The bottom line is that you should make your point clearly and ONLY ONCE. After you make your point, if they still wish to go forward with the "wrong" decision, do the work. Do NOT:
- whine - drag your feet - try to convince them again
Too many people try this and are a nightmare to work with. Unfortunately, this attitude is common in systems work, as many have the "everyone else is stupider than me" attitude. (e.g., Nick Burns, your company's computer guy)
Harrasment is absolutely illegal but publishing an address is not harrasment. Are you saying that the spammer has the right to freedom of speech but the site owner does not?
Agreed. Publishing the address is not illegal. I think calling and mailing the address can be illegal if it is proven that the intent is to harrass the person.
I was not objecting to the posting of the address, but the abuse thereof.
I do not agree. The problem of the tyranny of the majority is one of the wrongs that the constitution of the USA tried to right. Take note that almost all of the rights in the bill of rights were placed there to protect the minority opinion from being opressed by the majority. That in fact is is the reason that the first settlers to the new world went there, the reason behind the Revolution, and the reason behind the influx of most of the immigrants of the early 20th and late 19th centuries.
As long as spamming and junk mail remains legal, which it likely will, as it is part of that touchy subject of the first ammendment, he will be in the right.
What is more illegal is the intentional harassment of the spammer by others. If they were mailing and calling him with political or commercial requests, they probably cannot be stopped (other than by a no-call list). However, the intentional harrassment might be considered illegal, if it can be proven.
Im suprised that so few people here do not see how huge this is. This just proves that there are a lot of people out there that do not realize how duped they are.
People don't realize how powerful words are. Notice how the Bush regime and their in-the-pocket media put a newspeak spin on things:
USA word - transaltion regime - administration propaganda - news irregulars - people defending their country weapons of mass destruction - deterrant collateral damage - murder of innocents detention - arrest unlawful combattant - POW
This project has proven several things about large scale open source projects:
- Open source doesnt necessarily mean "instant development". It took over a year before anything useful came of the project.
- Just because you release something as open source, doesnt mean that thousands will flock and provide free development. Though thousands did flock, as soon as they saw that the code wasnt nearly usable, they gave up immediately. But, now that there is a small core of developers working on it, it is a useful product.
- Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it. It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.
Most, but not all, readers of Slashdot have a distaste for the DMCA and other laws that have strengthened copyright laws. But what most do not accept is the fact that these laws were created to solve a very real problem.
Software and media piracy is no longer an underground sub-culture. Just about anyone with enough money for a computer is able to easily find and illegally duplicate software, music, movies, and other media. Worse yet, most of the (former) music and movie buying public are doing just that.
The only "reasonable" alternative to strengthening laws and adding copy-protection to media is to give the media away, and make money with live appearances and peripheral tangible products, such as lunchboxes and t-shirts. I'm sure the people working for media conglomerates do not find this acceptable.
Do you agree with this assessment, and if so, if you had the chance to re-architect the DMCA to your liking, what would you change? Would you remove some parts, or augment others?
In almost all cases, the broadband connection providers have an option to allow a VPN or firewalled connection. However, it almost always is an additional cost and is listed as a "business" connection.
They often have a per-computer charge or a maximum number of devices or computers that are allowed to connect.
It usually costs significantly more than a regular connection.
It sounds like these speakers are similar to Martin Logan electrostatic speakers, and the screen will not produce anything close to low-frequency sound. The screen will likely require a midrange/woofer to reproduce the full spectrum of sound.
Electrostat speakers are typically transparent like glass, but held between two screens to allow the sound to travel. The article says the company claims the monitor has a "universal sweet spot", but that is probably corporate marketing talk for "no sweet spot". Most panel based electrostat speakers have a very very tiny sweet spot, and you need to be sitting perfectly between the two speakers.
From howstuff works:
These speakers vibrate air with a large, thin, conductive diaphragm panel. This diaphragm panel is suspended between two stationary conductive panels that are charged with electrical current from a wall outlet. These panels create an electrical field with a positive end and a negative end. The audio signal runs a current through the suspended panel, rapidly switching between a positive charge and a negative charge. When the charge is positive, the panel is drawn toward the negative end of the field, and when the charge is negative, it moves toward the positive end in the field.
No... This is exactly the attitude that I am talking about. There are often times when a manager needs to make a decision that he knows is not the most technically beautiful, but is necessary because of financial, scheduling, or standardization reasons. programmers need to learn how to present the argument logically to the management and then defer the decision to the manager. Once the manager has made his decision, do the work! Too many programmers and techies keep pushing for thier own ideas, event when management has decided otherwise.
For example: If all the other departments in the company run HP Openview to monitor servers, don't keep pushing for Big Brother and refusing to install anythign else.
If management said that we should install 10 mbit networks to all clients, don't sit on it saying "100/switched is the right way to do it". Management probably know s this and doesnt have the money to spend.
I now forsee lots of people being outraged at these companies trying to protect their product from being copied all in the name of "We can't back up our music or listen to it on an MP3 device!"
In other news:
The total percentage of albums last year that were copied for legitimate purposes:.00000023%
Well, if they had some sort of monitoring like this during the disasterous re-entry, they might be able to tell specifically what caused the accident. Instead, they now are working on conjecture and rumor.
What they really need is a "Psychology of a Company" or "Psychology of working for someone else" for programmers to read.
Too many programmers are Asperger-syndrome types that have difficulty with social skills and with understanding that THEY work for SOMEONE ELSE. They are not the boss, and therefore, just because they think something should happen a certain way, doesnt mean all other ideas are wrong.
There is a severe problem with tech workers in this respect. Too many think that they are driving and refuse to take direction. Too bad if something like this were written, most of them would not read it, and if they did, they would discount and ignore it.
I heard about scientists trying to create a new type of organism a little while ago... It scared me then and it scares me now.
However, I would think that it would be totally possible to generate TONS of energy and other useful things from something like this. It might be possible to generate oil from sunlight. Huge tanks of stuff making food, energy, whatever.
The ethical complications are interesting. If you create a new life form, do you have the right to destroy it? Maybe. If you can re-create it at a whim, why not? But then, what about existing life forms? Eventually scientists might be able to re-create just about any species in a petri dish. Can they then justifiably destroy a species, since they can re-create it at any time?
Cool sci-fi... or more accurately, cool sci-soon-to-be-not-fi.
However, my other thought on the obscurity is that it prevents public review of the code and design. It limits the debugging to the group of programmers that created the software. The question then turns to: What is more effective at security, group review or obscurity?
My thought is obscurity. There have been several security holes found in open source software many months or years after entering the code.
I don't know why, but for some reason I feel uneasy about having an open-source finance program. Especially one that accesses my account information across the Internet.
I know that I shouldn't feel that way, but I don't like the idea of easy access to the code. I know "security through obscurity" isn't security, but "security through obscurity and good coding" is probably better than "security though good coding" alone.
"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or at least give me a false sense of security"
Re:I can see wartime problems with this
on
Synthetic Vision
·
· Score: 1
To comment on both of your concerns:
The wireframe model can be overlaid on top of the regular world visuals.
It is very likely not going to display your troops for that very reason. Any additional information such as unseen terrain or structures is helpful for anyone in a war.
What I would like to see is not only a wireframe terrain overlay, but also a radar/sonar heads up display. This way, you could see in total darkness or through sandstorms, etc. Enemies would be able to detect the signal of the device, but I bet they can do the same thing with night vision.
Re:This is called enhanced vision
on
Synthetic Vision
·
· Score: 1
Glasses that blocked things you didn't want to see were predicted years ago in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series of books.
But, a technology like that scares me. Yes, it could be useful, like a sort of spam or pop-up blocker for the real world, but then, people could also use it like the "Exclude Stories from Homepage" option in Slashdot. They would only see the information that they want to see and not anything that they find "bothersome" or "inappropriate". It sounds fine, but is dangerous in a Democracy.
For the same reason, I believe that the American press should cover the war in the same way that Al Jazeera and the other networks around the world cover the war. Not a hygenic, cleaned up version showing noble troops shooting at an unseen enemy.... The blood and atrocity of war.
I would estimate that most persons with a NAT gateway is not using their internet connection any differently from a person with a direct connection. One machine surfing at any one time...
Why can't the cable and DSL provider settle on a reasonable limit, such as "no more than 4 computers from the same household"? That way, it allows 99% of persons with routers to do what they want to do (allow multiple family members to surf the net, or allow them to surf the net from any of their computers).
The problem is that most cable companies are accustomed to charging more for multiple connections. They are similar to the telephone company (ATT) before the government had to step in. What they refuse to realize is that most customers know that it does not "cost" the company any additional money when they watch cable on another TV, or surf from the livingroom instead of the home-office.
Though, they currently have every legal right to demand that only one device is attached to their line, most persons know that there is no legitimacy to the demand. It is pure greed.
Exactly! What ARE the protesters doing that is preventing the war machine from moving foward? Nothing.
They STILL go to work and they STILL pay taxes.
Those taxes are what is funding the war.
The president and all the army generals don't give a crap about protesters, since they still get their funding for the war.
Slashdot Mirror
The bottom line is that you should make your point clearly and ONLY ONCE. After you make your point, if they still wish to go forward with the "wrong" decision, do the work. Do NOT:
- whine
- drag your feet
- try to convince them again
Too many people try this and are a nightmare to work with. Unfortunately, this attitude is common in systems work, as many have the "everyone else is stupider than me" attitude. (e.g., Nick Burns, your company's computer guy)
Harrasment is absolutely illegal but publishing an address is not harrasment. Are you saying that the spammer has the right to freedom of speech but the site owner does not?
Agreed. Publishing the address is not illegal. I think calling and mailing the address can be illegal if it is proven that the intent is to harrass the person.
I was not objecting to the posting of the address, but the abuse thereof.
I do not agree. The problem of the tyranny of the majority is one of the wrongs that the constitution of the USA tried to right. Take note that almost all of the rights in the bill of rights were placed there to protect the minority opinion from being opressed by the majority. That in fact is is the reason that the first settlers to the new world went there, the reason behind the Revolution, and the reason behind the influx of most of the immigrants of the early 20th and late 19th centuries.
As long as spamming and junk mail remains legal, which it likely will, as it is part of that touchy subject of the first ammendment, he will be in the right.
What is more illegal is the intentional harassment of the spammer by others. If they were mailing and calling him with political or commercial requests, they probably cannot be stopped (other than by a no-call list). However, the intentional harrassment might be considered illegal, if it can be proven.
Im suprised that so few people here do not see how huge this is. This just proves that there are a lot of people out there that do not realize how duped they are.
People don't realize how powerful words are. Notice how the Bush regime and their in-the-pocket media put a newspeak spin on things:
USA word - transaltion
regime - administration
propaganda - news
irregulars - people defending their country
weapons of mass destruction - deterrant
collateral damage - murder of innocents
detention - arrest
unlawful combattant - POW
Here is a link with more.
Lets hope that the King Kong remake won't be as bad as the Godzilla remake. Of course, after seeing LOTR part 2, my hopes are high.
Next they will tell us Enlightenment has standardized the look and feel to be a button-down Windows 95 look-alike.
No customization allowed!
This project has proven several things about large scale open source projects:
- Open source doesnt necessarily mean "instant development". It took over a year before anything useful came of the project.
- Just because you release something as open source, doesnt mean that thousands will flock and provide free development. Though thousands did flock, as soon as they saw that the code wasnt nearly usable, they gave up immediately. But, now that there is a small core of developers working on it, it is a useful product.
- Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it. It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.
Most, but not all, readers of Slashdot have a distaste for the DMCA and other laws that have strengthened copyright laws. But what most do not accept is the fact that these laws were created to solve a very real problem.
Software and media piracy is no longer an underground sub-culture. Just about anyone with enough money for a computer is able to easily find and illegally duplicate software, music, movies, and other media. Worse yet, most of the (former) music and movie buying public are doing just that.
The only "reasonable" alternative to strengthening laws and adding copy-protection to media is to give the media away, and make money with live appearances and peripheral tangible products, such as lunchboxes and t-shirts. I'm sure the people working for media conglomerates do not find this acceptable.
Do you agree with this assessment, and if so, if you had the chance to re-architect the DMCA to your liking, what would you change? Would you remove some parts, or augment others?
In almost all cases, the broadband connection providers have an option to allow a VPN or firewalled connection. However, it almost always is an additional cost and is listed as a "business" connection.
They often have a per-computer charge or a maximum number of devices or computers that are allowed to connect.
It usually costs significantly more than a regular connection.
It sounds like these speakers are similar to Martin Logan electrostatic speakers, and the screen will not produce anything close to low-frequency sound. The screen will likely require a midrange/woofer to reproduce the full spectrum of sound.
Electrostat speakers are typically transparent like glass, but held between two screens to allow the sound to travel. The article says the company claims the monitor has a "universal sweet spot", but that is probably corporate marketing talk for "no sweet spot". Most panel based electrostat speakers have a very very tiny sweet spot, and you need to be sitting perfectly between the two speakers.
From howstuff works:
These speakers vibrate air with a large, thin, conductive diaphragm panel. This diaphragm panel is suspended between two stationary conductive panels that are charged with electrical current from a wall outlet. These panels create an electrical field with a positive end and a negative end. The audio signal runs a current through the suspended panel, rapidly switching between a positive charge and a negative charge. When the charge is positive, the panel is drawn toward the negative end of the field, and when the charge is negative, it moves toward the positive end in the field.
Perfect! Now the government can censor Al Jazeera and Arab News with the touch of a button!
No... This is exactly the attitude that I am talking about. There are often times when a manager needs to make a decision that he knows is not the most technically beautiful, but is necessary because of financial, scheduling, or standardization reasons. programmers need to learn how to present the argument logically to the management and then defer the decision to the manager. Once the manager has made his decision, do the work! Too many programmers and techies keep pushing for thier own ideas, event when management has decided otherwise.
For example:
If all the other departments in the company run HP Openview to monitor servers, don't keep pushing for Big Brother and refusing to install anythign else.
If management said that we should install 10 mbit networks to all clients, don't sit on it saying "100/switched is the right way to do it". Management probably know s this and doesnt have the money to spend.
I now forsee lots of people being outraged at these companies trying to protect their product from being copied all in the name of "We can't back up our music or listen to it on an MP3 device!"
.00000023%
In other news:
The total percentage of albums last year that were copied for legitimate purposes:
Well, if they had some sort of monitoring like this during the disasterous re-entry, they might be able to tell specifically what caused the accident. Instead, they now are working on conjecture and rumor.
What they really need is a "Psychology of a Company" or "Psychology of working for someone else" for programmers to read.
Too many programmers are Asperger-syndrome types that have difficulty with social skills and with understanding that THEY work for SOMEONE ELSE. They are not the boss, and therefore, just because they think something should happen a certain way, doesnt mean all other ideas are wrong.
There is a severe problem with tech workers in this respect. Too many think that they are driving and refuse to take direction. Too bad if something like this were written, most of them would not read it, and if they did, they would discount and ignore it.
I heard about scientists trying to create a new type of organism a little while ago... It scared me then and it scares me now.
However, I would think that it would be totally possible to generate TONS of energy and other useful things from something like this. It might be possible to generate oil from sunlight. Huge tanks of stuff making food, energy, whatever.
The ethical complications are interesting.
If you create a new life form, do you have the right to destroy it? Maybe. If you can re-create it at a whim, why not? But then, what about existing life forms? Eventually scientists might be able to re-create just about any species in a petri dish. Can they then justifiably destroy a species, since they can re-create it at any time?
Cool sci-fi... or more accurately, cool sci-soon-to-be-not-fi.
I would tend to agree with that comment. Obscurity, especially in smaller projects, tends to lend itself to really sloppy atrocious code.
No, it wasn't meant to be a troll post.
However, my other thought on the obscurity is that it prevents public review of the code and design. It limits the debugging to the group of programmers that created the software. The question then turns to: What is more effective at security, group review or obscurity?
My thought is obscurity. There have been several security holes found in open source software many months or years after entering the code.
I don't know why, but for some reason I feel uneasy about having an open-source finance program. Especially one that accesses my account information across the Internet.
I know that I shouldn't feel that way, but I don't like the idea of easy access to the code. I know "security through obscurity" isn't security, but "security through obscurity and good coding" is probably better than "security though good coding" alone.
Thoughts?
I believe it was Patrick Henry that said:
"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or at least give me a false sense of security"
To comment on both of your concerns:
The wireframe model can be overlaid on top of the regular world visuals.
It is very likely not going to display your troops for that very reason. Any additional information such as unseen terrain or structures is helpful for anyone in a war.
What I would like to see is not only a wireframe terrain overlay, but also a radar/sonar heads up display. This way, you could see in total darkness or through sandstorms, etc. Enemies would be able to detect the signal of the device, but I bet they can do the same thing with night vision.
Glasses that blocked things you didn't want to see were predicted years ago in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series of books.
But, a technology like that scares me. Yes, it could be useful, like a sort of spam or pop-up blocker for the real world, but then, people could also use it like the "Exclude Stories from Homepage" option in Slashdot. They would only see the information that they want to see and not anything that they find "bothersome" or "inappropriate". It sounds fine, but is dangerous in a Democracy.
For the same reason, I believe that the American press should cover the war in the same way that Al Jazeera and the other networks around the world cover the war. Not a hygenic, cleaned up version showing noble troops shooting at an unseen enemy.... The blood and atrocity of war.
Has anyone else noticed those helmet-mounted heads-up-displays that many of the soldiers have been wearing?
What are those? Are those some releated technology?
Why can't the cable and DSL provider settle on a reasonable limit, such as "no more than 4 computers from the same household"? That way, it allows 99% of persons with routers to do what they want to do (allow multiple family members to surf the net, or allow them to surf the net from any of their computers).
The problem is that most cable companies are accustomed to charging more for multiple connections. They are similar to the telephone company (ATT) before the government had to step in. What they refuse to realize is that most customers know that it does not "cost" the company any additional money when they watch cable on another TV, or surf from the livingroom instead of the home-office.
Though, they currently have every legal right to demand that only one device is attached to their line, most persons know that there is no legitimacy to the demand. It is pure greed.
Exactly! What ARE the protesters doing that is preventing the war machine from moving foward? Nothing. They STILL go to work and they STILL pay taxes. Those taxes are what is funding the war. The president and all the army generals don't give a crap about protesters, since they still get their funding for the war.