The article said that the carrier battle groups are going to be using these things for "force protection." I'm not sure, but I think that means watching the area when the ships are in port, and trying to prevent fiascos like the U.S.S Cole attack.
If I am interpreting their verbage correctly, the AC's first sentence is exactly right. Having a cheap eye in the sky that might notice the next crop of knuckleheads loading dynamite into their boat around the bend in the river would be very useful. If all it does is get the guy with the.50 on the deck to point in the right direction, it could be worth it. If that's what they are talking about.
ThI know that U.S. protections are kind of weak, but still, I wonder if that company would really care to stand up in court and say that 9 defects in a row isn't a defect. The practical question is whether it is worth screwing around with them in court. It's a shame.
I've fixed a few machines as favors to personal friends and friends of the family. One old couple has an old 300mhz Celeron that would be working great except for the masses of spyware, adware, and various unholiness.
This particular couple likes to stand over my shoulder while I work and complain about how the world and the net has gone to hel, about all the horrible porn, and how they are thinking of just disconnecting. The lady does most of the complaining, unsurprisingly. Sometimes it is difficult to keep a straight face.
This old couple, and most of the other old folks I've helped seem absolutely incapable of understanding the need to keep their definitions up to date. Written checklists, repeated suggestions, and even telling them to leave the computer on every Saturday night so the automated updates can work just don't penetrate their minds.That single move would keep the fat-young-heiffers junk under control, and the old guys out of trouble.
For these I usually just put an X through it or a straight line. I always believed that an X was a valid signature.
I t's my impression tha there are two functions a signature fills. The first is that it is an "affirmative act." I think almost anything would do, in theory, except that a signature is what everyone accepts.
The second function of a signature is as identification and by consequence, non repudiation.
An "X" may not be useful for identification, but it is an affirmative act, and therefore valid. I may be totally off base, but that is my understanding of the concept. It is, obviously, only useful in a fundamentally honest and familiar world.
BS. I call this a large, steaming pile of funky horse apples.
First of all, I find it improbable that any organization that necessarily thrives on secrecy and order would allow somebody to post AC. Large companies have a PR organ for a reason.
Secondly, who in the hell would spill anything about internal procedures unless they were forced to do so by Congress or a FOIA beatdown?
I'm wasting my breath since this is Slashdown and an AC post, but it is Sunday and I'm bored.
Let's assume, for fun, that the above AC poster is telling the truth. I have a problem with a powerful organization covering up incidental violations. A violation that isn't punished or compensated is abuse compounded. Nobody that is sane will think that this will ever change.
Also, what kind of moron thinks that just because ill-gotten data isn't presented in court means that it isn't useful? Once you notice someone it would be easy enough to develop indipendent evidence. Obscurity provided by the bellowing masses is low grade security.
I guess this post is a waste of decent electrons, but it's a weekend and all, so what the heck.
Ok, somebody is probably going to take me to school for this one, but is there a way to set this thing off on cue in one big burst? That should cut down on the observation costs.
What would happen if you could convince some moron to drive a boat into the eye of one of these storms and then set off a laser in the 193 nanometer range and aim it straight up. If you pumped a big old burst of energy into the laser it should make a nice ionized and therefore conductive path up into the stratosphere. Would that set up a decent experiment?
I can't quite figure out how this phenomenon is usefl, but that's just me.
AviLazar and other are right of course. This isn't news. The thing that irritates me is that the government is getting ripped off. Again, this isn't news and it is almost an tradition and a sport, but it is annoying for us lowly tax payers.
It seems to me that the government is probably one of the biggest customers a company like Dell is likely to ever have, and that the GSA has some potent leverage. How hard would it be to stick a line in their contract that runs something like "We get the best unit price on anything you sell, and changing the color of the paint on the memory chip labels and giving them a new serial number doesn't count. Futhermore, any hoser that tries to get cute with this will find themselves paying us a 5% bonus, just to have a prayer of getting the GSA contract reinstated."
It sounds simple enough to me. After all, memory and the like items are basically commodities, right? We're not talking about something that's all that functionally different than wheat and pork bellies.
In most cases, no. It's more than a little scary. There are no checkups except for some rudimentary vision checks, and those don't cover much except the ability to resolve basic shapes and lettering in the central field of vision.
Your way is better, and rational, but it won't happen in the U.S.
Thank God for morons with active imaginations and spare time. There is always one in every crowd that is willing to eat worms, spray stuff with hairspray and the light it, or spin CDs to destruction.
1. The Cat (Caesar) Generally cat-like, and hence was pretty much above the rest of the world. Beat the crap out of the dog on a regular basis.
2. My brother. Generally pretty smart except when he trained one of the sheep to charge everything and then wondered why he had to do all the barnyard chores until that psychotic ram went to slaughter.
3. The dog. Our sheltie pretty much did what it wanted to all day, pushed all the other animals around at will and generally had a good time doing whatever came into it's brain that minute. The dog was enraged by squirrels and snakes and would lose all sense though.
4. Goats They figure our doors, fences and pretty much do what they want. Not a lot scares them and they mostly ignore the dog.
5. The Horse Actually rather smart. I trained it to come when called, work without harness or saddle and almost got it to sit on command (really! althouth this one pissed it off) The only problem is that horses are basically very, very blond. Anything and nothing can scare them into a high-speed witless panic. Horses get bored easily and can get cranky and neurotic.
6. Ducks Bird brains, but they get along by themselves. They are not an active health hazard to themselves.
7. Sheep & Chickens Both are high proof stupid. The chickens have an excuse. They, after all, can run around with most of their brains amputated, which is pretty much what they do with all their brains. We raised a few ducks with our chickens and they chics would follow the duck hatchlings into the watering trough and immediately sink to the bottom. A gu on Whidbey Island, in Washignton State, assembled a glock of chickens and kept htem with a dog and a certain type of hawk. The dog and the hawk would keep most of the other predators away and he let chickens breed and fend for themselves. Eventually he came up witha flock that would hide in tall weeds, watch out for the hawk, and generally survive without a lot of replacements and help. It took 20 years.
Sheep should do better with their larger brains, but they don't. Sheep will pretty much kill themselves unless a human intervenes. One lamb tried to taste the flame of a blowtorch I was holding. Twice. When motivated, a herd of sheep can trample most things without a lot of trouble, but they never seem to learn to use this offensively. Really, if they had middle fingers, they could give it to the dog and go back to getting their heads stuck in the fence while trying to reach the grass on the other side. I hate sheep. If humans start getting sheep parts, the end of the world is about two hours away.
8. Other We didn't raise cows, thank god. I think that some people think cows are stupid because they are big enough to sit there and look at you without giving a crap what you think. That and the regurgitating and re-chewing lunch makes people wonder. Pigs are supposd to be as smart as dogs, but I don't know. Geese are somewhat smarter than chickens and they're frickin' mean.
I know this isn't prime geek material, but certainly the people doing this work realize these things and won't try to foist animal braisn on people. That would be unkind.
My head says you are right about this, but I'd really like to think Star Trek's goose isn't totally cooked. It is interesting to note that the/. link to Marina's web site and the mirrordot link is pretty much gone. She still draws some interest at least.
you can be social with your employees but not be friends with them. That close bond is resereved for coworkers.
Amen. Right now I work in a very small TV station, so informal relations are normal and could be very efficient. My boss wants "an open relationship, where we can tell eachother what's on our minds." Any why does he insist on calling me "buddy" and "pal?" Really! I don't understand this at all.
You're right, social is possible, but even that is difficult.
Yeah, I managed to piss off my subordinates in my one management experience. Once you lose the trust and respect of your crew you're permanently screwed. Even if you fail here, you can learn, but it'll be ugly.
The Attila The Hun management method doesn't work unless you actually have the power and are actually willing to cut out their tongues. It'll just piss them off and they'll find a way to screw you over, and will be justified in doing so. It probably won't take any overt acts on their part, they'll just not save you from yourself when you really need it.
I think that the original poster may not have any serious power so the Attila method is out, and it is not really any good anyway, in the long term.
(Disclosure: I'm a Mass Media weenie, so go easy on me)
Will this asynchronous, clockless computing business solve the clockspeed/propagation issues that are becoming an issue? Will the physical distance between one end of a Cell processor and the other end take the edge off the propagation/timing issues? It looks like a signal would only have to go a relatively small distance before it is somehow packaged/translated and prepped for the interface to the other chips somehow.
It's obvious that I'm underprepared to discuss this, but i'm just trying to tune up my BS filter and it's so damn interesting anyway.
We have freedom of speech, which usually means freedom of expression. Many programs, especially P2P apps are all about communication and expression. Really, without the right to distribute opinions and ideas, the right to have them and repeat them to yourself every morning is meaningless. So yeah, I think the Constitution does have something to say about us having the right to bear software.
The fact that the primary expression of that particular right is illegal shouldn't mean that the right itself does not exist.
Outlawing P2P because people will probably do something illegal is about as appropriate as prohibiting someone from publishing some secret and embarassing papers because somebody swiped the originals and it might be a crime to reveal said secrets. It's called "prior restraint," and the Supreme Court of the United States has already spoken to this issue more than once. Our UK friends and other handle these issues in a completely different, and if such a thing is possible, scarier way than we do.
IANAL and all. There are whole rafts of people that spend their lives puzzling this stuff out. Hopefully one of them will grow a pair and shut this law down.
but it always struck me that the Klingons would want to risk death, for it's own sake. Death is the primary goal. The sooner they get whacked in an honorable fashion, the sooner they get to meet Kahless The Unforgettable and take the dime tour of Sto-Vo-Kor, or whatever their after life was.
If you want to take Star Trek seriously at all, I guess it could be taken as a indictment of the Federations's, and the modern world's obsession with long life, perfection, and all-around, well-scrubbed goodness.
And yeah, it would hurt to furrow bony brow ridges which is why the Klingons would get off on it.
I could actually respect a spammer that had the "guts" to route their spam through a server owned by a group that could unload a platoon of M1A2s on his front lawn and permanently crush everything in sight in about 2 seconds.
Please God... Thou has made me bald and without charm. Pleae give this one thing.
Does mean, somehow, that condoms are now illegal under the no-circumvention provisions of the DMCA? Maybe Senator Hatch and friends really were forward thinking folks.
Maybe I don't understand, but I have a hard time thinking of an oath of allegiance as meaningless procedure. There is plenty to dislike in our society, enough to give a rational foreigner pause, but I think the oath should be taken seriously. Maybe that would ean saying "No, Your Honor, I don't swear it." That's ok too.
Anything less is an insulting fraud.
I've heard that some hospitals have established latex free surgical/recovery suites, just so they don't have to wast nursing talent and keep resuscitating them. I think they use mostly PVC products and the Nitrile gloves, but a 10x more expensive latex alternative doesn't sound terribly useful when the hospitals can already beat the problem.
No there are a few latex products that are not as price sensitive, of course. But that has to be a specialty niche.
To make a blanket assertion that computers are "ho-hum" commodity items, and that "no serious person gives a damn about the fastest pc" is an error.
Firstly, most ordinary business computing needs can and should be met by ho-hum commodity computers. But I work with people that do buy the fastest machines and they are very serious and rational about their choices. It is really a balancing act between the cost of capital and the incremental cost of paying people. Artists of many kinds cost businesses so much money that the suits will do almost anything make their days more efficient. That can mean buying the latest G5 monster that would be wasted on the front office types that really only need an AMD K6 level machine. It's really a cold blooded choice, not a pecker contest. If the suits are smart.
Sure, there are the nuts that thrive in the Jobs righteous reality distortion field, and will buy his junk just because, but there are many, including myself, that don't.
I run Windows 98 for gaming and just installed Fedora Core 3 at home, but you'll have to bludgeon my skull into a paste to get my G5/OS X goodness away from me for work purposes, and I have absolutely no emotional or financial investment in Apple/Jobs whatsoever. For my purposes, it's that important.
Secondly, computers may look like ho-hum commodity machines, and they really should be, but they aren't. Quality and durability still matters. eMachines may put a Pentium IV screamer in their boxes, and old Farmer MacDonald can put a gold ring in his pig's snout, but that doesn't change the essence of the beast. I just can't go along with the assertion that computers are commodities.
Slashdot Mirror
The article said that the carrier battle groups are going to be using these things for "force protection." I'm not sure, but I think that means watching the area when the ships are in port, and trying to prevent fiascos like the U.S.S Cole attack.
.50 on the deck to point in the right direction, it could be worth it. If that's what they are talking about.
If I am interpreting their verbage correctly, the AC's first sentence is exactly right. Having a cheap eye in the sky that might notice the next crop of knuckleheads loading dynamite into their boat around the bend in the river would be very useful. If all it does is get the guy with the
ThI know that U.S. protections are kind of weak, but still, I wonder if that company would really care to stand up in court and say that 9 defects in a row isn't a defect. The practical question is whether it is worth screwing around with them in court. It's a shame.
How many eons will it take for her to forget this? You, Sir, are brave, crazy, or both!
I've fixed a few machines as favors to personal friends and friends of the family. One old couple has an old 300mhz Celeron that would be working great except for the masses of spyware, adware, and various unholiness.
This particular couple likes to stand over my shoulder while I work and complain about how the world and the net has gone to hel, about all the horrible porn, and how they are thinking of just disconnecting. The lady does most of the complaining, unsurprisingly. Sometimes it is difficult to keep a straight face.
This old couple, and most of the other old folks I've helped seem absolutely incapable of understanding the need to keep their definitions up to date. Written checklists, repeated suggestions, and even telling them to leave the computer on every Saturday night so the automated updates can work just don't penetrate their minds.That single move would keep the fat-young-heiffers junk under control, and the old guys out of trouble.
It won't happen though.
For these I usually just put an X through it or a straight line. I always believed that an X was a valid signature.
I t's my impression tha there are two functions a signature fills. The first is that it is an "affirmative act." I think almost anything would do, in theory, except that a signature is what everyone accepts.
The second function of a signature is as identification and by consequence, non repudiation.
An "X" may not be useful for identification, but it is an affirmative act, and therefore valid. I may be totally off base, but that is my understanding of the concept. It is, obviously, only useful in a fundamentally honest and familiar world.
BS. I call this a large, steaming pile of funky horse apples.
First of all, I find it improbable that any organization that necessarily thrives on secrecy and order would allow somebody to post AC. Large companies have a PR organ for a reason.
Secondly, who in the hell would spill anything about internal procedures unless they were forced to do so by Congress or a FOIA beatdown?
I'm wasting my breath since this is Slashdown and an AC post, but it is Sunday and I'm bored.
Let's assume, for fun, that the above AC poster is telling the truth. I have a problem with a powerful organization covering up incidental violations. A violation that isn't punished or compensated is abuse compounded. Nobody that is sane will think that this will ever change.
Also, what kind of moron thinks that just because ill-gotten data isn't presented in court means that it isn't useful? Once you notice someone it would be easy enough to develop indipendent evidence. Obscurity provided by the bellowing masses is low grade security.
I guess this post is a waste of decent electrons, but it's a weekend and all, so what the heck.
Ok, somebody is probably going to take me to school for this one, but is there a way to set this thing off on cue in one big burst? That should cut down on the observation costs.
What would happen if you could convince some moron to drive a boat into the eye of one of these storms and then set off a laser in the 193 nanometer range and aim it straight up. If you pumped a big old burst of energy into the laser it should make a nice ionized and therefore conductive path up into the stratosphere. Would that set up a decent experiment?
I can't quite figure out how this phenomenon is usefl, but that's just me.
does this mean that Scott Adams will have to start actually working to come up with plot lines? Doesn't the above excerpt *scream* PHBness to you?
Now that Fiorina is gone will Dilbert's tie lay flat for once?
I know it is just a cartoon, but it is funny in a horrifying way for a huge number of people. There's a good reason for that.
AviLazar and other are right of course. This isn't news. The thing that irritates me is that the government is getting ripped off. Again, this isn't news and it is almost an tradition and a sport, but it is annoying for us lowly tax payers.
It seems to me that the government is probably one of the biggest customers a company like Dell is likely to ever have, and that the GSA has some potent leverage. How hard would it be to stick a line in their contract that runs something like "We get the best unit price on anything you sell, and changing the color of the paint on the memory chip labels and giving them a new serial number doesn't count. Futhermore, any hoser that tries to get cute with this will find themselves paying us a 5% bonus, just to have a prayer of getting the GSA contract reinstated."
It sounds simple enough to me. After all, memory and the like items are basically commodities, right? We're not talking about something that's all that functionally different than wheat and pork bellies.
Somebody in the GSA has been missing a jump, IMO.
I wonder if that small stake Canopy has gets their opinions heard in board meetings. Is it enough to let them hold the floor for any time at all?
In most cases, no. It's more than a little scary. There are no checkups except for some rudimentary vision checks, and those don't cover much except the ability to resolve basic shapes and lettering in the central field of vision.
Your way is better, and rational, but it won't happen in the U.S.
Thank God for morons with active imaginations and spare time. There is always one in every crowd that is willing to eat worms, spray stuff with hairspray and the light it, or spin CDs to destruction.
Our lives would be so much duller without them.
1. The Cat (Caesar)
Generally cat-like, and hence was pretty much above the rest of the world. Beat the crap out of the dog on a regular basis.
2. My brother.
Generally pretty smart except when he trained one of the sheep to charge everything and then wondered why he had to do all the barnyard chores until that psychotic ram went to slaughter.
3. The dog.
Our sheltie pretty much did what it wanted to all day, pushed all the other animals around at will and generally had a good time doing whatever came into it's brain that minute. The dog was enraged by squirrels and snakes and would lose all sense though.
4. Goats
They figure our doors, fences and pretty much do what they want. Not a lot scares them and they mostly ignore the dog.
5. The Horse
Actually rather smart. I trained it to come when called, work without harness or saddle and almost got it to sit on command (really! althouth this one pissed it off) The only problem is that horses are basically very, very blond. Anything and nothing can scare them into a high-speed witless panic. Horses get bored easily and can get cranky and neurotic.
6. Ducks
Bird brains, but they get along by themselves. They are not an active health hazard to themselves.
7. Sheep & Chickens
Both are high proof stupid. The chickens have an excuse. They, after all, can run around with most of their brains amputated, which is pretty much what they do with all their brains. We raised a few ducks with our chickens and they chics would follow the duck hatchlings into the watering trough and immediately sink to the bottom. A gu on Whidbey Island, in Washignton State, assembled a glock of chickens and kept htem with a dog and a certain type of hawk. The dog and the hawk would keep most of the other predators away and he let chickens breed and fend for themselves. Eventually he came up witha flock that would hide in tall weeds, watch out for the hawk, and generally survive without a lot of replacements and help. It took 20 years.
Sheep should do better with their larger brains, but they don't. Sheep will pretty much kill themselves unless a human intervenes. One lamb tried to taste the flame of a blowtorch I was holding. Twice. When motivated, a herd of sheep can trample most things without a lot of trouble, but they never seem to learn to use this offensively. Really, if they had middle fingers, they could give it to the dog and go back to getting their heads stuck in the fence while trying to reach the grass on the other side. I hate sheep. If humans start getting sheep parts, the end of the world is about two hours away.
8. Other
We didn't raise cows, thank god. I think that some people think cows are stupid because they are big enough to sit there and look at you without giving a crap what you think. That and the regurgitating and re-chewing lunch makes people wonder. Pigs are supposd to be as smart as dogs, but I don't know. Geese are somewhat smarter than chickens and they're frickin' mean.
I know this isn't prime geek material, but certainly the people doing this work realize these things and won't try to foist animal braisn on people. That would be unkind.
My head says you are right about this, but I'd really like to think Star Trek's goose isn't totally cooked. It is interesting to note that the /. link to Marina's web site and the mirrordot link is pretty much gone. She still draws some interest at least.
Amen. Right now I work in a very small TV station, so informal relations are normal and could be very efficient. My boss wants "an open relationship, where we can tell eachother what's on our minds." Any why does he insist on calling me "buddy" and "pal?" Really! I don't understand this at all.
You're right, social is possible, but even that is difficult.
Yeah, I managed to piss off my subordinates in my one management experience. Once you lose the trust and respect of your crew you're permanently screwed.
Even if you fail here, you can learn, but it'll be ugly.
The Attila The Hun management method doesn't work unless you actually have the power and are actually willing to cut out their tongues. It'll just piss them off and they'll find a way to screw you over, and will be justified in doing so. It probably won't take any overt acts on their part, they'll just not save you from yourself when you really need it.
I think that the original poster may not have any serious power so the Attila method is out, and it is not really any good anyway, in the long term.
(Disclosure: I'm a Mass Media weenie, so go easy on me)
Will this asynchronous, clockless computing business solve the clockspeed/propagation issues that are becoming an issue? Will the physical distance between one end of a Cell processor and the other end take the edge off the propagation/timing issues? It looks like a signal would only have to go a relatively small distance before it is somehow packaged/translated and prepped for the interface to the other chips somehow.
It's obvious that I'm underprepared to discuss this, but i'm just trying to tune up my BS filter and it's so damn interesting anyway.
We have freedom of speech, which usually means freedom of expression. Many programs, especially P2P apps are all about communication and expression. Really, without the right to distribute opinions and ideas, the right to have them and repeat them to yourself every morning is meaningless. So yeah, I think the Constitution does have something to say about us having the right to bear software.
The fact that the primary expression of that particular right is illegal shouldn't mean that the right itself does not exist.
Outlawing P2P because people will probably do something illegal is about as appropriate as prohibiting someone from publishing some secret and embarassing papers because somebody swiped the originals and it might be a crime to reveal said secrets. It's called "prior restraint," and the Supreme Court of the United States has already spoken to this issue more than once. Our UK friends and other handle these issues in a completely different, and if such a thing is possible, scarier way than we do.
IANAL and all. There are whole rafts of people that spend their lives puzzling this stuff out. Hopefully one of them will grow a pair and shut this law down.
but it always struck me that the Klingons would want to risk death, for it's own sake. Death is the primary goal. The sooner they get whacked in an honorable fashion, the sooner they get to meet Kahless The Unforgettable and take the dime tour of Sto-Vo-Kor, or whatever their after life was.
If you want to take Star Trek seriously at all, I guess it could be taken as a indictment of the Federations's, and the modern world's obsession with long life, perfection, and all-around, well-scrubbed goodness.
And yeah, it would hurt to furrow bony brow ridges which is why the Klingons would get off on it.
I could actually respect a spammer that had the "guts" to route their spam through a server owned by a group that could unload a platoon of M1A2s on his front lawn and permanently crush everything in sight in about 2 seconds.
Please God... Thou has made me bald and without charm. Pleae give this one thing.
Does mean, somehow, that condoms are now illegal under the no-circumvention provisions of the DMCA? Maybe Senator Hatch and friends really were forward thinking folks.
Maybe I don't understand, but I have a hard time thinking of an oath of allegiance as meaningless procedure. There is plenty to dislike in our society, enough to give a rational foreigner pause, but I think the oath should be taken seriously. Maybe that would ean saying "No, Your Honor, I don't swear it." That's ok too. Anything less is an insulting fraud.
One end to the malware writer, one end to the lawyer.
I've heard that some hospitals have established latex free surgical/recovery suites, just so they don't have to wast nursing talent and keep resuscitating them. I think they use mostly PVC products and the Nitrile gloves, but a 10x more expensive latex alternative doesn't sound terribly useful when the hospitals can already beat the problem.
No there are a few latex products that are not as price sensitive, of course. But that has to be a specialty niche.
To make a blanket assertion that computers are "ho-hum" commodity items, and that "no serious person gives a damn about the fastest pc" is an error.
Firstly, most ordinary business computing needs can and should be met by ho-hum commodity computers. But I work with people that do buy the fastest machines and they are very serious and rational about their choices. It is really a balancing act between the cost of capital and the incremental cost of paying people. Artists of many kinds cost businesses so much money that the suits will do almost anything make their days more efficient. That can mean buying the latest G5 monster that would be wasted on the front office types that really only need an AMD K6 level machine. It's really a cold blooded choice, not a pecker contest. If the suits are smart.
Sure, there are the nuts that thrive in the Jobs righteous reality distortion field, and will buy his junk just because, but there are many, including myself, that don't.
I run Windows 98 for gaming and just installed Fedora Core 3 at home, but you'll have to bludgeon my skull into a paste to get my G5/OS X goodness away from me for work purposes, and I have absolutely no emotional or financial investment in Apple/Jobs whatsoever. For my purposes, it's that important.
Secondly, computers may look like ho-hum commodity machines, and they really should be, but they aren't. Quality and durability still matters. eMachines may put a Pentium IV screamer in their boxes, and old Farmer MacDonald can put a gold ring in his pig's snout, but that doesn't change the essence of the beast. I just can't go along with the assertion that computers are commodities.