mostly W hasn't gone rampant with his powers - he just is misleading enough (either by cluelessness or active deception) to get people to do what he wants.
I've been an "anyone but Bush" supporter for a long time, but W hasn't done what Nixon did - he has "merely" abused the trust of the people and the powers given to him by others, while Nixon actively claimed powers belonging (legally) to others.
What if Social security decide to open a brokerage business for retirement, and decide that they would sell their services through the list of names and SS# that they have. SS is empowered to use that data only in certain ways - use of it to sell their own products is a misuse of the data, which isn't theirs in the first place, but the gov'ts. They can't use data obtained legally for one purpose for another purpose without gaining permission to do so.
Verisign has behaved similarly. They made SiteFinder (which is fine) but then broke an agreed-upon standard (under which they were given authority to act in the first place) to make it run while usurping common property (the namespace of misspelled sites) as their own. They did not ask for permission to use unused namespace to redirect to SF - they did it on their own. The namespace domain was never Verisign's to use - they were given authority over but only insofar as to execute their job. They attempted to use communal property for their sole use, and are now suing because they were prevented from doing so and were unwilling to concede what was necessary to gain permission to use it.
I can't use my employers' resources for a business of my own. Verisign should be similarly restrained.
I would much prefer if Verisign's management were infested with African parasites of various sorts. Guinea worms would be a good start.
Verisign hijacked people's computers because they typed invalid names, and "helped" them by advertising themselves while disabling computers that depended on the standard that Verisign unilaterally and capriciously broke. Verisign then has the gall to sue the organization that forced them to obey their previously agreed-upon standards. Isn't this like Nixon suing the Watergate special prosecutor for preventing him from "modifying" the government from a variant of a representative democracy to a dictatorship? After all, the prosecutor made him obey the law and wait through a long, drawn-out process known as legislation. I guess it would have been much easier and quicker to allow the President to do what he wants without waiting for Congress to get around and pass a law, right?
Hello, Verisign, welcome to my foes list, you useless, talentless a**holes... Oh wait, you were there already, after you enabled the Charlie-Fox known as SiteFinder. My bad.
There aren't any MS security holes for which a patch hasn't been released yet? I thought that there have been multiple problems for which MS took 6 months or more to release a fix, all the while during which the hole was known and exploitable. If you kept your machine patched on a regular basis, you would still miss these holes because they weren't fixed. The holes may not have been used, but the longer a security hole goes with no patch, the greater the odds are it will be exploited.
Then of course, as others have said, there is the issue of the patches breaking other things....
and spammers have a lot of time, a lot of computers, and all the incentive in the world. What makes you think that only MS can find the holes in their software? Brute force, lots of people, and lots of patience can do quite a lot - brilliance is not required. Even dumb people are smart sometimes ("the problem with stupid people is not that they are predictably stupid, but that they are unpredictably smart.")
The sig on/. says it best : 10 guys at MS working 9-5 versus 10 million file sharers working nights and weekends - do the math in man-hours...
MS wants to make computers secure for copyright holders from those who purchase their output (or not), they want to make email more secure and less spammable, and they claim to have an emphasis on security. The quotes (I haven't RTA, so fire away) seem to imply a level of security below "security through obscurity" (I call it "security through stupidity") incompatible with securing anything more valuable than yesterday's used toilet paper. These are the people I'm supposed to trust with my bank accounts (or already do), my pictures, video, and music, my checkbook and taxes, and my personal mail? Why would copyright holders or anyone else with anything of value trust MS to secure their work? Why would users trust them to make something that works well and does what they want if MS doesn't understand or care what they want? They may be able to write programs, but if they have such a distorted view of reality, how are they going to understand what others want or how to help them to get it?
Willful stupidity is not a defense mechanism - it is a way for MS to say "Got ya, suckers!" MS must figure that it can afford because of market share to ignore and antagonize its customers while using its positions to find new people to antagonize - usually businesses operating under willful stupidity end up in Chapters 7 or 11, so I can't figure that they're that stupid. They must think that others are however, that as long as they have a pretty butterfly and nice ads no one will pay attention to the bugginess and insecurity of their software and the denial of their executives. I hope this is wrong.
I don't disagree with what you wrote. Buying expensive furniture, etc. isn't always bad - but when you buy it there should be a good reason that you do it. You shouldn't buy the furniture because it's cool, but because it is likely to make your employees happier and/or increase productivity or decrease turnover. If there is a cheaper solution to do the same thing that doesn't have serious disadvantages (added maintenance, for example), then one should do that in preference. If there is something else that might improve employee health/happiness/productivity more, then one should do that instead.
My point was simply that sometimes executives and employees treat the company's money (or the investors' money) as if were of no value and spend it accordingly, particularly on things for which they would not spend their own money. It seems like you should treat your investors' money as if it were more valuable than your own - you should act as best you can to use it properly.
just that the executives who ran it are accused of treating your company like it was their personal piggy bank, to the company's (and its investors' and employees') detriment.
I think "someone else's money" sums it up pretty well.
1) could they have spent their money on something else that would have improved your lives more for the same money?
2) did having the chairs either decrease turnover (and make the people working there happier for less pay than it might have taken otherwise)? did the chairs improve worker output or quality more than spending the same money on something else would have?
Others have referred to other potential solution to reclining problems that might solve the same problems at lower price/higher effectiveness. Part of why people don't buy these chairs for themselves often is because the price doesn't justify the expense. If there are better or cheaper ways to make people happier and I'm spending someone else's money (which I shouldn't be spending unless I think I can get something for both the investors and my business for it) then spending money on the chairs doesn't make sense.
The chairs may have been nice, and I'm glad that the company was fair in giving them to everyone. The job of companies is to spend the money efficiently - part of that is keeping their workers happy and productive. There might have been better ways to spend the money to make you happy than on a chair; when companies spend their money inefficiently or badly (as if it weren't theirs), in the long run everyone loses.
You can take this in context with my liberal opinions (the gov't is perhaps one of the worst organizations for spending other people's money).
I can understand that you like the chairs. I spend more than I should on fancy pens, and one can reasonably argue that they're not the smartest thing for me to spend my money on. On the other hand, it is MY MONEY (at least until it goes for taxes, my gf, etc.)
The problem isn't that any of these items such as the Herman Miller chairs, the Hummers (although I could be convinced on that one...) or the Harleys aren't good, but that they're bought with someone else's money. Like the Tyco and Enron folks now, the dot-com people spent their investors' money as if it was given for their personal enjoyment rather than to fund a business intended to succeed. Items such as the above are good products, but their costs to individuals are not in most cases worth the benefits to the individuals. On the other hand, things like this are good if the money is someone else's; then the only comparison required is whether you could buy something else with which you would be happier with the money.
Bottom line - if these items are worth your money, buying them makes sense. If it isn't worth your own money to buy them, however, than it certainly isn't the job of your investors or companies to buy them for you, and they are ultimately counterproductive to the missions those people intended to achieve (because the money could almost certainly be used for things more likely to achieve their ends). When companies buy these things, someone else almost certain got ripped off to buy them - whether it is their customers, investors, or others in the company. Their presence says that the people running the show treat other people's money as their own personal piggy bank, and such people aren't to be trusted (at least not with my money).
I didn't get rods rights (fathom = 6 ft). On the other hand, did you bother to read the last 1/2 of the message (metric time has problems approximating timescales with direct physical implications such as days)?
Metric is worse at common scales but better for very large or very small things. The lack of factors of 2 and 3 in metric is outweighed (IMO) because in English units you have to remember which factor to use to convert between units (English unit bases are like standards - there are so many to choose from). This destroys most of the advantages of English units - memory not spent dividing 10 by 3 and 6 is spent instead trying to remember how many rods in a mile and trying to figure if the system operates on base 2, 3, or 110.
For everything other than time, metric is probably easier rather than harder computationally. I don't know why we don't use it for anything other than soda.
the people who are telling you to "trust us, we're better" have left lots of people high and dry before. With open source one doesn't require blind faith to operate - one can actually look at the code. If MS had been better at its job or fairer to its users before, their word might be good enough for most people like me who don't want to look at the source code - but they've been neither good nor fair, and so their word is by no means good enough.
When MS tells you to trust them, the first instinct (as with almost anyone, not just MS) should be not to turn your back.
If MS did a better job of writing their OSes in the first place (for example, by giving viruses less room to run and not allowing them to do what they want by default), their OSes probably wouldn't have had such a desperate need for anti-virus and security software. Extra locks on the front door aren't bad - but when the windows (pardon the pun) are large and unsecured, the added security is only illusory. Fix what's broken, rather than adding kluges to cover over the cracks, and then MS OSes might actually work better and be more secure.
The other issue, of course, is that if their antivirus sftware is as problematic as some of their other software, it may provide an even more illusory sense of security (because the AV sofftware doesn't work when users think it does). Do your software right the first time, and you won't have to do it badly a second time.
When MS gets going with TCPA, then this will really get fun - like having a large pit bull with a weak chain dragging you around. When the chain breaks, your computer will be yours, for as long as it takes for the pit bull takes to reach you. TCPA has the potential to take bad security to a whole new level - giving MS (in addition to the spammers and other malcontents who have already been doing it) the opportunity to take over your computer. Giving more power to your computer means that the security (the chain) has to be really good or people will be able to use your computer to do more against you as well. Bad security is the chain and the dog - when bad security becomes antagonistic to its users rather than merely useless, users will be hurt. Adding more software to do this is like adding links in the chain - only one has to break for you to be in trouble, and the dog can more easily bite you as well.
This is consistent with a business model of "embrace and extend" which wouldn't be good even if MS did what they extended to well. Since MS hasn't done well at extending (the software they've extended to such as IE hasn't been great), this doesn't necessarily improve security. Adding bad software to cover the flaws in bad software is not a good solution to a security problem. To borrow a Scotty quote from ST (well, badly), "The more plumbing they put in, the easier it is to stop up the drains."
Temperatures - there is more fine distinction in Fahrenheit than Celsius; however, the thermometers presumably have the same errors whether graduated in degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius. Division isn't an issue here.
Liquid - 1 pint = 16 oz
1 quart = 32 oz
1 gallon = 8 quarts
1 barrel = ? gallons
(+ tablespoons and teaspoons)
Mass/weight - lots of little measures (grains, etc.)
1 pound = 16 ounces
1 short ton = 2000 lbs
1 long ton = 2200 lbs (I think)
These measures are more easily divided by 2 but are no easier to divide by 3 than metric measures - most measuring cups are marked in 1/3's in addition to 1/2, 1/4, etc.
Length: (lots of binary fractions of inches)
1 foot = 12 inches
3 feet = 1 yard
6 feet = 1 rod
110 rods = 660 ft = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 5280 ft = 1 mile
Length measures are more easily divided by 2 and 3 than metric, but the facility of division comes at a cost. The bases change between length measurements; there is no constant factor of 12 (or 6) between units, but a widely varying difference. If you have to divide by varying numbers to do unit conversions (and have to remember what base goes with what), this negates much of the availability of factors of 2 and 3.
The divisibility of English units by 2 and 3 rather than 2 and 5 would be more convincing if the English system kept constant ratios between units (or close), but it doesn't. Length goes in units of 12 to 3 to 2 to 110 (to leagues - 20?). An added bonus is the lack of large and small units - weight has some small units but to go large or small in any of the English units requires lots of arithmetical legerdemain, and still gives numbers that are big and unpretty.
English units persist because of stubbornness, and because they have more units in the measures that people are likely to use than metric. Common distances, food weight, and some liquid volumes are more conveniently measured in English units; they could be done in metric, but the extra math isn't worth it to most people.
Time is a different issue altogether - primarily because metric has no good time frame that corresponds to the time most people use (particularly the day). Seconds are used, which is fine for measures and comparisons of small and large numbers, but there aren't good metric equivalents for days and hours. Since the factor of 60 is ingrained in our measure of time, factors of 10 will likely give units that are either too small or too large for common use.
That doesn't count those who were intoxicated and still performed at a "high" level (e.g, Mickey Mantle, Dock Ellis (who apparently through a no-hitter while on an LSD trip)).
the lukewarm prosecution of the Microsoft case, energy policy, Enron, and Halliburton might indicate that if you are a big company or have donated large amounts of money to the appropriate party, you might be able to break the law, hose your investors and employees, and walk away scot-free (or nearly so). Executives might be encouraged to take the money and run, knowing that if they give money to the right people they could escape the consequences of their misdeeds. I don't think GWB has anything to do with SCO, but when public policy is written as a consequence of donations to the exclusion of much else, executives might understandably believe that other things might be purchaseable as well.
I guess that places like this would pay you to drop cow manure on customers' cars - it would after all be only slightly more destructive and slightly less helpful than their tech support. If there is money in the job, someone (whether in the US or elsewhere) will do these jobs and do them "well" (badly, but according to the company's desire). In some cases, after all, these are jobs of the "new economy" (the modern version of "getting a silk purse out of a sow's ear") and may be some of the few jobs available; in addition, they provide valuable training in the growing field of jobs (such as Enron accountant) where one can make lots of money while (or by) screwing your customers, investors, and/or employees. The incentives for people to take these jobs exist, so the fact that someone will do these jobs is unsurprising.
The more relevant question is "Why is doing a bad job at a task (and hurting your paid customers) profitable?"
Thank you for your comment. I made the mistake of using (bias = having an opinion on the object of an analysis) rather than what it should have been, which is (I think) (bias = an opinion which determines the outcome of one's analysis). I probably would have been better off saying "because the UCS has a political position doesn't render their commentary incorrect" instead of what I did say.
Good idea Infinium! Now everybody knows about the article you didn't want them to see. Intimidating people into not revealing inconvenient facts only works if you're big enough and ruthless enough to scare the people who have the information into submission. Since you aren't big enough to do that, people are willing to stand up against you - and the information you wanted to keep away from the world is spread about for all to see.
Your response to the article should tell your prospective investors that you're not smart enough to actually deserve their money or to use it wisely.
1) (n) a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
2) (n) (fabric cut)
3) (adj) (referring to a fabric cut)
4) (v) to cause to be biased
5) (v) to influence an outcome in an unfair way (e.g., "you are biasing my choice by telling me yours"
I intended definition 1 (referring to the UCS) - I didn't intend to imply an inability to objectively discuss a topic, but perhaps an inhibition. "Preconceived viewpoint" would perhaps have been a better expression for my intended meaning of bias.
Even though the UCS (may) have an ideological bias (as in def. 1), that does not render their findings incorrect (they may be incomplete but not necessarily wrong). I could also be incorrect - they might not be biased as in 1) - they may be able to provide both complete and objective discussion on GWB's use of science.
Did you have any other issues with what I wrote (or did I not address your primary issue)?
Open inquiry allows the data that industry people submit and that environmental people submit to be compared with other data to determine their validity for making decisions. Some proprietary data might be best kept secret, but keeping data used for public policy analysis secret should require fairly stringent conditions. Analysis of policy in fact requires openness. Closed meetings and discussions beg one to ask whether the stated motivations and analysis are the real ones, and prevent the refutation of bad logic and decision making (because no one simultaneously knows the input into the policy and the full set of data supporting or contradicting it, or those that do won't discuss them openly).
Secrecy in gov't requires trust from citizens, trust that has been violated often enough that it is hard to give. Secrecy without obvious benefits to the gov't or the country is destructive of the freedoms we have and that the gov't depends on (to generate the money it needs to work, for example). The benefits (to anyone other than the Bush Administration and his political friends) don't seem to be present. The US was created by people who did not believe that such trust was a good idea because it was a gateway to despotism, and subsequent events have not disproven the wisdom of their opinion.
Bias helps to understand why someone takes a view and also what facts/theories/ideas they might be ignoring or not telling you about. It doesn't tell you what is right or wrong. While I have a bias against the Bush administration and their policy of allowing affected business to write their own regulations (e.g. Cheney and the secret meetings over energy policy), those businesses have knowledge that is useful to the process (they know things about their businesses and their process use that others wouldn't know) and should have input into what happens. The UCS has a bias as well, but they are made up of smart people who might also know something. The bias of these groups doesn't negate the validity of their arguments. Ultimately, the facts will out - the biases will explain why the UCS looked into these issues but do not deny the validity (or lack thereof) of their results.
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mostly W hasn't gone rampant with his powers - he just is misleading enough (either by cluelessness or active deception) to get people to do what he wants.
I've been an "anyone but Bush" supporter for a long time, but W hasn't done what Nixon did - he has "merely" abused the trust of the people and the powers given to him by others, while Nixon actively claimed powers belonging (legally) to others.
What if Social security decide to open a brokerage business for retirement, and decide that they would sell their services through the list of names and SS# that they have. SS is empowered to use that data only in certain ways - use of it to sell their own products is a misuse of the data, which isn't theirs in the first place, but the gov'ts. They can't use data obtained legally for one purpose for another purpose without gaining permission to do so.
Verisign has behaved similarly. They made SiteFinder (which is fine) but then broke an agreed-upon standard (under which they were given authority to act in the first place) to make it run while usurping common property (the namespace of misspelled sites) as their own. They did not ask for permission to use unused namespace to redirect to SF - they did it on their own. The namespace domain was never Verisign's to use - they were given authority over but only insofar as to execute their job. They attempted to use communal property for their sole use, and are now suing because they were prevented from doing so and were unwilling to concede what was necessary to gain permission to use it.
I can't use my employers' resources for a business of my own. Verisign should be similarly restrained.
I would much prefer if Verisign's management were infested with African parasites of various sorts. Guinea worms would be a good start.
Verisign hijacked people's computers because they typed invalid names, and "helped" them by advertising themselves while disabling computers that depended on the standard that Verisign unilaterally and capriciously broke. Verisign then has the gall to sue the organization that forced them to obey their previously agreed-upon standards. Isn't this like Nixon suing the Watergate special prosecutor for preventing him from "modifying" the government from a variant of a representative democracy to a dictatorship? After all, the prosecutor made him obey the law and wait through a long, drawn-out process known as legislation. I guess it would have been much easier and quicker to allow the President to do what he wants without waiting for Congress to get around and pass a law, right?
Hello, Verisign, welcome to my foes list, you useless, talentless a**holes... Oh wait, you were there already, after you enabled the Charlie-Fox known as SiteFinder. My bad.
There aren't any MS security holes for which a patch hasn't been released yet? I thought that there have been multiple problems for which MS took 6 months or more to release a fix, all the while during which the hole was known and exploitable. If you kept your machine patched on a regular basis, you would still miss these holes because they weren't fixed. The holes may not have been used, but the longer a security hole goes with no patch, the greater the odds are it will be exploited.
Then of course, as others have said, there is the issue of the patches breaking other things....
and spammers have a lot of time, a lot of computers, and all the incentive in the world. What makes you think that only MS can find the holes in their software? Brute force, lots of people, and lots of patience can do quite a lot - brilliance is not required. Even dumb people are smart sometimes ("the problem with stupid people is not that they are predictably stupid, but that they are unpredictably smart.")
/. says it best : 10 guys at MS working 9-5 versus 10 million file sharers working nights and weekends - do the math in man-hours...
The sig on
MS wants to make computers secure for copyright holders from those who purchase their output (or not), they want to make email more secure and less spammable, and they claim to have an emphasis on security. The quotes (I haven't RTA, so fire away) seem to imply a level of security below "security through obscurity" (I call it "security through stupidity") incompatible with securing anything more valuable than yesterday's used toilet paper. These are the people I'm supposed to trust with my bank accounts (or already do), my pictures, video, and music, my checkbook and taxes, and my personal mail? Why would copyright holders or anyone else with anything of value trust MS to secure their work? Why would users trust them to make something that works well and does what they want if MS doesn't understand or care what they want? They may be able to write programs, but if they have such a distorted view of reality, how are they going to understand what others want or how to help them to get it?
Willful stupidity is not a defense mechanism - it is a way for MS to say "Got ya, suckers!" MS must figure that it can afford because of market share to ignore and antagonize its customers while using its positions to find new people to antagonize - usually businesses operating under willful stupidity end up in Chapters 7 or 11, so I can't figure that they're that stupid. They must think that others are however, that as long as they have a pretty butterfly and nice ads no one will pay attention to the bugginess and insecurity of their software and the denial of their executives. I hope this is wrong.
I don't disagree with what you wrote. Buying expensive furniture, etc. isn't always bad - but when you buy it there should be a good reason that you do it. You shouldn't buy the furniture because it's cool, but because it is likely to make your employees happier and/or increase productivity or decrease turnover. If there is a cheaper solution to do the same thing that doesn't have serious disadvantages (added maintenance, for example), then one should do that in preference. If there is something else that might improve employee health/happiness/productivity more, then one should do that instead.
My point was simply that sometimes executives and employees treat the company's money (or the investors' money) as if were of no value and spend it accordingly, particularly on things for which they would not spend their own money. It seems like you should treat your investors' money as if it were more valuable than your own - you should act as best you can to use it properly.
just that the executives who ran it are accused of treating your company like it was their personal piggy bank, to the company's (and its investors' and employees') detriment.
I think "someone else's money" sums it up pretty well.
1) could they have spent their money on something else that would have improved your lives more for the same money?
2) did having the chairs either decrease turnover (and make the people working there happier for less pay than it might have taken otherwise)? did the chairs improve worker output or quality more than spending the same money on something else would have?
Others have referred to other potential solution to reclining problems that might solve the same problems at lower price/higher effectiveness. Part of why people don't buy these chairs for themselves often is because the price doesn't justify the expense. If there are better or cheaper ways to make people happier and I'm spending someone else's money (which I shouldn't be spending unless I think I can get something for both the investors and my business for it) then spending money on the chairs doesn't make sense.
The chairs may have been nice, and I'm glad that the company was fair in giving them to everyone. The job of companies is to spend the money efficiently - part of that is keeping their workers happy and productive. There might have been better ways to spend the money to make you happy than on a chair; when companies spend their money inefficiently or badly (as if it weren't theirs), in the long run everyone loses.
You can take this in context with my liberal opinions (the gov't is perhaps one of the worst organizations for spending other people's money).
I can understand that you like the chairs. I spend more than I should on fancy pens, and one can reasonably argue that they're not the smartest thing for me to spend my money on. On the other hand, it is MY MONEY (at least until it goes for taxes, my gf, etc.)
The problem isn't that any of these items such as the Herman Miller chairs, the Hummers (although I could be convinced on that one...) or the Harleys aren't good, but that they're bought with someone else's money. Like the Tyco and Enron folks now, the dot-com people spent their investors' money as if it was given for their personal enjoyment rather than to fund a business intended to succeed. Items such as the above are good products, but their costs to individuals are not in most cases worth the benefits to the individuals. On the other hand, things like this are good if the money is someone else's; then the only comparison required is whether you could buy something else with which you would be happier with the money.
Bottom line - if these items are worth your money, buying them makes sense. If it isn't worth your own money to buy them, however, than it certainly isn't the job of your investors or companies to buy them for you, and they are ultimately counterproductive to the missions those people intended to achieve (because the money could almost certainly be used for things more likely to achieve their ends). When companies buy these things, someone else almost certain got ripped off to buy them - whether it is their customers, investors, or others in the company. Their presence says that the people running the show treat other people's money as their own personal piggy bank, and such people aren't to be trusted (at least not with my money).
I didn't get rods rights (fathom = 6 ft). On the other hand, did you bother to read the last 1/2 of the message (metric time has problems approximating timescales with direct physical implications such as days)?
Metric is worse at common scales but better for very large or very small things. The lack of factors of 2 and 3 in metric is outweighed (IMO) because in English units you have to remember which factor to use to convert between units (English unit bases are like standards - there are so many to choose from). This destroys most of the advantages of English units - memory not spent dividing 10 by 3 and 6 is spent instead trying to remember how many rods in a mile and trying to figure if the system operates on base 2, 3, or 110.
For everything other than time, metric is probably easier rather than harder computationally. I don't know why we don't use it for anything other than soda.
the people who are telling you to "trust us, we're better" have left lots of people high and dry before. With open source one doesn't require blind faith to operate - one can actually look at the code. If MS had been better at its job or fairer to its users before, their word might be good enough for most people like me who don't want to look at the source code - but they've been neither good nor fair, and so their word is by no means good enough.
When MS tells you to trust them, the first instinct (as with almost anyone, not just MS) should be not to turn your back.
oh wait, there aren't so many...oops.
I guess users really don't do that.
If MS did a better job of writing their OSes in the first place (for example, by giving viruses less room to run and not allowing them to do what they want by default), their OSes probably wouldn't have had such a desperate need for anti-virus and security software. Extra locks on the front door aren't bad - but when the windows (pardon the pun) are large and unsecured, the added security is only illusory. Fix what's broken, rather than adding kluges to cover over the cracks, and then MS OSes might actually work better and be more secure.
The other issue, of course, is that if their antivirus sftware is as problematic as some of their other software, it may provide an even more illusory sense of security (because the AV sofftware doesn't work when users think it does). Do your software right the first time, and you won't have to do it badly a second time.
When MS gets going with TCPA, then this will really get fun - like having a large pit bull with a weak chain dragging you around. When the chain breaks, your computer will be yours, for as long as it takes for the pit bull takes to reach you. TCPA has the potential to take bad security to a whole new level - giving MS (in addition to the spammers and other malcontents who have already been doing it) the opportunity to take over your computer. Giving more power to your computer means that the security (the chain) has to be really good or people will be able to use your computer to do more against you as well. Bad security is the chain and the dog - when bad security becomes antagonistic to its users rather than merely useless, users will be hurt. Adding more software to do this is like adding links in the chain - only one has to break for you to be in trouble, and the dog can more easily bite you as well.
This is consistent with a business model of "embrace and extend" which wouldn't be good even if MS did what they extended to well. Since MS hasn't done well at extending (the software they've extended to such as IE hasn't been great), this doesn't necessarily improve security. Adding bad software to cover the flaws in bad software is not a good solution to a security problem. To borrow a Scotty quote from ST (well, badly), "The more plumbing they put in, the easier it is to stop up the drains."
I'm just wondering - the concept of Lenny Kravitz underneath at least six feet of water is okay, but what was the point?
Temperatures - there is more fine distinction in Fahrenheit than Celsius; however, the thermometers presumably have the same errors whether graduated in degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius. Division isn't an issue here.
Liquid - 1 pint = 16 oz
1 quart = 32 oz
1 gallon = 8 quarts
1 barrel = ? gallons
(+ tablespoons and teaspoons)
Mass/weight - lots of little measures (grains, etc.)
1 pound = 16 ounces
1 short ton = 2000 lbs
1 long ton = 2200 lbs (I think)
These measures are more easily divided by 2 but are no easier to divide by 3 than metric measures - most measuring cups are marked in 1/3's in addition to 1/2, 1/4, etc.
Length: (lots of binary fractions of inches)
1 foot = 12 inches
3 feet = 1 yard
6 feet = 1 rod
110 rods = 660 ft = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 5280 ft = 1 mile
Length measures are more easily divided by 2 and 3 than metric, but the facility of division comes at a cost. The bases change between length measurements; there is no constant factor of 12 (or 6) between units, but a widely varying difference. If you have to divide by varying numbers to do unit conversions (and have to remember what base goes with what), this negates much of the availability of factors of 2 and 3.
The divisibility of English units by 2 and 3 rather than 2 and 5 would be more convincing if the English system kept constant ratios between units (or close), but it doesn't. Length goes in units of 12 to 3 to 2 to 110 (to leagues - 20?). An added bonus is the lack of large and small units - weight has some small units but to go large or small in any of the English units requires lots of arithmetical legerdemain, and still gives numbers that are big and unpretty.
English units persist because of stubbornness, and because they have more units in the measures that people are likely to use than metric. Common distances, food weight, and some liquid volumes are more conveniently measured in English units; they could be done in metric, but the extra math isn't worth it to most people.
Time is a different issue altogether - primarily because metric has no good time frame that corresponds to the time most people use (particularly the day). Seconds are used, which is fine for measures and comparisons of small and large numbers, but there aren't good metric equivalents for days and hours. Since the factor of 60 is ingrained in our measure of time, factors of 10 will likely give units that are either too small or too large for common use.
"We aren't afraid of the Russians, just their helicopters."
Obviously they didn't think the Russian helicopters (e.g. the MI-24) performed dismally in Afghanistan.
...or Tony Gwynn, or John Kruk, or Babe Ruth...
That doesn't count those who were intoxicated and still performed at a "high" level (e.g, Mickey Mantle, Dock Ellis (who apparently through a no-hitter while on an LSD trip)).
the lukewarm prosecution of the Microsoft case, energy policy, Enron, and Halliburton might indicate that if you are a big company or have donated large amounts of money to the appropriate party, you might be able to break the law, hose your investors and employees, and walk away scot-free (or nearly so). Executives might be encouraged to take the money and run, knowing that if they give money to the right people they could escape the consequences of their misdeeds. I don't think GWB has anything to do with SCO, but when public policy is written as a consequence of donations to the exclusion of much else, executives might understandably believe that other things might be purchaseable as well.
I guess that places like this would pay you to drop cow manure on customers' cars - it would after all be only slightly more destructive and slightly less helpful than their tech support. If there is money in the job, someone (whether in the US or elsewhere) will do these jobs and do them "well" (badly, but according to the company's desire). In some cases, after all, these are jobs of the "new economy" (the modern version of "getting a silk purse out of a sow's ear") and may be some of the few jobs available; in addition, they provide valuable training in the growing field of jobs (such as Enron accountant) where one can make lots of money while (or by) screwing your customers, investors, and/or employees. The incentives for people to take these jobs exist, so the fact that someone will do these jobs is unsurprising.
The more relevant question is "Why is doing a bad job at a task (and hurting your paid customers) profitable?"
Thank you for your comment. I made the mistake of using (bias = having an opinion on the object of an analysis) rather than what it should have been, which is (I think) (bias = an opinion which determines the outcome of one's analysis). I probably would have been better off saying "because the UCS has a political position doesn't render their commentary incorrect" instead of what I did say.
Good idea Infinium! Now everybody knows about the article you didn't want them to see. Intimidating people into not revealing inconvenient facts only works if you're big enough and ruthless enough to scare the people who have the information into submission. Since you aren't big enough to do that, people are willing to stand up against you - and the information you wanted to keep away from the world is spread about for all to see.
Your response to the article should tell your prospective investors that you're not smart enough to actually deserve their money or to use it wisely.
(via hyperdictionary.com)
1) (n) a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
2) (n) (fabric cut)
3) (adj) (referring to a fabric cut)
4) (v) to cause to be biased
5) (v) to influence an outcome in an unfair way (e.g., "you are biasing my choice by telling me yours"
I intended definition 1 (referring to the UCS) - I didn't intend to imply an inability to objectively discuss a topic, but perhaps an inhibition. "Preconceived viewpoint" would perhaps have been a better expression for my intended meaning of bias.
Even though the UCS (may) have an ideological bias (as in def. 1), that does not render their findings incorrect (they may be incomplete but not necessarily wrong). I could also be incorrect - they might not be biased as in 1) - they may be able to provide both complete and objective discussion on GWB's use of science.
Did you have any other issues with what I wrote (or did I not address your primary issue)?
Open inquiry allows the data that industry people submit and that environmental people submit to be compared with other data to determine their validity for making decisions. Some proprietary data might be best kept secret, but keeping data used for public policy analysis secret should require fairly stringent conditions. Analysis of policy in fact requires openness. Closed meetings and discussions beg one to ask whether the stated motivations and analysis are the real ones, and prevent the refutation of bad logic and decision making (because no one simultaneously knows the input into the policy and the full set of data supporting or contradicting it, or those that do won't discuss them openly).
Secrecy in gov't requires trust from citizens, trust that has been violated often enough that it is hard to give. Secrecy without obvious benefits to the gov't or the country is destructive of the freedoms we have and that the gov't depends on (to generate the money it needs to work, for example). The benefits (to anyone other than the Bush Administration and his political friends) don't seem to be present. The US was created by people who did not believe that such trust was a good idea because it was a gateway to despotism, and subsequent events have not disproven the wisdom of their opinion.
Solid analysis can stand the light of reason.
Bias helps to understand why someone takes a view and also what facts/theories/ideas they might be ignoring or not telling you about. It doesn't tell you what is right or wrong. While I have a bias against the Bush administration and their policy of allowing affected business to write their own regulations (e.g. Cheney and the secret meetings over energy policy), those businesses have knowledge that is useful to the process (they know things about their businesses and their process use that others wouldn't know) and should have input into what happens. The UCS has a bias as well, but they are made up of smart people who might also know something. The bias of these groups doesn't negate the validity of their arguments. Ultimately, the facts will out - the biases will explain why the UCS looked into these issues but do not deny the validity (or lack thereof) of their results.