If the United States didn't have jigsaw puzzle elections, more moderate voices would gain prominence and the extremists would be pushed to the outskirts.
(I presume you're talking either about the Electoral College system or something else related to election by states rather than general popular vote.)
If the US didn't have "jigsaw puzzle elections" a corrupt political machine in a major urban area would be able to swing enough bogus votes to control the national government.
The election of the congress critters by district, senators by state, and president by state electors is one of the firewalls against tyranny.
(It's also part of the deal by which states with small populations were persuaded to federate with more crowded ones, which could totally swamp their interests if federal elections were by polling the whole mass rather than the jigsaw pieces. Change that and you might see another secessionist movement.)
If they win, they will have invsestors beating down their door. And they will break into the market of the fastest growing personal computer manufacturer. Plus, it will resolve a long standing legal question as to the validity of EULAs. I see no down side here for them at all.
The downside I see is that if they win they paid a bunch for the win and the benefits go equally to them and to people who did not chip in.
The new guys have "second mover advantage" - they're able to go into a proven workable business model with lower startup costs.
Psystar, however, still has "first mover advantage" - they're already up and running, and may be able to make and hold market share, build brand name, and/or pay off much or all the extra costs before the crowd of "me-too" baby ducks is hatched and nibbling their legs.
Interestingly, Psystar (if they win) are in a second mover position with respect to Apple. B-)
Tesla is bootstrapping a new technology. As such they are going for the high end first. The early adopters pay a premium to get a status symbol.
As they get to mass production and get their startup costs paid off, investors happy, and cash-flow positve, they plan to drop prices, build some more mainstream models, and go for the big time rather than the niche market. (As another poster pointed out, they've already announced plans for $60k and $30k models within the decade.)
Fast nickels are 'way better than slow dimes - once you have the infrastructure to make the nickels come in fast.
If they really want to do something they're better off protesting.
Plenty of people doing that already. A handfull of additional voices won't make enough difference to affect decision-makers.
But people willing to put tens of thousands of dollars and six months of their spare time into actually BUILDING an electric vehicle proves there's an actual demand out there, not just politically-correct lip service. That MAY get through to decision makers. (If not, at least it made a disprorportionate splash - which itself is a far more effective protest than writing letters or marching.)
I would like to point out there is no such thing as "clean coal"
But there IS such a thing as "clean wind". For instance - I have a fine site for a small mill, which would be big enough to charge an electric car if I could get one. (Doesn't have a mill now - because of ZONING laws. B-b But that may change.)
I got a 790 on the chemistry section of my college board exam in '65. (Felt like I'd let my college chem teacher down by not getting 800. He really liked the students to get perfect scores on the quizzes and exams, and would buy 'em an ice cream cone or a sundae respectively when they did it.)
But come '66 in college the drug war was just getting started. The government was nosing into purchase records for a lot of reagents and lab glassware and equipment. And the college chemistry store reacted by restricting private purchases of anything the government required reporting on - which put a big crimp in doing any serious experimentation outside a sponsored research project.
I saw that this would only get worse for the foreseeable future - which meant work for a company and they get all the benefits. So I switched back to my first love - electronics - and from there went into computer science and programming.
(Helped to have access to Galler, Riddle (as in "Djikstra and..."), Blue, and "Doctor Dave" Mills, along with Leith and Upatnieks, Fredricks, both Larrowe brothers, etc.)
wasn't there a compressionless sound wave-based cooling developed a few years back?
It's called "thermoacoustics". It involves "motors" that turn temperature gradients into sound and "refrigerators" that use sound to pump heat across temperature gradients.
It's been around for perhaps a century, and is in its third generation of development. (It's a prime example of patents retarding technological development, as the current generation of development started after the patents on the second generation expired.)
This generation is on a solid theoretical footing, with mathematical models close enough to the real behavior to perform engineering and computer simulations that can run on your laptop. Lots of cute gadgets are coming out of it.
Example: A two-story hunk of plumbing with a gas burner. Haul it to an oil field in some out-of-the-way location where the gas is being flared off because it's too expensive to liquefy it for shipping. Hook the well gas to the input pipe, the output pipe to a storage tank, and light the burner. It sits there humming away internally, burning part of the gas and liquefying the rest.
If these machines affected the outcome of the election, perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.
The American People MAY have been harmed and MAY have standing to sue. But that's a hard sell in court.
The State of Ohio HAS been harmed and DOES have standing to sue. (And they decided to do it. Oh, Goodie!)
... the only elections they've affected were purely local ones.
And they didn't even affect them, since the miscounts were noticed and corrected from the paper audit trail built into the system.
You don't know that they didn't affect the elections. The miscounts THAT WERE VISIBLE may have been corrected. But that doesn't prove they aren't just the tip of an iceberg - like the mismatch of a few cents in an accounting ledger that may point to multiple errors that nearly canceled - in THAT check - while shorting one account by a bunch and boosting another by almost the same amount.
The tiny difference tell you something's wrong. They aren't necessarily the ONLY thing that is wrong. And if something else is wrong it may be wrong by a LOT.
It is not partisan to go after the crooks, even if the crime leads to the GOP leadership.
Will is still be non-partisan if it leads to the Democratic party leadership?
(Just for the sake of argument, of course. B-) Especially since I'm disgusted with the leadership of both major parties this month. B-( )
Similarly if it leads to the county machine of one major party or the other.?
(After all, regardless of whether the hackability was deliberate, and regardless of who installed it if it is a back door, now that it's exposed it's a temptation to all parties to take advantage of it. Politics IS a series of wars of conquest by relatively nonviolent means. Breaking the "rules of civilized warfare" gives an enormous short-term advantage.)
I am still waiting for Google Earth to fully encompass the feedback offered in games like Sim City, where I can search regions around the world for such things as Crime Statistics, Pollution, Economy, etc.
The method of collection of such statistics varies by country, so they are not easily comparable.
One that I'm familiar with (from activism related to gun laws): Murder, accident, and suicide statistics. For instance:
- Britain counts it as a murder when they have a conviction. US when they have a body in suspicious circumstances.
- Father kills his three kids, wife, and himself: US: Four murders one suicide. Japan: Five suicides.
- In many places in the US a suicide, especially of a youth, will usually be reported as an accident (to avoid placing a stigma on the bereaved family).
I could go on. (Especially about Japan and variations on so-called "family suicide".) But I think the above examples show how directly comparing published rates for the US, England, and Japan can yield some very bogus impressions.
What is unusual and a bit frightening is that it seems like they were able to get arrest warrants or whatever was needed crossing international lines really quickly.
What makes you think it was quick. It doesn't hit the news until after the announcement, which is after the bust. If it takes two hours, two weeks, or two months to push the paper the visible timing is the same.
Until more information comes out the only date you have to put a limit on how much time it took is the time of the crime.
It almost seems like some uber government organization was at work on this affair.
Like Interpol? B-)
Cops - both generic and specialized (like the Secret Service for currency-related crimes) have been working together across national borders almost since there have been both cops and national borders.
They just backdoored the reception system so they didn't just get the card numbers that were being used in that store, but in all of whatever chain of stores.
A month or so ago I heard of a bust of a team that had done a similar "backdoor the server" crack that got the card numbers and PINs of essentially everybody who had used the ATMs at 7-11 nationally for several months.
Does anybody know if that crime and this one are related (other than by compromising the server)?
The judge should strip them of their right to practice until the successfully pass an English language exam showing that they can actually read and comprehend words.
You are expecting too much from an administration who spent time trying to figure out what "is" is.
"administrations" are time-limited instances of the top levels of the executive branch. Judges are part of the judicial branch - over which the executive branch has essentially no control beyond appointing judges for open (or new) seats and hoping congress confirms the appointments.
There was a perfectly valid vote where a majority chose to adjourn. Republicans wanted to take control of the agenda. They were not allowed to.
Also the Democrats may have cloned the "adjourn and turn off the lights" ploy from the Republicans - except that the Democrats did it by the rules.
Here's how I understand it (from reports - I wasn't there - maybe somebody can correct any errors...)
At the Nevada Republican state convention (supposedly run by the delegates chosen in the district caucuses) the Ron Paul contingent was very strong. Romney had the most delegates, Paul was a close second, and McCain a distant third - though the party machine was for him. (Nevada is a very libertarian state and might have gone for Paul big-time except that, with a large Mormon population and a big campaign push, Romney squeaked by. Then Romney dropped out and endorsed McCain.)
The party elite ran the convention and pushed a rules change to elect a (McCain) slate they had chosen. Both the Paul and Romney deligates revolted, pushed through their own change (candidates proposed from the floor), and were busy selecting national delegates with Paul getting the lion's share.
The McCain delegates walked out to try to get below a quorum, but weren't successful. So they came back in.
Then (in violation of the rules, which requires a vote) the chair announced that the meeting was recessed (allegedly because the time for which they'd rented the hall had expired - turned out not to be true). The party hacks quick-walked out, shutting down the PA system and the lights on their way. By the time the delegates got things back on enough people had left in the confusion that they were below quorum (and somebody called for a count, which made that official and convinced the rest to leave, rather than pick a new chair and continue).
Carbon buckytube and silicon whiskers both look good for that.
Unlike graphite, carbon nanofibers don't oxidize at the sides - or easily at the ends (which also might be capped.
Silicon fibers can repeatedly absorb and release enough protons to make them swell to four times their size without fatigue cracking. (And of course they're a different chemistry for oxidation.)
The price of their cells continues to drop, they're light, can discharge safely down to low temps (20 F and lower), and last 1,000s of cycles: [particular example of a currently available cell deleted]
In fact the lifetime of lithium ion batteries is mainly determined by the oxidation of one of the electrodes. It is a very close approximation to a clock that starts when they're assembled and runs out after a certain number of years, regardless of the number of cycles (though there is a slight effect from state-of-charge, lasting longest at 40% or so, and the capacity drops as they age).
Some newer models have much longer lifetimes - comparable to the life of a "buy it new and drive it until it falls apart" car.
Some newer models (not sure if there's an overlap with the above) can be charged or discharged 80% of their capacity in a matter of a couple minutes. This is suitable for directly powering a motor, and even regenerative braking, without the aid of a supercapacitor buffer. It's also an indication of extreme efficiency: Only a tiny bit of that capacity is lost at heat (or it would be slag...)
The solution is touted as improving storage of renewable energy from fat hours for use in lean hours. That problem is already well in hand using various battery technologies. I doubt that, even with this improvement, electrolysis-gas storage-fuel cell will beat even lead-acid batteries, let alone lithium ion (with efficiences close to 100%) or stationary vanadium redox (with properties like fuel cells but storing the energy in tanks of liquids at atmospheric pressure).
But it may be a DANDY solution for providing hydrogen and oxygen for powering vehicles: (fuel-cell prime-mover hybrids, hydrogen internal-combustion (at a carnot-cycle penalty), etc.) or as feedstock for energetic chemical processes.
Let's take the greenhouse issue with coal power plants in the US. Nuclear removes the atmospheric and climate issues, and replaces them with a much smaller scale radioactivity issue for which we already have numerous viable reprocessing protocols, but no.. it still pollutes a little! omg we must stifle this!
Actually, that's turning around.
The whole "carbon dioxide will cook us oh noes!" thing has gotten a number of major names in the environmental movement to rethink their opposition to nuclear power.
More recently the massive rise in fuel costs, along with the massive rise in food costs, which is partly blamed on switching agricultural production to biofuels, has encouraged this trend.
Even if they finally turned around and will finally work with everyone else with no dark agenda for the future, old-timers like me (i.e. more than 25-30 years old) will not trust them until they have really proven themselves.
However old timers like me (who programmed computers that used vacuum tubes, not just for the switches, but for the DIODES in the logic), remember when IBM had much the same reputation for closed tech and predatory behavior as Microsoft does now.
After SCO vs. IBM (and for a while before) there's no question where IBM is on the issue now. Wouldn't it be nice if, now that Bill is going away, Microsoft is starting to take a few steps down the same path?
(Then again, perhaps an "itsatrap" tag is appropriate...)
According TFA, the thing about his not saving the configs to flash is a CLAIM by the city, not something confirmed by Childs.
So how do they KNOW that, if they don't have the passwords? Did they try rebooting some network boxes and have them not come up? (If so, how is it that the net is still running...)
This is looking more and more like a pointy-haired-boss SNAFU than logic-bomb job-insurance/revenge sabotage.
AH HA! See, Childs was right , he is the only competent one!
Dang! You beat me to posting about it.
Wasn't part of Childs' point that password security in the S.F. government was lax and that divulging the big one in a way that would spread it around was dangerous to the network?
Given that the configurations on the routers weren't saved, the first guy to use that password on them had better be DARNED careful to get them recorded before changing anything or he's likely to break the network big time. So handing it to an administrator, who will hand it to several people, any of whom might leak it, could cause the net to come crashing down.
If all they'll let him do for a handoff is hand off the passwords, I can see how a prima donna BOFH would want to hand the big one directly to his successor, who would then spend the next week carefully recording the configs as-running before making changes or sharing the password with less-skilled delegates.
Not that it's right. But looks to me like the city is making his point for him - which his lawyer should use in a counter-argument at the bail hearing. B-)
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If the United States didn't have jigsaw puzzle elections, more moderate voices would gain prominence and the extremists would be pushed to the outskirts.
(I presume you're talking either about the Electoral College system or something else related to election by states rather than general popular vote.)
If the US didn't have "jigsaw puzzle elections" a corrupt political machine in a major urban area would be able to swing enough bogus votes to control the national government.
The election of the congress critters by district, senators by state, and president by state electors is one of the firewalls against tyranny.
(It's also part of the deal by which states with small populations were persuaded to federate with more crowded ones, which could totally swamp their interests if federal elections were by polling the whole mass rather than the jigsaw pieces. Change that and you might see another secessionist movement.)
If they win, they will have invsestors beating down their door. And they will break into the market of the fastest growing personal computer manufacturer. Plus, it will resolve a long standing legal question as to the validity of EULAs. I see no down side here for them at all.
The downside I see is that if they win they paid a bunch for the win and the benefits go equally to them and to people who did not chip in.
The new guys have "second mover advantage" - they're able to go into a proven workable business model with lower startup costs.
Psystar, however, still has "first mover advantage" - they're already up and running, and may be able to make and hold market share, build brand name, and/or pay off much or all the extra costs before the crowd of "me-too" baby ducks is hatched and nibbling their legs.
Interestingly, Psystar (if they win) are in a second mover position with respect to Apple. B-)
Tesla is bootstrapping a new technology. As such they are going for the high end first. The early adopters pay a premium to get a status symbol.
As they get to mass production and get their startup costs paid off, investors happy, and cash-flow positve, they plan to drop prices, build some more mainstream models, and go for the big time rather than the niche market. (As another poster pointed out, they've already announced plans for $60k and $30k models within the decade.)
Fast nickels are 'way better than slow dimes - once you have the infrastructure to make the nickels come in fast.
An additional problem for biofuel in CA is that the vehicle antipollution regulations make it difficult to get a diesel powered car.
If they really want to do something they're better off protesting.
Plenty of people doing that already. A handfull of additional voices won't make enough difference to affect decision-makers.
But people willing to put tens of thousands of dollars and six months of their spare time into actually BUILDING an electric vehicle proves there's an actual demand out there, not just politically-correct lip service. That MAY get through to decision makers. (If not, at least it made a disprorportionate splash - which itself is a far more effective protest than writing letters or marching.)
I would like to point out there is no such thing as "clean coal"
But there IS such a thing as "clean wind". For instance - I have a fine site for a small mill, which would be big enough to charge an electric car if I could get one. (Doesn't have a mill now - because of ZONING laws. B-b But that may change.)
PITA is going to have a field day with this one.
LOVE the misspelling of PETA. How true, how true...
I got a 790 on the chemistry section of my college board exam in '65. (Felt like I'd let my college chem teacher down by not getting 800. He really liked the students to get perfect scores on the quizzes and exams, and would buy 'em an ice cream cone or a sundae respectively when they did it.)
But come '66 in college the drug war was just getting started. The government was nosing into purchase records for a lot of reagents and lab glassware and equipment. And the college chemistry store reacted by restricting private purchases of anything the government required reporting on - which put a big crimp in doing any serious experimentation outside a sponsored research project.
I saw that this would only get worse for the foreseeable future - which meant work for a company and they get all the benefits. So I switched back to my first love - electronics - and from there went into computer science and programming.
(Helped to have access to Galler, Riddle (as in "Djikstra and ..."), Blue, and "Doctor Dave" Mills, along with Leith and Upatnieks, Fredricks, both Larrowe brothers, etc.)
wasn't there a compressionless sound wave-based cooling developed a few years back?
It's called "thermoacoustics". It involves "motors" that turn temperature gradients into sound and "refrigerators" that use sound to pump heat across temperature gradients.
It's been around for perhaps a century, and is in its third generation of development. (It's a prime example of patents retarding technological development, as the current generation of development started after the patents on the second generation expired.)
This generation is on a solid theoretical footing, with mathematical models close enough to the real behavior to perform engineering and computer simulations that can run on your laptop. Lots of cute gadgets are coming out of it.
Example: A two-story hunk of plumbing with a gas burner. Haul it to an oil field in some out-of-the-way location where the gas is being flared off because it's too expensive to liquefy it for shipping. Hook the well gas to the input pipe, the output pipe to a storage tank, and light the burner. It sits there humming away internally, burning part of the gas and liquefying the rest.
If these machines affected the outcome of the election, perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.
The American People MAY have been harmed and MAY have standing to sue. But that's a hard sell in court.
The State of Ohio HAS been harmed and DOES have standing to sue. (And they decided to do it. Oh, Goodie!)
... the only elections they've affected were purely local ones.
And they didn't even affect them, since the miscounts were noticed and corrected from the paper audit trail built into the system.
You don't know that they didn't affect the elections. The miscounts THAT WERE VISIBLE may have been corrected. But that doesn't prove they aren't just the tip of an iceberg - like the mismatch of a few cents in an accounting ledger that may point to multiple errors that nearly canceled - in THAT check - while shorting one account by a bunch and boosting another by almost the same amount.
The tiny difference tell you something's wrong. They aren't necessarily the ONLY thing that is wrong. And if something else is wrong it may be wrong by a LOT.
It is not partisan to go after the crooks, even if the crime leads to the GOP leadership.
Will is still be non-partisan if it leads to the Democratic party leadership?
(Just for the sake of argument, of course. B-) Especially since I'm disgusted with the leadership of both major parties this month. B-( )
Similarly if it leads to the county machine of one major party or the other.?
(After all, regardless of whether the hackability was deliberate, and regardless of who installed it if it is a back door, now that it's exposed it's a temptation to all parties to take advantage of it. Politics IS a series of wars of conquest by relatively nonviolent means. Breaking the "rules of civilized warfare" gives an enormous short-term advantage.)
I am still waiting for Google Earth to fully encompass the feedback offered in games like Sim City, where I can search regions around the world for such things as Crime Statistics, Pollution, Economy, etc.
The method of collection of such statistics varies by country, so they are not easily comparable.
One that I'm familiar with (from activism related to gun laws): Murder, accident, and suicide statistics. For instance:
- Britain counts it as a murder when they have a conviction. US when they have a body in suspicious circumstances.
- Father kills his three kids, wife, and himself: US: Four murders one suicide. Japan: Five suicides.
- In many places in the US a suicide, especially of a youth, will usually be reported as an accident (to avoid placing a stigma on the bereaved family).
I could go on. (Especially about Japan and variations on so-called "family suicide".) But I think the above examples show how directly comparing published rates for the US, England, and Japan can yield some very bogus impressions.
What is unusual and a bit frightening is that it seems like they were able to get arrest warrants or whatever was needed crossing international lines really quickly.
What makes you think it was quick. It doesn't hit the news until after the announcement, which is after the bust. If it takes two hours, two weeks, or two months to push the paper the visible timing is the same.
Until more information comes out the only date you have to put a limit on how much time it took is the time of the crime.
It almost seems like some uber government organization was at work on this affair.
Like Interpol? B-)
Cops - both generic and specialized (like the Secret Service for currency-related crimes) have been working together across national borders almost since there have been both cops and national borders.
They just backdoored the reception system so they didn't just get the card numbers that were being used in that store, but in all of whatever chain of stores.
A month or so ago I heard of a bust of a team that had done a similar "backdoor the server" crack that got the card numbers and PINs of essentially everybody who had used the ATMs at 7-11 nationally for several months.
Does anybody know if that crime and this one are related (other than by compromising the server)?
240l of Kindles is approx 65 gallons
But you can only get that if they blend.
The judge should strip them of their right to practice until the successfully pass an English language exam showing that they can actually read and comprehend words.
You are expecting too much from an administration who spent time trying to figure out what "is" is.
"administrations" are time-limited instances of the top levels of the executive branch. Judges are part of the judicial branch - over which the executive branch has essentially no control beyond appointing judges for open (or new) seats and hoping congress confirms the appointments.
There was a perfectly valid vote where a majority chose to adjourn. Republicans wanted to take control of the agenda. They were not allowed to.
Also the Democrats may have cloned the "adjourn and turn off the lights" ploy from the Republicans - except that the Democrats did it by the rules.
Here's how I understand it (from reports - I wasn't there - maybe somebody can correct any errors...)
At the Nevada Republican state convention (supposedly run by the delegates chosen in the district caucuses) the Ron Paul contingent was very strong. Romney had the most delegates, Paul was a close second, and McCain a distant third - though the party machine was for him. (Nevada is a very libertarian state and might have gone for Paul big-time except that, with a large Mormon population and a big campaign push, Romney squeaked by. Then Romney dropped out and endorsed McCain.)
The party elite ran the convention and pushed a rules change to elect a (McCain) slate they had chosen. Both the Paul and Romney deligates revolted, pushed through their own change (candidates proposed from the floor), and were busy selecting national delegates with Paul getting the lion's share.
The McCain delegates walked out to try to get below a quorum, but weren't successful. So they came back in.
Then (in violation of the rules, which requires a vote) the chair announced that the meeting was recessed (allegedly because the time for which they'd rented the hall had expired - turned out not to be true). The party hacks quick-walked out, shutting down the PA system and the lights on their way. By the time the delegates got things back on enough people had left in the confusion that they were below quorum (and somebody called for a count, which made that official and convinced the rest to leave, rather than pick a new chair and continue).
Carbon buckytube and silicon whiskers both look good for that.
Unlike graphite, carbon nanofibers don't oxidize at the sides - or easily at the ends (which also might be capped.
Silicon fibers can repeatedly absorb and release enough protons to make them swell to four times their size without fatigue cracking. (And of course they're a different chemistry for oxidation.)
The price of their cells continues to drop, they're light, can discharge safely down to low temps (20 F and lower), and last 1,000s of cycles: [particular example of a currently available cell deleted]
In fact the lifetime of lithium ion batteries is mainly determined by the oxidation of one of the electrodes. It is a very close approximation to a clock that starts when they're assembled and runs out after a certain number of years, regardless of the number of cycles (though there is a slight effect from state-of-charge, lasting longest at 40% or so, and the capacity drops as they age).
Some newer models have much longer lifetimes - comparable to the life of a "buy it new and drive it until it falls apart" car.
Some newer models (not sure if there's an overlap with the above) can be charged or discharged 80% of their capacity in a matter of a couple minutes. This is suitable for directly powering a motor, and even regenerative braking, without the aid of a supercapacitor buffer. It's also an indication of extreme efficiency: Only a tiny bit of that capacity is lost at heat (or it would be slag...)
The solution is touted as improving storage of renewable energy from fat hours for use in lean hours. That problem is already well in hand using various battery technologies. I doubt that, even with this improvement, electrolysis-gas storage-fuel cell will beat even lead-acid batteries, let alone lithium ion (with efficiences close to 100%) or stationary vanadium redox (with properties like fuel cells but storing the energy in tanks of liquids at atmospheric pressure).
But it may be a DANDY solution for providing hydrogen and oxygen for powering vehicles: (fuel-cell prime-mover hybrids, hydrogen internal-combustion (at a carnot-cycle penalty), etc.) or as feedstock for energetic chemical processes.
Let's take the greenhouse issue with coal power plants in the US. Nuclear removes the atmospheric and climate issues, and replaces them with a much smaller scale radioactivity issue for which we already have numerous viable reprocessing protocols, but no.. it still pollutes a little! omg we must stifle this!
Actually, that's turning around.
The whole "carbon dioxide will cook us oh noes!" thing has gotten a number of major names in the environmental movement to rethink their opposition to nuclear power.
More recently the massive rise in fuel costs, along with the massive rise in food costs, which is partly blamed on switching agricultural production to biofuels, has encouraged this trend.
Neither did the previous poster. B-)
Even if they finally turned around and will finally work with everyone else with no dark agenda for the future, old-timers like me (i.e. more than 25-30 years old) will not trust them until they have really proven themselves.
However old timers like me (who programmed computers that used vacuum tubes, not just for the switches, but for the DIODES in the logic), remember when IBM had much the same reputation for closed tech and predatory behavior as Microsoft does now.
After SCO vs. IBM (and for a while before) there's no question where IBM is on the issue now. Wouldn't it be nice if, now that Bill is going away, Microsoft is starting to take a few steps down the same path?
(Then again, perhaps an "itsatrap" tag is appropriate...)
According TFA, the thing about his not saving the configs to flash is a CLAIM by the city, not something confirmed by Childs.
So how do they KNOW that, if they don't have the passwords? Did they try rebooting some network boxes and have them not come up? (If so, how is it that the net is still running...)
This is looking more and more like a pointy-haired-boss SNAFU than logic-bomb job-insurance/revenge sabotage.
AH HA! See, Childs was right , he is the only competent one!
Dang! You beat me to posting about it.
Wasn't part of Childs' point that password security in the S.F. government was lax and that divulging the big one in a way that would spread it around was dangerous to the network?
Given that the configurations on the routers weren't saved, the first guy to use that password on them had better be DARNED careful to get them recorded before changing anything or he's likely to break the network big time. So handing it to an administrator, who will hand it to several people, any of whom might leak it, could cause the net to come crashing down.
If all they'll let him do for a handoff is hand off the passwords, I can see how a prima donna BOFH would want to hand the big one directly to his successor, who would then spend the next week carefully recording the configs as-running before making changes or sharing the password with less-skilled delegates.
Not that it's right. But looks to me like the city is making his point for him - which his lawyer should use in a counter-argument at the bail hearing. B-)