The terrorist actions we have seen have all been high profile - intended to make the most of the headlines in newspapers and TV news.
If the TV and newspapers hadn't reported a crap about the WTC attack then the intended result had failed. For the terrorists even a failed result is a success since the step up in security will cause a lot more harm and annoyance to people than what a single terrorist could do.
Not that I'm advocating censorship here, but I'm just presenting the reasoning from the terrorist leader point of view. They want their 15 minutes of fame. It's a PR trick to find out where to go for most visibility.
But for best long-term effect from an attack I could think of several other actions that would be a lot more effective - and easier to pull off.
Another issue is that engineering students are more likely to have enough skills to really pull off a terrorist act.
Many terrorist acts today involves a certain level of technology - everything from flying an aircraft to connecting two wires.
So there is no wonder that the terrorist organizations are targeting engineering students as a first choice. Just imagine how well another type of student would be able to rig an explosive or cause problems.
And there is also something behind the idea that many other societies are pushing hard in the engineering sector. It's only in the western world today that engineers are seen as some kind of low level creep that creates atomic bombs, weapons and biohazards - and that the best and highest rated people are instead working as actors, participate in reality shows like "Big Brother" or focus on essentially non-productive stuff like sociology.
GM is probably heading the same way as the Swedish shipyard industry was during the late 70's and 80's where it slowly died and dissipated. There is still a crane left in Eriksberg, Gothenburg from that era, but it's no longer used and the area is reclaimed for building apartments.
So GM seems to be a dinosaur and the only advantage to be seen is to avoid overflowing the US with unemployed former GM workers and subcontractors of GM.
The customers of today really don't care about brand - too many identical products are provided under the same brand with just some differences in styling.
And the latest version of the Subaru Legacy has some visual similarities to the Saab 9-5. But that's hardly surprising - since many different car brands do share the same style - even if the owners are different. In the end it's the designers that are hired that share ideas. Just look at how tail lights look on various cars from different years.
Re:I guess you could call it a ...
on
A Requiem For Saab
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Latest news is that Spyker haven't given up completely yet. They are right now handing in a new bid and it's up to GM to decide if they want to sell.
Re:Two questions from ignorance
on
A Requiem For Saab
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It was owned by an investment company called Investor. And they were just interested in cashing in money.
It seems like GM was mostly interested in technology and mot much in brand identity. The last decade of Saab has really went from something with at least some identity to something very average that can't compete with Toyota or other brands.
And since Saab was just another brand in the GM portfolio - and a small one - they weren't too keen on promoting it. Selling an Opel or Chevrolet would add more to the GM identity.
It also depends on the size and if it's going to be a new way of creating artificial gravity aside from spinning the ship.
Space battles wold be much like battles between submarines.
And then - there may be other reasons to not have spherical ships - like requirements for propulsion. It may be easier to keep the engine away from the habitation part than to have a lot of heavy shielding.
Remember - not all states have "Freedom of speech".
You can even be detained for having wrong color of your clothes. And during the Khmer Rouge period of Cambodia you could get killed if you had glasses.
It does contain software, but if you don't modify it and just use it "as is" then you are hardly messing things up.
Just download Wiimotelib and you can start hack your application.
And I recently succeeded in interfacing the Wiimote with a Windows Mobile - using the StoneStreet Bluetooth stack, so it's not impossible - even if the general consensus until now has been that it isn't possible.
It also means that the salesmen are getting more and more persistent on trying to push the "extended warranty" down your throat.
And that with no information about that many cases where you expect it to be valid invalidates the warranty anyway. Like when using your mobile phone while sweating...
No need to own a stake - sometimes a service is high on the search results anyway.
But sometimes it's better to buy a relatively small service that has the right stuff and adapt it to your model. So we will probably see a promoted music streaming service from Apple - streaming to the iPhone and other devices.
And the telcos will make a large amount of money from a streaming service to the iPhones. And especially for people who forgets about it and streams music while roaming. Can cause a phone bill the size of a new car.
You may have a clever detail in the code, and you may have a clever overall structure.
And in a larger solution there will always be parts that are clever and parts that are stupid. Sometimes by the same programmer.
And appeared to be a good idea at the time may end up being an outrageously stupid idea when time has passed and the component has grown over all limits.
It's also important to notice that an idea can be excellent from the point of understanding of the solution but have absolutely horrible performance. And it can be the opposite too, excellent performance but you have to be top grade to understand how it works.
The thing is to find a fine balance between structure and performance.
And as a designer - don't confuse people unnecessarily by using "smart" coding by utilizing "stored procedures" in external resources like databases. That will ultimately just cause headache. People may reason that using stored procedures will decouple the database from the code, but it also adds a new layer of code which is requiring different skills to maintain and that is tricky to debug in addition to not providing compile-time warnings/errors when there is a mismatch.
Out of curiosity - did they have other items in the backpacks or were they empty?
I'm thinking of papers that would take a while to read through but be completely legit, which would slow down things even more.
That reminds me of an old espionage story - an US intelligence officer was frequently in Moscow (or was employed by the embassy) and now and then he went out and purchased a set of various newspapers/magazines. Sat down on a park bench and then took up a pen and marked or wrote something down. Then he started walking again and handed out a newspaper or magazine to a random person. Imagine the amount of wasted work that the KGB had to do.
It may be that they run VoIP to your closest exchange and keep the analogue lines to your house.
But then it comes down to the encoders used what real bandwidth you get for dial up modems and faxes.
A much more important factor here is that if telephony starts to go over an IP network instead will that traffic be legally protected against wiretapping and other actions?
Slashdot Mirror
The terrorist actions we have seen have all been high profile - intended to make the most of the headlines in newspapers and TV news.
If the TV and newspapers hadn't reported a crap about the WTC attack then the intended result had failed. For the terrorists even a failed result is a success since the step up in security will cause a lot more harm and annoyance to people than what a single terrorist could do.
Not that I'm advocating censorship here, but I'm just presenting the reasoning from the terrorist leader point of view. They want their 15 minutes of fame. It's a PR trick to find out where to go for most visibility.
But for best long-term effect from an attack I could think of several other actions that would be a lot more effective - and easier to pull off.
Another issue is that engineering students are more likely to have enough skills to really pull off a terrorist act.
Many terrorist acts today involves a certain level of technology - everything from flying an aircraft to connecting two wires.
So there is no wonder that the terrorist organizations are targeting engineering students as a first choice. Just imagine how well another type of student would be able to rig an explosive or cause problems.
And there is also something behind the idea that many other societies are pushing hard in the engineering sector. It's only in the western world today that engineers are seen as some kind of low level creep that creates atomic bombs, weapons and biohazards - and that the best and highest rated people are instead working as actors, participate in reality shows like "Big Brother" or focus on essentially non-productive stuff like sociology.
And I suspect that the Vatican has been cursing Dave Allen for many years.
GM is probably heading the same way as the Swedish shipyard industry was during the late 70's and 80's where it slowly died and dissipated. There is still a crane left in Eriksberg, Gothenburg from that era, but it's no longer used and the area is reclaimed for building apartments.
So GM seems to be a dinosaur and the only advantage to be seen is to avoid overflowing the US with unemployed former GM workers and subcontractors of GM.
The customers of today really don't care about brand - too many identical products are provided under the same brand with just some differences in styling.
And the latest version of the Subaru Legacy has some visual similarities to the Saab 9-5. But that's hardly surprising - since many different car brands do share the same style - even if the owners are different. In the end it's the designers that are hired that share ideas. Just look at how tail lights look on various cars from different years.
Latest news is that Spyker haven't given up completely yet. They are right now handing in a new bid and it's up to GM to decide if they want to sell.
It was owned by an investment company called Investor. And they were just interested in cashing in money.
It seems like GM was mostly interested in technology and mot much in brand identity. The last decade of Saab has really went from something with at least some identity to something very average that can't compete with Toyota or other brands.
And since Saab was just another brand in the GM portfolio - and a small one - they weren't too keen on promoting it. Selling an Opel or Chevrolet would add more to the GM identity.
I didn't insist that it was a good thing - just that it's a fact.
Since phones are frequently replaced for various reasons the software upgrade issue seems to be less interesting anyway.
A new model replacing the old with better hardware comes at least every year. And people do drop their phones and a lot of other things happens too.
It also depends on the size and if it's going to be a new way of creating artificial gravity aside from spinning the ship.
Space battles wold be much like battles between submarines.
And then - there may be other reasons to not have spherical ships - like requirements for propulsion. It may be easier to keep the engine away from the habitation part than to have a lot of heavy shielding.
I would like to see a context-sensitive use of URL:s so that some URL:s starts IE others Firefox and yet others Opera.
Remember - not all states have "Freedom of speech".
You can even be detained for having wrong color of your clothes. And during the Khmer Rouge period of Cambodia you could get killed if you had glasses.
It does contain software, but if you don't modify it and just use it "as is" then you are hardly messing things up.
Just download Wiimotelib and you can start hack your application.
And I recently succeeded in interfacing the Wiimote with a Windows Mobile - using the StoneStreet Bluetooth stack, so it's not impossible - even if the general consensus until now has been that it isn't possible.
It also means that the salesmen are getting more and more persistent on trying to push the "extended warranty" down your throat.
And that with no information about that many cases where you expect it to be valid invalidates the warranty anyway. Like when using your mobile phone while sweating...
Spread the confusion by always killing your cookies and use different browsers.
But personally I run my own mail server and use only Google for searching.
One way to speed up things would be to dismiss a lot of patents for being too obvious.
And that's something that doesn't need to require too much skill.
Also make sure that any patent dismissed for obviousness can't be refiled.
No need to own a stake - sometimes a service is high on the search results anyway.
But sometimes it's better to buy a relatively small service that has the right stuff and adapt it to your model. So we will probably see a promoted music streaming service from Apple - streaming to the iPhone and other devices.
And the telcos will make a large amount of money from a streaming service to the iPhones. And especially for people who forgets about it and streams music while roaming. Can cause a phone bill the size of a new car.
There is clever and there is clever.
You may have a clever detail in the code, and you may have a clever overall structure.
And in a larger solution there will always be parts that are clever and parts that are stupid. Sometimes by the same programmer.
And appeared to be a good idea at the time may end up being an outrageously stupid idea when time has passed and the component has grown over all limits.
It's also important to notice that an idea can be excellent from the point of understanding of the solution but have absolutely horrible performance. And it can be the opposite too, excellent performance but you have to be top grade to understand how it works.
The thing is to find a fine balance between structure and performance.
And as a designer - don't confuse people unnecessarily by using "smart" coding by utilizing "stored procedures" in external resources like databases. That will ultimately just cause headache. People may reason that using stored procedures will decouple the database from the code, but it also adds a new layer of code which is requiring different skills to maintain and that is tricky to debug in addition to not providing compile-time warnings/errors when there is a mismatch.
Out of curiosity - did they have other items in the backpacks or were they empty?
I'm thinking of papers that would take a while to read through but be completely legit, which would slow down things even more.
That reminds me of an old espionage story - an US intelligence officer was frequently in Moscow (or was employed by the embassy) and now and then he went out and purchased a set of various newspapers/magazines. Sat down on a park bench and then took up a pen and marked or wrote something down. Then he started walking again and handed out a newspaper or magazine to a random person. Imagine the amount of wasted work that the KGB had to do.
Add to that the fact that some IP addresses are shared by a lot of virtual sites which makes statistics about as precise as the slashdot polls.
For some areas around where I live that's the fact, so it's not that silly.
It may be that they run VoIP to your closest exchange and keep the analogue lines to your house.
But then it comes down to the encoders used what real bandwidth you get for dial up modems and faxes.
A much more important factor here is that if telephony starts to go over an IP network instead will that traffic be legally protected against wiretapping and other actions?
Don't hold your breath - they may reclaim the copper and force you to get a mobile phone.
If they don't save money - do they use the computers in an efficient manner or are they just advanced typewriters?
I also agree. Call a hammer a hammer...
There are of course subvariants, but that's for the initiated people.