I definitely agree that there are a lot of things that the intelligence agencies can learn (and have learned) from open source.
I just kind of bristle at the idea of congressional committees dictating how people do their jobs. Who has more insight into the matter... somebody's who's been doing it for their whole life, or somebody who's intelligent enough to accept large campaign contributions? Congress can do (nearly) whatever they want, legally. It's just not always a good idea for them to get involved.
(1) I'm not really referring to the intelligence community in the guise of any existing agency. The CIA didn't come about and all of the sudden decide to start gathering intelligence. The united states government has been collecting and analyzing intelligence since its inception. And the methods used then were probably learned from the french and the brits.
(2) true, but you have to acknowledge the inherent difficulties in allowing popularly elected officials to dictate how agencies, consisting almost entirely of professionals in the field, should do their job.
I don't think that congress shouldn't have oversight. Congress should be able to say "listen, CIA, you're involved in foreignkistan, and we don't like that, get out." However, congress telling the CIA that they should do their job in a different way is like your CEO telling you you should use java because your C++ program "has a lot of bugs." It is getting beyond telling them "what" to do and into telling them "how" to do it.
Granted, congress has the authority to do whatever they want. However, nobody has to listen to their 'suggestions'. And I firmly believe that congress dictating methods (aside from "don't toruture people", etc.) to intelligence agencies is a very, very bad idea.
So, let me get this straight. A Congressional Committee told the intelligence agencies that they should gather intelligence in a different way.
And the intelligence agencies ignored them.
That may be because intelligence agencies have been in the business of collecting intelligence for a few hundred years. And the congressional committee has never been in the business of collecting intelligence. So maybe, and I may be grasping at straws here, but, maybe, the cia knows more about collecting intelligence than a reporter for time magazine. (audience gasps)
Before you discard my opinion, what do you think about congressional committees when they discuss the Harmful Effects of Video Games? Or the horrors of Pirated Music? Just because a few congresspersons decide the spooks don't know what they're doing doesn't mean that the congresspersons were right.
I should also note that I met somebody once whose job was to work for the CIA and search the internet. I'm sure they are using osi to the degree they feel necessary.
Actually, I don't think the inexpensive luxury items suffer too much. I know that video games are considered pretty recession-proof, as are movie ticket sales. Unless you are a phile of one of the three, you probably get your amusement for pretty cheap. I'm a phile of videogames;), but I probably only spend about $150 each on CD's and movies a year in good financial times. I wouldn't really have to cut back on that much if times were rough. It might increase, actually:)
Or, "the movie industry is under siege from a small community of both major technical engineering societies, Microsoft, Intel, and IBM. Little, little, tiny, miniscule, tiny companies and small, small, tiny, difficult to see major technological societies. You don't see the ACM and the IEEE? Or Microsoft or Intel or IBM? They're right here in the room right now. But they are so tiny that they are actually invisible to the human eye. And they're all professors. Tiny, cute, little, adorable, teeny professors."
Although jack valenti is often disparaged by the slashdot community, he doesn't stoop to our level of insult. Look how he describes hordes of slashdot readers and other copyright activists:
The movie industry is under siege from a small community of professors.
As about 400 people have replied to you and said, the game boy didn't have a backlight.:)
However, with the traditional gameboy, either because the res wasn't as good (not sure if this is true), or because it was only grayscale, a light wasn't necessary for most people.
However, with the new GBA, the "everyone, everywhere" thing definitely applies.
At least, not too much more than a slightly less powerful language.
In a production system, you are probably only going to spend 5 to 10% of your total time coding. Something that doubles or halves coding time may only add 5% or subtract 5%, respectively, to/from total project time.
Most important language traits (to me).
It should be good, but doesn't have to be great.
There should be good development tools that can be used with it.
Unless you're some kind of savant, you should make sure that there is a good-sized community to which you can turn for advice.
Unless you have really good contacts, or you're never going to grow much, there should be a reasonable number of people that program in that language.
It should have good support for the kind of applications you are doing (API-wise).
So, frankly, Ruby is probably a better language than java. But java wins on four of my five criteria and ties on the remaining one. I wouldn't try to deploy a system right now with anything other than java or C++, unless it is going to be a very small project, or you are brave.:)
Unfortunately, many of the people who promote using various obscure languages have good results just because they are very intelligent people. Unless you are really really smart (and I know that I, for one, am not), you might just want to stick with the herd.:)
I don't think that many people realize that charging for bandwidth is the route to freedom.
Every month there is a story on/. about how people can no longer run servers on their residential connection, can no longer do VPN, run multiple computers, etc.
I believe these are mostly plays by broadband providers to limit bandwidth. If we're paying for bandwidth, I don't think they would care what you were doing with it, beyond spamming or hacking. And that would be very, very cool.
If I recall correctly, Ellison (sp?) was also well known as predicting the the death of the PC. Everybody would use the internet to connect to giant computers!:)
Yeah, I looked something up, and while the zSeries is evidently supposed to supplant the AS/400 (or at least one press release said so), it isn't an immediate replacement. I had been confused, I guess.
Thanks:) I bask in the glow of your superior IBM minicomputer knowledge (bow).
If you're going to all the trouble to import games, why not just import the console? I realize it could be a bit more expensive, but it's really the best way to play foreign games without tangling with legal issues, or soldering.
As for the mod-chip allowing home-brewed games: While that's certainly noble, it also allows ease in pirating games. I'm sure it's great to create your own games for consoles, but until the console maker decides that there is some legal way for you to do that (without alienating their licensees, who pay money to be allowed to write for the console), I'm afraid mod-chip makers don't have much of a moral imperative, let alone a legal imperative.
Maybe it's just my market, but I live near DC, and listen to alternative radio stations, and it seems very rare for any somewhat popular alternative band to _not_ sell out their venue. Many concerts sell out only a few hours after they open.
So, maybe it isn't that concert sales are bad, as much as people are tired of music that sucks.:)
whoops, one more thing... dalke's point about the constitution is really, really weak. It talks about securing a liveliehood (sp?) for authors and inventors by keeping their works private.
However, if they are funded by public money, why do they need to keep things private to make money? This just kind of reeks of entitlement... I think researchers are now accustomed to creating IP on the public dime and then profiting in the private sector. Not that I mind public funding. Or private funding. But demanding both is greedy.
in some ways. Having the heart of stewart and mangalam, but (I hope) understanding the objections of dalke, I would say :
Stewart and Mangalam should probably just limit it to code that doesn't extend proprietary code, or, say, a diff of the added and the proprietary code (so, given a license for the code, you could reproduce the work, although redistribution of the final work would still be impossible).
Dalke brings up some good points about the difference between open source and openly distributed. Stewart and mangalam should amend their petition to say that researchers should distribute their GPL'd code, rather than just GPL'ing their code (when it would be distributed is another matter).
Considering dalke's points, I think the peer review point of stewart and mangalam is pretty weak. The public does not have the expertise, in general, to be considered peer reviewers. Not to say that the code shouldn't be open sourced and openly distributed, but I think peer review is a straw man.
Other than that, it sounds like Dalke might agree. This would be a great benefit to society:), and it would also make researchers more accountable to the public.
I don't understand: if there still are issues which are not resolved, how can the decision to put the dump there be taken?
In any engineering discipline, there are all sorts of problems which need to be solved. Just because those problems exist doesn't mean they can't be solved. In fact, you usually do something called 'risk reduction', which means you sit around and think of solutions to a problem, and backups to those solutions.
Many public problems with the government (and the private sector, too) are the results of a 'common sense' approach to engineering projects. "I know how long it takes to drive to the grocery store, therefore the government should know, to the dollar, how much it would cost to build the most technologically advanced strike fighter in the world ten years before they do it."
OK, not really. But, like everybody else in the news media, associates linux and open source with the dot-com era (even though they have been around far longer). I have never seen anyone before associating java with the dot-com era. But it's associated again here, I guess hoping for death by association.
He also says good things about visual basic. Visual basic is a crappy language. Or, at least, everybody thinks that. So, of the 10 or 20 competent programmers I have met in my life, only one of them would even consider programming in Visual Basic (and I'm sure he'll drop it once he learns java or C++).
I was hoping somebody would mention porkins. He was widely admired among both my fellow high school and college star wars fans.
Somebody actually made an elaborate SW RPG scenario wherein we learned that porkins crash landed on the death star, and it was he who hit the self destruct button, destroying it (not luke's proton torpedoes, which missed).
Slashdot Mirror
Claiming that people shouldn't have beliefs because you don't understand them really only proves the second presumption, not the first.
I just kind of bristle at the idea of congressional committees dictating how people do their jobs. Who has more insight into the matter ... somebody's who's been doing it for their whole life, or somebody who's intelligent enough to accept large campaign contributions? Congress can do (nearly) whatever they want, legally. It's just not always a good idea for them to get involved.
(2) true, but you have to acknowledge the inherent difficulties in allowing popularly elected officials to dictate how agencies, consisting almost entirely of professionals in the field, should do their job.
I don't think that congress shouldn't have oversight. Congress should be able to say "listen, CIA, you're involved in foreignkistan, and we don't like that, get out." However, congress telling the CIA that they should do their job in a different way is like your CEO telling you you should use java because your C++ program "has a lot of bugs." It is getting beyond telling them "what" to do and into telling them "how" to do it.
Granted, congress has the authority to do whatever they want. However, nobody has to listen to their 'suggestions'. And I firmly believe that congress dictating methods (aside from "don't toruture people", etc.) to intelligence agencies is a very, very bad idea.
And the intelligence agencies ignored them.
That may be because intelligence agencies have been in the business of collecting intelligence for a few hundred years. And the congressional committee has never been in the business of collecting intelligence. So maybe, and I may be grasping at straws here, but, maybe, the cia knows more about collecting intelligence than a reporter for time magazine. (audience gasps)
Before you discard my opinion, what do you think about congressional committees when they discuss the Harmful Effects of Video Games? Or the horrors of Pirated Music? Just because a few congresspersons decide the spooks don't know what they're doing doesn't mean that the congresspersons were right.
I should also note that I met somebody once whose job was to work for the CIA and search the internet. I'm sure they are using osi to the degree they feel necessary.
Actually, I don't think the inexpensive luxury items suffer too much. I know that video games are considered pretty recession-proof, as are movie ticket sales. Unless you are a phile of one of the three, you probably get your amusement for pretty cheap. I'm a phile of videogames ;), but I probably only spend about $150 each on CD's and movies a year in good financial times. I wouldn't really have to cut back on that much if times were rough. It might increase, actually :)
Or, "the movie industry is under siege from a small community of both major technical engineering societies, Microsoft, Intel, and IBM. Little, little, tiny, miniscule, tiny companies and small, small, tiny, difficult to see major technological societies. You don't see the ACM and the IEEE? Or Microsoft or Intel or IBM? They're right here in the room right now. But they are so tiny that they are actually invisible to the human eye. And they're all professors. Tiny, cute, little, adorable, teeny professors."
The movie industry is under siege from a small community of professors.
I'm blushing, jack. No, we're not all professors.
However, with the traditional gameboy, either because the res wasn't as good (not sure if this is true), or because it was only grayscale, a light wasn't necessary for most people.
However, with the new GBA, the "everyone, everywhere" thing definitely applies.
Congratulations :)
In the last 17-20 years (don't remember exact number), Every Best Picture But One Was Won By The Film With The Most Nominations.
In other words, FoTR is nearly a shoe-in for best picture.
In a production system, you are probably only going to spend 5 to 10% of your total time coding. Something that doubles or halves coding time may only add 5% or subtract 5%, respectively, to/from total project time.
Most important language traits (to me).
So, frankly, Ruby is probably a better language than java. But java wins on four of my five criteria and ties on the remaining one. I wouldn't try to deploy a system right now with anything other than java or C++, unless it is going to be a very small project, or you are brave. :)
Unfortunately, many of the people who promote using various obscure languages have good results just because they are very intelligent people. Unless you are really really smart (and I know that I, for one, am not), you might just want to stick with the herd. :)
(hee hee)
Looks like when I fill out online forms, I will now live in vermont.
Every month there is a story on /. about how people can no longer run servers on their residential connection, can no longer do VPN, run multiple computers, etc.
I believe these are mostly plays by broadband providers to limit bandwidth. If we're paying for bandwidth, I don't think they would care what you were doing with it, beyond spamming or hacking. And that would be very, very cool.
If I recall correctly, Ellison (sp?) was also well known as predicting the the death of the PC. Everybody would use the internet to connect to giant computers! :)
Thanks :)
Thanks :) I bask in the glow of your superior IBM minicomputer knowledge (bow).
and haven't touched z/os at all ... but was it a 'nix?
If you're going to all the trouble to import games, why not just import the console? I realize it could be a bit more expensive, but it's really the best way to play foreign games without tangling with legal issues, or soldering.
As for the mod-chip allowing home-brewed games: While that's certainly noble, it also allows ease in pirating games. I'm sure it's great to create your own games for consoles, but until the console maker decides that there is some legal way for you to do that (without alienating their licensees, who pay money to be allowed to write for the console), I'm afraid mod-chip makers don't have much of a moral imperative, let alone a legal imperative.
So, maybe it isn't that concert sales are bad, as much as people are tired of music that sucks. :)
However, if they are funded by public money, why do they need to keep things private to make money? This just kind of reeks of entitlement ... I think researchers are now accustomed to creating IP on the public dime and then profiting in the private sector. Not that I mind public funding. Or private funding. But demanding both is greedy.
Stewart and Mangalam should probably just limit it to code that doesn't extend proprietary code, or, say, a diff of the added and the proprietary code (so, given a license for the code, you could reproduce the work, although redistribution of the final work would still be impossible).
Dalke brings up some good points about the difference between open source and openly distributed. Stewart and mangalam should amend their petition to say that researchers should distribute their GPL'd code, rather than just GPL'ing their code (when it would be distributed is another matter).
Considering dalke's points, I think the peer review point of stewart and mangalam is pretty weak. The public does not have the expertise, in general, to be considered peer reviewers. Not to say that the code shouldn't be open sourced and openly distributed, but I think peer review is a straw man.
Other than that, it sounds like Dalke might agree. This would be a great benefit to society :), and it would also make researchers more accountable to the public.
In any engineering discipline, there are all sorts of problems which need to be solved. Just because those problems exist doesn't mean they can't be solved. In fact, you usually do something called 'risk reduction', which means you sit around and think of solutions to a problem, and backups to those solutions.
Many public problems with the government (and the private sector, too) are the results of a 'common sense' approach to engineering projects. "I know how long it takes to drive to the grocery store, therefore the government should know, to the dollar, how much it would cost to build the most technologically advanced strike fighter in the world ten years before they do it."
He also says good things about visual basic. Visual basic is a crappy language. Or, at least, everybody thinks that. So, of the 10 or 20 competent programmers I have met in my life, only one of them would even consider programming in Visual Basic (and I'm sure he'll drop it once he learns java or C++).
Somebody actually made an elaborate SW RPG scenario wherein we learned that porkins crash landed on the death star, and it was he who hit the self destruct button, destroying it (not luke's proton torpedoes, which missed).