Does it change your preference whether the guy should be shot or tasered?
It doesn't help the discussion to frame it as a false choice. Law enforcement officers have a wide range of force options available in any situation. It's rarely a choice between a taser and a gun. It's usually a choice between baton, pepper spray or taser. Batons leave bruises and even working with someone after pepper spray can make your eyes water so bad you can't drive. I can't think of many situations when a taser would substitute for deadly force. I'm sure there have been a few but use of tasers is far too routine. It's almost getting punitive.
And we have to have accountability in law enforcement that has all but disappeared. Accountability in the employment of surveillance, in the choice of force options and especially accountability for telling the truth.
It's not talking about open source software, it's open source as a methodology. The author is using the term open source in terms of how knowledge of improvised weapons and tactics are being spread. That technically sophisticated terrorists have managed to shorten the learning curve. It's open source intelligence and the premise is not flawed. They're using the open source model very effectively. It's not that the pitchforks are all that much more advanced, it's the learning environment that's advanced. And it that regard the insurgents are running rings around the Pentagon. Although one could argue that's a pretty low bar.
But the real boon for terrorists is having a practical lab located conveniently in their own back yard.
The reason Iraq has proven to be such a rich learning environment for insurgents has more to do with practical, on-the-ground opportunities for learning that the fighting provides."
I've been working a steady contract supporting.NET development and MS products but I'm letting this contract run out in January so I can devote more time to supporting F/OSS development and applications. I may be a bit ahead of the curve but MS development is just so hideously boring. Plus I'm getting a lot more calls about alternatives to Vista and I'm curious if the market is really there or if it's just talk. I'll let you know how it goes. Worst case is I end up taking on more Windows support and come crawling back when faced with imminent starvation.
All the fun stuff in IT is happening in open source...and that's more than MS. Although in fairness to my clients, if MS or proprietary is the right solution, I'll pick the right tool for the job. This is business not religion. But I find in my own business and home network that F/OSS is frequently the better decision.
Note to self: remember to program Adblock to reject everything from DoubleClick from now on, on all home computers.
I use Adblock and NoScript on Firefox. Doubleclick is the first site on the block list in both apps. That's why I couldn't figure out why Google wanted to buy them.
Just like XP flopped when people were complaining for ages that thousands of applications wouldn't work on it
I was there and this nothing like those days. There is a perfect storm of circumstance conspiring against Vista success. The devaluation of the dollar and crisis in confidence of the valuation of US investment instruments will put many big enterprise upgrades on hold. Based on just the phone calls I get, I see more companies actively seeking alternatives that will run adequately on the commodity hardware they already own.
MSFT contributed to Vista's problems by delivering late, stripping out the value functionality, jacking the prices and confusing the market with their licensing scheme.
Business is good for people writing those decision papers right now.
The eye of Ballmermon sweeps across the media landscape while orks cut down forests to make more chair weapons to hurl at their enemies. Ballmermon must have the media ring to keep it out of the hands of teh suck Google.
I've RTFA, is wasn't a memory leak caused by C#, is was caused by bad programming
We've had similar trouble trying to build big systems on an MS platform. Stubborn memory leaks that don't seem to have a common cause. It's happened in VB and C#. You can't blame them all on bad programming because we've had similar problems from completely different groups of programmers with varying skill levels. We build mainly web apps and this was a desktop app but their description was strangely familiar.
It's pretty callous to blame the programmer when they trust garbage collection to do its job. That was one of the big selling points of the whole.NET framework from day one. This great tool that manages memory for you. Like a lot of what MS sells it turned out to me more of a false sense of security.
I'm guessing this wasn't the core of what Kyocera needed. It's just as likely MSFT threw it in there as a FUD grenade target of poopertunity. An IP stink bomb.
This whole thing is just so...seedy. This is not how a supposedly world class company acts. It would be far more effective if they fielded high quality products at reasonable prices. Or is that a quaint concept nowadays?
Of course, with telcos spying on Americans, banks and credit card companies nickel and diming customers to death at will and collection agencies routinely operating outside the law with little fear of accountability...maybe this is the new standard in big corp conduct. We're all the poorer if it's true.
I think all this shows is what people perceive their vote is really worth. All you can really do with your vote is join an effort to throw the bums out. Maybe the next set of bums will be better, but it's usually only a matter of degrees.
A really interesting experiment would be if we allowed US citizens to sell their citizenship to someone else. The deal is once you sell it, you can never get it back. How much would you take to give up your US citizenship forever? That's when we'd find out how serious people really are. It would also give us an idea how the rest of the world views living here.
Would I sell mine? That's a good question. I'm pretty ashamed of the last seven years of US history and shamed by the 25% still supporting a corrupt, incompetent administration. Seeing Bush in a prison cell next to Cheney and Rove, stand a couple telco execs up against the wall for cooperating with the effort to spy on the American public, purge the FBI and Justice Dept. of anyone who used investigative powers toward political ends...the answer might be different. But I don't see that happening.
Saddam's Iraq was safety paradise to live in, compared to the civil war that is going on in the country
We're wandering a little ot here but I thought it was interesting to run across some of the old German justifications for invading Russia during WWII. Right up near the top of the list was to free the Russian people from the rule of Bolsheviks.
Germany promoted that they were bringing freedom to Russia. I don't buy into comparing Bush to Hitler but the neo-cons do seem to borrow a lot of their ad copy. Besides, Bush would look terrible with a mustache.
But by then it will be far too late to do anything but welcome our new cheese-eating overlords.
Yeah and the next thing you know the cats will be conducting genetic experiments to make members of their species even more powerful and fearless mouse resistant. This will kick off an genetic arms race eventually leading to mice and cats evolving into beings of pure energy.
Then someone in Alabama will figure out how to run their pickup truck off cat energy creatures and upset the whole balance of power.
There is little that's secret about modern diesel/electric submarines. Submerged they've always been hard to detect. With advances in battery technology and quieter props it's not that big of a shock they could get close enough to launch.
It's not like they were pulling all their clubs out of the bag, it was a demonstration what they could do with fairly basic technology. The real interesting speculation would be what they might have in the inventory that's even more capable. Long range missiles or UAV's that could attack a carrier from hundreds or thousands of miles away, perhaps aided by satellite, robotic mines, or something equally surprising.
When your foreign policy is built around being able to project air power it's a rude surprise to find out in the modern era a floating airport is a big, fat target.
If you really want ulcers start looking up how many countries have similar subs. You might be surprised at some of the names.
I have a contract now where they wanted that kind of NDA/Non-Compete. Those boilerplates are just getting silly and theirs was one of the silly ones. It covered the earth, moon and stars to the end of time. I refused to sign it. We worked for a while without one, then negotiated changes to the language. The specific changes:
- Inventions and IP were limited to novel work and inventions I was developing for hire and specifically exempted common and routine code structures.
- Non-Compete was limited to the actual customers I worked on location. In addition, I agreed to withdraw from competitive bids we both were bidding for one year.
- I stripped out every reference to partner companies and subsidiaries.
- References to transferability were removed. If the company is sold or files bankruptcy I'm released from the terms of the agreement.
There's a lot of work out there right now, too much to sign dangerous contracts with paranoid companies being ruled by fear. Because some mid-level exec went to a seminar where a lawyer scared the crap out them, or the outsource HR service wants to score points by making it look like they're actually doing something for the money. Sometimes sudden updates are an indication someone is interested in buying the company, in which case I wouldn't want to limit my options by signing away a negotiating position.
Most times you'll just get fired for refusing, so be prepared. I discovered over the years that working a W2 job for one company and living paycheck to paycheck is a great way to be held hostage to this type of legal extortion.
as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies.
Quite right. MSFT is hoarding precious IP from last week's technology. Reminds of lady who lives down the road. She didn't want to go to the hospital after falling and dislocating her hip because she was convinced thieves would break in and steal her salt and pepper shakers. She refused transport until the daughter showed up and convinced her she'd pack them up and take them home with her.
The simple fact is staff are leaving MSFT for Google because they are fun, hip and technology progressive. MSFT is political, heavy-handed and more concerned with their revenue stream than fielding quality software. Ballmer is up in Tower Redmondore, surrounding himself with high paid toadies, convinced departing employees are thieves and traitors.
Paranoia coupled with arrogance and stupidity in equal measure is a volatile mix.
surprise surprise, that most people in the world would rather not have their packets routed through a police state.
Exactly. Who says this discussion is being driven by nations wanting to censor content? Maybe the rest of the world starting thinking about all the business sensitive information zipping through the US and doesn't trust America not to pass that information along to their buddies in big business or use it inappropriately. They've got every right to be skeptical of our behavior, motives and policies.
I'm just amazed at the people that apparently think we can act like complete dicks on the world stage and not expect the rest of the planet to push back. If any nation on earth deserves a big slice of humble pie, it's us.
Recent spam message plogging mail filters around the world...
GREETINGS MY NAME IS STEVE BALLMER I WAS referring to you by a trusted friend for a matter of great urgency. The government of Nigeria died and left no heir for 17,000 laptops awaiting installation of the WINDOWS operating system. We will happily pay you to for the sum of $400,000 USD for your assistance in getting rid of teh suck Linux and installing the wonderful operating system for the children.
Impeachment isn't a matter of convenience or political expediency, it is a matter of congressional Duty.
I would join Bill Maher in calling on the Democrats to grow one ball. Just one. I'm disgusted with both parties but I'm most disappointed with the Democrats.
Sure MS employees are going to take shots at Google services. But even if they're not perfect, Google is getting the services out there and putting the tools out there. While MS blogs about it. I'm sure MS will eventually field some Windows-centric competitive product...just as soon as they get done blogging about how bad Google is.
I'm going to have to go with "doesn't hurt Red Hat" on many counts.
Then there's the PHB factor. The mid-level manager mindful that no one ever lost their job buying Microsoft. Many would pay the RHEL license cost just to have a throat to choke in the event something goes wrong. I've heard that discussion with my own ears. Decision makers wanting to know who was on the hook if something went bad.
If RedHat itself fielded an exact, unbranded, unsupported copy I bet many companies would still opt for the support licenses. Most companies just don't get open source.
Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing
FCP is very popular and making inroads to some pro shops but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "the standard" in professional video editing. Avid is still very popular in broadcast shops and Adobe still has a fair number of Premiere users out there. I'd go up against any of them with Sony Vegas. I'd give FCP the upper-middle range.
If anyone should buy Adobe it should be Sony. Then they could both change their name to Sonobe One, which sounds like a Star Wars character.
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Does it change your preference whether the guy should be shot or tasered?
It doesn't help the discussion to frame it as a false choice. Law enforcement officers have a wide range of force options available in any situation. It's rarely a choice between a taser and a gun. It's usually a choice between baton, pepper spray or taser. Batons leave bruises and even working with someone after pepper spray can make your eyes water so bad you can't drive. I can't think of many situations when a taser would substitute for deadly force. I'm sure there have been a few but use of tasers is far too routine. It's almost getting punitive.
And we have to have accountability in law enforcement that has all but disappeared. Accountability in the employment of surveillance, in the choice of force options and especially accountability for telling the truth.
It's not talking about open source software, it's open source as a methodology. The author is using the term open source in terms of how knowledge of improvised weapons and tactics are being spread. That technically sophisticated terrorists have managed to shorten the learning curve. It's open source intelligence and the premise is not flawed. They're using the open source model very effectively. It's not that the pitchforks are all that much more advanced, it's the learning environment that's advanced. And it that regard the insurgents are running rings around the Pentagon. Although one could argue that's a pretty low bar.
But the real boon for terrorists is having a practical lab located conveniently in their own back yard.
The reason Iraq has proven to be such a rich learning environment for insurgents has more to do with practical, on-the-ground opportunities for learning that the fighting provides."
The MPAA running open source tools to spy on university networks pegs my irony meter.
What a fun time hackers would have borking this tool kit. It's a treasure trove of information.
I wonder if the buggy whip manufacturers were this retarded trying to undermine the horseless carriage?
My favorite Magnatune artists are Burnshee Thornside and Brad Sucks. Give generously, half the money goes to the artist.
I've been working a steady contract supporting .NET development and MS products but I'm letting this contract run out in January so I can devote more time to supporting F/OSS development and applications. I may be a bit ahead of the curve but MS development is just so hideously boring. Plus I'm getting a lot more calls about alternatives to Vista and I'm curious if the market is really there or if it's just talk. I'll let you know how it goes. Worst case is I end up taking on more Windows support and come crawling back when faced with imminent starvation.
All the fun stuff in IT is happening in open source...and that's more than MS. Although in fairness to my clients, if MS or proprietary is the right solution, I'll pick the right tool for the job. This is business not religion. But I find in my own business and home network that F/OSS is frequently the better decision.
Should be interesting. Send food. ;)
Note to self: remember to program Adblock to reject everything from DoubleClick from now on, on all home computers.
I use Adblock and NoScript on Firefox. Doubleclick is the first site on the block list in both apps. That's why I couldn't figure out why Google wanted to buy them.
Just like XP flopped when people were complaining for ages that thousands of applications wouldn't work on it
I was there and this nothing like those days. There is a perfect storm of circumstance conspiring against Vista success. The devaluation of the dollar and crisis in confidence of the valuation of US investment instruments will put many big enterprise upgrades on hold. Based on just the phone calls I get, I see more companies actively seeking alternatives that will run adequately on the commodity hardware they already own.
MSFT contributed to Vista's problems by delivering late, stripping out the value functionality, jacking the prices and confusing the market with their licensing scheme.
Business is good for people writing those decision papers right now.
Users of Microsoft Windows Vista can rejoice in the fact that Microsoft just released a preview of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release
If users of Microsoft Windows rejoice over a stupid service pack, users of Microsoft Vista need to get out more.
The eye of Ballmermon sweeps across the media landscape while orks cut down forests to make more chair weapons to hurl at their enemies. Ballmermon must have the media ring to keep it out of the hands of teh suck Google.
Precioussssssssssss.
I've RTFA, is wasn't a memory leak caused by C#, is was caused by bad programming
We've had similar trouble trying to build big systems on an MS platform. Stubborn memory leaks that don't seem to have a common cause. It's happened in VB and C#. You can't blame them all on bad programming because we've had similar problems from completely different groups of programmers with varying skill levels. We build mainly web apps and this was a desktop app but their description was strangely familiar.
It's pretty callous to blame the programmer when they trust garbage collection to do its job. That was one of the big selling points of the whole .NET framework from day one. This great tool that manages memory for you. Like a lot of what MS sells it turned out to me more of a false sense of security.
I'm guessing this wasn't the core of what Kyocera needed. It's just as likely MSFT threw it in there as a FUD grenade target of poopertunity. An IP stink bomb.
This whole thing is just so...seedy. This is not how a supposedly world class company acts. It would be far more effective if they fielded high quality products at reasonable prices. Or is that a quaint concept nowadays?
Of course, with telcos spying on Americans, banks and credit card companies nickel and diming customers to death at will and collection agencies routinely operating outside the law with little fear of accountability...maybe this is the new standard in big corp conduct. We're all the poorer if it's true.
I think all this shows is what people perceive their vote is really worth. All you can really do with your vote is join an effort to throw the bums out. Maybe the next set of bums will be better, but it's usually only a matter of degrees.
A really interesting experiment would be if we allowed US citizens to sell their citizenship to someone else. The deal is once you sell it, you can never get it back. How much would you take to give up your US citizenship forever? That's when we'd find out how serious people really are. It would also give us an idea how the rest of the world views living here.
Would I sell mine? That's a good question. I'm pretty ashamed of the last seven years of US history and shamed by the 25% still supporting a corrupt, incompetent administration. Seeing Bush in a prison cell next to Cheney and Rove, stand a couple telco execs up against the wall for cooperating with the effort to spy on the American public, purge the FBI and Justice Dept. of anyone who used investigative powers toward political ends...the answer might be different. But I don't see that happening.
Saddam's Iraq was safety paradise to live in, compared to the civil war that is going on in the country
We're wandering a little ot here but I thought it was interesting to run across some of the old German justifications for invading Russia during WWII. Right up near the top of the list was to free the Russian people from the rule of Bolsheviks.
Germany promoted that they were bringing freedom to Russia. I don't buy into comparing Bush to Hitler but the neo-cons do seem to borrow a lot of their ad copy. Besides, Bush would look terrible with a mustache.
It will be the most secure version of Windows ever released!
But by then it will be far too late to do anything but welcome our new cheese-eating overlords.
Yeah and the next thing you know the cats will be conducting genetic experiments to make members of their species even more powerful and fearless mouse resistant. This will kick off an genetic arms race eventually leading to mice and cats evolving into beings of pure energy.
Then someone in Alabama will figure out how to run their pickup truck off cat energy creatures and upset the whole balance of power.
There is little that's secret about modern diesel/electric submarines. Submerged they've always been hard to detect. With advances in battery technology and quieter props it's not that big of a shock they could get close enough to launch.
It's not like they were pulling all their clubs out of the bag, it was a demonstration what they could do with fairly basic technology. The real interesting speculation would be what they might have in the inventory that's even more capable. Long range missiles or UAV's that could attack a carrier from hundreds or thousands of miles away, perhaps aided by satellite, robotic mines, or something equally surprising.
When your foreign policy is built around being able to project air power it's a rude surprise to find out in the modern era a floating airport is a big, fat target.
If you really want ulcers start looking up how many countries have similar subs. You might be surprised at some of the names.
I have a contract now where they wanted that kind of NDA/Non-Compete. Those boilerplates are just getting silly and theirs was one of the silly ones. It covered the earth, moon and stars to the end of time. I refused to sign it. We worked for a while without one, then negotiated changes to the language. The specific changes:
- Inventions and IP were limited to novel work and inventions I was developing for hire and specifically exempted common and routine code structures.
- Non-Compete was limited to the actual customers I worked on location. In addition, I agreed to withdraw from competitive bids we both were bidding for one year.
- I stripped out every reference to partner companies and subsidiaries.
- References to transferability were removed. If the company is sold or files bankruptcy I'm released from the terms of the agreement.
There's a lot of work out there right now, too much to sign dangerous contracts with paranoid companies being ruled by fear. Because some mid-level exec went to a seminar where a lawyer scared the crap out them, or the outsource HR service wants to score points by making it look like they're actually doing something for the money. Sometimes sudden updates are an indication someone is interested in buying the company, in which case I wouldn't want to limit my options by signing away a negotiating position.
Most times you'll just get fired for refusing, so be prepared. I discovered over the years that working a W2 job for one company and living paycheck to paycheck is a great way to be held hostage to this type of legal extortion.
as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies.
Quite right. MSFT is hoarding precious IP from last week's technology. Reminds of lady who lives down the road. She didn't want to go to the hospital after falling and dislocating her hip because she was convinced thieves would break in and steal her salt and pepper shakers. She refused transport until the daughter showed up and convinced her she'd pack them up and take them home with her.
The simple fact is staff are leaving MSFT for Google because they are fun, hip and technology progressive. MSFT is political, heavy-handed and more concerned with their revenue stream than fielding quality software. Ballmer is up in Tower Redmondore, surrounding himself with high paid toadies, convinced departing employees are thieves and traitors.
Paranoia coupled with arrogance and stupidity in equal measure is a volatile mix.
surprise surprise, that most people in the world would rather not have their packets routed through a police state.
Exactly. Who says this discussion is being driven by nations wanting to censor content? Maybe the rest of the world starting thinking about all the business sensitive information zipping through the US and doesn't trust America not to pass that information along to their buddies in big business or use it inappropriately. They've got every right to be skeptical of our behavior, motives and policies.
I'm just amazed at the people that apparently think we can act like complete dicks on the world stage and not expect the rest of the planet to push back. If any nation on earth deserves a big slice of humble pie, it's us.
Recent spam message plogging mail filters around the world...
GREETINGS MY NAME IS STEVE BALLMER I WAS referring to you by a trusted friend for a matter of great urgency. The government of Nigeria died and left no heir for 17,000 laptops awaiting installation of the WINDOWS operating system. We will happily pay you to for the sum of $400,000 USD for your assistance in getting rid of teh suck Linux and installing the wonderful operating system for the children.
Impeachment isn't a matter of convenience or political expediency, it is a matter of congressional Duty.
I would join Bill Maher in calling on the Democrats to grow one ball. Just one. I'm disgusted with both parties but I'm most disappointed with the Democrats.
A pox on both your houses.
Sure MS employees are going to take shots at Google services. But even if they're not perfect, Google is getting the services out there and putting the tools out there. While MS blogs about it. I'm sure MS will eventually field some Windows-centric competitive product...just as soon as they get done blogging about how bad Google is.
I'm going to have to go with "doesn't hurt Red Hat" on many counts.
Then there's the PHB factor. The mid-level manager mindful that no one ever lost their job buying Microsoft. Many would pay the RHEL license cost just to have a throat to choke in the event something goes wrong. I've heard that discussion with my own ears. Decision makers wanting to know who was on the hook if something went bad.
If RedHat itself fielded an exact, unbranded, unsupported copy I bet many companies would still opt for the support licenses. Most companies just don't get open source.
How about "Microsoft has a strong relationship with the government and people in Nigeria and will continue to help meet their needs" ?
Should read: "Microsoft has a large bank account and will continue to slip cash to certain government officials in Nigeria." There, that fixed it.
Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing
FCP is very popular and making inroads to some pro shops but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "the standard" in professional video editing. Avid is still very popular in broadcast shops and Adobe still has a fair number of Premiere users out there. I'd go up against any of them with Sony Vegas. I'd give FCP the upper-middle range.
If anyone should buy Adobe it should be Sony. Then they could both change their name to Sonobe One, which sounds like a Star Wars character.