common to share your connections. The original ISPs were mom and pops running it out of their homes, sharing their connection with local people via dial-up. They were later aggegated by large for-profit enterprises that created the TOS restriction to create tiered pricing to increase revenue by charging more for downstream ISPs.
Clearly, the author is aware of the risk of Comcast disconnecting his service, as he has already written a response to provide a defense, claiming that he was unaware anyone was using his network. He will be telling the truth, since his article is about making sure he is unaware by turning off DHCP logging. The greatest risk is a TOS violation, with the worst case scenario being that he'll have to find another ISP. He may still be able to effectively immune himself from copyright violation accusations where the only evidence is that his IP was used to download the content.
The problem is the traditional distinction between the FBI and the RIAA is rapidly disappearing. Unfortunately, there are bills in Congress to turn the FBI into an extension of the RIAA. Even a letter by one congressman recommends permitting the FBI to go after 15,000 or so file sharers to set an example, and to permit the FBI to pursue civil as well as criminal punishment so it could more easily help corporations pursue individuals.
Forget the keyboard. Take something with a voice recorder. It can be very small, and probably even play mp3's.
Unload it each nite into your laptop. Then, at the end of your vacation, you can transcribe it, and perhaps even use voice recognition software to transcribe the rough draft for you.
I think that since you aren't identifying people, but just that someone ran through an area, you are at least preserving anonymity.
However, one person made a good point that this does run counter to why some of us go to the natural areas. I had two places I went to when I grew up. Both of those places represented "God made" areas barely touched by people. Thus, the escape for me was to be somewhere where God was and civilation had virtually no impact.
One of those places was changed to permit public access, which ruined it, because they had to destroy 90% of why we went there in order to make it "safe."
The other place put cameras in the trees, again in the name of safety. This, again, ruined it. I went there to be away from civilization, but cameras just bring civilization to you, just knowing that someone behind some TV can watch.
I had nothing to hide; wasn't a criminal or a fugitive. Heck, these were place I went to since age 7 to enjoy some time in a God created recreation area with rivers, trees, mountains and wildlife that people didn't ruin yet. I simply didn't want civilation to be at a place where I went to enjoy time away from civilation.
Yours is less intrusive, but clearly you are bringing in the presence of technology in the name of safety to a place where people go to get away from technology and other totems of civilization.
Thus, I'd have to consider other options that might be possible, and even more effective at your goal. One option might be to offer beacon devices that are off unless someone turns them on. The person can choose to:
Not use the beacon device
Carry it, and only turn it on when needed
Carry it, and leave it on all the time
This way, you have the ability to locate a person to an exact location. Yet, the system is truly voluntary, and people even have the option of only turning the beacon on if they actually need it, meaning that for those people, they have increased safety over no beacon, without having to sacrifice any privacy unless they actually have an emergency.
With radio technology dirty cheap, I imagine that such a beacon device can be quite cheap.
ICOS company profile: "The Group applies its integrated approach to erectile dysfunction"
I can't help but wonder how he's going to balance his anti-spam stance with his pro-Viagra II investment.
I think that you presume they are all complete idealists, which I don't believe, because they are human. I haven't met one person that's 100% idealistic, 0% realistic, and completely immune to human instincts. Thus, I don't believe Debian developers are intrapersonally as idealistic as people describe. I believe peer pressure probably plays a role in the public statements, so that it can become easy to believe this if you only look on the surface.
Regardless, how about the 30 something votes against the change? For those that voted for it, how many really understood the impact? For those that understood the impact, how many will feel the same way if things don't turn out as idealistically as they thought?
I'm going to help a friend buy a new computer and install Linux on it. She doesn't have experience with Windows, so there won't be a change.
However, I can't decide which distro is best. I'm not as concerned about usability, since the apps are where usability is the issue, and they'll be the same regardless of the distro. What I'm concerned about is not having to support it after it's running, ease of installation of new software (for a newbie), and the ability to have it automatically receive errata updates.
I am a bit shocked that for this piece of news, have the comments are about "irregardless"; and no one is talking about the distros and experiences helping newbies use Linux on the desktop.
So, what distro is best for a newbie to computers that addresses the three issues I listed above?
>It hurts no one in that group if people stop downloading Debian.
Not true at all. The developers are motivated to be part of something bigger than themselves. If Debian dwindles and disappears, let's see if your theory holds true.
When developers leave Debian, then what are you going to say? It hurts no one when developers disappear. What about when you are down to one guy working alone 10 years from now on what was once Debian? Was no one hurt?
The developers who like to build something great and successful get hurt if the project loses its interested parties. They might be the cause, ironically. We are our own worst enemies. But being the cause doesn't mean you won't get hurt.
Leaving a project that is dwindling is depressing. You can't tell me that some contributors won't feel like they lost something.
I'm not saying this will happen to Debian. I'm simply saying that's its innacurate to say it hurts no one.
You're right, once it's running, everything is great.
What I was kind of imagining, though, when I said, "people need some assurance that things will run smoothly, today and in the foreseeable future," was that if Debian did install successfully and run well (Java is fast, errata is easy to keep up-to-date, etc,...), it might become the chosen OS for successive hardware purchases, which may have different hardware and may receive a newer version of Debian. You want to know that the installation 6 months from now will go as smoothly as today's installation, and knowing that they are changing it in a new way does not help give you that kind of assurance.
If being the best sysadmin was the most critical part of the decision, I'd go Windows all the way. I know that backards and forwards, and inside and out (barring the source code, lol.) However, I also know Nimda and Nimda II a little too well.;) Discovering that my Kernel was trying to send packets to North Korea didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
So, I'm willing to risk the "unknown" a bit, though RedHat 9 and FreeBSD 4.9, including all the networking and server software I had to configure, have done well to break me in. Heck, I even finally had the ballz to give one of those machines a full static public IP address instead of hiding it behind NAT. Yet, I never did get my D-Link wireless card to work on my laptop, so am typing this in Windows XP right now.:( Thus, I will NEVER claim to be a Linux hardware driver guru. NEVER!!! I need to trust the OS to take care of that.
Your probably right. However, when I read his description of the impact on the installer, it appeared a bit unprecedented that the firmware for a network card could not be presumed to be in the kernel, and thus creating a new complication.
Perhaps this is only an issue for the next major release, and thus not critical today. I don't know. The reality is, though, that people have to make decisions and don't have all the time in the world to investigate every possible scenario and become Debian gurus before they've ever even installed it for the first time. People need some assurance that things will run smoothly, today and in the foreseeable future.
In IT, perception is 9/10ths of reality. Thanks for helping to ease my perception.;)
That's what I was thinking. Why not call it the Social Contract of 2005?
Or amend the social contract to promise hardware support and then prioritize the goals to hardware support takes a priority until a "free" option is created or becomes available?
It appears as though Debian is going to take a big step backwards if something isn't done. The goals are clearly good, yet the real world has always required a compromise between the ideal and the real. Don't the Debian developers actually work in IT for a living?
I'm really concerned about this, because I was highly considering Debian for the next OS to try since RH is discontinuing free security updates, and I'm not sure at all how Fedora is supposed to address it. The last thing I need, though, is a hardware problem, particularly with a network card.
I believe this is another case of the law trying to preempt a technical solution.
Instead of a new law, where the cons by far outweight the pros, from being overly broad to being ineffective because of EULAs, how about a technical solution?
One solution would be a browser plug-in that checks a central database for spyware "signatures", similar to anti-virus software. It would then warn you whenever you downloaded spyware, with a link to more information at the central site.
The primary reason spyware has become prevailant is because user's are unaware. The law is not going to accomplish this, and never be nearly as effective as a technical solution.
Remember when they wanted to make cookies and pop-ups illegal? Browser technology made it possible to deal with them, so the user had choice, control and freedem, without the need for a law.
I am honestly trying to think of ONE good Internet law that passed that was effective at accomplishing its goals. Is there one?
A LOT of IT positions require a BA just to be considered for a position. Unfortunately, it's not a guarantee of a job. However, you'll appreciate those positions you take that you know you could never have obtained if you didn't get your degree. Plus, remember, learning is fun. You have to really enjoy learning to complete all four years.
With that said, I developed applications since I gradudated from high school, and got my degree after 10 years of night school. In many ways, I think I was better off, because I had the experience during the day to make the courses a breeze. In fact, I felt bad that most of the classmates had no idea what it was like to try to apply the course to the real world. To try to describe, in purely acedemic terms, how you make certain decisions, is nearly impossible.
The acedemic world doesn't consider, for instance, the impact that a limitted dollar and time pool has on project decisions, including overall design. Nor does it address quality decisions, and the things you do to increase quality in less time, because those are the real-world constraints you are under.
Going to school at night while working during the day gives you the benefit of being able to apply real world experience to your education, in addition to being able to immediately apply your education to your real world experiences.
I agree. However, at 24, a lot of the "good" stress looks "bad" in the short-term. We rarely have the foresight to see how things will benefit us and help us grow.
I remember at that age I hated politics with a passion, and swore I'd never work for government because I knew it would be a whole lot worse. Well, eventually, by age 27, I worked for the DoD. And I couldn't have been more right. The politics, and thus the stress, was intense. However, in hind sight, I grew tremendously because of it. I now am very glad I did it. Although, now that I learned and grew as much as I did, I'll be happy if I never work on another government contract again.:)
As one poster replied to your post, being micromanaged can lead to a more professional project management response that addresses the root cause. Often times they'll leave you alone a lot more if you can produce reports for them showing your progress. If you give them too much information, they'll really back off.
In IT, you need to accept that someone will want assurance that your are producing the requirements and will be ontime. Over time, you can often reduce the reporting period, but I never let it become less frequent than once a week, even after they learned that you always deliver ontime.
One good way to give continuous feedback on a project in an automated fashion is through Apache's Maven. There are, of course, countless other project management related ways to provide "progress" reports online or on a regular basis. Maven is free, though, so worth considering.
Yeah, I laughed when I first read that years ago. Fortunately, you can use foreign constraints today, and I do. InnoDB rocks!
It's worth noting that I love not having triggers or stored procedures. I develop J2EE applications, and want them to be highly portable, and have high rip-and-replace between database vendors. Sticking to DML without a procedural language helps a lot. I use the EJB tier to enforce business rules.
But foreign constraints are a blesing for data integrity. I remember well the day before they existed, having been doing RDMS development since dBase II in the early 80s. You spent 1/3 of your coding time just to ensure that your data integrity was intact, and still wound up with integrity errors in production.
Database contraints are one of the reasons central database servers took off (e.g., Oracle). It reduced development time and increased data integrity by a large magnitude, not to mention performance that improved over time as the database servers learned to optimize.
As a J2EE advocate today, what I really want to see is EJB-QL evolve. This may require some of the new additions to MySQL, such as subqueries. However, I could care less about having stored procedures in MySQL. MySQL will reach a point where it will have all I'll ever need, as I'll be doing most in EJBs.
It's worth noting the CMR is supposed to handle foreign constraints. Thus, in theory, even foreign constraints in the database are losing value. But unlike the arguement you copied from the MySQL docs, you aren't getting rid of them. You are simply moving them to the data object tier.
By the way, one last note: people confuse a foreign key with a foreign contraint. If you develop a relational model, then you have foreign keys. They are conceptual. It says that some valies in a child table correspond to values in a parent table. Nothing more. You have foreign keys even if you don't use foreign constraints. The contraints, however, are what some people are actually referring to when they mistakenly say foreign keys. The only role of the database in this area is to enforce constraints. Sure, in some syntax you do this by declaring a key, but you are really creating an insert/update contraint on a child table, as well as a delete constraint on the parent.
I understand your point. Yet, these countries do have economies of their own. India happens to have a lot of regulatory problems where free enterprise is just beginning to be accepted. India still has a long way to go to dismantle some of their regulatory structure, yet the only reason you're seeing economic progress there today is because they have taken some initial steps.
The point is that they have the capacity to grow their own economies. Those in politics simply need to understand it. You usually have to educate the policy makers before you can improve a country.
In third-world countries improving the efficiency of their own economies is in high demand. However, children often have to work to provide for their families, thus forgoing an education. It's the lack of skills that hinders attempts of countries as a whole from growing out of poverty.
Increased economic efficiency permits them to produce more for less, increasing the benefits internally as well as increasing exports, bringing in foreign dollars.
One common example is farming. Since they usually have very inefficient farming (a mule instead of a tractor), third world countries often become net importers of food. Increasing their efficiency with farming can result in less imports and higher standard of living. Yet, education is needed to precede this trend on a large scale.
Like the history of the US, education is a critical determinant in their ability to overcome poverty.
Perhaps I'm picturing Africa more than India and China. Yet, even in China, 90% of the country is not enjoying the boom because they don't have access to the resources to overcome poverty. Like most rural citizens, their education is lacking, and work often takes a priority. Until they lift up their education level, there isn't a whole lot the Chinese government can do to help their situation.
Ditto for India. The majority of the country is not benefiting from the IT boom. Without a major overhaul in their access to education, and a decrease in their need to work as children so they don't forgo education, India as a whole is not likely to benefit much from the economic boom.
Those who think that the IT jobs India is getting is lifting the country itself out of poverty need to learn about what the majority of the 1 billion people there are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree 100%. I've been trying to explain this. People think you are obliged to use WEP, as if WEB means that no unauthorized person can use your network. I believe the author understands that WEB and MAC filtering are a joke; but, rather than try to explain that to Comcast or anyone else, it's easier to say that anyone could have easily used his network without his knowing about it. In fact, I think disabling DHCP logging was more important to his point than WEP or MAC filtering, since he wants to also say he has know way of knowing if someone used his wireless network, versus a virus, for instance, where you might be expected to prove that it caused the downloads.
When you say WEP, you mean WAP.
WAP = Wireless Access Point
WEP = Wired Equivalent Privacy
Thus, you use WEP to "secure" your WAP.
The thing is, WEP is breakable, and the vulnerability is in the way WAPs communicate with the wireless cards to establish enrypted communications. Thus, WEP is NOT truly secure. It simply keeps non-hackers or hackers that don't have the motivation to hack your network out.
MAC addresses, another tequnique to protect your wireless network, can be easily spoofed.
Between the two problems, virtually every 802.11b wireless network can be hacked today. The author, I believe, understands this. He realizes, however, that its easier to explain that someone could have used his network without his knowing about it if he doesn't have to explain how WEP and MAC security are vulnerable.
I think part of the author's arguement is that the computer is already insecure. You cannot guarantee some virus or hacker isn't downloading copyrighted material. Thus, he simply makes it easier to explain that he had no way of knowing whether or not someone was connected to his network. He's saying that since it's already insecure, he'll go all the way so it will be easier to explain how someone could have used his IP.
Before the internet became dominated by corporations, it was common to share your connections. The original ISPs were mom and pops running it out of their homes, sharing their connection with local people via dial-up. They were later aggegated by large for-profit enterprises that created the TOS restriction to create tiered pricing to increase revenue by charging more for downstream ISPs.
Clearly, the author is aware of the risk of Comcast disconnecting his service, as he has already written a response to provide a defense, claiming that he was unaware anyone was using his network. He will be telling the truth, since his article is about making sure he is unaware by turning off DHCP logging. The greatest risk is a TOS violation, with the worst case scenario being that he'll have to find another ISP. He may still be able to effectively immune himself from copyright violation accusations where the only evidence is that his IP was used to download the content.
The problem is the traditional distinction between the FBI and the RIAA is rapidly disappearing. Unfortunately, there are bills in Congress to turn the FBI into an extension of the RIAA. Even a letter by one congressman recommends permitting the FBI to go after 15,000 or so file sharers to set an example, and to permit the FBI to pursue civil as well as criminal punishment so it could more easily help corporations pursue individuals.
ditto
Unload it each nite into your laptop. Then, at the end of your vacation, you can transcribe it, and perhaps even use voice recognition software to transcribe the rough draft for you.
However, one person made a good point that this does run counter to why some of us go to the natural areas. I had two places I went to when I grew up. Both of those places represented "God made" areas barely touched by people. Thus, the escape for me was to be somewhere where God was and civilation had virtually no impact.
One of those places was changed to permit public access, which ruined it, because they had to destroy 90% of why we went there in order to make it "safe."
The other place put cameras in the trees, again in the name of safety. This, again, ruined it. I went there to be away from civilization, but cameras just bring civilization to you, just knowing that someone behind some TV can watch.
I had nothing to hide; wasn't a criminal or a fugitive. Heck, these were place I went to since age 7 to enjoy some time in a God created recreation area with rivers, trees, mountains and wildlife that people didn't ruin yet. I simply didn't want civilation to be at a place where I went to enjoy time away from civilation.
Yours is less intrusive, but clearly you are bringing in the presence of technology in the name of safety to a place where people go to get away from technology and other totems of civilization.
Thus, I'd have to consider other options that might be possible, and even more effective at your goal. One option might be to offer beacon devices that are off unless someone turns them on. The person can choose to:
This way, you have the ability to locate a person to an exact location. Yet, the system is truly voluntary, and people even have the option of only turning the beacon on if they actually need it, meaning that for those people, they have increased safety over no beacon, without having to sacrifice any privacy unless they actually have an emergency.
With radio technology dirty cheap, I imagine that such a beacon device can be quite cheap.
ICOS company profile: "The Group applies its integrated approach to erectile dysfunction" I can't help but wonder how he's going to balance his anti-spam stance with his pro-Viagra II investment.
"173 db sound"!
Regardless, how about the 30 something votes against the change? For those that voted for it, how many really understood the impact? For those that understood the impact, how many will feel the same way if things don't turn out as idealistically as they thought?
However, I can't decide which distro is best. I'm not as concerned about usability, since the apps are where usability is the issue, and they'll be the same regardless of the distro. What I'm concerned about is not having to support it after it's running, ease of installation of new software (for a newbie), and the ability to have it automatically receive errata updates.
I am a bit shocked that for this piece of news, have the comments are about "irregardless"; and no one is talking about the distros and experiences helping newbies use Linux on the desktop.
So, what distro is best for a newbie to computers that addresses the three issues I listed above?
Not true at all. The developers are motivated to be part of something bigger than themselves. If Debian dwindles and disappears, let's see if your theory holds true.
When developers leave Debian, then what are you going to say? It hurts no one when developers disappear. What about when you are down to one guy working alone 10 years from now on what was once Debian? Was no one hurt?
The developers who like to build something great and successful get hurt if the project loses its interested parties. They might be the cause, ironically. We are our own worst enemies. But being the cause doesn't mean you won't get hurt.
Leaving a project that is dwindling is depressing. You can't tell me that some contributors won't feel like they lost something.
I'm not saying this will happen to Debian. I'm simply saying that's its innacurate to say it hurts no one.
What I was kind of imagining, though, when I said, "people need some assurance that things will run smoothly, today and in the foreseeable future," was that if Debian did install successfully and run well (Java is fast, errata is easy to keep up-to-date, etc,...), it might become the chosen OS for successive hardware purchases, which may have different hardware and may receive a newer version of Debian. You want to know that the installation 6 months from now will go as smoothly as today's installation, and knowing that they are changing it in a new way does not help give you that kind of assurance.
If being the best sysadmin was the most critical part of the decision, I'd go Windows all the way. I know that backards and forwards, and inside and out (barring the source code, lol.) However, I also know Nimda and Nimda II a little too well. ;) Discovering that my Kernel was trying to send packets to North Korea didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
So, I'm willing to risk the "unknown" a bit, though RedHat 9 and FreeBSD 4.9, including all the networking and server software I had to configure, have done well to break me in. Heck, I even finally had the ballz to give one of those machines a full static public IP address instead of hiding it behind NAT. Yet, I never did get my D-Link wireless card to work on my laptop, so am typing this in Windows XP right now. :( Thus, I will NEVER claim to be a Linux hardware driver guru. NEVER!!! I need to trust the OS to take care of that.
Perhaps this is only an issue for the next major release, and thus not critical today. I don't know. The reality is, though, that people have to make decisions and don't have all the time in the world to investigate every possible scenario and become Debian gurus before they've ever even installed it for the first time. People need some assurance that things will run smoothly, today and in the foreseeable future.
In IT, perception is 9/10ths of reality. Thanks for helping to ease my perception. ;)
ROFL!
Or amend the social contract to promise hardware support and then prioritize the goals to hardware support takes a priority until a "free" option is created or becomes available?
It appears as though Debian is going to take a big step backwards if something isn't done. The goals are clearly good, yet the real world has always required a compromise between the ideal and the real. Don't the Debian developers actually work in IT for a living?
I'm really concerned about this, because I was highly considering Debian for the next OS to try since RH is discontinuing free security updates, and I'm not sure at all how Fedora is supposed to address it. The last thing I need, though, is a hardware problem, particularly with a network card.
Don't you moderators have a sense of humor? It's a joke! If you can't joke with your friends (Europeans), then who can you joke with?
Hint Hint
Instead of a new law, where the cons by far outweight the pros, from being overly broad to being ineffective because of EULAs, how about a technical solution?
One solution would be a browser plug-in that checks a central database for spyware "signatures", similar to anti-virus software. It would then warn you whenever you downloaded spyware, with a link to more information at the central site.
The primary reason spyware has become prevailant is because user's are unaware. The law is not going to accomplish this, and never be nearly as effective as a technical solution.
Remember when they wanted to make cookies and pop-ups illegal? Browser technology made it possible to deal with them, so the user had choice, control and freedem, without the need for a law.
I am honestly trying to think of ONE good Internet law that passed that was effective at accomplishing its goals. Is there one?
Companies to include your in boycott list
With that said, I developed applications since I gradudated from high school, and got my degree after 10 years of night school. In many ways, I think I was better off, because I had the experience during the day to make the courses a breeze. In fact, I felt bad that most of the classmates had no idea what it was like to try to apply the course to the real world. To try to describe, in purely acedemic terms, how you make certain decisions, is nearly impossible.
The acedemic world doesn't consider, for instance, the impact that a limitted dollar and time pool has on project decisions, including overall design. Nor does it address quality decisions, and the things you do to increase quality in less time, because those are the real-world constraints you are under.
Going to school at night while working during the day gives you the benefit of being able to apply real world experience to your education, in addition to being able to immediately apply your education to your real world experiences.
I remember at that age I hated politics with a passion, and swore I'd never work for government because I knew it would be a whole lot worse. Well, eventually, by age 27, I worked for the DoD. And I couldn't have been more right. The politics, and thus the stress, was intense. However, in hind sight, I grew tremendously because of it. I now am very glad I did it. Although, now that I learned and grew as much as I did, I'll be happy if I never work on another government contract again. :)
As one poster replied to your post, being micromanaged can lead to a more professional project management response that addresses the root cause. Often times they'll leave you alone a lot more if you can produce reports for them showing your progress. If you give them too much information, they'll really back off.
In IT, you need to accept that someone will want assurance that your are producing the requirements and will be ontime. Over time, you can often reduce the reporting period, but I never let it become less frequent than once a week, even after they learned that you always deliver ontime.
One good way to give continuous feedback on a project in an automated fashion is through Apache's Maven. There are, of course, countless other project management related ways to provide "progress" reports online or on a regular basis. Maven is free, though, so worth considering.
It's worth noting that I love not having triggers or stored procedures. I develop J2EE applications, and want them to be highly portable, and have high rip-and-replace between database vendors. Sticking to DML without a procedural language helps a lot. I use the EJB tier to enforce business rules.
But foreign constraints are a blesing for data integrity. I remember well the day before they existed, having been doing RDMS development since dBase II in the early 80s. You spent 1/3 of your coding time just to ensure that your data integrity was intact, and still wound up with integrity errors in production.
Database contraints are one of the reasons central database servers took off (e.g., Oracle). It reduced development time and increased data integrity by a large magnitude, not to mention performance that improved over time as the database servers learned to optimize.
As a J2EE advocate today, what I really want to see is EJB-QL evolve. This may require some of the new additions to MySQL, such as subqueries. However, I could care less about having stored procedures in MySQL. MySQL will reach a point where it will have all I'll ever need, as I'll be doing most in EJBs.
It's worth noting the CMR is supposed to handle foreign constraints. Thus, in theory, even foreign constraints in the database are losing value. But unlike the arguement you copied from the MySQL docs, you aren't getting rid of them. You are simply moving them to the data object tier.
By the way, one last note: people confuse a foreign key with a foreign contraint. If you develop a relational model, then you have foreign keys. They are conceptual. It says that some valies in a child table correspond to values in a parent table. Nothing more. You have foreign keys even if you don't use foreign constraints. The contraints, however, are what some people are actually referring to when they mistakenly say foreign keys. The only role of the database in this area is to enforce constraints. Sure, in some syntax you do this by declaring a key, but you are really creating an insert/update contraint on a child table, as well as a delete constraint on the parent.
The point is that they have the capacity to grow their own economies. Those in politics simply need to understand it. You usually have to educate the policy makers before you can improve a country.
In third-world countries improving the efficiency of their own economies is in high demand. However, children often have to work to provide for their families, thus forgoing an education. It's the lack of skills that hinders attempts of countries as a whole from growing out of poverty.
Increased economic efficiency permits them to produce more for less, increasing the benefits internally as well as increasing exports, bringing in foreign dollars.
One common example is farming. Since they usually have very inefficient farming (a mule instead of a tractor), third world countries often become net importers of food. Increasing their efficiency with farming can result in less imports and higher standard of living. Yet, education is needed to precede this trend on a large scale.
Like the history of the US, education is a critical determinant in their ability to overcome poverty.
Perhaps I'm picturing Africa more than India and China. Yet, even in China, 90% of the country is not enjoying the boom because they don't have access to the resources to overcome poverty. Like most rural citizens, their education is lacking, and work often takes a priority. Until they lift up their education level, there isn't a whole lot the Chinese government can do to help their situation.
Ditto for India. The majority of the country is not benefiting from the IT boom. Without a major overhaul in their access to education, and a decrease in their need to work as children so they don't forgo education, India as a whole is not likely to benefit much from the economic boom.
Those who think that the IT jobs India is getting is lifting the country itself out of poverty need to learn about what the majority of the 1 billion people there are doing.