I think your analogy is generally accurate. However, we do theoretically have methods today that can produce provably correct programs. The problem is: (1) that these methods constrain the manner in which we design software to an extent that development of complex software becomes extremely time consuming, and (2) it does not lead to error free systems because these requires error free design which will only ever be possible (if at all) when we have very advanced computer assisted design methods. To see how far we are from that, consider how well today computers validate our writing for error free grammar.
I have found this whole thread fascinating as a commentary on the current state of our society. While some of the contributions have been well considered, overall people allow themselves to be swayed purely by emotion. We/.ers are supposed to be much more analytical and openminded than the general population. If this is true, it is easy to see how government bodies can manipulate people's emotional reaction to issues like child porn to successfuly push legislation restricting individual freedoms and protections.
Looking at this case, first some facts:
(1) There is very little, if any, freely available hard child porn available today on the Internet -- there are lots of photos of twenty-somethings in school uniforms and some sneaked naturist or sports field photos of children. These are distasteful, but scarcely evidence of extensive child molestation.
(2) There are child porn sites hosted out of Eastern Europe, but I'll bet anyone in the U.S. who signed up for one of these would quickly find themselves visited by the police.
(3) There are pedophile rings that abuse their own children and distribute records of the abuse to each other (presumably using encrypted e-mail). Occasionally, one of these rings gets cracked. I am sure many others go undetected.
(4) It is unclear which category the child porn in this case falls into.
Snooping to see if a computer contains something incriminating to its owner is a gross invasion of privacy. If it happens to show up criminal behaviour, this does not justify the act.
I do not believe these system administrators came upon the child porn accidentally but, for the sake of argument, let's assume they did. If there is evidence of involvement in a pedophile ring, I think the police must be involved immediately since clear and present danger to others is involved. In other cases, I would normally follow company regulations. In unclear cases, I would give him the benefit of the doubt.
Fellow/.ers, if we cannot examine such issues with in a clear, unbaised fashion, what hope has our society as aa whole?
With Windows Update you need to read every non-critical choice because you may need it or you may not want what'll change.
There are no non-critical choices. Many of the critical updates are not appropriate for the system being patched, while fixes you really need can be hidden inside SP's that you would avoid applying if you could get away with it. One of the biggest problems is that MS wants you do do way too much updating of your system.
Haven't you heard, we are all about to stop using computers, phones and all those other high-tech gadgets and go back to a simple existence tilling the land.
I could be making this all up. That article at CNN has to forged, and those chemical warheads [idsnews.com] Iraq was supposedly hiding are most certainly fake!
No, you are not making this up. It is all a matter of interpretation.
If the only issue was the business contracts, I am convinced France could have negotiated their maintenance in return for support of the attack. Even if that were not the case, it would not automatically follow that the attack was justified. France has business contracts with Britain, but I hope any proposal by the U.S. to attack Britain would be opposed by them for other reasons.
On the weapons, Iraq itself admitted that they had a chemical weapons program in the past. The question is whether these warheads were the residue of a terminated program or evidence of an active ongoing development effort. [I do not pretend to know.] Did the warheads justify an immediate attack without giving the weapons inspectors (who discovered them) the extra time they requested to determine the answer to the above question?
We are all entitled to our opinions, but I did not believe at the time that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. and I do not think so either in hindsight.
During the American revolution Canada went one way while the states went the other. Before then they really was no Canada except by the french in what is now Quebec.
I am not an historian, but I believe the Oregon treaty set the boundary between the U.S. and Canada at the 49N from 1846.
France has provided outstanding military, judicial, and law-enforcement support to the war against terrorism.
Unfortunately, they do not support attacks on countries, justified by the war on terrorism, based on a combination of manufactured and inadequate evidence.
Unicast claims these ads will be *less* annoying than pop-ups, because, rather than open new windows you have to close, this ad format temporarily takes over the existing window
I guess, at least, it does not operate like one of those really sadistic sites that open about 10 pop-ups simultaneously. Way more annoying than a single pop-up window, though, especially since (like about 80% of./ers ) I have those disabled.
you don't see people rising up demanding ways to get around magazine ads
Actually, the sort of card insert ads you get in computer mags drives me nuts. First thing I do with a new mag is spend a couple of minutes ripping them out. Guess I must be over sensitive!
How do we stamp "FDA approved" on these little buggers?
No problem: just make a few tweaks to the Palladium specifications so MS + CIA own your body in addition to your computer, documents and household appliances.
Microsoft is gearing up to introduce a computer architecture where they will decide the hardware, software and documents you can use on your computer. Obviously, they will expect to receive money, one way or another, for products allowed to access your computer.
Their interest in preventing ISPs from restricting access is that it may reduce the number of products from which they can receive revenue. Their motto is: "the Internet should be free to everyone and everything provided it is providing us with revenue."
The terrifying thing is that I think most Americans agree with you. Anyone non American has no rights and the American government can do what they like to them. Actually, this is understandable because Americans increasingly extend this to saying that you can do what you like to anyone (American or not) insofar as you can get away with it. WorldCom etc. are a symptom of a general American attitude and not an aberration.
Unless analouge sound cards are suddenly outlawed I don't see you ever won't be able to make copies of music on your computer.
Well, I think the 'master plan' is to have a hardware architecture that will restrict the circumstances under which the sound card will work. Whether this will succeed is a very interesting question. We shall know in a couple of years.
I think making a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget may be going too far, but make it so that you can't be re-elected as president if you have a budget in the red (or something like that -- though not sure what to do about second-term presidents)
Second-term presidents are much less of a problem. They are concerned with their legacy (of which their affect on the country's financial health is a part) rather than inducing a short-term economic boom to get re-elected.
In the future, the main impetus may not come from the space pioneers of the 1960s, but space travel will steadily grow. China will have a huge space program for reasons of prestige if nothing else. While not yet true, there will be valid commercial applications. I expect Japan, with its lead in new materials (based on nanotechnology) will eventually become involved.
I pretty much agree with everything that you wrote. This does assume, however, that you are looking to make a buck and quit. In my experience, consultants rely on repeat business. It behoves them to give the impression of going the extra mile to satisfy clients. If convinced that the client is doing something seriously against their own interests, I believe you should briefly state this in writing at an appropriate level and then drop it. This should never be done verbally and should never be pressed as that will usually just raise antagonism without any positive result.
There is a form of consulting that is distinct from the kind you are discussing. Often a consultant is working with a consultancy company. In that case, the consultant must consider the relationship between the company and the client. It is always correct to discuss any such major issues with your company in this case -- and be guided by how they want to deal with it.
I agree that script kiddies are not behind this. It is probably more skilled crackers and may possibly be the CIA. It is interesting that U.S. authorities have been trying to shut down al-Jazeera coverage from the U.S. and eliminate Iraqi TV at the same time.
I think Redmond is playing the card of trying to keep non-MS approved (i.e. open source and other ISV) software off of retail shelves. However, with retail giants like Wal-Mart only concerned with cost and sales, this could prove a losing strategy....especially outside of the U.S.
If Micro$oft is using pricing incentives to enforce this, it will work only too well. Few people, btw, seem to be aware that Micro$oft is still using the operating system monopoly trick extensively in major markets outside the U.S. (such as Japan). If the article is correct that M$ initiated this, I am extremely suspicious about their motives. I seriously doubt their reason was to minimise Office Depot returns.
David Reed carefully says that the final architecture should not be prejudged. However, I think I see the general direction of his thinking. He sees many more, but lower power transmitters. Presumably, the receiver will say what it wants to receive and a suitable nearby transmitter will send it. The transmitter may, in turn need to receive it from another node. By restricting the power (and distance) of the signals (and being able to dynamically choose a frequency) and by having the relay transmitters be highly directional, I think the available bandwidth is indeed close to infinite.
Japan's economic woes are inevitable and are largely in spite of long term thinking. Japan has very little in the way of natural resources and a seriously aging population. The spectacular success of the Japanese economy until about 1990 reflected excellent government support for industry, a very strong work ethic and intelligent application of R&D resources. It was unrealistic to assume that they could buck all their underlying disadvantages indefinitely.
The strengths of the U.S. have been availability of venture capital, resulting in a steady stream of technological innovation; and quality immigration, providing a highly motivated and skilled workforce in critical areas of the economy. Large U.S. corporations, with a few honourable exceptions, have usually bought technology rather than developing it themselves. It is unclear whether immigration will continue to be as positive for the U.S. in years to come. China, India and other Asian countries provide opportunities today that were not available in the past and their talent may increasingly stay at home. What I definitely believe is that the availability of venture capital is much less than a few years ago and I suspect is not going to recover. Further, government decisions (such as the Missile Defense Shield and foreign adventurism) will severely skew the economy away from productive areas and towards the military. The lesson of history is that there is a real danger that this will damage the underlying fabric of the economy and gradually lead to a U.S. decline.
Yes, this makes a lot of sense. There is a long history of big players trying to ease migration pains, when moving to new architectures, by allowing the old and new architectures to coexist. IBM, for instance, used VM/370 rather successfully to help ease customers to virtual storage operating systems while still allowing the old operating system to run legacy apps.
It is true that, historically, the same machine can be both a client and a server. However, I think one of Microsoft's long term goals is to prevent that in the future. Have you tried to install SQL Server on Windows 2000 Professional? You cannot. Have you tried to install IIS on Windows XP? In many areas Microsoft has needed to tread carefully, but maximising revenue and ensuring their customers are trapped are their key goals.
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I think your analogy is generally accurate. However, we do theoretically have methods today that can produce provably correct programs. The problem is: (1) that these methods constrain the manner in which we design software to an extent that development of complex software becomes extremely time consuming, and (2) it does not lead to error free systems because these requires error free design which will only ever be possible (if at all) when we have very advanced computer assisted design methods. To see how far we are from that, consider how well today computers validate our writing for error free grammar.
Looking at this case, first some facts:
(1) There is very little, if any, freely available hard child porn available today on the Internet -- there are lots of photos of twenty-somethings in school uniforms and some sneaked naturist or sports field photos of children. These are distasteful, but scarcely evidence of extensive child molestation.
(2) There are child porn sites hosted out of Eastern Europe, but I'll bet anyone in the U.S. who signed up for one of these would quickly find themselves visited by the police.
(3) There are pedophile rings that abuse their own children and distribute records of the abuse to each other (presumably using encrypted e-mail). Occasionally, one of these rings gets cracked. I am sure many others go undetected.
(4) It is unclear which category the child porn in this case falls into.
Snooping to see if a computer contains something incriminating to its owner is a gross invasion of privacy. If it happens to show up criminal behaviour, this does not justify the act.
I do not believe these system administrators came upon the child porn accidentally but, for the sake of argument, let's assume they did. If there is evidence of involvement in a pedophile ring, I think the police must be involved immediately since clear and present danger to others is involved. In other cases, I would normally follow company regulations. In unclear cases, I would give him the benefit of the doubt.
Fellow /.ers, if we cannot examine such issues with in a clear, unbaised fashion, what hope has our society as aa whole?
There are no non-critical choices. Many of the critical updates are not appropriate for the system being patched, while fixes you really need can be hidden inside SP's that you would avoid applying if you could get away with it. One of the biggest problems is that MS wants you do do way too much updating of your system.
Haven't you heard, we are all about to stop using computers, phones and all those other high-tech gadgets and go back to a simple existence tilling the land.
No, you are not making this up. It is all a matter of interpretation.
If the only issue was the business contracts, I am convinced France could have negotiated their maintenance in return for support of the attack. Even if that were not the case, it would not automatically follow that the attack was justified. France has business contracts with Britain, but I hope any proposal by the U.S. to attack Britain would be opposed by them for other reasons.
On the weapons, Iraq itself admitted that they had a chemical weapons program in the past. The question is whether these warheads were the residue of a terminated program or evidence of an active ongoing development effort. [I do not pretend to know.] Did the warheads justify an immediate attack without giving the weapons inspectors (who discovered them) the extra time they requested to determine the answer to the above question?
We are all entitled to our opinions, but I did not believe at the time that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. and I do not think so either in hindsight.
I am not an historian, but I believe the Oregon treaty set the boundary between the U.S. and Canada at the 49N from 1846.
Unfortunately, they do not support attacks on countries, justified by the war on terrorism, based on a combination of manufactured and inadequate evidence.
I guess, at least, it does not operate like one of those really sadistic sites that open about 10 pop-ups simultaneously. Way more annoying than a single pop-up window, though, especially since (like about 80% of ./ers ) I have those disabled.
Actually, the sort of card insert ads you get in computer mags drives me nuts. First thing I do with a new mag is spend a couple of minutes ripping them out. Guess I must be over sensitive!
No problem: just make a few tweaks to the Palladium specifications so MS + CIA own your body in addition to your computer, documents and household appliances.
Their interest in preventing ISPs from restricting access is that it may reduce the number of products from which they can receive revenue. Their motto is: "the Internet should be free to everyone and everything provided it is providing us with revenue."
The terrifying thing is that I think most Americans agree with you. Anyone non American has no rights and the American government can do what they like to them. Actually, this is understandable because Americans increasingly extend this to saying that you can do what you like to anyone (American or not) insofar as you can get away with it. WorldCom etc. are a symptom of a general American attitude and not an aberration.
Well, I think the 'master plan' is to have a hardware architecture that will restrict the circumstances under which the sound card will work. Whether this will succeed is a very interesting question. We shall know in a couple of years.
Second-term presidents are much less of a problem. They are concerned with their legacy (of which their affect on the country's financial health is a part) rather than inducing a short-term economic boom to get re-elected.
In the future, the main impetus may not come from the space pioneers of the 1960s, but space travel will steadily grow. China will have a huge space program for reasons of prestige if nothing else. While not yet true, there will be valid commercial applications. I expect Japan, with its lead in new materials (based on nanotechnology) will eventually become involved.
There is a form of consulting that is distinct from the kind you are discussing. Often a consultant is working with a consultancy company. In that case, the consultant must consider the relationship between the company and the client. It is always correct to discuss any such major issues with your company in this case -- and be guided by how they want to deal with it.
I agree that script kiddies are not behind this. It is probably more skilled crackers and may possibly be the CIA. It is interesting that U.S. authorities have been trying to shut down al-Jazeera coverage from the U.S. and eliminate Iraqi TV at the same time.
If Micro$oft is using pricing incentives to enforce this, it will work only too well. Few people, btw, seem to be aware that Micro$oft is still using the operating system monopoly trick extensively in major markets outside the U.S. (such as Japan). If the article is correct that M$ initiated this, I am extremely suspicious about their motives. I seriously doubt their reason was to minimise Office Depot returns.
David Reed carefully says that the final architecture should not be prejudged. However, I think I see the general direction of his thinking. He sees many more, but lower power transmitters. Presumably, the receiver will say what it wants to receive and a suitable nearby transmitter will send it. The transmitter may, in turn need to receive it from another node. By restricting the power (and distance) of the signals (and being able to dynamically choose a frequency) and by having the relay transmitters be highly directional, I think the available bandwidth is indeed close to infinite.
The IQ of anyone who would respond to this spam is so low already that, paradoxically, this might actually be truth in advertising!
Was the inclusion of the sexy picture an attempt to check how many feminists frequent /.?
The strengths of the U.S. have been availability of venture capital, resulting in a steady stream of technological innovation; and quality immigration, providing a highly motivated and skilled workforce in critical areas of the economy. Large U.S. corporations, with a few honourable exceptions, have usually bought technology rather than developing it themselves. It is unclear whether immigration will continue to be as positive for the U.S. in years to come. China, India and other Asian countries provide opportunities today that were not available in the past and their talent may increasingly stay at home. What I definitely believe is that the availability of venture capital is much less than a few years ago and I suspect is not going to recover. Further, government decisions (such as the Missile Defense Shield and foreign adventurism) will severely skew the economy away from productive areas and towards the military. The lesson of history is that there is a real danger that this will damage the underlying fabric of the economy and gradually lead to a U.S. decline.
Anyone else find this interesting?
Yes, this makes a lot of sense. There is a long history of big players trying to ease migration pains, when moving to new architectures, by allowing the old and new architectures to coexist. IBM, for instance, used VM/370 rather successfully to help ease customers to virtual storage operating systems while still allowing the old operating system to run legacy apps.
It is true that, historically, the same machine can be both a client and a server. However, I think one of Microsoft's long term goals is to prevent that in the future. Have you tried to install SQL Server on Windows 2000 Professional? You cannot. Have you tried to install IIS on Windows XP? In many areas Microsoft has needed to tread carefully, but maximising revenue and ensuring their customers are trapped are their key goals.