The Bush administration and the GOP dominated Congress were very quick to earmark $6 Billion for eVoting upgrades, after the "hanging chad" problems in the 2000 elections. The push to "use it, or lose it" for this money meant a rush to adopt some very badly implimented solutions from corporate friends of the Bush administration.
So now that the word is out about these crappy eVoting machines (WITH NO PAPER AUDIT TRAIL), and the Bush administration is now "floating trial balloons" in the press about DELAYING the November national elections. As well as preparing the public to EXPECT terrorist acts similar to the Madrid train bombings that would be designed to disrupt these elections.
Doesn't anyone else besides me see a conspiracy theory in the making? Like: if the GOP feels that they will not win the November elections using the SOP of FUD, that there WILL be some major terrorist attacks here AND there WILL be a delay in the national elections.
Micro$oft has announced that they will be moving their OS operations to China, and their Office Apps operations to India.
In a quote from Steve Ballmer "With the current economic Outlook, we have a responsibility to our shareholders to reduce costs and improve share value. Our goal is to reduce our HR overhead by 60 percent. Certain employees will be given the opportunity to move with the job, but relocation costs will not be reimbursed."
Nothing quite like getting overruled by a manager to go out and buy XYZ brand (BTO) computers just because the OS (linux) was tested on same. More than 50% of arrived computers either "rattled" or suffered "sudden infant death" syndrome. Turns out the BTO manufacturer hired employees' kids to assemble them, and they tore off the flashcard socket on the bottom of the MB when putting them in the case.
I could have built the same number of computers myself in less time than it took to straighten out this mess. The manager was under the mistaken impression that using another platform (like Dell 1U servers) would have been too costly, and would not have worked reliably with linux.
WTF was my opinion, with 8 years of linux exposure, worth? ZIP. And the cost was a serious slip in production delivery. Pretty damn glad to see the last of those boxen.
The entire point is: "Don't let some newbies in a big fscking hurry get near the insides of a computer, let alone ones destined for production use..."
The GOP-controlled US Congress appropriated $6 Billion to upgrade voting machines across the country. This was done to insure that there will be no paper trail to audit when GW Bush wins in November 2004 by a landslide.
The money has been distributed to the states' voting districts, who have purchased eVoting machines largely on faith from promises made by the manufacturers. These manufacturers are big multinational corporations that have ties to the Republican Party, and whose CEO's are friends of the Bush administration. (How else would a $6 Billion get shoveled out of the US Congress with the proviso "use it, or lose it"?
The voting districts spent the money without having the scientific insight to question the manufacturers, let alone properly validate the equipment being deployed. They have rushed into these purchases, and many have found during the primary elections in the various states that what they bought was pure crap.
I cannot say how the voting citizens of the USA will react when they finally realize that they have been disenfrachised, but I am fairly confident that the US Supreme Court will uphold the invalid voting results. The time is now for the Democratic Party and others interested in a fair election to request large scale UN monitoring of the November 2004 election.
MicroSoft has plans for a subscription-based security update CD (should be security update DVD IMO). Shortly after I received my free M$ security CD this spring, I was sent a poll to fill out. The jist of the poll was to determine reaction to Micro$oft's going to a subscription-based security product.
The security CD was at least 3 months out of date for security patches, and I don't think the M$ can really do any better than that. Bottom line is that if you don't have Broadband, and will be relying upon M$ security CDs for your updates, you WILL be vulnerable to what ever nasty exloits have been discovered for those 3 months.
I, for one, do not welcome our new Chinese overlords.
It has become apparent, between PRC's proprietary WiFi security standards, their adoption of proprietary multimedia formats, their proprietary Cellphone standards, and now their proprietary TCP/IP standards, that they either believe that:
(1) their emerging market share gives them
the power to dictate standards to the
rest of the world, OR
(2) that this is their attempt to circumvent
WTO trade agreements to restrict foreign
products from their markets, OR
(3) have adopted Micro$oft monopolistic
tactics in their quest for world
domination.
As there was a recent report out about the rate of foreign investment in the PRC exceeding that of any other country in the world (including the USA), one might draw the conclusion that it is actually
(4) ALL OF THE ABOVE.
If the PRC mades goods for al lof the rest of the world, and forces their products down our throats (via WTO governance), AND ALSO prevents foreign goods to enter the PRC without compliance with their proprietary standards (under strict licensing), what do you think will happen with every other country's balance of trade with PRC? They would eventually have total control of these countries economies, through BoT leverage.
I say, "Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure (they are destroyed)."
DHS settled upon Micro$oft OS as their standard, IN SPITE OF industry associations' warnings of the multitude of vulnerabilities in same.
While I have no doubt that DHS may do a credible job of securing their computers, the recent vulnerabilities announced in Cisco routers does little to assuage security concerns.
Considering the shear number of computers/gear purchased by DHS, and the volume of SENSITIVE data they have collected, how long before the bad guys know everything about everyone, plus all the security vulnerabilities that the USA (government/industry/infrastructure) still has?
Whatever happened to the notions of "secure by design" policies that the more sensitive portions of the US government subscribed to? Were these notions scrapped for "political" reasons, or just the usual SOP of "dunderheads in charge"?
Micro$oft used to be one of those IT companies that did not involve themselves in politics, including especially massive "contributions". This "error of judgement" became apparant when the DoJ brought suit against M$. When Micro$oft saw the light, and began making large donations to both political parties, the monopoly issue all but went away. The decision against M$ was so insignificant as to be irrelevant. Ashcroft has merely provided the "positive" feedback required to assure that Micro$oft continues to contribute a portion of their bankroll.
Is it extortion? In the narrow legal definition of the term, it is not. In the broader moral realm it could be so construed. It would be quite interesting to know the full details on how Judge Jackson reached the decision made, as it would appear to have been written by M$.
I am not in any way defending Micro$oft with these comments, but merely pointing out the whoremongering that goes on in politics today.
IANAUPSE (I am not a UPS employee), but I used to be a customer. Never again.
(1) on the delivery dock of my employer when
$15K worth of Compaq servers were delivered,
and signed for. The product was originally
destined for a company across town.
(2) packages marked "Signature Only" delivery
left on a neighboring business's doorstep
(3) package marked (all over) "Fragile Glass"
arrived with a smashed corner & tinkled:
$6K flatbed scanner (in original factory
box) was dropped from a height of 6 feet.
(The same packaging protected same equipment
on 12K mile trip from Japan.)
Why would anyone trust such a delivery company? IMHO, UPS is good for one thing only: stress testing MIL spec ruggedized equipment.
In keeping with the Bush doctrine of only supporting applied science (as opposed to pure science), the mobile lunar base will be used as a replacement penal colony for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ashcroft has adviced that it will be the only way to keep the Red Cross, ACLU, and Amnesty International away from his "boy toys" in detention there.
was called "VISA Express". With it, the Dept. of State allowed proported Saudi nationals to phone in to the embassy for their US visas. This program was very helpful in speeding up the entry of young Moslem males into the USA.
The Saudi's that were not on the four hijacked planes on 9-11-2001 were picked up by chartered Saudi flights in the USA at a time when all domestic US flights were grounded.
Without secure borders AND universal secure biometric ID's, the next 9-11 will still happen: -- it just will not be done with hijacked planes...
when "Jurassic Park" first came out the company I worked for at the time had a spike in interest in the SGI systems we were selling...
until they saw the price tag...
SGI still makes some of the finest unix boxes/racks around. But like the Jurassic creatures, they are dying off. Their management kept making big mistakes: spinning off MIPS for small change, buying and then selling Cray Research, etc. For a company that was at the bleeding edge of the internet, their market timing has since then been fsckd.
to a drug dealer passing out crack cocaine laced marijuana cigarettes to the kiddies for free. Where else is the next generation of Micro$oft clients going to come from?
as the first and last HP computer I bought (an Omnibook 800CT) went back for factory service twice in a year, and never worked reliably (chipset/motherboard/memory issues). I now use it strictly as a CLI OpenBSD terminal.
My next laptop computer was an Apple PowerBook. Never ANY problems with it, ever. I wouldn't buy an HP (or Compaq) anything, even if it was offered at a 75% markdown. Just not worth the hassles.
The "free" press in the USA has basically given GW Bush a free ride since 9-11-2001. If you consider all of the "mini-scandals" that erupted into the news, and stayed in the news, during the Clinton era, Bush has wrapped himself in a teflon-coated American flag. (Wonder just how big an impact that the anthrax-laced letters sent to the liberal press and liberal political opposition has to do with the timidity of the press.)
If the info filtering out of the White House as staff leaves (and memos released under the FOIA) are to be believed, Bush & Cheney had a hard-on for invading Saddam's Iraq since January 2001 (or at least since Cheney's Energy Commission). WMD was the original reason given for going, and then the fight against world terrorism, and then finally "bringing democracy to Iraq". The real reason is OIL, period. Which is why GW quickly lost interest in Afghanistan (they don't have any), and why nothing has been done with North Korea over the last 3 years. (And also why there is continued Bush interest in the overthrow of a left of center democratically elected government in Venezuela, an OIL-rich neighbor to the south of our borders.)
Close ties between Bush & Cheney family and commercial interests and the Saudi government AND the bin Laden family have never been properly investigated in the American press. And while all US commercial aircraft were grounded after 9-11, the Saudi government managed to fly jets around the USA to "evacuate" Saudis and other foreign nationals. The Saudi embassy got caught (along with Riggs Bank) in huge CASH transfers totaling more that $20M USD. That went where? I don't think that the embassy chauffuer withdrew that money to handle the embassy's monthy utility bills. (Perhaps to pay off that large "VISA Express" program Bush started at the State Dept?)
The Bush administration has made very effective use of patriotism, indignation, and the flag to forward his political agenda for the last 3 years. Enough so that I would place a bet that if Bush's poll numbers don't look so good leading up to the election in November, that there WILL be another major terrorist attack in the USA (that will boost his numbers). The ground- work has already been prepared by Ashcroft & Tenet & Ridge in their statements that another major attack isn't just possible, but likely.
BTW: Anyone that wants to contribute time or
money to the construction of my bomb
shelter will get a guaranteed space...
When your entire data center moves to India,
so does your job, buddy. But guess what?
You can still get another job as a sysadmin,
providing you have a current & transferable
Top Secret/Lifestyle/Polygraph security clearance.
The big Catch-22 is that if you don't already
have the security clearance, you are fscked.
It takes 2 plus years these days to get that
clearance, and not too many employers want to
hire someone for a job (maybe) 2 or 2-1/2 years,
meanwhile paying them a living wage for some
other position. On top of that, the employer
has to shell out the $15 - 25K USD to pay for
the background check. I have seen the exact same
sysadmin positions advertised for nearly 2 years,
because the employer would not hire someone that
didn't already have the security clearance that
their work required. (So much for the aftermath
of 9-11-01, and our glorious leader's war on
terrorism.)
The people that do have the job qualifications
AND the security clearance are still in the
military. Some would get out and take that
civilian job, if only their tour of duty didn't
keep getting extended.
Sorry to sound a bit bitter here, but if I had
known 15 years ago what I know now about the
future prospects for the USA's IT industry, I
would have becoem a plumber or electrician.
Those jobs cannot be outsourced overseas, but
are instead threatened by cheap imported labor
from illegal aliens. There are plenty of
construction job sites in the Metro DC area
where you cannot get hired if you don't speak
Spanish.
The Bush administration seems bent upon what
it's corporate overlords want -- cheaper labor
from any source possible. If you want to
survive the Bush "revolution", get used to a
much lower standard of living (and shuffling
your feet, averting your eyes, and saying
"yessir, master") for whatever job you can get.
My early experience with Macs, and with some of the big name unixes convinced me that PS was the only way to go. SGI, SUN, HP, Mac, Windows all support Postscript, and especially networked Postscript. A few will charge extra for drivers that use resolutions greater than 600dpi, because they figure you're working in a prepress shop (and can afford the Hi-Res drivers). All will make use of a human readable configuration file called a PPD (Postscript Printer Definition) file. With it, you can add a custom page size or print quality. Postscript is a very well documented printer interface (and programming language) that was originally exclusively owned by Adobe, but which now has alternative compatible programs like Ghostscript. Postscript used to be ubiquitous, but had an HP challenger called PCL. None of the printer manufacturers liked paying royalties to Adobe, which is why there is such a mess with winprint printers today.
to rockets that uses kerosene and liquid oxygen?
OR perhaps alcohol and hydrazine?
Better yet, time to start work on those
personal railguns...
(BTW: anyone have a good source for 100 Kgs
of mallable superconductor?)
when the National Guard were deployed to the USA's airports, they were never issued ammo. The worst they could have done is install their bayonet (for crowd control purposes(?)).
It was strictly a Bush PR move. And 2-1/2 yrs later, the situation regarding the "war on terrorism" hasn't evolved much. The USA still has unguarded borders and seaports. Both illegal immigration and the rate of identity theft are both higher now than before 9/11/01.
It sure isn't any comfort that fingerprint scanners are so ineffective, just as have iris scanners also proven to be. What's next? Maybe implanted RFID chips?
ECC memory is good for detecting and correcting single bit errors only. A random cosmic ray traveling at near light speed can flip a bit in otherwise perfectly good memory. Even rad- hardened memory is not impervious to continued cosmic (or other) radiation. This MREM memory offers an improved operating environment for reliable computing, BUT until memory is designed to detect AND correct multiple bit errors (such as the use of Hamming Code in hardware), truly rock solid computing will not have arrived.
Better memory hardware does NOT in any case guarantee better code -- the old axiom about GIGO (Garbage In == Garbage Out) still applies
No doubt, Micro$oft has done the economic forecasts, and come to the conclusion that having a captive customer base is more important to their future than having better code. And historically, the captive customer base has a proven return. No matter how crappy their software is, their legacy customers will buy it unquestionably.
By seeding the primary schools, secondary schools, and colleges with discounted software, Micro$oft has assured themselves a continued revenue stream for 10, 20, even 30 years downstream. This is not so much unlike the tobacco companies trolling youngsters for their next wave of captive customers. Is this drawing a comparison between Micro$oft and our neighborhood "crack" dealers? You bet!
To make matters even worse, I would be willing to wager that Micro$oft gets a tax break for charitable contributions to these very same non-profit organizations. It is a win-win-win situation for MS to spread their FUD through these "independent" think tanks. Welcome to the brave new world of corporate national socialism in America.
The USA may not admit it, but it yearns for royalty, just like what we gave up with our Revolution. How else to explain:
(1) fastination with Hollywood celebrities (2) continued re-election of undeserved
politicians (like the House of Lords) (3) elevation of GW Bush to near-sainthood?
Slashdot Mirror
It is called Forth.
(extensible, embedible, and cross-platform)
But is is nice to see a major new release of
PHP, especially with a compiler, and cross
platform as well. Congratulations, PHP Team!
The Bush administration and the GOP dominated
...)
Congress were very quick to earmark $6 Billion
for eVoting upgrades, after the "hanging chad"
problems in the 2000 elections. The push to
"use it, or lose it" for this money meant a
rush to adopt some very badly implimented
solutions from corporate friends of the Bush
administration.
So now that the word is out about these crappy
eVoting machines (WITH NO PAPER AUDIT TRAIL),
and the Bush administration is now "floating
trial balloons" in the press about DELAYING
the November national elections. As well as
preparing the public to EXPECT terrorist acts
similar to the Madrid train bombings that would
be designed to disrupt these elections.
Doesn't anyone else besides me see a conspiracy
theory in the making? Like: if the GOP feels
that they will not win the November elections
using the SOP of FUD, that there WILL be some
major terrorist attacks here AND there WILL be
a delay in the national elections.
(Pardon me while I put on my tin-foil hat
Micro$oft has announced that they will be
moving their OS operations to China, and
their Office Apps operations to India.
In a quote from Steve Ballmer "With the
current economic Outlook, we have a
responsibility to our shareholders to
reduce costs and improve share value.
Our goal is to reduce our HR overhead by
60 percent. Certain employees will be
given the opportunity to move with the job,
but relocation costs will not be reimbursed."
Nothing quite like getting overruled by a manager
..."
to go out and buy XYZ brand (BTO) computers just
because the OS (linux) was tested on same. More
than 50% of arrived computers either "rattled"
or suffered "sudden infant death" syndrome. Turns
out the BTO manufacturer hired employees' kids
to assemble them, and they tore off the flashcard
socket on the bottom of the MB when putting them
in the case.
I could have built the same number of computers
myself in less time than it took to straighten
out this mess. The manager was under the
mistaken impression that using another platform
(like Dell 1U servers) would have been too
costly, and would not have worked reliably with
linux.
WTF was my opinion, with 8 years of linux
exposure, worth? ZIP. And the cost was
a serious slip in production delivery. Pretty
damn glad to see the last of those boxen.
The entire point is: "Don't let some newbies
in a big fscking hurry get near the insides
of a computer, let alone ones destined for
production use
The GOP-controlled US Congress appropriated
$6 Billion to upgrade voting machines across
the country. This was done to insure that
there will be no paper trail to audit when
GW Bush wins in November 2004 by a landslide.
The money has been distributed to the states'
voting districts, who have purchased eVoting
machines largely on faith from promises made
by the manufacturers. These manufacturers are
big multinational corporations that have ties
to the Republican Party, and whose CEO's are
friends of the Bush administration. (How else
would a $6 Billion get shoveled out of the US
Congress with the proviso "use it, or lose it"?
The voting districts spent the money without
having the scientific insight to question
the manufacturers, let alone properly validate
the equipment being deployed. They have rushed
into these purchases, and many have found during
the primary elections in the various states that
what they bought was pure crap.
I cannot say how the voting citizens of the USA
will react when they finally realize that they
have been disenfrachised, but I am fairly
confident that the US Supreme Court will uphold
the invalid voting results. The time is now
for the Democratic Party and others interested
in a fair election to request large scale UN
monitoring of the November 2004 election.
MicroSoft has plans for a subscription-based
security update CD (should be security update
DVD IMO). Shortly after I received my free
M$ security CD this spring, I was sent a poll
to fill out. The jist of the poll was to
determine reaction to Micro$oft's going to
a subscription-based security product.
The security CD was at least 3 months out of
date for security patches, and I don't think
the M$ can really do any better than that.
Bottom line is that if you don't have Broadband,
and will be relying upon M$ security CDs for
your updates, you WILL be vulnerable to what
ever nasty exloits have been discovered for
those 3 months.
I, for one, do not welcome our new Chinese
overlords.
It has become apparent, between PRC's
proprietary WiFi security standards, their
adoption of proprietary multimedia formats,
their proprietary Cellphone standards, and
now their proprietary TCP/IP standards, that
they either believe that:
(1) their emerging market share gives them
the power to dictate standards to the
rest of the world, OR
(2) that this is their attempt to circumvent
WTO trade agreements to restrict foreign
products from their markets, OR
(3) have adopted Micro$oft monopolistic
tactics in their quest for world
domination.
As there was a recent report out about the
rate of foreign investment in the PRC
exceeding that of any other country in the
world (including the USA), one might draw
the conclusion that it is actually
(4) ALL OF THE ABOVE.
If the PRC mades goods for al lof the rest
of the world, and forces their products down
our throats (via WTO governance), AND ALSO
prevents foreign goods to enter the PRC
without compliance with their proprietary
standards (under strict licensing), what
do you think will happen with every other
country's balance of trade with PRC? They
would eventually have total control of these
countries economies, through BoT leverage.
I say, "Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only
way to be sure (they are destroyed)."
DHS settled upon Micro$oft OS as their standard,
IN SPITE OF industry associations' warnings of
the multitude of vulnerabilities in same.
While I have no doubt that DHS may do a credible
job of securing their computers, the recent
vulnerabilities announced in Cisco routers does
little to assuage security concerns.
Considering the shear number of computers/gear
purchased by DHS, and the volume of SENSITIVE
data they have collected, how long before the
bad guys know everything about everyone, plus
all the security vulnerabilities that the USA
(government/industry/infrastructure) still has?
Whatever happened to the notions of "secure by
design" policies that the more sensitive portions
of the US government subscribed to? Were these
notions scrapped for "political" reasons, or just
the usual SOP of "dunderheads in charge"?
Micro$oft used to be one of those IT companies
that did not involve themselves in politics,
including especially massive "contributions".
This "error of judgement" became apparant when
the DoJ brought suit against M$. When Micro$oft
saw the light, and began making large donations
to both political parties, the monopoly issue
all but went away. The decision against M$ was
so insignificant as to be irrelevant. Ashcroft
has merely provided the "positive" feedback
required to assure that Micro$oft continues to
contribute a portion of their bankroll.
Is it extortion? In the narrow legal definition
of the term, it is not. In the broader moral
realm it could be so construed. It would be
quite interesting to know the full details on
how Judge Jackson reached the decision made, as
it would appear to have been written by M$.
I am not in any way defending Micro$oft with
these comments, but merely pointing out the
whoremongering that goes on in politics today.
IANAUPSE (I am not a UPS employee), but I used
to be a customer. Never again.
(1) on the delivery dock of my employer when
$15K worth of Compaq servers were delivered,
and signed for. The product was originally
destined for a company across town.
(2) packages marked "Signature Only" delivery
left on a neighboring business's doorstep
(3) package marked (all over) "Fragile Glass"
arrived with a smashed corner & tinkled:
$6K flatbed scanner (in original factory
box) was dropped from a height of 6 feet.
(The same packaging protected same equipment
on 12K mile trip from Japan.)
Why would anyone trust such a delivery company?
IMHO, UPS is good for one thing only: stress
testing MIL spec ruggedized equipment.
In keeping with the Bush doctrine of only
supporting applied science (as opposed to
pure science), the mobile lunar base will
be used as a replacement penal colony for
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ashcroft has adviced
that it will be the only way to keep the
Red Cross, ACLU, and Amnesty International
away from his "boy toys" in detention there.
was called "VISA Express". With it,
...
the Dept. of State allowed proported
Saudi nationals to phone in to the
embassy for their US visas. This
program was very helpful in speeding
up the entry of young Moslem males
into the USA.
The Saudi's that were not on the four
hijacked planes on 9-11-2001 were picked
up by chartered Saudi flights in the USA
at a time when all domestic US flights
were grounded.
Without secure borders AND universal
secure biometric ID's, the next 9-11
will still happen: -- it just will not
be done with hijacked planes
when "Jurassic Park" first came out the ... ...
company I worked for at the time had a
spike in interest in the SGI systems we
were selling
until they saw the price tag
SGI still makes some of the finest unix
boxes/racks around. But like the Jurassic
creatures, they are dying off. Their
management kept making big mistakes: spinning
off MIPS for small change, buying and then
selling Cray Research, etc. For a company
that was at the bleeding edge of the internet,
their market timing has since then been fsckd.
Too bad, really.
to a drug dealer passing out crack cocaine
laced marijuana cigarettes to the kiddies
for free. Where else is the next generation
of Micro$oft clients going to come from?
as the first and last HP computer I bought (an Omnibook 800CT) went back for factory service
twice in a year, and never worked reliably
(chipset/motherboard/memory issues). I now use
it strictly as a CLI OpenBSD terminal.
My next laptop computer was an Apple PowerBook.
Never ANY problems with it, ever. I wouldn't
buy an HP (or Compaq) anything, even if it was
offered at a 75% markdown. Just not worth the
hassles.
The "free" press in the USA has basically given
...
GW Bush a free ride since 9-11-2001. If you
consider all of the "mini-scandals" that erupted
into the news, and stayed in the news, during
the Clinton era, Bush has wrapped himself in a
teflon-coated American flag. (Wonder just how big
an impact that the anthrax-laced letters sent to
the liberal press and liberal political opposition
has to do with the timidity of the press.)
If the info filtering out of the White House as
staff leaves (and memos released under the FOIA)
are to be believed, Bush & Cheney had a hard-on
for invading Saddam's Iraq since January 2001
(or at least since Cheney's Energy Commission).
WMD was the original reason given for going,
and then the fight against world terrorism, and
then finally "bringing democracy to Iraq". The
real reason is OIL, period. Which is why GW
quickly lost interest in Afghanistan (they don't
have any), and why nothing has been done with
North Korea over the last 3 years. (And also
why there is continued Bush interest in the
overthrow of a left of center democratically
elected government in Venezuela, an OIL-rich
neighbor to the south of our borders.)
Close ties between Bush & Cheney family and
commercial interests and the Saudi government
AND the bin Laden family have never been properly
investigated in the American press. And while
all US commercial aircraft were grounded after
9-11, the Saudi government managed to fly jets
around the USA to "evacuate" Saudis and other
foreign nationals. The Saudi embassy got caught
(along with Riggs Bank) in huge CASH transfers
totaling more that $20M USD. That went where?
I don't think that the embassy chauffuer withdrew
that money to handle the embassy's monthy utility
bills. (Perhaps to pay off that large "VISA
Express" program Bush started at the State Dept?)
The Bush administration has made very effective
use of patriotism, indignation, and the flag
to forward his political agenda for the last
3 years. Enough so that I would place a bet
that if Bush's poll numbers don't look so good
leading up to the election in November, that there
WILL be another major terrorist attack in the
USA (that will boost his numbers). The ground-
work has already been prepared by Ashcroft &
Tenet & Ridge in their statements that another
major attack isn't just possible, but likely.
BTW: Anyone that wants to contribute time or
money to the construction of my bomb
shelter will get a guaranteed space
When your entire data center moves to India, so does your job, buddy. But guess what? You can still get another job as a sysadmin, providing you have a current & transferable Top Secret/Lifestyle/Polygraph security clearance. The big Catch-22 is that if you don't already have the security clearance, you are fscked. It takes 2 plus years these days to get that clearance, and not too many employers want to hire someone for a job (maybe) 2 or 2-1/2 years, meanwhile paying them a living wage for some other position. On top of that, the employer has to shell out the $15 - 25K USD to pay for the background check. I have seen the exact same sysadmin positions advertised for nearly 2 years, because the employer would not hire someone that didn't already have the security clearance that their work required. (So much for the aftermath of 9-11-01, and our glorious leader's war on terrorism.) The people that do have the job qualifications AND the security clearance are still in the military. Some would get out and take that civilian job, if only their tour of duty didn't keep getting extended. Sorry to sound a bit bitter here, but if I had known 15 years ago what I know now about the future prospects for the USA's IT industry, I would have becoem a plumber or electrician. Those jobs cannot be outsourced overseas, but are instead threatened by cheap imported labor from illegal aliens. There are plenty of construction job sites in the Metro DC area where you cannot get hired if you don't speak Spanish. The Bush administration seems bent upon what it's corporate overlords want -- cheaper labor from any source possible. If you want to survive the Bush "revolution", get used to a much lower standard of living (and shuffling your feet, averting your eyes, and saying "yessir, master") for whatever job you can get.
My early experience with Macs, and with some
of the big name unixes convinced me that PS was
the only way to go. SGI, SUN, HP, Mac, Windows
all support Postscript, and especially networked
Postscript. A few will charge extra for drivers
that use resolutions greater than 600dpi, because
they figure you're working in a prepress shop
(and can afford the Hi-Res drivers). All will
make use of a human readable configuration file
called a PPD (Postscript Printer Definition) file.
With it, you can add a custom page size or
print quality. Postscript is a very well
documented printer interface (and programming
language) that was originally exclusively owned
by Adobe, but which now has alternative compatible
programs like Ghostscript. Postscript used to be
ubiquitous, but had an HP challenger called PCL.
None of the printer manufacturers liked paying
royalties to Adobe, which is why there is such a
mess with winprint printers today.
to rockets that uses kerosene and liquid oxygen? OR perhaps alcohol and hydrazine? Better yet, time to start work on those personal railguns ...
(BTW: anyone have a good source for 100 Kgs
of mallable superconductor?)
when the National Guard were deployed to the
USA's airports, they were never issued ammo.
The worst they could have done is install their
bayonet (for crowd control purposes(?)).
It was strictly a Bush PR move. And 2-1/2 yrs
later, the situation regarding the "war on
terrorism" hasn't evolved much. The USA still
has unguarded borders and seaports. Both
illegal immigration and the rate of identity
theft are both higher now than before 9/11/01.
It sure isn't any comfort that fingerprint
scanners are so ineffective, just as have
iris scanners also proven to be. What's
next? Maybe implanted RFID chips?
ECC memory is good for detecting and correcting
single bit errors only. A random cosmic ray
traveling at near light speed can flip a bit
in otherwise perfectly good memory. Even rad-
hardened memory is not impervious to continued
cosmic (or other) radiation. This MREM memory
offers an improved operating environment for
reliable computing, BUT until memory is designed
to detect AND correct multiple bit errors (such
as the use of Hamming Code in hardware), truly
rock solid computing will not have arrived.
Better memory hardware does NOT in any case
guarantee better code -- the old axiom about
GIGO (Garbage In == Garbage Out) still applies
so it will not be too long before everyone's
personal data collected under MATRIX & CAPPS
will be available to all the hackers, for free.
that Micro$oft performed much of their pre-patent ...
testing at Abu Ghraib prison, using Saddam's
test equipment and some Iraqi "volunteers"
No doubt, Micro$oft has done the economic
forecasts, and come to the conclusion that
having a captive customer base is more
important to their future than having better
code. And historically, the captive customer
base has a proven return. No matter how crappy
their software is, their legacy customers will
buy it unquestionably.
By seeding the primary schools, secondary
schools, and colleges with discounted software,
Micro$oft has assured themselves a continued
revenue stream for 10, 20, even 30 years
downstream. This is not so much unlike the
tobacco companies trolling youngsters for
their next wave of captive customers. Is this
drawing a comparison between Micro$oft and
our neighborhood "crack" dealers? You bet!
To make matters even worse, I would be willing
to wager that Micro$oft gets a tax break for
charitable contributions to these very same
non-profit organizations. It is a win-win-win
situation for MS to spread their FUD through
these "independent" think tanks. Welcome to
the brave new world of corporate national
socialism in America.
The USA may not admit it, but it yearns
for royalty, just like what we gave up
with our Revolution. How else to explain:
(1) fastination with Hollywood celebrities
(2) continued re-election of undeserved
politicians (like the House of Lords)
(3) elevation of GW Bush to near-sainthood?