This is not a solution. It will do nothing whatsoever to help the poster's safety. It will also not have the effect you desire. It's built on the assumption that all people are rational. They're not. There are people that will hurt you or steal from you because they LIKE to.
A lot of people don't want to work even if they had a chance to. You are massively naive.
Perhaps we can donate to the EFF or start a class action suit against them. Any proceeds could then be donated to the companies they sued in the first place;)
> if you want to treat information coming from the people who are getting paid to do fusion, about how much they are being paid to do fusion this year, as opposed to years past, as 'second hand exposure', then I don't believe you'll be convinced by anything which can be presented on slashdot, and you're just a troll.
I'm not on purpose being a troll. If you were on the budget committee or accountant in any of these programs then I'd treat your information as having more weight. Since the discussion was about budgets, not about physics, I don't think your experience as a physicist really adds much. I don't think word of mouth from your SO adds much either. I work for a company, but that doesn't mean I have any knowledge whatsoever about it's total operating budget. I'm not even allowed to ask the salaries of my coworkers.
>I don't mean to give Bush full personal credit if that's what's bugging you
That was it.
>Now they're going to cancel the program (FIRE) entirely? >Let others do all the research and gather all >the wisdom?
I believed what would happen was we would give money to an international organization which would fund research in other countries, which our scientists would not participate in, or benefit from.
> Part of the problem is that there isn't very much to spend a huge amount of money on at the moment
An Arab friend of mine told me a "secret". He said the largest recipient of US foreign aid was Isreal. He indicated that was a large part of the root of our Terrorist problem, but let's leave that one for another discussion. I looked it up. He was right. We gave 2 billion to them. Maybe it's naive, but why don't we spend that on fusion? It's not like the money is actually buying us any stability in the middle east.
> The U.S., looking at the huge pricetag, and not wanting to build it somewhere other than the U.S., pulled out of ITER, saying it wanted to focus its efforts on its own domestic research programs. (i.e. FIRE). Everyone who actually worked in the field thought this was a dumb idea, but they were used to dumb ideas by then.
Based on what the funding levels seem to have been pulling out of ITER probably was a bad idea. We reduced the already poor chances of success. Personally I would have preferred a real effort instead of the token one we seem to have put forth. Thanks for the clarification, that helped a lot.
> my S.O. happens to be a grad student in the fairly small field of fusion research.
My girlfriend in college was a nuclear engineer. That doesn't qualify me as an expert in nuclear engineering or politics. It might make you a bit more well informed, but I don't believe we can use second hand exposure as an indication of wisdom.
> It doesn't matter if Bush came up with the idea himself. The point is that he has supported their recommendation. People have been recommending that fusion be funded for years, and are usually completely ignored.
The budget contains thousands of items. I believe that few of our lawmakers are cognizant of the details of even a reasonable percentage of them. I don't believe Bush saw this as anything more than a power point screen that got an increase because it looked good politically.
"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan."
I'm glad it got funding and think it needs a lot more. I believe you're giving Bush credit for something he doesn't deserve. Fusion reasearch was funded long before Bush came into office. I believe the article says we spent 2.5 million on our research, internationally there was 5 billion. So our research budget was 0.05% of the total? In a field that requires expensive machines to validate theories? To claim 'credit' for that miserable lack of foresight seems foolish to me. Now they're going to cancel the program entirely? Let others do all the research and gather all the wisdom? I think you listened to the spin doctors and didn't think this through for yourself.
> Bush *has* funded fusion research during his term in office
I don't believe Bush created any funding for fusion research.
The first mention of fusion in the national energy policy is on page 101. Fusion is a back page line item.
Bush didn't push for it, a working group recommended it to them: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of Energy to develop next generation technology -- including hydrogen and fusion."
It also said "recommended that the Secretary of Energy be directed to "develop an education campaign that communicates the benefits of alternative forms of energy, including hydrogen and fusion."
Note they didn't recommend research, just education about it!
I think you're mistake here is that you infer good sense should be used in planning and decision making. Look around you and you can easily see that's not the case.
> You connect to the public Internet, you open a port to a service, and you allow anyone anywhere to connect to it.
In the majority of cases this is not true. People who use computers as an appliance, the majority of Windows users, do not *choose* to open ports. They don't know the port is open, what a port is, how to close it, nor are they presented with the option to NOT run the services that open the ports at install time.
> there's nothing wrong with my entering your house if you've put a sign in your front yard saying "Open House".
All of the ports marked 'Open House' are already quite well known. There's no need to scan for the port for the web server. Anyone port scanning is NOT looking for an open house sign in my yard, they're snooping in my back yard looking for a unsecured entrance to break in.
There is no legitimate reason to port scan someone else's computer without their consent. It shows intent to commit a criminal or immoral act.
If you do have a legitimate reason contact the owner of the system and ask for permission.
Because their computer is connected to the internet it doesn't make it public property any more than your house is public property because it's congruent to a public street.
When most of these virii came out my system started getting lots of intrusion attempts. I setup a shell script to grep them out of the log, then it would use the same vulnerability that allowed the virus to enter that system to popup a window on the machine letting the owner know he'd been infected. I have no idea if it actually resulted in anyone fixing their problems but it made me feel better.
> Personally I am the view point that if you have a port open with a service that is easily accessible without a password, or the default password, (like NFS, say) then anybody using it is not in the wrong, as how are they to tell that the service is not intended for the public especially since it is on the PUBLIC internet
If you have a radio controlled garage door opener and someone drives by your house, transmits all the possible codes sequentially, opens your garage door and starts looking through your stuff would you say 'because I didn't buy a sufficiently advanced garage door opener or engineer my own I invited the public into my garage'. Of course you wouldn't. Their intent is obviously to commit a crime.
I agree with you to some extent, but there are a lot of things you overlooked:
(I've used gentoo emerge and redhat rpm but not apt-get.)
The ones I've used don't always install a working application. When they don't it's very difficult to figure out why. Even for a programmer.
The last one I tried (mandrake) didn't modify the desktop menus so it took me several minutes and a 'find' command to figure out where the app was installed. I had to add the menu item myself.:(
There was no introductory text or readme displayed before or after the install. Mandrake did have a short description of the apps at least.
I can't use apt-get on more than one flavor of linux.
One of the problems with linux adoption is that every distro does things a different way. A long time ago we figured out the cost of learning a new user interface for every application was stupid. Why not have this 'GUI desktop' concept and enable all applications with common features (buttons, list boxes, copy and paste and such)? Is it so hard for people to generalize the concept one step farther? Let's enable all operating systems with common methods so installing software, or configuring a network connection, is the same everywhere?
It doesn't address the underlying problem with X windows. I looked at 'Y windows', which addressed some of the problems, but the author didn't seem to have the ability to translate his idea into a real product though.
The examples I used were copied from the message I replied to.
You're missing the point.
To make it simple there should be a single way of installing software on all distros. It would make life much easier for me when I help aunt martha and for the help desk when joe user calls. Make Linux less work and headache than windows and Windows will disappear real quick.
> Tons of hardware doesn't work well or easily with Windows. People just never have to deal with it because Windows gets preinstalled.
I think a lot of hardware is just plain badly designed and QCed personally.
Linux isn't worth it for manufacturers.
Manufacturers are willing to provide microsoft with info so their products will work, but are not willing to put their design info out for public consumption. There's no single point of contact for getting a product supported by Linux. There's nobody to sign a non disclosure agreement that the info won't be publically released. They can't buy a Linux Developer Network box and get all the info they need to make their product work with every Linux flavor.
I run Gentoo linux for my servers. I built them from stage 1 source and compiled the everything, including the kernel. It works like a champ. I could leave out all the services I don't use to minimize my vulnerability to attacks.
Ernesto is right on every count based on what I've seen.
I can't use Linux for non server applications.
The X desktop is awful. If I wanted remote access I'd use VNC. I used to like Gnome a little, but they're becoming as bloated as Windows Playskool.
I've got stuff to do with the computer. I don't want DRM, fancy GUI effects on the desktop, RPC services that nobody uses to get me infected with virii, etc.
Will someone do a nice lightweight desktop that just works? I'd even be willing to help port applications to it.
When you ask "what's the best..." you always have to give your assumptions. If you asked "What's the best cutting tool" you'd have to tell me if you were going to do surgery with it, or chop firewood. An axe is great for one, but terrible for the other, and vice versa.
Are you trying to get the 'best' application for the users, or for the programmers? What makes it best for users might make it harder for staff to support. What's your budget? If the best choice is to rewrite in 'X++' will they pay for it? Are there language and support availability constraints? Will someone there dictate to the programming staff that they must use Microsoft products? Will they refuse to use 'X++' because support staff is hard to find?
It's hard to get someplace when you don't know where you're going.
Guess you and he both missed all that stuff about meteor/comet impacts wiping out entire species thing. That wasn't even the worst mass extinction event...
> How is my response not rational? You didn't present any facts showing why my statement was false.
>You say religious people are out of touch with reality, and have flawed judgement. I respond with, well what about Einstein?
I don't believe Einstein presented any proof that God existed either.
> you write off well over 40% of the world population as having fundamentally flawed judgement
True. Actually the correct percentage I write off as having flawed judgement is 100%. It's one of the drawbacks of being human. We can strive to be better though.
> Maybe the big problem that caused people to commit these atrocities against their fellow man weren't so much about religion as they were about ideology
I think you've hit on something important there. Although I might want to be careful about those generalizations?;)
> It's nice to see that you amended your generality to mention that people who have religious convictions can be "otherwise capable".
Just trying to stay in touch with reality. A lot of people that do really stupid things can otherwise be extremely capable. I see that every day.
This just reinforces my point. Tour response isn't rational. It's an emotional rejection designed to 'win' an argument, not determine truth. If you can't rationally argue the case then belittle the proponent (with smug amusement in this case).
There's no more proof that god(s) exist than there is for "the great pumpkin". If you can prove it by an argument other than faith you'll be the first in history.
If you believe in something that contradicts reality then you've got real problems. What's frightening is how otherwise capable individuals can accept such an obvious insanity into their thinking. Religion is a poisonous virus that's destroyed horrendous numbers of people.
> Do you think any religious person with any intelligence at all thinks that God created dashhounds?
Good point, but it seems to me that anyone who is religious is out of touch with reality anyway. Why argue about the intelligence of such people? Their judgement is obviously fundamentally flawed.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a solution. It will do nothing
whatsoever to help the poster's safety. It will
also not have the effect you desire. It's built
on the assumption that all people are rational.
They're not. There are people that will hurt
you or steal from you because they LIKE to.
A lot of people don't want to work even if
they had a chance to. You are massively naive.
Perhaps we can donate to the EFF or start ;)
a class action suit against them. Any proceeds
could then be donated to the companies they
sued in the first place
Thanks, I learned a lot about this.
> if you want to treat information coming from the people who are getting paid to do fusion, about how much they are being paid to do fusion this year, as opposed to years past, as 'second hand exposure', then I don't believe you'll be convinced by anything which can be presented on slashdot, and you're just a troll.
I'm not on purpose being a troll.
If you were on the budget committee or accountant
in any of these programs then I'd treat your
information as having more weight. Since the
discussion was about budgets, not about physics,
I don't think your experience as a physicist
really adds much. I don't think word of mouth
from your SO adds much either. I work for a
company, but that doesn't mean I have any
knowledge whatsoever about it's total operating
budget. I'm not even allowed to ask the salaries
of my coworkers.
>I don't mean to give Bush full personal credit if that's what's bugging you
That was it.
>Now they're going to cancel the program (FIRE) entirely?
>Let others do all the research and gather all
>the wisdom?
I believed what would happen was we would give
money to an international organization which
would fund research in other countries, which
our scientists would not participate in,
or benefit from.
> Part of the problem is that there isn't very much to spend a huge amount of money on at the moment
An Arab friend of mine told me a "secret". He
said the largest recipient of US foreign aid
was Isreal. He indicated that was a large part
of the root of our Terrorist problem, but let's
leave that one for another discussion. I looked
it up. He was right. We gave 2 billion to them.
Maybe it's naive, but why don't we spend that on fusion? It's not like the money is actually buying
us any stability in the middle east.
> The U.S., looking at the huge pricetag, and not wanting to build it somewhere other than the U.S., pulled out of ITER, saying it wanted to focus its efforts on its own domestic research programs. (i.e. FIRE). Everyone who actually worked in the field thought this was a dumb idea, but they were used to dumb ideas by then.
Based on what the funding levels seem to have
been pulling out of ITER probably was a bad idea.
We reduced the already poor chances of success.
Personally I would have preferred a real effort
instead of the token one we seem to have put
forth. Thanks for the clarification, that helped
a lot.
> my S.O. happens to be a grad student in the fairly small field of fusion research.
My girlfriend in college was a nuclear engineer.
That doesn't qualify me as an expert in nuclear
engineering or politics. It might make you a
bit more well informed, but I don't believe
we can use second hand exposure as an indication
of wisdom.
> It doesn't matter if Bush came up with the idea himself. The point is that he has supported their recommendation. People have been recommending that fusion be funded for years, and are usually completely ignored.
The budget contains thousands of items. I believe
that few of our lawmakers are cognizant of the
details of even a reasonable percentage of them.
I don't believe Bush saw this as anything more
than a power point screen that got an increase
because it looked good politically.
"Success has many fathers, but failure is an
orphan."
I'm glad it got funding and think it needs
a lot more. I believe you're giving Bush
credit for something he doesn't deserve.
Fusion reasearch was funded long before
Bush came into office.
I believe the article says we spent 2.5 million on
our research, internationally there was 5 billion.
So our research budget was 0.05% of the total?
In a field that requires expensive machines to
validate theories? To claim 'credit' for that
miserable lack of foresight seems foolish to me.
Now they're going to cancel the program entirely?
Let others do all the research and gather all
the wisdom? I think you listened to the spin
doctors and didn't think this through for
yourself.
> Bush *has* funded fusion research during his term in office
I don't believe Bush created any funding
for fusion research.
The first mention of fusion in the national
energy policy is on page 101. Fusion is a back
page line item.
Bush didn't push for it, a working group
recommended it to them: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of Energy to develop next generation technology -- including hydrogen and fusion."
It also said "recommended that the Secretary of Energy be directed to "develop an education campaign that communicates the benefits of alternative forms of energy, including hydrogen and fusion."
Note they didn't recommend research, just
education about it!
I think you're mistake here is that you infer good sense should be used in planning and decision making. Look around you and you can easily see that's not the case.
> You connect to the public Internet, you open a port to a service, and you allow anyone anywhere to connect to it.
In the majority of cases this is not true.
People who use computers as an appliance, the
majority of Windows users, do not *choose* to
open ports. They don't know the port is open,
what a port is, how to close it, nor are they
presented with the option to NOT run the services
that open the ports at install time.
> there's nothing wrong with my entering your house if you've put a sign in your front yard saying "Open House".
All of the ports marked 'Open House' are already
quite well known. There's no need to scan for the
port for the web server. Anyone port scanning
is NOT looking for an open house sign in my yard,
they're snooping in my back yard looking for a
unsecured entrance to break in.
I believe the example gets across the concept.
There is no legitimate reason to port scan
someone else's computer without their consent.
It shows intent to commit a criminal or immoral
act.
If you do have a legitimate reason contact
the owner of the system and ask for permission.
Because their computer is connected to the
internet it doesn't make it public property
any more than your house is public property
because it's congruent to a public street.
When most of these virii came out my system
started getting lots of intrusion attempts.
I setup a shell script to grep them out of the
log, then it would use the same vulnerability
that allowed the virus to enter that system
to popup a window on the machine letting the
owner know he'd been infected. I have no idea
if it actually resulted in anyone fixing their
problems but it made me feel better.
> Personally I am the view point that if you have a port open with a service that is easily accessible without a password, or the default password, (like NFS, say) then anybody using it is not in the wrong, as how are they to tell that the service is not intended for the public especially since it is on the PUBLIC internet
If you have a radio controlled garage door opener
and someone drives by your house, transmits all
the possible codes sequentially, opens your garage
door and starts looking through your stuff
would you say 'because I didn't buy a sufficiently
advanced garage door opener or engineer my own
I invited the public into my garage'. Of course
you wouldn't. Their intent is obviously to
commit a crime.
> apt-get seems easier to me.
:(
I agree with you to some extent, but there
are a lot of things you overlooked:
(I've used gentoo emerge and redhat rpm but not apt-get.)
The ones I've used don't always install a
working application. When they don't it's very
difficult to figure out why. Even for a
programmer.
The last one I tried (mandrake) didn't
modify the desktop menus so it took me
several minutes and a 'find' command to
figure out where the app was installed.
I had to add the menu item myself.
There was no introductory text or readme
displayed before or after the install.
Mandrake did have a short description
of the apps at least.
I can't use apt-get on more than one
flavor of linux.
One of the problems with linux
adoption is that every distro does
things a different way. A long time ago
we figured out the cost of learning
a new user interface for every application
was stupid. Why not have this 'GUI desktop'
concept and enable all applications with
common features (buttons, list boxes, copy
and paste and such)? Is it so hard for
people to generalize the concept one step
farther? Let's enable all operating systems
with common methods so installing software,
or configuring a network connection, is
the same everywhere?
> Many distros and many ways of doing the same things is part of live on planet linux, and that's what makes it fun.
:)
"One man's trash is another man's treasure"
Thanks! I'll look at it.
It doesn't address the underlying problem with
X windows. I looked at 'Y windows', which addressed
some of the problems, but the author
didn't seem to have the ability to translate
his idea into a real product though.
Maybe I should port DirectX to Linux
The examples I used were copied from the message
I replied to.
You're missing the point.
To make it simple there should be a single way of
installing software on all distros. It would make
life much easier for me when I help aunt martha
and for the help desk when joe user calls. Make
Linux less work and headache than windows and
Windows will disappear real quick.
> Tons of hardware doesn't work well or easily with Windows. People just never have to deal with it because Windows gets preinstalled.
I think a lot of hardware is just plain badly
designed and QCed personally.
Linux isn't worth it for manufacturers.
Manufacturers are willing to provide microsoft
with info so their products will work, but are
not willing to put their design info out for
public consumption. There's no single point of
contact for getting a product supported by Linux.
There's nobody to sign a non disclosure agreement
that the info won't be publically released. They
can't buy a Linux Developer Network box and get
all the info they need to make their product work
with every Linux flavor.
I think the idea was, as you point out, installing software is different in every single distro:
>slackware: type "installpkg [filename]"
>Gentoo, "emerge [package]"
>RedHat: use RPM to install it.
>Debian, you'd apt-get it "apt-get [package]"
It's not that it's hard, it's that it's harder than it needs to be.
First off, I'm not a windows bigot.
I run Gentoo linux for my servers. I built them from stage 1 source and compiled the everything, including the kernel. It works like a champ. I could leave out all the services I don't use to minimize my vulnerability to attacks.
Ernesto is right on every count based on what I've
seen.
I can't use Linux for non server applications.
The X desktop is awful. If I wanted remote access
I'd use VNC. I used to like Gnome a little, but they're becoming as bloated as Windows Playskool.
I've got stuff to do with the computer. I don't want DRM, fancy GUI effects on the desktop,
RPC services that nobody uses to get me infected
with virii, etc.
Will someone do a nice lightweight desktop
that just works? I'd even be willing to help
port applications to it.
I wrote to Pearson's president expressing my
displeasure at their sister company's behaviour.
I didn't even get a form letter in response.
When you ask "what's the best..." you always have
to give your assumptions. If you asked "What's the
best cutting tool" you'd have to tell me if you
were going to do surgery with it, or chop firewood.
An axe is great for one, but terrible for the other,
and vice versa.
Are you trying to get the 'best' application for
the users, or for the programmers? What makes
it best for users might make it harder for
staff to support. What's your budget? If the
best choice is to rewrite in 'X++' will they
pay for it? Are there language and support
availability constraints? Will someone there
dictate to the programming staff that they must
use Microsoft products? Will they refuse to use
'X++' because support staff is hard to find?
It's hard to get someplace when you don't know
where you're going.
Dude, you are THE god of technology! ;)
Guess you and he both missed all that stuff
about meteor/comet impacts wiping out entire
species thing. That wasn't even the worst mass
extinction event...
> How is my response not rational?
;)
You didn't present any facts showing
why my statement was false.
>You say religious people are out of touch with reality, and have flawed judgement. I respond with, well what about Einstein?
I don't believe Einstein presented any proof
that God existed either.
> you write off well over 40% of the world population as having fundamentally flawed judgement
True. Actually the correct percentage I write
off as having flawed judgement is 100%. It's
one of the drawbacks of being human. We can
strive to be better though.
> Maybe the big problem that caused people to commit these atrocities against their fellow man weren't so much about religion as they were about ideology
I think you've hit on something important there.
Although I might want to be careful about those
generalizations?
> It's nice to see that you amended your generality to mention that people who have religious convictions can be "otherwise capable".
Just trying to stay in touch with reality. A
lot of people that do really stupid things can
otherwise be extremely capable. I see that every
day.
This just reinforces my point. Tour response isn't rational. It's an emotional rejection designed to 'win' an argument, not determine truth. If you can't rationally argue the case then belittle the proponent (with smug amusement in this case).
There's no more proof that god(s) exist than there
is for "the great pumpkin". If you can prove it by an argument other than faith you'll be the first in history.
If you believe in something that contradicts reality then you've got real problems. What's
frightening is how otherwise capable individuals
can accept such an obvious insanity into their
thinking. Religion is a poisonous virus that's
destroyed horrendous numbers of people.
> Do you think any religious person with any intelligence at all thinks that God created dashhounds?
Good point, but it seems to me that anyone who is
religious is out of touch with reality anyway.
Why argue about the intelligence of such people?
Their judgement is obviously fundamentally flawed.
A double plus ungood idea.
Have all my private data accessable by anyone in
the world? NO WAY MAN! I don't trust people
that much any more.