First of all, finance isn't a close partner to economics.
Fiat currencies allow non-market entities to regulate market economies. Without an "artifical" currency (not that gold is any less artificial, it's just a finite shared delusion) there is no (or very little) room for long-term actors to intervene in short-term crises. With a gold standard, one rich person can control an improbably large percentage of the (finite) money supply. Or a million individuals can simply hoarde their money, reducing the supply in circulation, and the government has no easy way of resolving it, short of revaluing the currency which makes a gold standard into a slower fiat currency.
Sure, fiat currencies can get governments into trouble (i.e. Zimbabwe), but gold standards can, and have gotten large economies into trouble, namely us in 1929.
It never fails to amaze me how smart, educated people can completely lose their rational thinking skills when money comes into the discussion. Think of how silly tinfoil hats sound to an engineer, that's how silly people like this sound to economists.
I was looking at leatherman-type tools last year and came to the conclusion that the SOG PowerLock (S60) is the one to get. Its not quite as ergonomic as the new Leatherman Waves but its insanely tough. All the tools lock and the main pliars have a nifty gear reduction on them that makes hanging onto things much easier. Mine cost about $60 and hasn't left my belt since.
Hats.
I'm serious. As disturbing as it would be to turn into an elephant as you changed privilage classes, it would be worse if there was no way of identifying those classes.
Do an Sims-style floating-thing above a user that's either symbolic or color-coded to designate class. That way, users know who is root and who to bug (or not bug for the smart).
Obviously a colored hat would be cool for human avatars but what about the elephants?
I've given this some thought since I first read about Reiser4. I know very little about low-level systems programming, so I concede that my solution is certainly not the fastest way.
I think this is (wait for it) a perfect application for either XML or another, easily-parseable format.
Instead of trying to hack tar to handle metadata (which is not its purpose anyway, tools should have one task, right?), make a dedicated serialization app. Call it feather (pardon the pun) or something. All it does is take a file in whatever filesystem you're running, grab all the metadata and serialize it in a standardized way into XML or something (anything, I use XML as an example, not a recommendation), then tar that metadata up in a file. Then, on another system, you can run feather to unpack the tar and restore the metadata in whatever format the machine uses. This would allow for portable ACLs as well as a bunch of other nifty things.
Of course you could hack tar to do it, but I think it should be a separate app first, and just piped to tar like the -z and -j options are.
Just imagine it, you could tar and feather your documents directory, with its complicated ACLs and Nifty-keen reiser4 metadata, then unpack it on your Samba-controlled NT box and have it keep all the ACLs. The other stuff gets put into a.feather directory or something.
All that needs to be done is a namespace for the serialization. XML is easily parsed so userspace apps can handle it, and we don't really care about size as its all getting tbz2'd anyway.
Again, its not efficient or particularly pretty. But it is portable.
If you've ever thought about subscribing to Car and Driver or Motor Trend or a similar mag, I urge you to check you Grassroots Motorsports. It definitely caters more to the autocross and weekend racer market than the average consumer, but the articles are long, informative, entertaining and written by people without God's budget. Every year they do a this-year-dollars challenge, which this year ended up with 70-something highly competant racecars for under US$2004.
To stay on-topic, I read 2600, The Economist, Scientific American, and after reading this thread, I'll take a look at StratFor, Extra!, and Mental Floss.
The AARL has a lot of information on Field Day events, but much of it is difficult to find.
For those of us in NYC Metro, the relevant information is: here.
It really has very little to do with legistlative sloth. The problem with legislating against this sort of thing is that its so tangled up in the issue of surveillance cameras. If you make videotaping an unknowing or unwilling person in a "public place" illegal, all surveillance cameras are then illegal. The problem is that drawing the line between useful surveillance and spying is so difficult.
In this case, the transmissions being intercepted are not encrypted or even hidden. No attempt to keep them private has been made, and the owners/operators have no expectation of privacy. IANAL, but I can't see any way to extend the laws to cover this without being draconian.
One other point: voyeur-type hidden cameras are usually beaten in civil court if the voyeur charges money for the video; it may be legal to spy on others without their permission, but selling it is usually a no-no.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, finance isn't a close partner to economics. Fiat currencies allow non-market entities to regulate market economies. Without an "artifical" currency (not that gold is any less artificial, it's just a finite shared delusion) there is no (or very little) room for long-term actors to intervene in short-term crises. With a gold standard, one rich person can control an improbably large percentage of the (finite) money supply. Or a million individuals can simply hoarde their money, reducing the supply in circulation, and the government has no easy way of resolving it, short of revaluing the currency which makes a gold standard into a slower fiat currency. Sure, fiat currencies can get governments into trouble (i.e. Zimbabwe), but gold standards can, and have gotten large economies into trouble, namely us in 1929.
It never fails to amaze me how smart, educated people can completely lose their rational thinking skills when money comes into the discussion. Think of how silly tinfoil hats sound to an engineer, that's how silly people like this sound to economists.
I was looking at leatherman-type tools last year and came to the conclusion that the SOG PowerLock (S60) is the one to get. Its not quite as ergonomic as the new Leatherman Waves but its insanely tough. All the tools lock and the main pliars have a nifty gear reduction on them that makes hanging onto things much easier. Mine cost about $60 and hasn't left my belt since.
ARGH why don't I have mod points? Or more preciesely, why do I never see posts like this when I do?
Hats. I'm serious. As disturbing as it would be to turn into an elephant as you changed privilage classes, it would be worse if there was no way of identifying those classes. Do an Sims-style floating-thing above a user that's either symbolic or color-coded to designate class. That way, users know who is root and who to bug (or not bug for the smart). Obviously a colored hat would be cool for human avatars but what about the elephants?
I've given this some thought since I first read about Reiser4. I know very little about low-level systems programming, so I concede that my solution is certainly not the fastest way.
I think this is (wait for it) a perfect application for either XML or another, easily-parseable format.
Instead of trying to hack tar to handle metadata (which is not its purpose anyway, tools should have one task, right?), make a dedicated serialization app. Call it feather (pardon the pun) or something. All it does is take a file in whatever filesystem you're running, grab all the metadata and serialize it in a standardized way into XML or something (anything, I use XML as an example, not a recommendation), then tar that metadata up in a file. Then, on another system, you can run feather to unpack the tar and restore the metadata in whatever format the machine uses. This would allow for portable ACLs as well as a bunch of other nifty things.
Of course you could hack tar to do it, but I think it should be a separate app first, and just piped to tar like the -z and -j options are.
Just imagine it, you could tar and feather your documents directory, with its complicated ACLs and Nifty-keen reiser4 metadata, then unpack it on your Samba-controlled NT box and have it keep all the ACLs. The other stuff gets put into a .feather directory or something.
All that needs to be done is a namespace for the serialization. XML is easily parsed so userspace apps can handle it, and we don't really care about size as its all getting tbz2'd anyway.
Again, its not efficient or particularly pretty. But it is portable.
If you've ever thought about subscribing to Car and Driver or Motor Trend or a similar mag, I urge you to check you Grassroots Motorsports. It definitely caters more to the autocross and weekend racer market than the average consumer, but the articles are long, informative, entertaining and written by people without God's budget. Every year they do a this-year-dollars challenge, which this year ended up with 70-something highly competant racecars for under US$2004. To stay on-topic, I read 2600, The Economist, Scientific American, and after reading this thread, I'll take a look at StratFor, Extra!, and Mental Floss.
Err... ARRL
The AARL has a lot of information on Field Day events, but much of it is difficult to find. For those of us in NYC Metro, the relevant information is: here.
It really has very little to do with legistlative sloth. The problem with legislating against this sort of thing is that its so tangled up in the issue of surveillance cameras. If you make videotaping an unknowing or unwilling person in a "public place" illegal, all surveillance cameras are then illegal. The problem is that drawing the line between useful surveillance and spying is so difficult. In this case, the transmissions being intercepted are not encrypted or even hidden. No attempt to keep them private has been made, and the owners/operators have no expectation of privacy. IANAL, but I can't see any way to extend the laws to cover this without being draconian. One other point: voyeur-type hidden cameras are usually beaten in civil court if the voyeur charges money for the video; it may be legal to spy on others without their permission, but selling it is usually a no-no.