The Wikipedia article on the WTO is pretty good.
International trade is very complex and it's really a big administrative nightmare. It can take years to work out agreements and codify them. Sometimes they just end up getting thrown away when politicians change their mind.
The WTO is basically a cooperative of all countries which meet general and case-specific standards for trade barrier reduction. These standards are often implemented as timetables whereby tariffs and subsidies are gradually reduced. It is common to have a 10-year timetable for every country on reducing their largest tariffs, for example.The org is dominated by the largest economies (they can afford not to trade), but incorporates many poorer countries as well.
"In a lot of 3rd world countries which the WTO has jurisdiction over..."
Not sure what you mean. There is no jurisdiction in the WTO. It's more like a club of countries which use trade to benefit from one another. Rulings from the WTO are basically created from previous negotiations or precendents and are only binding in the sense that if a country breaks them, they risk their trade status in the organization and with member states.
"...they simply tear down protectionist policies to open up new markets for these transnationals to exploit."
I think you mean the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which operate in tandem by providing conditional loans that require government spending changes for endebted countries. The WTO is voluntary - countries try to get in. I'm not ready to defend the WB/IMF, but lets just say a lot of poor countries have really bad governments that make really bad decisions about their spending habits (which, unlike say the U.S., they can't afford to make). The WB/IMF are concerned primarily with infrastructure, market development, and exploiting (i.e. making use of) underdeveloped markets. Countries opt into these programs, which almost always advocate liberal trade policies (read: comparative advantage). if the governments take the WB's advice, they try to get into the WTO, because in modern economies the only good status as a market economy is growth.
"So why would any country want to be the WTO?"
Comparative advantage.
"or is it mainly the large Russian corporations which want Russia to gain admission into the organization?"
No, its probably the Kremlin. Russian companies have to behave in Russia, else they fall into tax trouble. There are a host of possibilities whereby the Russian government can exert influence on foreign governments via their open markets. Plus, the Russian market has some really poorly performing sectors.
It was actually the U.S. that accelerated Chinese WTO membership (well, entrance at least), allowing for what were effectively special provisions - notably letting China to enter as a non-market economy when it is in fact a huge (though incredibly backward) market economy. The timetable for tariff reduction and other government cleanup was very ambitious as well, meaning that the U.S. basically hoped the "invisible hand" and some good diplomacy would patch up problems (like currency valuation). Well, that was the plan then at least.
Incidentally, if China was not an authoritarian government, they never would have been able to meet an agreement, because a lot of Chinese tariffs were considerably reduced from ridiculous highs. There is, unfortunately, no way to prevent copyright infringement and so tariffs are meaningless for IP goods.
The temporary solution to this is to ignore massive Chinese "piracy" at the street-level and cut off the U.S. consumer from other loophole markets where large businesses operate safely, like Russia. As yet, Chinese exports are easily controlled because the Internet and basically all markets are pretty well controlled (in the big sense; huge discontinuities in some places).
Dvorak aside, there is no way to get rid of IE without making its replacement back into IE. Too much functionality is dependent on the component interfaces of IE, the concept of a built-in browser, and the fact that way too many people use it and consider it essential to Windows. Replacing IE will not be accomplished with an acquisition or a rebranding or anything. It will be done over a period of no less than 10 years and two OS cycles, and we haven't even started.
//I saw the series and the movie, but I'm not a serious fan or anything.//I'm not a serious fan of anything.
The whole concept of the show was about a series, not a movie. The progression of characters and particularly their own opinions on one another, was the meaning of their "team" of sorts. The movie completely threw this away. Instead, we got star wars with different characters.
For example, in killing the pilot and the preacher, there was only suspense and emotion. There was no time for the characters to come back from these events. The pilot's wife could be mad and sad, but not *changed*. The captain could miss the preacher and say something nice about him, but he couldn't do anything different. The movie, from the start, was about reliving the characters and just enjoying them as they were. The show, OTOH, was about changing the characters.
Take my favorite chracter, Jade. He started out as pretty lonely and hostile. But over a few episodes, after he betrayed the crew, after he was shamed by the captain, etc. he began to change. He was still lonely and hostile, but he saw these things in himself. When he denounced himself as a hero on that mud slave planet, he was denouncing what he saw in himself. This could not happen in 90 minutes. It took time and molding. For me, Jade is the most complete character in the series.
But in general, the characters need more time. This was a great way of extending the life of the series, but that obviously didn't work. The tension was simply left to frustrate the viewer. The tensions also didn't change that much, meaning you were pretty much stuck with them. The relationship between the captain and the prostitute stuttered. The engineer and the doctor just started to get going (they flirted for way too long). The doctor's messed up sister was always a killer pyscho (the movie totally reinforced this too). Oh, and instead of telling us more about the preacher they killed him.
I am sure that the studios decided that Firefly was not coming back, but they thought a movie might gross enough to be worth the effort. The movie could, at the very least, be sold as an attempt to bring back the series. But obviously, if they wanted a series they would have revived it from the get go. What they wanted was to take the fanbase to the bank, and maybe they did.
I read no less than three typos total (one extra space, two grammar). Direct correspondance is the most meticulous of all and the brevity of this letter means it was almost certainly developed in several drafts. So it has to be the Register's mistake (assuming this is legitimate). They probably just got it from email.
The specific country headings all depend on the format of delivery. If a physical letter, then these would be seperate sections for that at the top and bottom of the document. I actually have never seen official electronic correspondance, but I would imagine its formated with PDF or similar.
Let's assume this letter is legitimate and that the Register is right. The language is not strong per se, but the controversial points are 1)directed against the EU position, 2)specifically unilateral (no "coalition" babble) and 3)the EU position is criticized explicitly.
All three of these are typically mediated in diplomacy through indirection. You don't want to trap yourself, because words are your best tool (unless you are willing to make physical threats or change associations). It's convention that most of diplomacy is filler content designed to continue a relationship along the status quo. Redefining a relationship or asserting a new position are all actions with finality. That is usually reserved for when such actions are necessary.
For example, you would normally speak directly against a general position and not directly mention your opponent's position as their position. Neither would you speak from your position as solely your position (the U.S., Iran, North Korea, and China are exceptions) - you would express a general opinion developed from some previous consensus, like a document, or some rhetorical one. Finally, you would not crticize the opponents position, but suggest considerations and alternatives. Labeling an opponent's position with negative terminology and then contrasting that with your positive position is generally viewed as "strong."
FYI, the reason the U.S. Secretary of Commerce signed this was because the original government oversight, which is now semi-private through ICANN, was under the Commerce department. The current contract, to my knowledge, is still sole-sourced to ICANN through Commerce.
Africa policing is in bad shape (excepting SA). There is poor crime data, little or no accountability, and effectiveness can hardly be measured (though possibly observed). You can imagine how these factors would adversely affect decent people and allow further illegal behavior.
The police can often have little knowledge of white collar crime. In the western world, white collar crime has been known and perfected over a 500 years (credit and interest were long adopted in Christiandom, which facilitated these crimes, but not so much in Muslim countries where interest is often illegal). The problem is largely that electionic communcation and transfers mean that there is a lot of overhead to catch criminals, especially if the victims are overseas. Transactions have to be looked into and this can take a long time in a relatively efficient, resource-plentiful, Western investigations. In Nigeria, this kind of process might be impossible in most small cases (e.g. most 419 scammers). And of course, trying the criminals is expensive and time-intensive. Extradition just as expensive. An investigation and trial is also people-intensive, involving legal professionals (who are non to plentiful in Nigeria).
Nigerian scammers (not the email variety) don't just bum around on email, they also operate throughout the nigerian government (See Transparency Intl's Survey). Scamming is the sibling of corruption. The beaurocracy is complex, incomprehensible as a whole, and plagued with illicit dealings. Really, scamming is encouraged by the system, because no one can penetrate it and find the muck. And finding muck isn't too rewarding, because it doesn't make you any friends, puts you at risk, and its so common no one really finds the information all too useful.
So who cares about information leading to some lady getting scammed in Florida? Helping foreign citizens, who have more money than brains, is really not a national priority.
There is a strong measure of responsibility in regards to practicing open source vs. merely interacting with it (e.g. commercially). Opponents call this risk, because working on principle is not a very popular business model. Proponents call this freedom, because principles let you know who you are and where you are going, leaving the getting there to your own means.
I admire Linux and the kernel community, because they have always been willing to take the risk that their work would never be used, that their time would be wasted, and that their efforts would be meaningless. They have proved these doubts wrong because they knew who they were as an open source community and they knew they were working towards better software. Principles are not clauses in their contracts.
The binary driver issue is at the heart of the goals of better software. Open, modifiable drivers will lead to better software. The only reason to close driver source code is, ultimately, for business advantage. Linux is not about business advantage anymore than it is about making a penguin into a mascot. It is about opening software so it can work better for users.
Yet more proof people do not understand open source, let alone the principles of free software. Software and computers are not just about business - they are not simply the functions of capital and labor flow. Software is changing the way people conceive of property and value, and open source is critical to that change. Business analysts would be the last people to get this point.
Was the printing press just about selling more books?
The problem is there is no structure or process in society to cultivate his ability. In history there have been a few places where he would have been welcome - Greek philosophical schools, Islamic jurisprudence colleges, a few Chinese schools, etc. Even these institutions were not perfect, but they were far more flexible and student-oriented than what we call education. They had drawbacks, of course. By and large these institutions have profoundly changed, if they still exist, and are decidely against the grain of modern education practice.
What this kid needs are people who understand his age and his ability, and do not exclusively obsess about either. It's about balancing who he is and what he can do. I have only met a few individuals in my life who were truly able to handle and teach someone who was smarter than them. It is amazing to see. They are not all professional teachers - the ones who are seem more like mentors than instructors.
I hope this kid finds someone who sees him as he is, not as just a prodigy or just a smart twerp.
Exactly. The key is editing, summary, and analysis. We should also add investigation, when that still happens.
The Internet is great for instant information, opinions, and huge amounts of both. But it is very spotty when it comes to analysis, SNR, and summary. Typically, it takes a little time for information to be properly filtered and recommunicated. This delay allows print publications time to catch up and this material can still be placed on the web later. Fundamentally, the act of publication forces information to be cut down, crap to be thrown out, and resources to be focused. There are papers that do this well and some that do it very poorly.
An excellent example is the Economist. I can find virtually every piece of information from that publication through some other channel before the print edition hits a stand. I do not, however, have the time to summarize, anaylze, and edit as the Economist does. Nothing in that publication is revolutionary or, in fact, beyond what I could generate. But it saves me countless hours of research.
It's very easy to do the wrong thing as a group. It is even easier to let it happen and not say anything. Responsibility really is not a group concept. Combined with an office that supports the corporation (how can it not?), is somewhat sanitized and removed from the effects of a decision, and has job security, this effect just seems to be multiplied.
Once I learned this, my ability to influence people on a person-to-person level became the primary focus of work - managing or as just a team player.
Well, we can certainly mount guns on things and shoot remotely. The current, long-developing trend in military warfare is towards smaller, versatile units that are hard to pin down but are extremely coordinated. Hive-like would be a wet-dream, but I'm sure beaurocrat is having such a dream as we speak. Bottom line, robots don't yet play into this dream. They are really only good as disposable long-range swiss-army knives. This will improve over time, of course. And as you read, the border patrol part is a focus as well.
This particular focus from SK seems to be a politically-pushed idea. Perhaps similar to the U.S. Star Wars idea in the 1980's (i.e. makes people happy, makes some contractors rich). North Korea weighs heavily on SK citizen's minds, partly because they hear so much crazy, horrible stuff about what happens in the country. Remember there is a huge infrantry deployment (for U.S. particularly) along the North Korean border, so any press about being able to one day replace these forces with robots is good press (who will hopefully just be sentrys really, because no one south of the meridian wants war).
Also, the South Koreans are fairly keen on technology in general, similar to the Japanese. Like all of us, they love to find excuses to play with robots and grant government contracts. The SK government has invested heavily in certain industries in the past and now the market seems to be sensing the technological shift. Yesterday (way back) the hot things were conventional transport like shipbuilding. Today its robots. So the story goes, if you can get a copy of the student roster at MIT, you can find out just what the South Koreans want to become leaders in. Though, I would add a few Japanese and Chinese schools to the list now as well.
The thieves reference feels like a troll (obviously infringment is not theft). History is rife with "unethical" actions involving patents, trademarks, copyright, etc - by corporations and individuals. There is no honor in business and consumerism period. Selling and buying is about self-interest.
But it bothers me that you cite ethics. Ethics is not synonymous with the law. The whole notion of "intellectual property" in modern economies could be argued as unethical. The law, generally, conveniences those who enacted it. I don't remember having a specific vote on copyright laws, do you?
A lot of times it is not administrators who are directly doing this (i.e. its much bigger than one person or they have no real way of knowing). Information security is far more than simply one person's job. Everyone who has access to information - even the poor grad student who does backups on Sunday nights - should be responsible in some way for security.
It takes a lot of work to make strong, accountable policies and carefully define simple, but narrow ways of accessing information (i.e. not just dumping the student records excel file in the share folder). For example, everyone on campus has network access which is most often directly linked to online access. If one person screws up and misuses their data access priveleges by opening up information over the network, it is very hard to tell unless you have accountability in place. And how many places do security reviews?
When it becomes part of people's jobs to protect information, it will become a responsibilty. Right now, blaming one or two people is rarely a good solution. It's like someone who blames an outsourced medical transcripts worker in Pakistan for leaking information. Sure, it is there fault but the problem is much larger than one low-paid worker. Executive or peon, security is a group responsibility in information-rich, networked environments.
Practically no one thinks there shouldn't be more metadata and relationships in files. The question is where in the system stack should the logic of these changes take place and what are acceptable performance penalties. As you say, single-users have different requirements from multiusers. So any good engineer would conclude we should not target a design at just one user type.
Now, in a perfect world, a high-level component would differentiate between "secretary's stuff" and "network share". The lower level components would be more generic. But in the real world secretaries often put their stuff in network shares. In the same way, the relational logic tends to bleed into the system design. We need better abstraction.
The API has to change and we may eventually need a new, more system-neutral API. Right now though, we are still working on system-specific API's and integrating core functionality. I take this as a sign that, in general, we are all still figuring out how these new concepts will work out and what patterns will emerge. We are still figuring out how these new concepts fit into the overall system design. It's evolutionary.
The only way to find out where we are going is to let a few mutations take place. Again, the question under debate is where in the system these mutations should take place. Because we know that once we make major changes, there will be lessons learned and better ideas proposed. I would say we set up a petre dish and not turn major components of the kernel into a petre dish.
Yeah, that's not a good link. Try this kerneltrap one. Things have been brewing. I haven't kept up with the most recent stuff, though.
It's really a design/people issue. There are the lingering issues of stability and similar, but these are not (as I understand) the original problem.
Reiser4 incorporates some sophisticated metadata concepts ("semantics") that are in effect a software layer over the fs - which is why Hans can compare it to WinFS. Some of these features step into the functionality domain of the VFS and the kernel. Not a bad thing, per se.
Now, we all know the stereotypical kernel dev - technically conservative, concerned about maintenaince, not really keen on making big compromises, and annoyed by ego (again, a stereotype). Keep that in mind.
Hans of course wants Reiser4 into the kernel. What's the holdup (from a technical design standpoint)? Well, individuals like Andrew Morton want functionality in the kernel that can be reused in a file-system nuetral fashion. Reiser4 has a plugin system, but it's a Reiser4 plugin system. Reiser4 and Hans want to extend Linux as an API, which right now will just be for Reiser4.
There are also some lingering details of how this will change the course of filesystem integration in the kernel, in regards to traditional POSIX and Unix-like behavior. I don't recall any enduser problems, but there are few complaints.
Why might this be annoying? Well, Hans wants his fs into the kernel now and he makes the case of its superiority, the markets demand, and the need to compete with companies like Microsoft. I wouldn't be the one to tell kernel devs that they need to compete with MS, but Hans is - to say the least - confident. And he did name the filesystem after himself, so I'm not how this couldn't be personal on some level.
The middle ground is to say to Hans: we'll take Reiser4, but we want these Reiser-only features to be ultimately modified for all capable filesystems. Hans insists - and I'm sort of generalizing here - that the details can be sorted out, but right now we should go with Reiser4 and not worry about making it anything but a great fs.
So, Hans took a "assertive" position on why Reiser4 should not only be included in the Linux kernel but also change the kernel. Linus, Morton, and a few others took a stand and said - in so many words - "Hans, we aren't putting your ego into our kernel. Not even experimental."
It would be interesting to see if end users put enough momentum behind Reiser4 to put in into mainline or start it in 2.7.
Is that worth a few flames?;) If I butchered anybody's perspective, please correct me. I don't do kernel dev or psychology.
What is "fundamental" about Western liberalism is human nature. People will overvalue their lives, desires, and what not. People will distort facts and follow blindly. The same reason we avoid tyranny is the same reason terrorism has any effect on us.
Not that I don't share some of your opinion, but this article has very little to do with New Orleans. From the article:
"In mid-90's morning heat at Edwards Air Force Base, HPV Technologies and American Technology demonstrated prototypes of non-lethal sonic devices for a group of military and law enforcement guests, including representatives of the U.K. Home Office.
Representatives of both companies say that within days, they will ship some units of their respective products to areas hit by Hurricane Katrina, so authorities can use the tools for crowd control, aid distribution and rescue operations."
So it's a publicity stunt for corporations. They are sending them to Marine MP and hope they will get some free press when one of the thousands of reporters in the area gets the scoop of Marines using some scifi crowd control.
I read nowhere any government official asking or endorsing this specifically for New Orleans. Maybe I missed it. It does mention the LAPD is looking at it and that the Navy already uses similar devices in Iraq. Never having been on the receiving end of crowd control techniques, I can't say this weapon is any better than things like tear gas. I would damn well like to know that before any member of any force uses it on anyone. Especially in an area with martial law.
Of course, if there is a riot and the government does nothing, everyone will watch it on CNN and complain the government is not doing their job. So either the military ship thousands of individuals to handle upset people (vs. rescuing - or we could trail off about Iraq here too) or they use a allegedly non-lethal weapon. I'd prefer to pass judgement after we know all the details of what leaders and people alike are dealing with down there.
I see exactly what you are saying, but really there are three components to a heavier-than-market price fine/punishment:
1) deterrence. Your payment is bigger because "the society" wants you to know they mean business. If getting caught meant paying a "normal" price than there would be little difference between buying and infringement+getting caught. If fines were cheap and reasonable, people would start calculating the risk as "worth it". In fact, many individuals and groups already do.
2) subversion. You have subverted a government-protected property arrangement. It's fictional - in the sense of material goods - but very much "real" in legal terms. Therefore, the government deems your actions dangerous to the their arrangements and authority, not simply the value of a single transaction.
3) money talks. It communicates to everyone - the shareholders of media corporations, the public, and the criminal - that the law is serious and must be obeyed. People are impressed by money, and large fines impresses them a lot. Low fines, OTOH, actually breed indifference.
I happen to have disagreements with all of these, incidentally.
Blacklists are temporary solutions. The larger the blacklist, the more temporary. It's like censorship in this regard.
Blacklisting is a balancing act between the nature of the Internet and what you want out of it. It only "works" to a degree, but it never solves the problem. I'm not saying give up or stop blocking IP's, but people need to come to grips about the real world. The Internet is a two-way street, so let's start looking at it that way, eh? Blocking whole countries is extreme. Some people really seem to like being extreme though.
Besides, some smart rulesets and decent filtering can drop the vast majority of troublesome content.
It's almost like choosing a president based on what you see on TV...
But seriously, imagination is an important part of human life. I've made a lot of important choices based on my perceptions and ideals that were pretty ignorant and idyllic. Of course real life is boring. I will probably stay within the same 50 mile radius for most of my life. I will eat the same things over and over again. I will only really know a handleful of people. I will pass by the same strangers everyday. And my job doesn't really account for much.
But I still keep those stupid notions that there is an exciting and fulfilling part of life hidden, just beneath the commonality. Maybe what I do is really important, and I just don't notice. Or something. Yeah, it's a myth. No more "real" than most of TV. It's just another way to "escape" without leaving the trappings of what we know. To each his own.
WinFS is essentially an intelligent metadata layer. In Windows OS parlance, an executive subsystem that utilizes an existing NTFS volume. The idea is to extend the traditional data model for files/folders and scraps of metadata into object-oriented patterns that the entire system can use (and hopefully reuse). Sort of like an object manager for the filesystem.
It's more than a file indexer for a developer, but just that for the enduser. Right now, it seems Microsoft really just wants feedback on the API's. If any real innovation for endusers is going to come from this, Microsoft seems to hope developers will figure it out.
ext3 was essentially an add-on for ext2. Point being, some of the better improvements don't take reinventing everything.
"Invasion", hackers (with a sense of purpose no less!), "new breed of enemy". Typical Time insight.
The reason to release information on this is almost purely a Pentagon press game. They have their own little war going on with China already. It's mostly been bearucratic (arguing over how much money is being spent on military budgets, saying one side is a threat, etc.) Occassionaly they move major pieces of the Pacific fleet, just to stir up speculation (in the U.S. press mostly). The Pentagon does have some necons nesting there, so taking a coarse line is in vogue.
Practically speaking, the Pentagon has also long been aware of the "soft-power" threats, especially IT. They have invested in computer networks for decades. Over the last decade work has gone into networking everything (in terms of information) and finding ways to control their resources electronically. The technocrats are keen on the U.S. military's weaknesses. This is translated by the more politically-minded managment into a counter-statement: The U.S. is vulnerable to an information war, but the better way to say this is to play up the threat of China in terms of cyber*buzzword*.
The Pentagon can argue for more funding this way and field little/no criticism. Same with the PLA in China (who has a growing budget). Both militaries are getting what they want without a huge payout in budget (i.e. a traditional war). And I definitely wouldn't rule out ego on both sides of the Pacific.
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The Wikipedia article on the WTO is pretty good. International trade is very complex and it's really a big administrative nightmare. It can take years to work out agreements and codify them. Sometimes they just end up getting thrown away when politicians change their mind.
The WTO is basically a cooperative of all countries which meet general and case-specific standards for trade barrier reduction. These standards are often implemented as timetables whereby tariffs and subsidies are gradually reduced. It is common to have a 10-year timetable for every country on reducing their largest tariffs, for example.The org is dominated by the largest economies (they can afford not to trade), but incorporates many poorer countries as well.
"In a lot of 3rd world countries which the WTO has jurisdiction over..."
Not sure what you mean. There is no jurisdiction in the WTO. It's more like a club of countries which use trade to benefit from one another. Rulings from the WTO are basically created from previous negotiations or precendents and are only binding in the sense that if a country breaks them, they risk their trade status in the organization and with member states.
"...they simply tear down protectionist policies to open up new markets for these transnationals to exploit."
I think you mean the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which operate in tandem by providing conditional loans that require government spending changes for endebted countries. The WTO is voluntary - countries try to get in. I'm not ready to defend the WB/IMF, but lets just say a lot of poor countries have really bad governments that make really bad decisions about their spending habits (which, unlike say the U.S., they can't afford to make). The WB/IMF are concerned primarily with infrastructure, market development, and exploiting (i.e. making use of) underdeveloped markets. Countries opt into these programs, which almost always advocate liberal trade policies (read: comparative advantage). if the governments take the WB's advice, they try to get into the WTO, because in modern economies the only good status as a market economy is growth.
"So why would any country want to be the WTO?"
Comparative advantage.
"or is it mainly the large Russian corporations which want Russia to gain admission into the organization?"
No, its probably the Kremlin. Russian companies have to behave in Russia, else they fall into tax trouble. There are a host of possibilities whereby the Russian government can exert influence on foreign governments via their open markets. Plus, the Russian market has some really poorly performing sectors.
It was actually the U.S. that accelerated Chinese WTO membership (well, entrance at least), allowing for what were effectively special provisions - notably letting China to enter as a non-market economy when it is in fact a huge (though incredibly backward) market economy. The timetable for tariff reduction and other government cleanup was very ambitious as well, meaning that the U.S. basically hoped the "invisible hand" and some good diplomacy would patch up problems (like currency valuation). Well, that was the plan then at least.
Incidentally, if China was not an authoritarian government, they never would have been able to meet an agreement, because a lot of Chinese tariffs were considerably reduced from ridiculous highs. There is, unfortunately, no way to prevent copyright infringement and so tariffs are meaningless for IP goods.
The temporary solution to this is to ignore massive Chinese "piracy" at the street-level and cut off the U.S. consumer from other loophole markets where large businesses operate safely, like Russia. As yet, Chinese exports are easily controlled because the Internet and basically all markets are pretty well controlled (in the big sense; huge discontinuities in some places).
Dvorak aside, there is no way to get rid of IE without making its replacement back into IE. Too much functionality is dependent on the component interfaces of IE, the concept of a built-in browser, and the fact that way too many people use it and consider it essential to Windows. Replacing IE will not be accomplished with an acquisition or a rebranding or anything. It will be done over a period of no less than 10 years and two OS cycles, and we haven't even started.
//I saw the series and the movie, but I'm not a serious fan or anything. //I'm not a serious fan of anything.
The whole concept of the show was about a series, not a movie. The progression of characters and particularly their own opinions on one another, was the meaning of their "team" of sorts. The movie completely threw this away. Instead, we got star wars with different characters.
For example, in killing the pilot and the preacher, there was only suspense and emotion. There was no time for the characters to come back from these events. The pilot's wife could be mad and sad, but not *changed*. The captain could miss the preacher and say something nice about him, but he couldn't do anything different. The movie, from the start, was about reliving the characters and just enjoying them as they were. The show, OTOH, was about changing the characters.
Take my favorite chracter, Jade. He started out as pretty lonely and hostile. But over a few episodes, after he betrayed the crew, after he was shamed by the captain, etc. he began to change. He was still lonely and hostile, but he saw these things in himself. When he denounced himself as a hero on that mud slave planet, he was denouncing what he saw in himself. This could not happen in 90 minutes. It took time and molding. For me, Jade is the most complete character in the series.
But in general, the characters need more time. This was a great way of extending the life of the series, but that obviously didn't work. The tension was simply left to frustrate the viewer. The tensions also didn't change that much, meaning you were pretty much stuck with them. The relationship between the captain and the prostitute stuttered. The engineer and the doctor just started to get going (they flirted for way too long). The doctor's messed up sister was always a killer pyscho (the movie totally reinforced this too). Oh, and instead of telling us more about the preacher they killed him.
I am sure that the studios decided that Firefly was not coming back, but they thought a movie might gross enough to be worth the effort. The movie could, at the very least, be sold as an attempt to bring back the series. But obviously, if they wanted a series they would have revived it from the get go. What they wanted was to take the fanbase to the bank, and maybe they did.
I read no less than three typos total (one extra space, two grammar). Direct correspondance is the most meticulous of all and the brevity of this letter means it was almost certainly developed in several drafts. So it has to be the Register's mistake (assuming this is legitimate). They probably just got it from email.
The specific country headings all depend on the format of delivery. If a physical letter, then these would be seperate sections for that at the top and bottom of the document. I actually have never seen official electronic correspondance, but I would imagine its formated with PDF or similar.
Let's assume this letter is legitimate and that the Register is right. The language is not strong per se, but the controversial points are 1)directed against the EU position, 2)specifically unilateral (no "coalition" babble) and 3)the EU position is criticized explicitly.
All three of these are typically mediated in diplomacy through indirection. You don't want to trap yourself, because words are your best tool (unless you are willing to make physical threats or change associations). It's convention that most of diplomacy is filler content designed to continue a relationship along the status quo. Redefining a relationship or asserting a new position are all actions with finality. That is usually reserved for when such actions are necessary.
For example, you would normally speak directly against a general position and not directly mention your opponent's position as their position. Neither would you speak from your position as solely your position (the U.S., Iran, North Korea, and China are exceptions) - you would express a general opinion developed from some previous consensus, like a document, or some rhetorical one. Finally, you would not crticize the opponents position, but suggest considerations and alternatives. Labeling an opponent's position with negative terminology and then contrasting that with your positive position is generally viewed as "strong."
FYI, the reason the U.S. Secretary of Commerce signed this was because the original government oversight, which is now semi-private through ICANN, was under the Commerce department. The current contract, to my knowledge, is still sole-sourced to ICANN through Commerce.
Africa policing is in bad shape (excepting SA). There is poor crime data, little or no accountability, and effectiveness can hardly be measured (though possibly observed). You can imagine how these factors would adversely affect decent people and allow further illegal behavior.
The police can often have little knowledge of white collar crime. In the western world, white collar crime has been known and perfected over a 500 years (credit and interest were long adopted in Christiandom, which facilitated these crimes, but not so much in Muslim countries where interest is often illegal). The problem is largely that electionic communcation and transfers mean that there is a lot of overhead to catch criminals, especially if the victims are overseas. Transactions have to be looked into and this can take a long time in a relatively efficient, resource-plentiful, Western investigations. In Nigeria, this kind of process might be impossible in most small cases (e.g. most 419 scammers). And of course, trying the criminals is expensive and time-intensive. Extradition just as expensive. An investigation and trial is also people-intensive, involving legal professionals (who are non to plentiful in Nigeria).
Nigerian scammers (not the email variety) don't just bum around on email, they also operate throughout the nigerian government (See Transparency Intl's Survey). Scamming is the sibling of corruption. The beaurocracy is complex, incomprehensible as a whole, and plagued with illicit dealings. Really, scamming is encouraged by the system, because no one can penetrate it and find the muck. And finding muck isn't too rewarding, because it doesn't make you any friends, puts you at risk, and its so common no one really finds the information all too useful.
So who cares about information leading to some lady getting scammed in Florida? Helping foreign citizens, who have more money than brains, is really not a national priority.
There is a strong measure of responsibility in regards to practicing open source vs. merely interacting with it (e.g. commercially). Opponents call this risk, because working on principle is not a very popular business model. Proponents call this freedom, because principles let you know who you are and where you are going, leaving the getting there to your own means.
I admire Linux and the kernel community, because they have always been willing to take the risk that their work would never be used, that their time would be wasted, and that their efforts would be meaningless. They have proved these doubts wrong because they knew who they were as an open source community and they knew they were working towards better software. Principles are not clauses in their contracts.
The binary driver issue is at the heart of the goals of better software. Open, modifiable drivers will lead to better software. The only reason to close driver source code is, ultimately, for business advantage. Linux is not about business advantage anymore than it is about making a penguin into a mascot. It is about opening software so it can work better for users.
Yet more proof people do not understand open source, let alone the principles of free software. Software and computers are not just about business - they are not simply the functions of capital and labor flow. Software is changing the way people conceive of property and value, and open source is critical to that change. Business analysts would be the last people to get this point.
Was the printing press just about selling more books?
The problem is there is no structure or process in society to cultivate his ability. In history there have been a few places where he would have been welcome - Greek philosophical schools, Islamic jurisprudence colleges, a few Chinese schools, etc. Even these institutions were not perfect, but they were far more flexible and student-oriented than what we call education. They had drawbacks, of course. By and large these institutions have profoundly changed, if they still exist, and are decidely against the grain of modern education practice.
What this kid needs are people who understand his age and his ability, and do not exclusively obsess about either. It's about balancing who he is and what he can do. I have only met a few individuals in my life who were truly able to handle and teach someone who was smarter than them. It is amazing to see. They are not all professional teachers - the ones who are seem more like mentors than instructors.
I hope this kid finds someone who sees him as he is, not as just a prodigy or just a smart twerp.
Exactly. The key is editing, summary, and analysis. We should also add investigation, when that still happens.
The Internet is great for instant information, opinions, and huge amounts of both. But it is very spotty when it comes to analysis, SNR, and summary. Typically, it takes a little time for information to be properly filtered and recommunicated. This delay allows print publications time to catch up and this material can still be placed on the web later. Fundamentally, the act of publication forces information to be cut down, crap to be thrown out, and resources to be focused. There are papers that do this well and some that do it very poorly.
An excellent example is the Economist. I can find virtually every piece of information from that publication through some other channel before the print edition hits a stand. I do not, however, have the time to summarize, anaylze, and edit as the Economist does. Nothing in that publication is revolutionary or, in fact, beyond what I could generate. But it saves me countless hours of research.
It's very easy to do the wrong thing as a group. It is even easier to let it happen and not say anything. Responsibility really is not a group concept. Combined with an office that supports the corporation (how can it not?), is somewhat sanitized and removed from the effects of a decision, and has job security, this effect just seems to be multiplied.
Once I learned this, my ability to influence people on a person-to-person level became the primary focus of work - managing or as just a team player.
Well, we can certainly mount guns on things and shoot remotely. The current, long-developing trend in military warfare is towards smaller, versatile units that are hard to pin down but are extremely coordinated. Hive-like would be a wet-dream, but I'm sure beaurocrat is having such a dream as we speak. Bottom line, robots don't yet play into this dream. They are really only good as disposable long-range swiss-army knives. This will improve over time, of course. And as you read, the border patrol part is a focus as well.
This particular focus from SK seems to be a politically-pushed idea. Perhaps similar to the U.S. Star Wars idea in the 1980's (i.e. makes people happy, makes some contractors rich). North Korea weighs heavily on SK citizen's minds, partly because they hear so much crazy, horrible stuff about what happens in the country. Remember there is a huge infrantry deployment (for U.S. particularly) along the North Korean border, so any press about being able to one day replace these forces with robots is good press (who will hopefully just be sentrys really, because no one south of the meridian wants war).
Also, the South Koreans are fairly keen on technology in general, similar to the Japanese. Like all of us, they love to find excuses to play with robots and grant government contracts. The SK government has invested heavily in certain industries in the past and now the market seems to be sensing the technological shift. Yesterday (way back) the hot things were conventional transport like shipbuilding. Today its robots. So the story goes, if you can get a copy of the student roster at MIT, you can find out just what the South Koreans want to become leaders in. Though, I would add a few Japanese and Chinese schools to the list now as well.
The thieves reference feels like a troll (obviously infringment is not theft). History is rife with "unethical" actions involving patents, trademarks, copyright, etc - by corporations and individuals. There is no honor in business and consumerism period. Selling and buying is about self-interest.
But it bothers me that you cite ethics. Ethics is not synonymous with the law. The whole notion of "intellectual property" in modern economies could be argued as unethical. The law, generally, conveniences those who enacted it. I don't remember having a specific vote on copyright laws, do you?
A lot of times it is not administrators who are directly doing this (i.e. its much bigger than one person or they have no real way of knowing). Information security is far more than simply one person's job. Everyone who has access to information - even the poor grad student who does backups on Sunday nights - should be responsible in some way for security.
It takes a lot of work to make strong, accountable policies and carefully define simple, but narrow ways of accessing information (i.e. not just dumping the student records excel file in the share folder). For example, everyone on campus has network access which is most often directly linked to online access. If one person screws up and misuses their data access priveleges by opening up information over the network, it is very hard to tell unless you have accountability in place. And how many places do security reviews?
When it becomes part of people's jobs to protect information, it will become a responsibilty. Right now, blaming one or two people is rarely a good solution. It's like someone who blames an outsourced medical transcripts worker in Pakistan for leaking information. Sure, it is there fault but the problem is much larger than one low-paid worker. Executive or peon, security is a group responsibility in information-rich, networked environments.
Practically no one thinks there shouldn't be more metadata and relationships in files. The question is where in the system stack should the logic of these changes take place and what are acceptable performance penalties. As you say, single-users have different requirements from multiusers. So any good engineer would conclude we should not target a design at just one user type.
Now, in a perfect world, a high-level component would differentiate between "secretary's stuff" and "network share". The lower level components would be more generic. But in the real world secretaries often put their stuff in network shares. In the same way, the relational logic tends to bleed into the system design. We need better abstraction.
The API has to change and we may eventually need a new, more system-neutral API. Right now though, we are still working on system-specific API's and integrating core functionality. I take this as a sign that, in general, we are all still figuring out how these new concepts will work out and what patterns will emerge. We are still figuring out how these new concepts fit into the overall system design. It's evolutionary.
The only way to find out where we are going is to let a few mutations take place. Again, the question under debate is where in the system these mutations should take place. Because we know that once we make major changes, there will be lessons learned and better ideas proposed. I would say we set up a petre dish and not turn major components of the kernel into a petre dish.
Yeah, that's not a good link. Try this kerneltrap one. Things have been brewing. I haven't kept up with the most recent stuff, though.
;) If I butchered anybody's perspective, please correct me. I don't do kernel dev or psychology.
It's really a design/people issue. There are the lingering issues of stability and similar, but these are not (as I understand) the original problem.
Reiser4 incorporates some sophisticated metadata concepts ("semantics") that are in effect a software layer over the fs - which is why Hans can compare it to WinFS. Some of these features step into the functionality domain of the VFS and the kernel. Not a bad thing, per se.
Now, we all know the stereotypical kernel dev - technically conservative, concerned about maintenaince, not really keen on making big compromises, and annoyed by ego (again, a stereotype). Keep that in mind.
Hans of course wants Reiser4 into the kernel. What's the holdup (from a technical design standpoint)? Well, individuals like Andrew Morton want functionality in the kernel that can be reused in a file-system nuetral fashion. Reiser4 has a plugin system, but it's a Reiser4 plugin system. Reiser4 and Hans want to extend Linux as an API, which right now will just be for Reiser4.
There are also some lingering details of how this will change the course of filesystem integration in the kernel, in regards to traditional POSIX and Unix-like behavior. I don't recall any enduser problems, but there are few complaints.
Why might this be annoying? Well, Hans wants his fs into the kernel now and he makes the case of its superiority, the markets demand, and the need to compete with companies like Microsoft. I wouldn't be the one to tell kernel devs that they need to compete with MS, but Hans is - to say the least - confident. And he did name the filesystem after himself, so I'm not how this couldn't be personal on some level.
The middle ground is to say to Hans: we'll take Reiser4, but we want these Reiser-only features to be ultimately modified for all capable filesystems. Hans insists - and I'm sort of generalizing here - that the details can be sorted out, but right now we should go with Reiser4 and not worry about making it anything but a great fs.
So, Hans took a "assertive" position on why Reiser4 should not only be included in the Linux kernel but also change the kernel. Linus, Morton, and a few others took a stand and said - in so many words - "Hans, we aren't putting your ego into our kernel. Not even experimental."
It would be interesting to see if end users put enough momentum behind Reiser4 to put in into mainline or start it in 2.7.
Is that worth a few flames?
What is "fundamental" about Western liberalism is human nature. People will overvalue their lives, desires, and what not. People will distort facts and follow blindly. The same reason we avoid tyranny is the same reason terrorism has any effect on us.
Not that I don't share some of your opinion, but this article has very little to do with New Orleans. From the article:
"In mid-90's morning heat at Edwards Air Force
Base, HPV Technologies and American Technology demonstrated prototypes of non-lethal sonic devices for a group of military and law enforcement guests, including representatives of the U.K. Home Office.
Representatives of both companies say that within days, they will ship some units of their respective products to areas hit by Hurricane Katrina, so authorities can use the tools for crowd control, aid distribution and rescue operations."
So it's a publicity stunt for corporations. They are sending them to Marine MP and hope they will get some free press when one of the thousands of reporters in the area gets the scoop of Marines using some scifi crowd control.
I read nowhere any government official asking or endorsing this specifically for New Orleans. Maybe I missed it. It does mention the LAPD is looking at it and that the Navy already uses similar devices in Iraq. Never having been on the receiving end of crowd control techniques, I can't say this weapon is any better than things like tear gas. I would damn well like to know that before any member of any force uses it on anyone. Especially in an area with martial law.
Of course, if there is a riot and the government does nothing, everyone will watch it on CNN and complain the government is not doing their job. So either the military ship thousands of individuals to handle upset people (vs. rescuing - or we could trail off about Iraq here too) or they use a allegedly non-lethal weapon. I'd prefer to pass judgement after we know all the details of what leaders and people alike are dealing with down there.
I see exactly what you are saying, but really there are three components to a heavier-than-market price fine/punishment:
1) deterrence. Your payment is bigger because "the society" wants you to know they mean business. If getting caught meant paying a "normal" price than there would be little difference between buying and infringement+getting caught. If fines were cheap and reasonable, people would start calculating the risk as "worth it". In fact, many individuals and groups already do.
2) subversion. You have subverted a government-protected property arrangement. It's fictional - in the sense of material goods - but very much "real" in legal terms. Therefore, the government deems your actions dangerous to the their arrangements and authority, not simply the value of a single transaction.
3) money talks. It communicates to everyone - the shareholders of media corporations, the public, and the criminal - that the law is serious and must be obeyed. People are impressed by money, and large fines impresses them a lot. Low fines, OTOH, actually breed indifference.
I happen to have disagreements with all of these, incidentally.
Blacklists are temporary solutions. The larger the blacklist, the more temporary. It's like censorship in this regard.
Blacklisting is a balancing act between the nature of the Internet and what you want out of it. It only "works" to a degree, but it never solves the problem. I'm not saying give up or stop blocking IP's, but people need to come to grips about the real world. The Internet is a two-way street, so let's start looking at it that way, eh? Blocking whole countries is extreme. Some people really seem to like being extreme though.
Besides, some smart rulesets and decent filtering can drop the vast majority of troublesome content.
It's almost like choosing a president based on what you see on TV...
But seriously, imagination is an important part of human life. I've made a lot of important choices based on my perceptions and ideals that were pretty ignorant and idyllic. Of course real life is boring. I will probably stay within the same 50 mile radius for most of my life. I will eat the same things over and over again. I will only really know a handleful of people. I will pass by the same strangers everyday. And my job doesn't really account for much.
But I still keep those stupid notions that there is an exciting and fulfilling part of life hidden, just beneath the commonality. Maybe what I do is really important, and I just don't notice. Or something. Yeah, it's a myth. No more "real" than most of TV. It's just another way to "escape" without leaving the trappings of what we know. To each his own.
WinFS is essentially an intelligent metadata layer. In Windows OS parlance, an executive subsystem that utilizes an existing NTFS volume. The idea is to extend the traditional data model for files/folders and scraps of metadata into object-oriented patterns that the entire system can use (and hopefully reuse). Sort of like an object manager for the filesystem.
It's more than a file indexer for a developer, but just that for the enduser. Right now, it seems Microsoft really just wants feedback on the API's. If any real innovation for endusers is going to come from this, Microsoft seems to hope developers will figure it out.
ext3 was essentially an add-on for ext2. Point being, some of the better improvements don't take reinventing everything.
"Invasion", hackers (with a sense of purpose no less!), "new breed of enemy". Typical Time insight.
The reason to release information on this is almost purely a Pentagon press game. They have their own little war going on with China already. It's mostly been bearucratic (arguing over how much money is being spent on military budgets, saying one side is a threat, etc.) Occassionaly they move major pieces of the Pacific fleet, just to stir up speculation (in the U.S. press mostly). The Pentagon does have some necons nesting there, so taking a coarse line is in vogue.
Practically speaking, the Pentagon has also long been aware of the "soft-power" threats, especially IT. They have invested in computer networks for decades. Over the last decade work has gone into networking everything (in terms of information) and finding ways to control their resources electronically. The technocrats are keen on the U.S. military's weaknesses. This is translated by the more politically-minded managment into a counter-statement: The U.S. is vulnerable to an information war, but the better way to say this is to play up the threat of China in terms of cyber*buzzword*.
The Pentagon can argue for more funding this way and field little/no criticism. Same with the PLA in China (who has a growing budget). Both militaries are getting what they want without a huge payout in budget (i.e. a traditional war). And I definitely wouldn't rule out ego on both sides of the Pacific.