I've gotten into the habit of pasting the content of emails that I think I will need into related topic pages in my Wiki - which is also available to other members of my team.
The search facility is alot faster (given my near gigabyte PST files, and unlike outlook, not limited to one top level folder). I can also modify the content and provide quick links to other related information on the fly.
Once I get my wiki to recognize email headers in the text, then I'll be halfway home (now to just convince our IT dept that we should scrap our echange servers and run [insert anything else here] on the server side - preferably something configured to do POP or IMAP which I could leverage from within the wiki).
There is nothing turn-key that will do much more than dialtone. If you want specialized services that are resilient, super scalable, and integrated, you are talking bleeding edge development. Convergence, while inevitable, is not something you can just order up, like so much lobster flown in from Maine on the UPS redball express...
The guys who do it right will end up on top. I think companies with broadband infrastructure in place will have an advantage; Telcos, LD and Cable companies.
So, when your website (which also will probably host voicemail and email and [enter some other communications medium here] - and provide a web interface to all of it for your users) is experiencing problems - now you not only have to troubleshoot the network, you also have to be able to troubleshoot your PSTN gateways - and the associated wireline circuits beyond (and believe me - they will be pointing at your equipment 9 times out of 10).
Engineering the growth of the network will also be a bear; not only will you need to take into account your busy hour call volumes, but also how this translates into bandwidth utilization, disk usage, cpu utilization etc on your network.
Good luck. Convergence is basically taking an equation and changing a bunch of variables all at once. Troubleshooting will be tricky at best - and a morass at worse from which there is no return...[overdramatization off]
It will be interesting to see how cable companies handle 911 and other emergency services (hospitals, government agencies etc.).
This is really why (aside from reasonable rates for customers) that the Telcos are regulated - and fined heavily if they screw it up.
Dialtone uptimes will be hard to manage for current cable networks - given the current traffic patterns as well as the poor scalability vis-a-vis DSL.
Finally, don't worry about the Telcos; most if not all of them are already leveraging these new technologies in various creative ways to make copper wire a value added proposition into the forseable future. Don't overlook SDSL rollouts over the horizon - and who knows what is on the drawing boards. Given that copper wire touches more homes than cable - who do you think is really in a better position to take advantage of broadband communications of all types in the long term? Who do you think critical government agencies and emergency services are going to trust with their external communications gateways?
I will leave those answers as an exercise for the user...
If you are a 'small' company, then you are probably not doing any significant business to begin with. Additionally, if your development process is so close to the open source model, then why mince words? If something looks, feels, smells and tastes like another - then they must be the same thing.
Finally, most of the software we use, both generic and for special projects comes from the 'big boys' because the perception of management is that big = good. From firsthand experience, I have seen that this is not the case - in most cases.
The challenge for agile development wizards is to hammer that message home to the people who make the decisions - and the teams that implement them.
VOIP is not just a TCP/IP connection. Based on the H.323 standard, the network must be established to support VOIP telephony to gain a QOS standard for audio and video. This basically means voice and picture packets get priority over other forms of transport on that network, and call routing is optomized depending on available telephone gateways etc.
This is not like connecting two machines via TCP/IP, and therefore is not an issue for individual users who want to connect their machines for communications purposes.
The regulations will effect entities set up for the purpose of providing a communications service for a fee; again, that does not include you using Roger Wilco or TeamSpeak to talk to grandma over the internet. Additionally, these tools will not provide the sound quality consistent with H.323 network connectivity - and will not support such services as POTS gateways or 911 service, which the service providers must also provide by law.
Don't lose any sleep over this. Individual network users have nothing to fear (unless the FCC goes completely froggy - in which case, all bets are off. However, the FCC chairman is leaning away from regulating anything on the internet - so regulating individuals is the furthest thing from his mind atm)
1. A hypodermic injection, syringe, or needle.
2. A drug addict.
tr.v. hyped, hyping, hypes
To stimulate with or as if with a hypodermic injection: "hyped the country up to a purposeless pitch" (Newsweek).
hype n.
1. Excessive publicity and the ensuing commotion: the hype surrounding the murder trial.
2. Exaggerated or extravagant claims made especially in advertising or promotional material: "It is pure hype, a gigantic PR job" (Saturday Review).
3. An advertising or promotional ploy: "Some restaurant owners in town are cooking up a $75,000 hype to promote New York as 'Restaurant City, U.S.A.'" (New York).
4. Something deliberately misleading; a deception: " [He] says that there isn't any energy crisis at all, that it's all a hype, to maintain outrageous profits for the oil companies" (Joel Oppenheimer).
tr.v. hyped, hyping, hypes
To publicize or promote, especially by extravagant, inflated, or misleading claims: hyped the new book by sending its author on a promotional tour. ~
Your choice of words is illuminating CharlieG. Oratory is one thing, propoganda is another.
Trade, and I think that is what you mean by 'harmless greed', is not Greed. Balanced trade is trade that benefits not only the seller and the buyer, but also the workers the environment, and society at large.
Greed, on the other hand, leads to destruction and destitution; there is no give and take - only take. Decisions based soley on greed are not wise decisions - only mercenary decisions bereft of any considerations of the moral, social or environmental wisdom.
When people with billions of dollars make greedy decisions at the expense of everything decent and equitable, then real suffering occurs on a large scale - both now, and in the future. When people have this kind of power, they need to treat it with a commensurate level of care. Unfortunately, people are not perfect, and it seems like the people who end up on boards of directors are the lowest sort when it comes to character (perhaps this is because most of them always got what they wanted - or never tasted the bad effects of their poor decisions) and wisdom in the excersize of this power.
When is the last time you went to a movie that had an intermission (I assume that is what you mean by interval)?
I can't remember the last time because I was a very small child at the time.
The point I am driving at is that the production companies have focussed on packaging a standard length movie. To distributors and cinemas the more people they can get in and out of their theatre over a given amount of time, the more profit they can turn per movie. Standard length movies meet this need; non-standard (long) movies don't.
I disagree with Dan's hypothesis that there are some things that must be closed source.
In all cases he assumes that the program logic is built into the application itself.
This is a bad assumption. You can (and should) build an application that reads configuration information in from an external file or database, and behaves based on those configurations. Those files can be unique for every installation as needed.
Another thing you did not take into account are embedded scripting languages for extending the functionality of applications. Again, only the local developer/users using the scripting need know about the specifics - not the development community at large.
Anything can be 'open-sourced' - it just takes an understanding of how it will be used and the implications of that use; a good developer will design for flexibility, rather than embedding key logic that may need to change inside the program.
I thought the term 'Limey' was related to the drink 'Lager 'n Lime', and had either one or both connotations:
1. Since it is a uniquely English drink combination, it served to identify an Englishman to any non-English in the crowd. It might have originally been a result of trying to prevent scurvy; however, it still survived - at least into the 1980s - in every pub I have been to, in the Midlands (Cambridge and points North).
2. Since mostly women drink it, it serves to put down said Englishman as a 'girly-man', basically a term of derision. You were careful not to mention this. However, I witnessed male bashing of gentlemen who prefered 'Baby-Shams' and 'Lager and Lime' to the stouter ales and bitters - so there is something to be said for the sensitivity of this issue.
I think these are more closer to the truth of the meaning of 'Limey' - from the perspective of the occidental. That being said, in an effort to foster better relations with our English friends, while living in England I came to the conclusion that people everywhere are generally the same - the terminology is just different (loo vs. restroom, bar vs. pub, wanker vs. bloody wanker etc...)
(I was part of the peaceful American occupation of Great Britain during the Cold War in the 1980s - thus having several years of practical experience with this subject - and English pubs in general)
The key to not becoming disheartened is to pick your battles carefully. That way you aren't always getting squashed. Know when it is most useful to expose your hand, and when it is better to work quietly behind the scenes.
Overall, it is much better to gather 10,000 allies quietly over time, than to run out into sunlight alone and get squashed right away - unless you are into being a martyr. Patience and sacrifice = success. Sacrifice alone = death.
I do not advocate blind sacrifice. I do advocate struggling for what is right - but smartly, with your eyes open.
I think the problem was with what they were originally smoking. They need to stop smoking whatever they currenting have their lips wrapped around - now!
"Drop the bong and back away from the LA County government building, posthaste!"
So, you mean to tell me that you have 100% of the voting age populace voting during every election? How is that possible?
More importantly, how is it enforced? (are there fines if you don't vote? And what about bums/homeless people - or people who are perhaps transient - moving about from place to place, not giving a fig?)
That my office space at work does not fit the stereotype of geeky clutter. I generally don't generate much paper, prefering to actually try to live up to the 'paperless office' paradigm.
At home, on the other hand, I have several disorganized piles of junk in transition (stuff I am getting rid of after doing some 'Fall cleaning') - but for the most part the vast bulk of it is semi-neatly organized and stored in my work station composed of several hutches with file cabinets and other types of storage compartments.
All of my portable stuff is stored in my backpack, of course.
The light at the end of the tunnel for this is XML. It is basically a plain text (ascii or utf-8, take your pick) standard which means it shouldn't have compatability issues as you described.
However (and this is a big however), Microsoft is basing their next-gen file standard on XML, but of course, with proprietary extensions. My ferverent hope is that the XML standard, which is designed to be extensible, is bulletproof enough to withstand Microsoft's 'embrace and extend' IT control paradigm.
I found it quite enlightening to read the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action for the summit. The most interesting aspect of this document is the apparent riders that were added to the document later in the draft process [in brackets]. Some selected quotes:
We are resolute in our quest to ensure everyone can benefit from the opportunities ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) can offer...all stakeholders should work together to:...(list of items)...;foster and respect cultural diversity;[recognize the role of the media]...
Governments, as well as the private sector, civil society, and the United Nations and other international organizations have an important role and responsibility in developing the Information Society and, as appropriate, in decision making processes...[The media has a special role in the Information Society]...
[Strengthening the trust framework, including [network and information security] authentication, privacy and consumer protection, is a prerequisite for the development of the Information Society and for building confidence among users of ICTs...
The document seemed like a table tennis match, wherein the countervailing issues had no apparent resolution. In particular, the conflict between the fair use access to free information and the digital rights management and security issues seems irreconcilable. I applauded the emphasis on free and open standards - but again find it hard to reconcile with other issues attached to the document.
This item I found particularly interesting:
Volunteering, [if conducted in harmony with national policies and local cultures,] can be a valuable asset for raising human capacity to make productive use of ICT tools and to build a more inclusive Information Society.
Given the subject of the document, 'Volunteering' in this context would be helping people to learn 'ICT' tools and perhaps building infrastructure. I can not fathom how this would be conducted outside of 'harmony with national policies and local cultures'. This does, however, open the door for suppressing the assistance given to particular groups in a state, if such assitance is not approved by said government. This contradicts the whole idea behind an inclusive Information Society, which this document seems, at first glance, to espouse.
From a practical perspective, I have noticed the same phenomenon over the years, and have created the following axioms for my own sanity:
1. You can not depend on any outside entity to archive information that is important to you.
If there is come critical piece of information that you need to do your job, or as a reference to related work - by all means download and keep an archival copy for your own use. While the Internet Archive is an excellent resource - there is no way they will be able to keep track of everything on the net for all time. The drawback of this is that if you do not periodically look at the original web page you will be using the latest information (I will address this issue in a moment).
2. Look for means of extending the ability to locate information beyond the URL.
While the URL is a great boon to keeping unique locations on the web, they do not encapsulate enough information (meta information) to make searching and locating information easy. The problem is not just related to the internet - it also encompases other storage mediums (i.e. files outside of the exposed WWW partition). There are some recent tools that are at a test bed level now that can be used to solve this problem if brought into mainstream use, as we will see below.
I see several technologies need to be developed/perfected to help ameliorate these issues:
a) Software needs to be developed for end users to manage their own information resources - similar to how the Internet Archive keeps track of changes to web pages. The software should allow the user to archive pages to the local drive as desired, and provide a version control system for easily retrieving previous versions as needed; the system should also provide:
b) An easy means of keeping meta information and annotations regarding a particular web document needs to be made a standard part of all web browsers. A good starting point is the W3CAnnotea standard for keeping meta data - as implemented in the Amaya editor/browser.
I think a good set of the pieces are already in place to accomplish what I suggest - the real issue now is integrating them into current end user tools.
The next, and perhaps biggest, question that needs to be resolved is how does DRM fit into this picture (if at all), and how much will DRM serve to further erode the cultural continuity archivists desire?
From the article: "...the average Israeli hacker resembles hackers the world over..."
This is not my problem, this is what the article stated. However, the good doctor did not correlate the resemblence.
The point she missed is that the phenomenon, just as the internet on which it thrives, crosses most, if not all, international borders. Relationships between people, from a socialogical standpoint, are not confined to one geographical area - and thus discounting those relationships and influences provides an incomplete picture.
Perhaps her actual research provided that missing part of the puzzle; however, the article did not show this - which led to my critique.
Instead of trying to keep a centrally maintained package matrix tree, why not shift the burden to the developer (not really a burden, when you consider he is already packaging most of the data needed already under current apt/rpm systems today) via direct filesystem validation?
I would suggest we create a standard that will allow new applications to be added to distributions easily by encoding their own dependencies - but with a twist. This would require the creation of a better mousetrap, in the form of a platform independent standard for passing the dependency information, and a standard means of validating those dependencies in the operating system at the file level (where it must be able to recognize non-standard installations as well as the standard fare - or even recognize when the operating system is damaged - or incompletely installed for that matter, and work around the roadblock). If a developer really wants to make installation easy for his application, he could include all the dependent files so autoloading can be local as needed, otherwise the installation tool would need to have the correct URL to get the version that the developer used in his application (again, both items would be encoded in the standard).
Rather than keeping a central database, a la Microsoft Registry, RPM, etc, *nix systems should look to the file system itself to validate dependencies (I can load an RPM, then go out and remove the files - which will not update the package database, or conversely, the package database can become corrupted - forcing a reload of all non-standard packages; this is the central matrix's Achilles heel and why I believe we must move outside of this paradigm).
A decentralized approach will provide several advantages over current methods:
1. Less overhead at the distribution level. Distributions don't need to keep track of dependencies in an active way - and thus are free to pick and choose what applications are correct for their audiences. If a particular application has a dependency that requires upgrading a library or the kernel beyond what the distribution maintainers are comfortable with - then that can be managed easily (the goal would be to make such management relatively trivial - perhaps allowing the distribution managers to set revision 'stop points' in the interface - such that automated upgrading will not go beyond a certain revision level on specific applications/libraries). Overall, more flexibility for the distribution makers.
2. Since there is no centralized database, there can be no centralized corruption that brings package management to a halt. Any problems that occur along these lines will only effect one application - not the whole system.
3. Will work with any type of archive system; tar, rpm, etc. The system must not preclude or inhibit the use of existing systems if the user so desires.
To make this happen, I would recommend a self 'certification' for applications developed under the standard (similar to other 'compliant' tagging used today). The certification would ensure that application is compliant with the standard. The following items would need to be resolved to accomplish this:
a) A means of allowing multiple versions of libraries and applications to coexist on the platform without creating problems for the operating system must be devised. Perhaps applications could use a unique set of environmental variables to point to the correct version to use.
b) A means of encoding the dependency information and URL or./local location information to load the dependent modules - workable with TAR, RPM, and other archival systems.
c) A means of leveraging existing make and config dependency files to automate the creation of the encoded standard file.
This is ultimately the correct approach in my mind, and follows the overriding Unix paradigms more closely than the other methods out there.
From the article: In the case of Yaron, 39, a former hacker who now owns an information security company, the court's verdict reflected a sympathetic attitude toward hackers. The judge "saw the situation in the correct light," Yaron told Turgeman, "unlike the police." In the 1980s, Yaron was charged with breaking into the Yedioth Ahronoth daily's system and planting a fictitious item on one of the teachers in his school. The judge considered the incident a "prank" and decided not to convict him.
This is definitely not representative of what happens in the USA.
The key flaw in Dr. Goldschmidt's disertation is that 'hackers' (crackers), and the response of society as a whole is consistent across international boundaries. This could not be further from the truth.
I was running a TI-99a in 1981 - and I consider it a more common machine than the Osborne (which I never saw or heard about until the 1990s).
Where is the Atari? The Atari 800XL was an awsome machine - on par with the Commodore 64. After learning basic on the TI-99, I later used the Atari to learn machine level programming, poking and peeking (or was it push and pop?)my way into the guts of the beast.
I am not aware of any broadband service that is billed on a per use basis. This is how it generally works:
For DSL and Cable Modem, you have a maximum upload and download speed that is choked by the access provider to maintain service quality over the whole network. QOS is generally nonexistant for these customers.
For larger connections (DS1, DS3, ATM and so on) you have a maximum bandwidth per second - however the service provider can increase this as a part of a service level agreement to allow spikes above the ceiling. However, in most cases spikes above the ceiling end up on your next bill. These accounts are generally very big and very expensive (my company is spending more than my whole salary for the year - per month - for connectivity at one of our sites).
Given that, most small businesses (those most likely to be using WiFi btw) will have a fixed bandwidth - so no additional fees will acrue.
The real effect for you using bandwidth on another network may be the slowdown of the host network - if that network were running near maximum capacity, or you were doing something - like downloading MP3s - that ate up the available bandwidth.
The effect of this on a small business would be worth no more than the cost of the time lost during the slowdown - hardly worth 10 years of someone's life. In either case, the odds of this happening are astronomical because most small networks sit idle most of the time, and most big networks have plenty of bandwidth to spare due to traffic shaping that over-engineers for the worse busy hour in the worse traffic time of the year.
War driving is a drop in the bucket, compared to the bigger problem: Spam.
Re:The CIS majors must know something the CS don't
on
In Search of Stupidity
·
· Score: 1
I had a CIS graduate who only knew cobol come into my shop as my 'peer'. He quickly disabused himself of any hubris he may have had when I layed out Unix [file system, IPC, differences between shells, system level programming, CLI interface paradigm), the languages I expected him to become conversant in (sh, sed, awk, perl, python, java, C), agile development methodologies/lifecycles, and basic computer and network architecture and Telephony needed to understand how our myriad applications actually worked.
On the first day working there he said to me, "My head hurts!". I replied, "Thats because you haven't used it in the last 4 years..."
He turned out to be a pretty good guy - but he was never enthusiastic about his job, and I could sense that he always struggled with the differences between how he learned to program and what he needed to do to perform the job. From my side, I understood his language of choice clearly - and found it to be lacking when it came to 99% of the core business applications we did (another way of saying it was a blecherous heavy handed solution). He ended up in another job doing training.
Slashdot Mirror
I've gotten into the habit of pasting the content of emails that I think I will need into related topic pages in my Wiki - which is also available to other members of my team.
The search facility is alot faster (given my near gigabyte PST files, and unlike outlook, not limited to one top level folder). I can also modify the content and provide quick links to other related information on the fly.
Once I get my wiki to recognize email headers in the text, then I'll be halfway home (now to just convince our IT dept that we should scrap our echange servers and run [insert anything else here] on the server side - preferably something configured to do POP or IMAP which I could leverage from within the wiki).
There is nothing turn-key that will do much more than dialtone. If you want specialized services that are resilient, super scalable, and integrated, you are talking bleeding edge development. Convergence, while inevitable, is not something you can just order up, like so much lobster flown in from Maine on the UPS redball express...
The guys who do it right will end up on top. I think companies with broadband infrastructure in place will have an advantage; Telcos, LD and Cable companies.
So, when your website (which also will probably host voicemail and email and [enter some other communications medium here] - and provide a web interface to all of it for your users) is experiencing problems - now you not only have to troubleshoot the network, you also have to be able to troubleshoot your PSTN gateways - and the associated wireline circuits beyond (and believe me - they will be pointing at your equipment 9 times out of 10).
Engineering the growth of the network will also be a bear; not only will you need to take into account your busy hour call volumes, but also how this translates into bandwidth utilization, disk usage, cpu utilization etc on your network.
Good luck. Convergence is basically taking an equation and changing a bunch of variables all at once. Troubleshooting will be tricky at best - and a morass at worse from which there is no return...[overdramatization off]
It will be interesting to see how cable companies handle 911 and other emergency services (hospitals, government agencies etc.).
This is really why (aside from reasonable rates for customers) that the Telcos are regulated - and fined heavily if they screw it up.
Dialtone uptimes will be hard to manage for current cable networks - given the current traffic patterns as well as the poor scalability vis-a-vis DSL.
Finally, don't worry about the Telcos; most if not all of them are already leveraging these new technologies in various creative ways to make copper wire a value added proposition into the forseable future. Don't overlook SDSL rollouts over the horizon - and who knows what is on the drawing boards. Given that copper wire touches more homes than cable - who do you think is really in a better position to take advantage of broadband communications of all types in the long term? Who do you think critical government agencies and emergency services are going to trust with their external communications gateways?
I will leave those answers as an exercise for the user...
If you are a 'small' company, then you are probably not doing any significant business to begin with. Additionally, if your development process is so close to the open source model, then why mince words? If something looks, feels, smells and tastes like another - then they must be the same thing.
Finally, most of the software we use, both generic and for special projects comes from the 'big boys' because the perception of management is that big = good. From firsthand experience, I have seen that this is not the case - in most cases.
The challenge for agile development wizards is to hammer that message home to the people who make the decisions - and the teams that implement them.
VOIP is not just a TCP/IP connection. Based on the H.323 standard, the network must be established to support VOIP telephony to gain a QOS standard for audio and video. This basically means voice and picture packets get priority over other forms of transport on that network, and call routing is optomized depending on available telephone gateways etc.
This is not like connecting two machines via TCP/IP, and therefore is not an issue for individual users who want to connect their machines for communications purposes.
The regulations will effect entities set up for the purpose of providing a communications service for a fee; again, that does not include you using Roger Wilco or TeamSpeak to talk to grandma over the internet. Additionally, these tools will not provide the sound quality consistent with H.323 network connectivity - and will not support such services as POTS gateways or 911 service, which the service providers must also provide by law.
Don't lose any sleep over this. Individual network users have nothing to fear (unless the FCC goes completely froggy - in which case, all bets are off. However, the FCC chairman is leaning away from regulating anything on the internet - so regulating individuals is the furthest thing from his mind atm)
hyped up crowd (of developers) - CharlieG
Per Dictionary.com:
hype n.
1. A hypodermic injection, syringe, or needle.
2. A drug addict.
tr.v. hyped, hyping, hypes
To stimulate with or as if with a hypodermic injection: "hyped the country up to a purposeless pitch" (Newsweek).
hype n.
1. Excessive publicity and the ensuing commotion: the hype surrounding the murder trial.
2. Exaggerated or extravagant claims made especially in advertising or promotional material: "It is pure hype, a gigantic PR job" (Saturday Review).
3. An advertising or promotional ploy: "Some restaurant owners in town are cooking up a $75,000 hype to promote New York as 'Restaurant City, U.S.A.'" (New York).
4. Something deliberately misleading; a deception: " [He] says that there isn't any energy crisis at all, that it's all a hype, to maintain outrageous profits for the oil companies" (Joel Oppenheimer).
tr.v. hyped, hyping, hypes
To publicize or promote, especially by extravagant, inflated, or misleading claims: hyped the new book by sending its author on a promotional tour.
~
Your choice of words is illuminating CharlieG. Oratory is one thing, propoganda is another.
Trade, and I think that is what you mean by 'harmless greed', is not Greed. Balanced trade is trade that benefits not only the seller and the buyer, but also the workers the environment, and society at large.
Greed, on the other hand, leads to destruction and destitution; there is no give and take - only take. Decisions based soley on greed are not wise decisions - only mercenary decisions bereft of any considerations of the moral, social or environmental wisdom.
When people with billions of dollars make greedy decisions at the expense of everything decent and equitable, then real suffering occurs on a large scale - both now, and in the future. When people have this kind of power, they need to treat it with a commensurate level of care. Unfortunately, people are not perfect, and it seems like the people who end up on boards of directors are the lowest sort when it comes to character (perhaps this is because most of them always got what they wanted - or never tasted the bad effects of their poor decisions) and wisdom in the excersize of this power.
That is my take on it. Your mileage may vary.
When is the last time you went to a movie that had an intermission (I assume that is what you mean by interval)?
I can't remember the last time because I was a very small child at the time.
The point I am driving at is that the production companies have focussed on packaging a standard length movie. To distributors and cinemas the more people they can get in and out of their theatre over a given amount of time, the more profit they can turn per movie. Standard length movies meet this need; non-standard (long) movies don't.
It is as simple as that.
I disagree with Dan's hypothesis that there are some things that must be closed source.
In all cases he assumes that the program logic is built into the application itself.
This is a bad assumption. You can (and should) build an application that reads configuration information in from an external file or database, and behaves based on those configurations. Those files can be unique for every installation as needed.
Another thing you did not take into account are embedded scripting languages for extending the functionality of applications. Again, only the local developer/users using the scripting need know about the specifics - not the development community at large.
Anything can be 'open-sourced' - it just takes an understanding of how it will be used and the implications of that use; a good developer will design for flexibility, rather than embedding key logic that may need to change inside the program.
I thought the term 'Limey' was related to the drink 'Lager 'n Lime', and had either one or both connotations:
1. Since it is a uniquely English drink combination, it served to identify an Englishman to any non-English in the crowd. It might have originally been a result of trying to prevent scurvy; however, it still survived - at least into the 1980s - in every pub I have been to, in the Midlands (Cambridge and points North).
2. Since mostly women drink it, it serves to put down said Englishman as a 'girly-man', basically a term of derision. You were careful not to mention this. However, I witnessed male bashing of gentlemen who prefered 'Baby-Shams' and 'Lager and Lime' to the stouter ales and bitters - so there is something to be said for the sensitivity of this issue.
I think these are more closer to the truth of the meaning of 'Limey' - from the perspective of the occidental. That being said, in an effort to foster better relations with our English friends, while living in England I came to the conclusion that people everywhere are generally the same - the terminology is just different (loo vs. restroom, bar vs. pub, wanker vs. bloody wanker etc...)
(I was part of the peaceful American occupation of Great Britain during the Cold War in the 1980s - thus having several years of practical experience with this subject - and English pubs in general)
The key to not becoming disheartened is to pick your battles carefully. That way you aren't always getting squashed. Know when it is most useful to expose your hand, and when it is better to work quietly behind the scenes.
Overall, it is much better to gather 10,000 allies quietly over time, than to run out into sunlight alone and get squashed right away - unless you are into being a martyr. Patience and sacrifice = success. Sacrifice alone = death.
I do not advocate blind sacrifice. I do advocate struggling for what is right - but smartly, with your eyes open.
I think the problem was with what they were originally smoking. They need to stop smoking whatever they currenting have their lips wrapped around - now!
"Drop the bong and back away from the LA County government building, posthaste!"
Life is about that. However, our performance is rarely as consistent as our best intentions.
Conversely, the same thing can be expressed as:
Life will always be about further our greedy desires, despite our stupidity, at the expense of truth.
It all depends on where you mostly fall in the desire/righteousness continuum.
All I see is people talking past one another.
To paraphrase something I saw on TV the other night:
We have to continue talking, because once we quit talking people will die.
Voting is compulsory in Australia?
So, you mean to tell me that you have 100% of the voting age populace voting during every election? How is that possible?
More importantly, how is it enforced? (are there fines if you don't vote? And what about bums/homeless people - or people who are perhaps transient - moving about from place to place, not giving a fig?)
That my office space at work does not fit the stereotype of geeky clutter. I generally don't generate much paper, prefering to actually try to live up to the 'paperless office' paradigm.
At home, on the other hand, I have several disorganized piles of junk in transition (stuff I am getting rid of after doing some 'Fall cleaning') - but for the most part the vast bulk of it is semi-neatly organized and stored in my work station composed of several hutches with file cabinets and other types of storage compartments.
All of my portable stuff is stored in my backpack, of course.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
The light at the end of the tunnel for this is XML. It is basically a plain text (ascii or utf-8, take your pick) standard which means it shouldn't have compatability issues as you described.
However (and this is a big however), Microsoft is basing their next-gen file standard on XML, but of course, with proprietary extensions. My ferverent hope is that the XML standard, which is designed to be extensible, is bulletproof enough to withstand Microsoft's 'embrace and extend' IT control paradigm.
I found it quite enlightening to read the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action for the summit. The most interesting aspect of this document is the apparent riders that were added to the document later in the draft process [in brackets]. Some selected quotes:
We are resolute in our quest to ensure everyone can benefit from the opportunities ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) can offer...all stakeholders should work together to:...(list of items)...;foster and respect cultural diversity;[recognize the role of the media]...
Governments, as well as the private sector, civil society, and the United Nations and other international organizations have an important role and responsibility in developing the Information Society and, as appropriate, in decision making processes...[The media has a special role in the Information Society]...
[Strengthening the trust framework, including [network and information security] authentication, privacy and consumer protection, is a prerequisite for the development of the Information Society and for building confidence among users of ICTs...
The document seemed like a table tennis match, wherein the countervailing issues had no apparent resolution. In particular, the conflict between the fair use access to free information and the digital rights management and security issues seems irreconcilable. I applauded the emphasis on free and open standards - but again find it hard to reconcile with other issues attached to the document.
This item I found particularly interesting:
Volunteering, [if conducted in harmony with national policies and local cultures,] can be a valuable asset for raising human capacity to make productive use of ICT tools and to build a more inclusive Information Society.
Given the subject of the document, 'Volunteering' in this context would be helping people to learn 'ICT' tools and perhaps building infrastructure. I can not fathom how this would be conducted outside of 'harmony with national policies and local cultures'. This does, however, open the door for suppressing the assistance given to particular groups in a state, if such assitance is not approved by said government. This contradicts the whole idea behind an inclusive Information Society, which this document seems, at first glance, to espouse.
From a practical perspective, I have noticed the same phenomenon over the years, and have created the following axioms for my own sanity:
1. You can not depend on any outside entity to archive information that is important to you.
If there is come critical piece of information that you need to do your job, or as a reference to related work - by all means download and keep an archival copy for your own use. While the Internet Archive is an excellent resource - there is no way they will be able to keep track of everything on the net for all time. The drawback of this is that if you do not periodically look at the original web page you will be using the latest information (I will address this issue in a moment).
2. Look for means of extending the ability to locate information beyond the URL.
While the URL is a great boon to keeping unique locations on the web, they do not encapsulate enough information (meta information) to make searching and locating information easy. The problem is not just related to the internet - it also encompases other storage mediums (i.e. files outside of the exposed WWW partition). There are some recent tools that are at a test bed level now that can be used to solve this problem if brought into mainstream use, as we will see below.
I see several technologies need to be developed/perfected to help ameliorate these issues:
a) Software needs to be developed for end users to manage their own information resources - similar to how the Internet Archive keeps track of changes to web pages. The software should allow the user to archive pages to the local drive as desired, and provide a version control system for easily retrieving previous versions as needed; the system should also provide:
b) An easy means of keeping meta information and annotations regarding a particular web document needs to be made a standard part of all web browsers. A good starting point is the W3C Annotea standard for keeping meta data - as implemented in the Amaya editor/browser.
I think a good set of the pieces are already in place to accomplish what I suggest - the real issue now is integrating them into current end user tools.
The next, and perhaps biggest, question that needs to be resolved is how does DRM fit into this picture (if at all), and how much will DRM serve to further erode the cultural continuity archivists desire?
From the article: "...the average Israeli hacker resembles hackers the world over..."
This is not my problem, this is what the article stated. However, the good doctor did not correlate the resemblence.
The point she missed is that the phenomenon, just as the internet on which it thrives, crosses most, if not all, international borders. Relationships between people, from a socialogical standpoint, are not confined to one geographical area - and thus discounting those relationships and influences provides an incomplete picture.
Perhaps her actual research provided that missing part of the puzzle; however, the article did not show this - which led to my critique.
I think we are looking at this all wrong.
./local location information to load the dependent modules - workable with TAR, RPM, and other archival systems.
Instead of trying to keep a centrally maintained package matrix tree, why not shift the burden to the developer (not really a burden, when you consider he is already packaging most of the data needed already under current apt/rpm systems today) via direct filesystem validation?
I would suggest we create a standard that will allow new applications to be added to distributions easily by encoding their own dependencies - but with a twist. This would require the creation of a better mousetrap, in the form of a platform independent standard for passing the dependency information, and a standard means of validating those dependencies in the operating system at the file level (where it must be able to recognize non-standard installations as well as the standard fare - or even recognize when the operating system is damaged - or incompletely installed for that matter, and work around the roadblock). If a developer really wants to make installation easy for his application, he could include all the dependent files so autoloading can be local as needed, otherwise the installation tool would need to have the correct URL to get the version that the developer used in his application (again, both items would be encoded in the standard).
Rather than keeping a central database, a la Microsoft Registry, RPM, etc, *nix systems should look to the file system itself to validate dependencies (I can load an RPM, then go out and remove the files - which will not update the package database, or conversely, the package database can become corrupted - forcing a reload of all non-standard packages; this is the central matrix's Achilles heel and why I believe we must move outside of this paradigm).
A decentralized approach will provide several advantages over current methods:
1. Less overhead at the distribution level. Distributions don't need to keep track of dependencies in an active way - and thus are free to pick and choose what applications are correct for their audiences. If a particular application has a dependency that requires upgrading a library or the kernel beyond what the distribution maintainers are comfortable with - then that can be managed easily (the goal would be to make such management relatively trivial - perhaps allowing the distribution managers to set revision 'stop points' in the interface - such that automated upgrading will not go beyond a certain revision level on specific applications/libraries). Overall, more flexibility for the distribution makers.
2. Since there is no centralized database, there can be no centralized corruption that brings package management to a halt. Any problems that occur along these lines will only effect one application - not the whole system.
3. Will work with any type of archive system; tar, rpm, etc. The system must not preclude or inhibit the use of existing systems if the user so desires.
To make this happen, I would recommend a self 'certification' for applications developed under the standard (similar to other 'compliant' tagging used today). The certification would ensure that application is compliant with the standard. The following items would need to be resolved to accomplish this:
a) A means of allowing multiple versions of libraries and applications to coexist on the platform without creating problems for the operating system must be devised. Perhaps applications could use a unique set of environmental variables to point to the correct version to use.
b) A means of encoding the dependency information and URL or
c) A means of leveraging existing make and config dependency files to automate the creation of the encoded standard file.
This is ultimately the correct approach in my mind, and follows the overriding Unix paradigms more closely than the other methods out there.
From the article: In the case of Yaron, 39, a former hacker who now owns an information security company, the court's verdict reflected a sympathetic
attitude toward hackers. The judge "saw the situation in the correct light," Yaron told Turgeman, "unlike the police." In the 1980s, Yaron was charged with breaking into the Yedioth Ahronoth daily's system and planting a fictitious item on one of the teachers in his school. The judge considered the incident a "prank" and decided not to convict him.
This is definitely not representative of what happens in the USA.
The key flaw in Dr. Goldschmidt's disertation is that 'hackers' (crackers), and the response of society as a whole is consistent across international boundaries. This could not be further from the truth.
I was running a TI-99a in 1981 - and I consider it a more common machine than the Osborne (which I never saw or heard about until the 1990s).
Where is the Atari? The Atari 800XL was an awsome machine - on par with the Commodore 64. After learning basic on the TI-99, I later used the Atari to learn machine level programming, poking and peeking (or was it push and pop?)my way into the guts of the beast.
I am not aware of any broadband service that is billed on a per use basis. This is how it generally works:
For DSL and Cable Modem, you have a maximum upload and download speed that is choked by the access provider to maintain service quality over the whole network. QOS is generally nonexistant for these customers.
For larger connections (DS1, DS3, ATM and so on) you have a maximum bandwidth per second - however the service provider can increase this as a part of a service level agreement to allow spikes above the ceiling. However, in most cases spikes above the ceiling end up on your next bill. These accounts are generally very big and very expensive (my company is spending more than my whole salary for the year - per month - for connectivity at one of our sites).
Given that, most small businesses (those most likely to be using WiFi btw) will have a fixed bandwidth - so no additional fees will acrue.
The real effect for you using bandwidth on another network may be the slowdown of the host network - if that network were running near maximum capacity, or you were doing something - like downloading MP3s - that ate up the available bandwidth.
The effect of this on a small business would be worth no more than the cost of the time lost during the slowdown - hardly worth 10 years of someone's life. In either case, the odds of this happening are astronomical because most small networks sit idle most of the time, and most big networks have plenty of bandwidth to spare due to traffic shaping that over-engineers for the worse busy hour in the worse traffic time of the year.
War driving is a drop in the bucket, compared to the bigger problem: Spam.
I had a CIS graduate who only knew cobol come into my shop as my 'peer'. He quickly disabused himself of any hubris he may have had when I layed out Unix [file system, IPC, differences between shells, system level programming, CLI interface paradigm), the languages I expected him to become conversant in (sh, sed, awk, perl, python, java, C), agile development methodologies/lifecycles, and basic computer and network architecture and Telephony needed to understand how our myriad applications actually worked.
On the first day working there he said to me, "My head hurts!". I replied, "Thats because you haven't used it in the last 4 years..."
He turned out to be a pretty good guy - but he was never enthusiastic about his job, and I could sense that he always struggled with the differences between how he learned to program and what he needed to do to perform the job. From my side, I understood his language of choice clearly - and found it to be lacking when it came to 99% of the core business applications we did (another way of saying it was a blecherous heavy handed solution). He ended up in another job doing training.