Classic science fiction: Jerks ignore the expert scientists, causing big disasters and at the climax it's all resolved by finally utilizing science... Often by some dumb jock / pretty boy that is wise enough to listen to the science and save the day. The jerks are usually put in their place as well. Sadly, in the real world it plays out similarly but the jerks get rich and the story is boring slow and drawn out - so nobody watches.
Educated guesses by EXPERTS are the best thing we can possibly have and when they agree so highly it should be followed. Hindsight is 20/20 but the ACTUAL scientific proof won't come until AFTERWARDS... when it is too late. Science can't predict the future; it can only test the past!
EXPERTS make the best educated guesses mankind has at any moment in time - their error rate after the fact is irrelevant, the best you have beforehand are the people who make the best guesses based upon known FACT. not beliefs/dogma/opinions.
So many problems come down to simplistic metrics that fail to be representative. From modern MBAs to society thinking in similar ways. Income level does not represent quality of life and while many people will agree with that, most will actually not believe it in their actions...
There are jobs that pay huge amounts that are valued which require less intelligence, skill, and effort than McDonalds! (some congressmen come to mind...)
The "market" will continue to push human resources to the brink. We already resort to near slave labor in order to compete against the machines; in some cases even that can't compete with the machines- we have factories that only have a few workers to watch over the robots which replaced 100s. It has been happening already for a long long time. Sure, people find other jobs but not everybody does... the population rises and the jobs do not rise at the same rates; we can do more with less workers and eventually you have more than you need (market saturation) and not enough consumers able to consume it all. We've delayed this problem by creating a consumer culture that promotes profitable addictions to perpetuate the system. That solution was a bandaid because resources are getting low and is already not enough to allow most people to live like wasteful consumers. We don't have enough Earths for that already and we have 1.5 billion in poverty, that's about 1/7 of the world... the vast majority being unable to change their situation, not lazy or deserving of their lot in life. (not everybody in the slum can luck out and if they could, there would be huge resource issues to curb it.)
Most jobs are meaningless already or ripe for automation that has yet to come. People like to say they are against something; however, when it comes to selfish personal decisions, the majority continues to do the wrong thing -- like how Americans love Walmart while complaining about outsourcing to China... What the collective *want* doesn't trump what they were raised to do. It does not matter if some can think for themselves; the threshold for harm is easily met.
The purpose of patents is to benefit society same with copyrite (spelling intentional) - to promote a small amount of legitimately deserving works we have to screw up the other 99% and ruin the industry? Free speech includes horrible speech, its the price one pays for the bad minority (and sometimes the bad stuff IS the most important... just as some of the most deserving patents may be the most important.)
We can no longer afford to cripple research, small business, and even the nation by this idiotic patent system ripe for abuse. Almost any system works just fine if nobody exploits the flaws. Our once useful system only worked because it wasn't being sufficiently abused.
Software should never have been patented; it is as useful and nearly as universal as MATH is today -- it is not just something that is so close to math some classify it as a kind of math, it is also AS USEFUL as math. Math is exempt for practical reasons and software is so similar it too should be exempt. Besides, math and software are quite complex and abstract - you really can't make judgements on it without a lot of education.... arguably, the modern levels of complexity in many professions are so much higher today (due to progress of mankind) that you can't make intelligent decisions on a large number of areas. The evaluation process must be updated to meet the specialization levels present in society - far far beyond what was imagined centuries ago. Trivial to an expert is going to be out of grasp of even an educated examiner.
For starters, educational uses should be completely EXEMPT. It is insane to have universities barred from or wasting money on passing some rite. Science progresses from shared effort not from competition and most the work happens outside the commercial sector. Where they do collaborate, in journals... that system is harming progress as well... Well funded public institutions shouldn't need to or be allowed to patent their research (like the patent everybody violates online except the big sites that PAY for linking external files in a hypertext document... which shouldn't have been approved in the 1st place...) Publishing has become a mindless metric for management which results in time wasting articles flooding the journals at increasing levels... As the problem space is settled it takes more to venture out into new territory - so why some universities require the same level as they did long ago does not make sense. There is so much "padding" going on and it is going to get worse.
Education levels have gone up around the world; in nations without our harmful practices the ability to surpass us grows each year. Not that this in itself is bad, but when all things become equal, our flaws are going to hold us back and it will become more evident to the ignorant and thick headed majority. With china unofficially ignoring things we do that slow down progress, they are making huge strides and not just in catching up with us- they are discovering and innovating at ever increasing levels. While people like myself wonder why I didn't skip science and become a stable low-stress janitor for similar wages... and do science as a hobby.
Depends on the COST to figure out the identity. DNA isn't cheap or quickly checked, you have to be worth it.
Scanning a DVD for the burner's serial number probably takes little effort depending on how widespread the tools are. I wasn't aware they burned that info--- they do? I know even CDs have manufacturer info on them but that didn't seem that useful. Then looking that up against a db containing them might also be easy but somehow I doubt the db contains that much info... probably more labor than a DNA check; blueray... that probably has your name burned into it. (sony made them)
Printing on paper? your inkjet is printing the printer's serial number onto the paper- I would think the feds would have that software and anybody with access probably can use it. tracking that down to you is probably much easier than DVDs but still involved.
Flash? well, buy a new one in cash and use it only once. make sure your OS isn't putting hidden files onto it... mount it in a virtual machine just to be safe. you could also find your OS's cache of UUIDs and delete it... but if they are accessing your computer to find if you ever mounted the drive you are in a bad situation already.
TOR might be great but one has to wonder -- the feds could be half the nodes and with enough of them they could detect you. they can use it themselves without concern about this but you on the other hand... could be unlucky. plus as some records have shown, they've found people by tracking when they show up in chat rooms and when they went on TOR matching... then you have all these horrible "cloud" apps today-- even your simple calculator app is connecting to the "cloud" today! all these apps doing "harmless" things in the background online is providing a signature of their own, if not giving out identifiers.
After a wikileak, foreign governments catching them, spies coming out -- the CIA wouldn't still admit somebody is a spy. Hell, they could reclassify something that was public and then refuse to acknowledge the obvious! That is how they work.
Now if the spy upset Bush... THEN it could then get officially acknowledged (and it would still not result in consequences.)
This hurts the state dept. not that anybody should have trusted them before and especially after wikileaks showed them for what many of us knew that they were. The CIA is using diplomats to do spying and corruption... the only thing perhaps new about this is that the CIA would be directly involved.
Sun made people feel safe putting their eggs all in 1 basket. Witness the result that many of us said was a foolish move.
C# may be a knock off and not have Oracle but then you have MS holding your eggs; and while MS might not act as badly as Oracle, they have a borg mentality that Oracle does not yet have with Java.
Do not build your business around closed languages. When C# becomes fortran the MS holdings company will still be extracting blood.
Oracle is secure (and just evil,) MS on the other hand has 1 real market success and 2 monopolies that people don't care about or even like. All 3 based on platforms that have a limited future at the scale they are presently. When MS gets more desperate... they already have taken the place of SCO instead of finding another shell corp to perform their legal extortion scheme.
While it is true there is a non-Oracle Java out there; it hardly replaces the official one and is still subject to their whims.
Bush Sr. did a few good things, probably by mistake. Even a broken clock... It is right to praise that policy even if they guy may have been against it or an unwitting party to it. Jr on the other hand was trying to UNDO his father's decision and bring back tactical mini nukes etc.
They don't need our help; whole businesses have been formed around the lack of DRM from day 1. We can continue just fine without DRM just as we have for decades. Needing Apps or crippled apps in the form of browser plug-ins has been the norm for decades. It creates a hurdle for anybody implementing DRM; which promotes an open web.
This is the same BS we hear all the time... there would be no film, no plays, no music, no culture if we didn't have copyright - there would be no technology without patents... as if we came out of the caves, invented the wheel just centuries ago.
The Apps were/are at risk because of the migration TO the web and now a small fad of migration of web to mobile apps is seen as a huge deal? That is going on independent of DRM support! Besides many mobile apps are just app wrapped html apps anyhow.
The web will continue to be fine. Just as DRM hasn't worked and ends up hacked eventually - every time - doing it as an open standard by the w3c is even more foolish (unless the w3c wants some donation $.) With just 1 target for attackers to work against with multiple implementations and an open standard to refer to, it will not only be vastly more accessible to people thinking of cracking it than the past DRM schemes but it's standardization on the web will create a larger audience.
We evolve a sense of taste for a reason. Perhaps researchers should be using information like this as a starting point for further investigation of many things.
No. Learning new frameworks and languages ARE NOT an essential part of coding. It is the current state of the market and nothing more. It can be easily argued it is the reality of the career, but it is not necessary for programming itself. A lot of people do just find for decades in some tiny niche like FORTRAN and in fact those companies are desperately looking to replace the retiring people - it might cost them; however, they already decided that a rewrite is too risky and costly over just finding or even paying to train replacements.
Enjoying coding and enjoying reading documentation on rehashed ideas are two different things. You don't code today, you spend your time researching APIs and once you start to feel good with the APIs somebody wants you to start over with another buzzword.
Given the history of these contractors of doing rigged demos... Remember back to the rocket defense system where it came out they put tracking devices into the the rocket so all it had to do was fly towards the beacon in the target? After that huge PR nightmare one would think they would learn.... and usually it is not the right lesson (make it actually work) but to learn to do a better job of not getting caught.
Everybody forget the F-22? That was lockheed martin. So, does this laser work in the rain? wouldn't be surprised... they managed to sell Americans an F-22 that didn't mix with water... I could see how falling water could mess a laser beam... And if the scattered light blinded people (a mile around) that would not only be bad for the people it protects but would violate Geneva.
None of this matters-- They will sell a $billion+ of them if they work or not and we will buy it just to subsidize their company (hoping they make something better later - because our military is all about space weapons just waiting for when the politicians change their minds.)
The OS already lost. With VMs being so widespread and popular, the OS has already lost one of its main purposes: To run software by providing the HAL and the common needs of software.
The OS should keep your old apps safely running forever. Going to a VM because of a broken dependency system or changing APIs (again related to dependency) or for SECURITY just illustrates that the OS has failed in doing it's job.
I don't care what is done about it but I am sick of the mess everybody has. The only benefit linux/BSD has is that you are made to feel stupid for not enjoying all the complexity involved (which of course is so bad that everybody uses almost as complex tools to manage it all.)
Me, I think the future is one of complex VM hypervisors where it almost feels like that is the OS and the client OS are just frameworks apps use like the window managers are today. It is not the future I want... but it is coming. Apple did it 1st I believe with their OS 9 (being closed, they could and did kill it.) There are apps from the 90s that I could still find useful today... especially the ones I paid for...
In a world of software patents nearing the edge of insanity, we can't pretend everything has to be and can always be open source and that ALL users are capable of supporting the code.
Already lost. With VMs being so widespread and popular, the OS has already lost one of its main purposes: To run software by providing the HAL and the common needs of software.
The OS should keep your old apps safely running forever. Going to a VM because of a broken dependency system or changing APIs (again related to dependency) or for SECURITY just illustrates that the OS has failed in doing it's job.
Linux (and others) have a bias to recompiling source for all the changes that go on -fine- be that way, but the packages should be able to compile against the new kernel (and basic libraries) without modifications. Sure, that means some THINKING and design as far as how to manage all the overhead of backward compatibility. It only seems insurmountable because nobody addresses it, they run away from the problem and push it onto everybody else to work around
Root level stuff can be different - but some user app should be able to run for decades unpatched, insecure, infected but still doing it's job for the user and not harming the rest of the system.
thanks. I clearly haven't touched windows since XP... some relatives PCs had it and I didn't even look to see if I could actually uninstall IE. Next time I'll try it.
You do know that IE can not be removed from Windows right? You do know MS was in big trouble with governments over it's bundling of IE and its LIES in court about it being impossible for them to remove?
Well, then you probably don't know about how Bush appointed MS to oversee it's own punishment after losing the court case... and that is why the problem continues unresolved...
1) Most states have seen their revenue drop by losing sales tax income as the internet shopping rose.
2) Some claim this is only a tiny 1% of the state's income (which states?) but fail to mention that for many states 1% is a HUGE portion of their budget shortfalls over the last decade and even larger before the depression cut revenue.
3) Phone orders are a problem. Ebay is a problem if you pay tax on USED items when you should pay tax on the ebay fees. Ebay doesn't sell anything, they are a service for 3rd party sales...
4) Shipping is wasteful and not environmental. Fuel prices keep making shipping more expensive. I would much rather prefer an interstate shipping tax which exempts freight. ALSO, these trucks on our public roads are not paying for the huge damage they cause in wearing our roads down. They also increase congestion.
5) Market pressure hasn't killed off sales taxes; some almighty market... Perhaps the transition will create a temporary window in some states to finally kill off sales tax?? One can hope.... and properly time the campaign. (Obviously, you increase other taxes to compensate or become one of those loser states.... yes, all the low revenue states suck, it is not a coincidence - feel free to exempt your state to appease your tribalism.)
6) Many states have games that can and are played with sales tax so businesses end up getting partially or completely subsidized for their tax collection. This largely only benefits large corporations. Some pay no tax, they invest and profit off the tax while holding on to it, they profit from rounding errors, some states PAY them a collection fee, and they except the tax fund from some rules (because it's not their money.)
7) Fed-Ex and UPS need to be knocked down a peg so they can't continue bribing officials to destroy the constitutionally mandated post office (which continues to see increased use year over year - in packages far making up for the drop letters. Perhaps with this change the USPS will actually see a decline instead of just false claims by corrupt politicians. BTW, if you want to know if your politician is corrupt ask them about the USPS budget problems; there is no way they are ignorant about it.)
I meant to say the US Gov likes to support it's highly paid contractors who in turn "contribute" to it's politicians.
As far as software quality. It is largely a numbers game. The more eyeballs the better. Sure some people are better than others but overall the majority are of average skill and if you just throw a ton of them at it you'll more than make up for the smart ones. Open or not it comes down to the human power put into it. That being said, project leaders probably have more to do with success/failure than any other factor. Open source has the same problem; they can fragment too much, but private software can fail to fire managers quickly enough and there is zero choice outside of what marketing & management want.
Forks happen; revisions happen more often. So do you compare MS IE against Safari? KHTML? just webkit? or googles new fork? Do you use builds that remove apple and google cruft? If you don't need the bloat having less of it has to improve quality... even if you can't realistically measure quality - the larger the program the more space you have for bugs. Just as the higher the population the likely you have more crimes (which is why we use percentages on those statistics.)
Small well made components that work simply together is unix design philosophy and good software design- large distributed groups of developers will tend to work better and probably trend towards that; even with zero software engineering experience (which the private stuff has enough of to have similar aims but being more of a dictator like hierarchy they don't have to be.) Getting a 100% volunteer unpaid complex monolithic program out I would think would be a hard thing for open source to do... but I doubt most problems require that approach.
Given the massive bias the US government has towards expensive private software contractors, I am surprised the results were so close.
MBAs, Politicians and incompetent journalists LOVE poor metrics. Americans love simplistic binary metrics (sorry no citation just experience, it's the culture.)
Remember klocs? That went on a while. Sounds like this metric dates back to those days-- they don't measure programmers by 1000s of lines coded anymore but they didn't learn their lesson and kept the defect rate measures...
Academics? Sciences? get with the real world, nobody bothers unless it is found to improve the bottom line Usually, it has to be forced to even be seriously considered... Proof by example using science and academic results is SUCH a change they call those who employ it "innovators" and they usually get all the undeserved credit as well.
Frontline is still good. I watch it often. I saw that show when it came out. They make a good legal arguments.
But like I said, they can violate your rights all the time; the result is you maybe win a case against them, but most likely they just lose that evidence against you. It is not unheard of for them to lose or give up cases against a criminal but use side information they get hints of in the process of illegally investigating which in turn can lead to them legally prosecuting the person for "unrelated" crimes... like tax evasion for example.
If you are a nobody, today you have no functional rights; they can abuse you as much as they want. You might get $$$ later after years in prison but the officials who put you there are unlikely to ever suffer half as much as they inflicted upon you. So, some reporters get $100k for illegal police actions during the political conventions - not the protesters, the reporters - that money doesn't come out of the police funds, they feel no pain at all. They buy insurance upfront they budget for when lobbying for such conventions - the local city puts it under promotion of commerce. They can recklessly blow a few million in lawsuits because they payed for insurance - its the insurance company's gamble that the inevitable lawsuits will not add up to more than the insurance premium... and they'll put in their law firms to make sure that doesn't happen.
Forgive my mistakes, I'm in a rush and didn't proof read my rant. can't type fast enough... I did go to graduate school and I'm an educator with some training in education and learning psychology.
Americans only value money; despite what they say. I know, I live here. Education = job = money. Most people don't care about education they care about the job it can get them. This corrupted modern value system is slowly corrupting the education system from the grassroots. Turning education into job training and where wrote learning is often good enough for most jobs... and heavy on testing / certifications which traditionally didn't mean that much but today it is thought of like some sort of quarterly business report.
You are not a dentist, making policy for the professional dentists because you'd had some fillings... But you all are education experts because you went to school? WTF?? Also, TED isn't as good as it was... off topic.
Idiotic plans like "no child left behind" where constant improvements were mandated regardless of the changing demographics. An influx of immigrants and a whole school's numbers could flat line and while they may have been #1 last year they are now put on probation and BS funding rules because they didn't return more "profit" than the previous year. I'm not kidding it happened here locally repeated times. Laying off teachers to higher part-timers months before the tests so they could teach to the standardized test-- just so they'd not lose more money the next year.
Education is NOT business even if you only think it's purpose is to program drones for business. Bill Gates is a business man 1st, far more ruthless businessman than computer nerd.
Some kids need to be left behind. sorry. some kids are fucked up-- especially in the USA where we have frequent shootings by kids. You can't FIX THE PARENTS - if we were serious, we'd look into getting child protection involved with a failing child. Not that moving kids around to foster homes is going to help their grades in the short term...
Interestingly, there was an old TED talk that fit this... where a brit talking about the tons of money the UK spent on the postal system because 1% of their mail wasn't delivered and they wanted 100%. Their costs and performance went DOWN trying to get perfection! They could have spent a fraction of that money advertizing how good the 99% was and people would have been better off.
Remember your history-- most people DID NOT NEED HIGHER EDUCATION, not even most of high school! A lot of those jobs still exist and modern forms exist. You don't need higher education for many jobs; in fact many certification level jobs don't need the certifications either. Some people just don't need to go to college; it is not a failure that they don't go, or even if they drop out of school. We see plenty of 4 year degree graduates working along side the drop outs... and plenty of drop outs are making a more stable living at possibly higher wages picking up your garbage. Small family businesses thrive without any college education (until one kid gets an MBA and takes over...)
EXACTLY. These MBA types (like the author) all over these days don't want to actually do anything for their inflated salaries. Cost externalization is their main dogma. Short term planning is also a big problem. They don't care if education is destroyed or if their whole company goes under as long as they maximize the benefits during their tenure. (I know MBAs, they develop a talent for shifting responsibility. They'll blame the market when an economic hiccup puts their over-leveraged business into bankruptcy. )
Part of the job of management (traditionally) is to deal with employee training and attempt to RETAIN employees they invest in. They all want to make employees disposable human resources and that is at the heart of their whole MBA religion. They forget that competition and making money is NOT the sole purpose - the system was the best thing we had for uplifting society (it has changed, it is not the same as it was.) Most jobs are unnecessary and we have far too many people needing jobs; so we engineered a consumer society (post WW2) to invent meaningless jobs. Despite all that effort, we still have almost 2 billion in poverty, because we have too many people and not enough resources to keep them all busy making disposable shit to feed socially engineered consumer addicts. You can't fix poverty because its a symptom of the over-burdened system. If you don't want communism or whatever comes next you'd be for employing people at jobs machines can do instead of making millions work like slaves in order to undercut the machines... the machines will eventually surpass serf labor in all sectors and make inroads into "thinking" jobs like general medical practitioners (they'll still need cheap nurses.)
The truth sucks doesn't it? Ignore me and go shopping and watch your "reality" TV you'll forget all about it by tomorrow... Ignorance is bliss until reality surprises smacks you in the face. You'll be outsourced or automated...or layed off for a younger person who only knows SQL but doesn't understand database theory.
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Classic science fiction:
Jerks ignore the expert scientists, causing big disasters and at the climax it's all resolved by finally utilizing science... Often by some dumb jock / pretty boy that is wise enough to listen to the science and save the day. The jerks are usually put in their place as well. Sadly, in the real world it plays out similarly but the jerks get rich and the story is boring slow and drawn out - so nobody watches.
Educated guesses by EXPERTS are the best thing we can possibly have and when they agree so highly it should be followed. Hindsight is 20/20 but the ACTUAL scientific proof won't come until AFTERWARDS... when it is too late. Science can't predict the future; it can only test the past!
EXPERTS make the best educated guesses mankind has at any moment in time - their error rate after the fact is irrelevant, the best you have beforehand are the people who make the best guesses based upon known FACT. not beliefs/dogma/opinions.
So many problems come down to simplistic metrics that fail to be representative. From modern MBAs to society thinking in similar ways. Income level does not represent quality of life and while many people will agree with that, most will actually not believe it in their actions...
There are jobs that pay huge amounts that are valued which require less intelligence, skill, and effort than McDonalds! (some congressmen come to mind...)
The "market" will continue to push human resources to the brink. We already resort to near slave labor in order to compete against the machines; in some cases even that can't compete with the machines- we have factories that only have a few workers to watch over the robots which replaced 100s. It has been happening already for a long long time. Sure, people find other jobs but not everybody does... the population rises and the jobs do not rise at the same rates; we can do more with less workers and eventually you have more than you need (market saturation) and not enough consumers able to consume it all. We've delayed this problem by creating a consumer culture that promotes profitable addictions to perpetuate the system. That solution was a bandaid because resources are getting low and is already not enough to allow most people to live like wasteful consumers. We don't have enough Earths for that already and we have 1.5 billion in poverty, that's about 1/7 of the world... the vast majority being unable to change their situation, not lazy or deserving of their lot in life. (not everybody in the slum can luck out and if they could, there would be huge resource issues to curb it.)
Most jobs are meaningless already or ripe for automation that has yet to come. People like to say they are against something; however, when it comes to selfish personal decisions, the majority continues to do the wrong thing -- like how Americans love Walmart while complaining about outsourcing to China... What the collective *want* doesn't trump what they were raised to do. It does not matter if some can think for themselves; the threshold for harm is easily met.
The purpose of patents is to benefit society same with copyrite (spelling intentional) - to promote a small amount of legitimately deserving works we have to screw up the other 99% and ruin the industry? Free speech includes horrible speech, its the price one pays for the bad minority (and sometimes the bad stuff IS the most important... just as some of the most deserving patents may be the most important.)
We can no longer afford to cripple research, small business, and even the nation by this idiotic patent system ripe for abuse. Almost any system works just fine if nobody exploits the flaws. Our once useful system only worked because it wasn't being sufficiently abused.
Software should never have been patented; it is as useful and nearly as universal as MATH is today -- it is not just something that is so close to math some classify it as a kind of math, it is also AS USEFUL as math. Math is exempt for practical reasons and software is so similar it too should be exempt. Besides, math and software are quite complex and abstract - you really can't make judgements on it without a lot of education.... arguably, the modern levels of complexity in many professions are so much higher today (due to progress of mankind) that you can't make intelligent decisions on a large number of areas. The evaluation process must be updated to meet the specialization levels present in society - far far beyond what was imagined centuries ago. Trivial to an expert is going to be out of grasp of even an educated examiner.
For starters, educational uses should be completely EXEMPT. It is insane to have universities barred from or wasting money on passing some rite. Science progresses from shared effort not from competition and most the work happens outside the commercial sector. Where they do collaborate, in journals... that system is harming progress as well... Well funded public institutions shouldn't need to or be allowed to patent their research (like the patent everybody violates online except the big sites that PAY for linking external files in a hypertext document... which shouldn't have been approved in the 1st place...) Publishing has become a mindless metric for management which results in time wasting articles flooding the journals at increasing levels... As the problem space is settled it takes more to venture out into new territory - so why some universities require the same level as they did long ago does not make sense. There is so much "padding" going on and it is going to get worse.
Education levels have gone up around the world; in nations without our harmful practices the ability to surpass us grows each year. Not that this in itself is bad, but when all things become equal, our flaws are going to hold us back and it will become more evident to the ignorant and thick headed majority. With china unofficially ignoring things we do that slow down progress, they are making huge strides and not just in catching up with us- they are discovering and innovating at ever increasing levels. While people like myself wonder why I didn't skip science and become a stable low-stress janitor for similar wages... and do science as a hobby.
Depends on the COST to figure out the identity. DNA isn't cheap or quickly checked, you have to be worth it.
Scanning a DVD for the burner's serial number probably takes little effort depending on how widespread the tools are. I wasn't aware they burned that info--- they do? I know even CDs have manufacturer info on them but that didn't seem that useful. Then looking that up against a db containing them might also be easy but somehow I doubt the db contains that much info... probably more labor than a DNA check; blueray... that probably has your name burned into it. (sony made them)
Printing on paper? your inkjet is printing the printer's serial number onto the paper- I would think the feds would have that software and anybody with access probably can use it. tracking that down to you is probably much easier than DVDs but still involved.
Flash? well, buy a new one in cash and use it only once. make sure your OS isn't putting hidden files onto it... mount it in a virtual machine just to be safe. you could also find your OS's cache of UUIDs and delete it... but if they are accessing your computer to find if you ever mounted the drive you are in a bad situation already.
TOR might be great but one has to wonder -- the feds could be half the nodes and with enough of them they could detect you. they can use it themselves without concern about this but you on the other hand... could be unlucky. plus as some records have shown, they've found people by tracking when they show up in chat rooms and when they went on TOR matching... then you have all these horrible "cloud" apps today-- even your simple calculator app is connecting to the "cloud" today! all these apps doing "harmless" things in the background online is providing a signature of their own, if not giving out identifiers.
After a wikileak, foreign governments catching them, spies coming out -- the CIA wouldn't still admit somebody is a spy. Hell, they could reclassify something that was public and then refuse to acknowledge the obvious! That is how they work.
Now if the spy upset Bush... THEN it could then get officially acknowledged (and it would still not result in consequences.)
This hurts the state dept. not that anybody should have trusted them before and especially after wikileaks showed them for what many of us knew that they were. The CIA is using diplomats to do spying and corruption... the only thing perhaps new about this is that the CIA would be directly involved.
Sun made people feel safe putting their eggs all in 1 basket. Witness the result that many of us said was a foolish move.
C# may be a knock off and not have Oracle but then you have MS holding your eggs; and while MS might not act as badly as Oracle, they have a borg mentality that Oracle does not yet have with Java.
Do not build your business around closed languages. When C# becomes fortran the MS holdings company will still be extracting blood.
Oracle is secure (and just evil,) MS on the other hand has 1 real market success and 2 monopolies that people don't care about or even like. All 3 based on platforms that have a limited future at the scale they are presently. When MS gets more desperate... they already have taken the place of SCO instead of finding another shell corp to perform their legal extortion scheme.
While it is true there is a non-Oracle Java out there; it hardly replaces the official one and is still subject to their whims.
Bush Sr. did a few good things, probably by mistake. Even a broken clock...
It is right to praise that policy even if they guy may have been against it or an unwitting party to it. Jr on the other hand was trying to UNDO his father's decision and bring back tactical mini nukes etc.
They don't need our help; whole businesses have been formed around the lack of DRM from day 1. We can continue just fine without DRM just as we have for decades. Needing Apps or crippled apps in the form of browser plug-ins has been the norm for decades. It creates a hurdle for anybody implementing DRM; which promotes an open web.
This is the same BS we hear all the time... there would be no film, no plays, no music, no culture if we didn't have copyright - there would be no technology without patents... as if we came out of the caves, invented the wheel just centuries ago.
The Apps were/are at risk because of the migration TO the web and now a small fad of migration of web to mobile apps is seen as a huge deal? That is going on independent of DRM support! Besides many mobile apps are just app wrapped html apps anyhow.
The web will continue to be fine. Just as DRM hasn't worked and ends up hacked eventually - every time - doing it as an open standard by the w3c is even more foolish (unless the w3c wants some donation $.) With just 1 target for attackers to work against with multiple implementations and an open standard to refer to, it will not only be vastly more accessible to people thinking of cracking it than the past DRM schemes but it's standardization on the web will create a larger audience.
We evolve a sense of taste for a reason. Perhaps researchers should be using information like this as a starting point for further investigation of many things.
I move for a vote on the motion.
No. Learning new frameworks and languages ARE NOT an essential part of coding. It is the current state of the market and nothing more. It can be easily argued it is the reality of the career, but it is not necessary for programming itself. A lot of people do just find for decades in some tiny niche like FORTRAN and in fact those companies are desperately looking to replace the retiring people - it might cost them; however, they already decided that a rewrite is too risky and costly over just finding or even paying to train replacements.
Enjoying coding and enjoying reading documentation on rehashed ideas are two different things. You don't code today, you spend your time researching APIs and once you start to feel good with the APIs somebody wants you to start over with another buzzword.
Given the history of these contractors of doing rigged demos... Remember back to the rocket defense system where it came out they put tracking devices into the the rocket so all it had to do was fly towards the beacon in the target? After that huge PR nightmare one would think they would learn .... and usually it is not the right lesson (make it actually work) but to learn to do a better job of not getting caught.
Everybody forget the F-22? That was lockheed martin. So, does this laser work in the rain? wouldn't be surprised... they managed to sell Americans an F-22 that didn't mix with water... I could see how falling water could mess a laser beam... And if the scattered light blinded people (a mile around) that would not only be bad for the people it protects but would violate Geneva.
None of this matters-- They will sell a $billion+ of them if they work or not and we will buy it just to subsidize their company (hoping they make something better later - because our military is all about space weapons just waiting for when the politicians change their minds.)
The OS already lost. With VMs being so widespread and popular, the OS has already lost one of its main purposes: To run software by providing the HAL and the common needs of software.
The OS should keep your old apps safely running forever. Going to a VM because of a broken dependency system or changing APIs (again related to dependency) or for SECURITY just illustrates that the OS has failed in doing it's job.
I don't care what is done about it but I am sick of the mess everybody has. The only benefit linux/BSD has is that you are made to feel stupid for not enjoying all the complexity involved (which of course is so bad that everybody uses almost as complex tools to manage it all.)
Me, I think the future is one of complex VM hypervisors where it almost feels like that is the OS and the client OS are just frameworks apps use like the window managers are today. It is not the future I want... but it is coming. Apple did it 1st I believe with their OS 9 (being closed, they could and did kill it.) There are apps from the 90s that I could still find useful today... especially the ones I paid for...
In a world of software patents nearing the edge of insanity, we can't pretend everything has to be and can always be open source and that ALL users are capable of supporting the code.
Already lost. With VMs being so widespread and popular, the OS has already lost one of its main purposes: To run software by providing the HAL and the common needs of software.
The OS should keep your old apps safely running forever. Going to a VM because of a broken dependency system or changing APIs (again related to dependency) or for SECURITY just illustrates that the OS has failed in doing it's job.
Linux (and others) have a bias to recompiling source for all the changes that go on -fine- be that way, but the packages should be able to compile against the new kernel (and basic libraries) without modifications. Sure, that means some THINKING and design as far as how to manage all the overhead of backward compatibility. It only seems insurmountable because nobody addresses it, they run away from the problem and push it onto everybody else to work around
Root level stuff can be different - but some user app should be able to run for decades unpatched, insecure, infected but still doing it's job for the user and not harming the rest of the system.
thanks. I clearly haven't touched windows since XP... some relatives PCs had it and I didn't even look to see if I could actually uninstall IE. Next time I'll try it.
You do know that IE can not be removed from Windows right? You do know MS was in big trouble with governments over it's bundling of IE and its LIES in court about it being impossible for them to remove?
Well, then you probably don't know about how Bush appointed MS to oversee it's own punishment after losing the court case... and that is why the problem continues unresolved...
1) Most states have seen their revenue drop by losing sales tax income as the internet shopping rose.
2) Some claim this is only a tiny 1% of the state's income (which states?) but fail to mention that for many states 1% is a HUGE portion of their budget shortfalls over the last decade and even larger before the depression cut revenue.
3) Phone orders are a problem. Ebay is a problem if you pay tax on USED items when you should pay tax on the ebay fees. Ebay doesn't sell anything, they are a service for 3rd party sales...
4) Shipping is wasteful and not environmental. Fuel prices keep making shipping more expensive. I would much rather prefer an interstate shipping tax which exempts freight. ALSO, these trucks on our public roads are not paying for the huge damage they cause in wearing our roads down. They also increase congestion.
5) Market pressure hasn't killed off sales taxes; some almighty market... Perhaps the transition will create a temporary window in some states to finally kill off sales tax?? One can hope.... and properly time the campaign. (Obviously, you increase other taxes to compensate or become one of those loser states.... yes, all the low revenue states suck, it is not a coincidence - feel free to exempt your state to appease your tribalism.)
6) Many states have games that can and are played with sales tax so businesses end up getting partially or completely subsidized for their tax collection. This largely only benefits large corporations. Some pay no tax, they invest and profit off the tax while holding on to it, they profit from rounding errors, some states PAY them a collection fee, and they except the tax fund from some rules (because it's not their money.)
7) Fed-Ex and UPS need to be knocked down a peg so they can't continue bribing officials to destroy the constitutionally mandated post office (which continues to see increased use year over year - in packages far making up for the drop letters. Perhaps with this change the USPS will actually see a decline instead of just false claims by corrupt politicians. BTW, if you want to know if your politician is corrupt ask them about the USPS budget problems; there is no way they are ignorant about it.)
I meant to say the US Gov likes to support it's highly paid contractors who in turn "contribute" to it's politicians.
As far as software quality. It is largely a numbers game. The more eyeballs the better. Sure some people are better than others but overall the majority are of average skill and if you just throw a ton of them at it you'll more than make up for the smart ones. Open or not it comes down to the human power put into it. That being said, project leaders probably have more to do with success/failure than any other factor. Open source has the same problem; they can fragment too much, but private software can fail to fire managers quickly enough and there is zero choice outside of what marketing & management want.
Forks happen; revisions happen more often. So do you compare MS IE against Safari? KHTML? just webkit? or googles new fork? Do you use builds that remove apple and google cruft? If you don't need the bloat having less of it has to improve quality... even if you can't realistically measure quality - the larger the program the more space you have for bugs. Just as the higher the population the likely you have more crimes (which is why we use percentages on those statistics.)
Small well made components that work simply together is unix design philosophy and good software design- large distributed groups of developers will tend to work better and probably trend towards that; even with zero software engineering experience (which the private stuff has enough of to have similar aims but being more of a dictator like hierarchy they don't have to be.) Getting a 100% volunteer unpaid complex monolithic program out I would think would be a hard thing for open source to do... but I doubt most problems require that approach.
Given the massive bias the US government has towards expensive private software contractors, I am surprised the results were so close.
MBAs, Politicians and incompetent journalists LOVE poor metrics. Americans love simplistic binary metrics (sorry no citation just experience, it's the culture.)
Remember klocs? That went on a while. Sounds like this metric dates back to those days-- they don't measure programmers by 1000s of lines coded anymore but they didn't learn their lesson and kept the defect rate measures...
Academics? Sciences? get with the real world, nobody bothers unless it is found to improve the bottom line Usually, it has to be forced to even be seriously considered... Proof by example using science and academic results is SUCH a change they call those who employ it "innovators" and they usually get all the undeserved credit as well.
Gates was still getting it all from others... 10 years late:
See: the Knowledge Navigator at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRH8eimU_20
Frontline is still good. I watch it often. I saw that show when it came out. They make a good legal arguments.
But like I said, they can violate your rights all the time; the result is you maybe win a case against them, but most likely they just lose that evidence against you. It is not unheard of for them to lose or give up cases against a criminal but use side information they get hints of in the process of illegally investigating which in turn can lead to them legally prosecuting the person for "unrelated" crimes... like tax evasion for example.
If you are a nobody, today you have no functional rights; they can abuse you as much as they want. You might get $$$ later after years in prison but the officials who put you there are unlikely to ever suffer half as much as they inflicted upon you. So, some reporters get $100k for illegal police actions during the political conventions - not the protesters, the reporters - that money doesn't come out of the police funds, they feel no pain at all. They buy insurance upfront they budget for when lobbying for such conventions - the local city puts it under promotion of commerce. They can recklessly blow a few million in lawsuits because they payed for insurance - its the insurance company's gamble that the inevitable lawsuits will not add up to more than the insurance premium... and they'll put in their law firms to make sure that doesn't happen.
Forgive my mistakes, I'm in a rush and didn't proof read my rant. can't type fast enough... I did go to graduate school and I'm an educator with some training in education and learning psychology.
Americans only value money; despite what they say. I know, I live here. Education = job = money. Most people don't care about education they care about the job it can get them. This corrupted modern value system is slowly corrupting the education system from the grassroots. Turning education into job training and where wrote learning is often good enough for most jobs... and heavy on testing / certifications which traditionally didn't mean that much but today it is thought of like some sort of quarterly business report.
You are not a dentist, making policy for the professional dentists because you'd had some fillings... But you all are education experts because you went to school? WTF?? Also, TED isn't as good as it was... off topic.
Idiotic plans like "no child left behind" where constant improvements were mandated regardless of the changing demographics. An influx of immigrants and a whole school's numbers could flat line and while they may have been #1 last year they are now put on probation and BS funding rules because they didn't return more "profit" than the previous year. I'm not kidding it happened here locally repeated times. Laying off teachers to higher part-timers months before the tests so they could teach to the standardized test-- just so they'd not lose more money the next year.
Education is NOT business even if you only think it's purpose is to program drones for business. Bill Gates is a business man 1st, far more ruthless businessman than computer nerd.
Some kids need to be left behind. sorry. some kids are fucked up-- especially in the USA where we have frequent shootings by kids. You can't FIX THE PARENTS - if we were serious, we'd look into getting child protection involved with a failing child. Not that moving kids around to foster homes is going to help their grades in the short term...
Interestingly, there was an old TED talk that fit this... where a brit talking about the tons of money the UK spent on the postal system because 1% of their mail wasn't delivered and they wanted 100%. Their costs and performance went DOWN trying to get perfection! They could have spent a fraction of that money advertizing how good the 99% was and people would have been better off.
Remember your history-- most people DID NOT NEED HIGHER EDUCATION, not even most of high school! A lot of those jobs still exist and modern forms exist. You don't need higher education for many jobs; in fact many certification level jobs don't need the certifications either. Some people just don't need to go to college; it is not a failure that they don't go, or even if they drop out of school. We see plenty of 4 year degree graduates working along side the drop outs... and plenty of drop outs are making a more stable living at possibly higher wages picking up your garbage. Small family businesses thrive without any college education (until one kid gets an MBA and takes over...)
EXACTLY. These MBA types (like the author) all over these days don't want to actually do anything for their inflated salaries. Cost externalization is their main dogma. Short term planning is also a big problem. They don't care if education is destroyed or if their whole company goes under as long as they maximize the benefits during their tenure. (I know MBAs, they develop a talent for shifting responsibility. They'll blame the market when an economic hiccup puts their over-leveraged business into bankruptcy. )
Part of the job of management (traditionally) is to deal with employee training and attempt to RETAIN employees they invest in. They all want to make employees disposable human resources and that is at the heart of their whole MBA religion. They forget that competition and making money is NOT the sole purpose - the system was the best thing we had for uplifting society (it has changed, it is not the same as it was.)
Most jobs are unnecessary and we have far too many people needing jobs; so we engineered a consumer society (post WW2) to invent meaningless jobs. Despite all that effort, we still have almost 2 billion in poverty, because we have too many people and not enough resources to keep them all busy making disposable shit to feed socially engineered consumer addicts. You can't fix poverty because its a symptom of the over-burdened system. If you don't want communism or whatever comes next you'd be for employing people at jobs machines can do instead of making millions work like slaves in order to undercut the machines... the machines will eventually surpass serf labor in all sectors and make inroads into "thinking" jobs like general medical practitioners (they'll still need cheap nurses.)
The truth sucks doesn't it? Ignore me and go shopping and watch your "reality" TV you'll forget all about it by tomorrow... Ignorance is bliss until reality surprises smacks you in the face. You'll be outsourced or automated...or layed off for a younger person who only knows SQL but doesn't understand database theory.