Cruise missles isolate humans from the actual act of killing in war. Before that, ballistic missiles isolated humans from this awful task. Before that it was strategic bombing, and before that it was long range artillery, and before that it was the machine gun, and before that the rifle, which came after the cannon, the trebuchet, the arrow, the rock, and everything that wasn't some sort of cutting weapon weilded in close combat. This is a recurring whine, and little more than that.
The real concern is the number of human lives lost in stopping these recurring acts of idiocy. The actual effect of technological advancement has been to steadily reduce the number of combatant and noncombatant casualties as technology improved. Modern technology makes it possible to confront agression with less cost in human lives over shorter periods of time.
But if it assauges your sense of moral rectitude, we can go back to the days of sword-weilding armies and the concomitant casualty rates of 20-40% of entire populations during wars. We wouldn't be isolated at all from the act of killing -- a large plurality of us would have a constant connection with death, rather than our 1-2% or so who have intimate experience with it now.
If you think more experience with death promotes peace, talk to a Bosinan, or a Croat. They'll set you straight.
Well NMCI (the Navy/Marine Corps Internet) boondoggle awarded to EDS is a disaster for both the Navy and EDS. NAVSUP and SPAWAR, which I have contacts in are both furious at EDS and the needlessly restrictive policies that require them to use outdated (and vulnerable) software. For example, of the three mobile devices available on CLIN 0023, one of them is a Palm 3xe. Another is the Palm M505. They're livid they can't deploy anything remotely useful because they're limited to hardware that was obsolete three years ago.
But EDS isn't faring too well on this. You'd think that $60/month for every network connection, without any OS support or server storage would be a cash bonanza, but somehow EDS has managed to screw this up and is actually losing money on the contract. Yep, that's right -- being an ISP charging double what AOL charges for internet access for a million or so customers, and they're losing money. They've proven unable to manage the contract and had to bring in subcontractors charging rates far above what they can recover from the Navy. It's a complete mess that noone these days bothers to defend.
Now USAF has uniquely been able to keep it's head out of it's butt on a lot of IT stuff, and I can't believe they're going to go this route (presumably on the NETCENTS contract). I can imagine a few people at some of the NETCENTS awardees (as well as a lot of USAF IT guys and gals) would be mighty unhappy if this came to pass, so given the history of NMCI and the traditional buck-the-trend attitude of the USAF, don't think for a moment that this will be as bad as you think.
But the fact that they existed and served a useful (if rarely employed) military purpose contradicts the conclusion in Miller that it had no relation to the 2nd Amendment. If it is employed as a military firearm, it is by definition consistent with a "well regulated militia".
The point is that the SCOTUS ruling in Miller is based on a faulty conclusion not supported by the evidence. It shouldn't be cited as an authoritative source for understanding the 2nd amendment, and is ripe for being overturned if only the facts could be presented.
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It's hard to believe that Miller has become some sort of precedent when one party wasn't able to present arguments to the court. One side argued, and the case was decided -- predictably -- based on the arguments of that one side. It's weak.
The "absence of any evidence" wasn't because the opposition could not bring arguments to bear, but because there was no opposition to point out that in fact shotguns with barrels shorter than 18 inches were in fact employed as military arms in both WWI and WWII. Clearing fortifications with a shortened shotgun is far easier than using a longer arm. Unfortunately, no one was present to provide this insight. So while the opinion of the court may be factually accurate, it only relates to evidence presented by the parties present (one side), not the evidence that could be presented. That's the way court procedure works, and while the decision is correct in terms of the evidence at trial, it's a really bad precedent to cite since the court never considered competing arguments from both sides beyond the initial briefs.
Another point is that "well regulated" (as in 'a well regulated militia') had a different meaning in the time the amendment was drafted than we might understand it to be now. In those days, "well regulated" was a reference to how proficient the unit was and what level of discipline was evident in the military formation. Even today, giving a firearm to a gunsmith "for regulation" refers to ensuring that the firearm operates correctly and that the parts conform to the mechanical specifications of the firearm's design. To assign "well regulated" a meaning that involves the application of laws and executive policy is to entirely misunderstand the intent and in fact the actual word of the amendment as it was understood at the time of it's drafting.
Having said all that, this idea of remotely shooting game via the internet is ludicrous.
A US that tries to end the war on terror. Not through force, but through negotiation. I sincerely does not believe that the war can be won. How can you defend yourself all over the planet?? The natural result of the current strategy is that all US allies are getting hit and are withdrawing support since nothing is done to end the war. Certainly the Iraq war was not the answer, the Afghanistan war was much more so. I do not think that Bush want's the war to end at all.
This to me sort of explains why there's so much of a disconnect between those who'd like to see Kerry win and those who hope Bush will be re-elected. If you think it's an utterly laughable premise that it's remotely possible to sit Osama bin-Laden down at a table and negotiate a solution, you're going to want Bush. If you think that Russia missed an opportunity to negotiate in Breslan and avoid several hundred deaths, you're going to be rooting for Kerry.
We in the U.S. (as well as quite a few other countries) have had just a little experience with this question. Carter: negotiating for the release of American hostages in Iran - result: 444 days of captivity. Reagan: threatening to do something about it - result: captives released within minutes of his inauguration. Right or wrong, experiences like this shape our approach to dealing with terrorism.
If there really is another, more effective way to deal with terrorism, perhaps some other country can step up to the plate and show us how it's done, by negotiating a solution to it's hostages in Iraq, or some other related issue. So far, there's not one example out there that I can see of a successful approach to dealing with terrorists other than aggressive confrontation and pursuing victory.
But if there's a proven alternative that's less expensive in human and dollar figure terms, I'm all ears, and would advocate changing the U.S. approach immediately. This wasn't what we wanted to do with these fine military people and all that money!
Well, if you were going to craft a competition that would test design and build quality, isn't that basic paradigm of boxing appropriate? The design issues are hugely complex, it inspires real innovation, and the results are decidedly based on merit, although there is some luck involved.
Look at battlebots. The designs changed rapidly, and evolved to deal with new competitive designs, and the capability of the "robots" really advanced quickly. It's an unambiguous meritocracy you would have a hard time finding anywhere else, and it's generated an enourmous interest in engineering amongst the younger set, led in no small part by that awesome young woman Lisa Winters.
[Lisa, If you're reading this, you will inspire my daughter and I will be forever grateful. Thanks!]
This is a first step in developing designs that can handle complex and dynamic requirements, and it's one that generates interest and excitement. Don't judge the future of this based on it's first steps, no more that we should have judged the first railroads by the fact they were powered by horses.
Database structure gets changed all the time in a real-world environment. Unless you want all your app developers to be reacting to every minor database change, you create stored procedures as an abstraction layer in between the database and the middleware or applications that depend on it. This allows your middleware and front-end developers to code to their strength, and your DBA's to work on their strength.
If you allow developers to access database structures directly, every time you change your database structure they have to change every program that depends on that structure. Stored procedures allow you to provide logical interfaces to (generally speaking) physical data structures that can withstand maintenance efforts.
Try letting your developers deal with transactional and logical units of work, particularly in the OO web applications environment, and you'll find your data severely screwed up. The J2EE methods of dealing with data are not at all the way that relational databases expect interaction. Provide a compatibility layer of stored procedures, and your data won't get hosed and your application developers will appreciate the convenience of not having to deal with transactional logic.
It's a great way for DBA's to enforce logical constraints that affect data management. It also allows them to employ the tweaks and tricks that modern RDBMS's provide. The end result is that those who have the strongest ability to execute well in a particular portion of a project can assume the authority to do what they know best. That can't be a bad thing.
It's obvious that oil, for instance, is a limited resource.
And why would this be the case? Because it has been proven that oil comes from dead dinosaurs or something? That might not be the case. Maybe it's time to revisit these periodical cries of "we're going to run out of oil!" that I've been hearing since the Carter Administration. Mr. Carter's 20 years are up, and we have more oil available now than we did then.
There's a lot of conventional wisdom we've collected that really isn't worth it's inclusion in your list of "obvious truths". Global warming, a theory based entirely on computer models, is likely flawed as well. Wasn't it as late as ten years ago when the prevailing theory was that we were going to suffer an ice age due to human activity? It's hard to accept this type of "science" at face value, at least without more evidence of higher quality.
It's worth it to be skeptical when extraordinary theories are presented. That's good scientific method, and while your friend might not be right, his approach is far from foolish.
Crime rates anywhere are nothing compared to the number of people murdered by their own governments. How many of their own people did Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler murder? The figures run well into the hundreds of millions. Fortunately this has happened on this scale in a relatively few countries. On a smaller scale, though, it happens nearly everywhere. It unfortunately happens in the US from time to time, in ones and twos and sometimes a few more. My understanding is that this is hardly unique to the US.
In regards to criminal violence, it kind of goes without saying that criminals are the ones committing the crimes, not the law-abiding, some of whom may own firearms. There are obviously societal differences between countries that impact how this criminal element decides to act, and perhaps there are some lessons to be learned that could help out. Some of this I suspect is simply due to demographic differences that are much harder to change. I haven't seen too many massive , ethnically diverse, low income urban areas in Norway that rival South L.A., the Bronx, South Chicago or Southwest D.C., and those are the places that experience the highest violent crime rates.
I'd suspect that if swords and daggers were the only weapons available to criminals, the U.S. would still have a higher crime rate than places like Norway, the only difference would be the nature of the wounds. That, and probably a higher mortality rate, since daggers don't need to be aimed and urban criminals are notoriously poor shots with handguns.
Heck, if I thought it possible that banning firearms would absolutely put an end to violence, I'd be first in line to turn 'em in. Really. As it is, it's my sole real means to confront it, and I'd rather have the choice about employing an effective means of resistance than to unilaterally disarm and put myself at the mercy of criminals.
I've lived in europe as well as in the US. It's probably unrealistic to expect that american notions of what society is/should be like would apply well in europe, but it is tragically misguided to think that somehow european societal norms would apply better in the US than what's currently in place. Would the US be a better place if we just acted more like Germany or France? No. No more than the world would be a better place if it was just more like america.
Firearms ownership is a cultural legacy in the US that can't be wiped out. And in a real world where bad guys are armed regardless of the law, that legacy is actually useful to society. It permits citizens to be personally responsible for their own safety if they so choose. Additionally, and probably more importantly, it allows citizens to have the means to resist the sort of tyrants that in the past have made a large number of countries into horror shows of citizens being abused and murdered by their own governments. Law-abiding citizens who own firearms have caused nothing near the mayhem that governments have historically wrought on their own peoples. So the man who legally carries a firearm and has never harmed anyone isn't the bane of society.
Those of us in the world who have entrusted our governments with the sole power of lethal force are in far more danger than those places where good citizens are trusted to have the ability to defend themselves and their families. History is pretty clear on this.
From what I understand from several expatriates, the difference between Russian troops and Russian prisoners during the time of the U.S.S.R. is vanishingly small. Particularly in the enlisted ranks.
What seems to us as now unfathomable in that time and that place may have well have been seen as entirely reasonable. Doesn't make it right by any stretch of the imagination, but that's just the way it was. Hopefully there's a lesson learned there, somewhere.
I was working with a contractor with a government agency, which I suppose ought to remain unnamed. I was the guy responsible for writing a program that would allow companies to fill out applications to participate in a government program where the dollar amounts went into the stratosphere. Most of the data would eventually be public record, but in order to satisfy some regulation or other, some of this data could be deemed confidential and not become publicly available. So we designated certain primary key values to mean that the data was confidential, and since all I was responsible for was the initial application to be a player here, I didn't think much else about it after that.
Of course I knew that this agency had a public records facility that would copy these applications, but that was a manual process outside of my control. There also was a feature in another system that would allow all of the applicants (and others who may be interested) to download everyone's application. Guess what field's logic wasn't checked -- you guessed it. Nobody thought of this new logic requiring a change in the download application, and suddenly companies bylaws, financial statements, special ownership disclosures, you name it -- all of them were falling into their competitor's hands despite the promise of the federal government to keep this information confidential. In about a day the firestorm was unbelievable.
Ever since then I preach "NO INTELLIGENCE IN PRIMARY KEYS, EVER!" and others don't know why I get why I get nuts about this. I guess they never had to deal with someone whining about a lost opportunity in the billion-dollar range!
On most systems, there actually was a save available, provided that autocommit wasn't set. "ROLLBACK" will restore everything since the last "COMMIT". But if you've got autocommit on, (or in some systems 'chained=off'), you're in deep doo-doo.
Too bad you weren't working on a system that had the ability to back off transactions from the transaction log. I've done this innumerable times, but the RDBMS has always been able to recover from my momentary lapses, or I've been fortunate enough to work in an environment where autocommit is NOT on. Makes no sense in a development environment.
I tried it on my WG602 with firmware revision 1.5.67, and this username/password doesn't work. Neither did the first combination provided.
Now maybe there are some firmware versions out there that have these vulnerabilities, but I haven't been able to confirm either report and am beginning to wonder whether any of these stories are true. Of course, my standard practice of getting the latest firmware when I buy some equipment may have shielded me from these problems, and there are probably plenty (fools?) out there that don't do this and may have opened themselves up. But to see two vulnerability reports I cannot confirm makes me wonder whether this is some sort of disinformation campaign.
I look at the comments on this thread and am amazed that the supposedly technically competent can rush to judgement so quickly and with so little evidence. Were this to hit the mainstream media, can you imagine how this could change the marketplace, even if the report isn't true?
I just ran this against my WG602 running firmware 1.5.7, and the account doesn't exist. So if you perform the absolute minimal step of checking for software upgrades before you put this into service, you won't run into any problem.
If you don't immediately check for upgrades when you open a box and haven't with this hardware, though, perhaps you deserve to get 0wn3d?
Surely any tool that is intended primarily to inflict harm is an offensive weapon. We're not labelling tools. We're labelling intent.
Then let's talk "individual with criminal intent" instead of confusingly labelling an inanimate object with an intent. It would raise the quality of this discussion tremendously.
The baton is intended for defence. The gun is there for protection perhaps, but is still an offensive weapon.
No, both the baton and the sidearm are for the officer to use in defending himself and are employed in a "continum of force" policy. Since it is against virtually every police department's policy to use a firearm in non-life threatening circumstances, the baton can be employed for a threat that falls below this critical level. This nearly universal policy is widely documented, and I would urge you to google this so you can better understand what the public servants who act in your behalf do in your name. I'm surprised you weren't aware of this.
Using a firearm to deal with a situation where your life is in danger is also difficult. Is the attacker going to wait for you to get it out?
It certainly is, and is the reason that responsible permit holders practice safe and rapid unholstering frequently. It's far from impossible to be caught unaware, and you're certinly right that access to a firearm doesn't guarantee one's ability to use it. It doesn't in any way guarantee that it should be used in all circumstances either.
That wheelchair-bound person doesn't have a whole lot of "other ways" to employ.
Nope. He's at a great disadvantage. a gun isn't going to help much either.
I have talked to permit holders who have concealed carry permits, and their experience is that it is a tremendous help. They've told me that their disability usually makes them a rather inviting target for criminals and having a firearm has made a huge difference in their quality of life. The only permit holder that I know who has ever had to point a firearm at an attacker was confined to a wheelchair. So I'd say he'd disagree with you.
Neither does the woman who is a hundred pounds lighter and ten inches shorter than her attacker have many "other ways" that are as effective and proven as legally employing a firearm.
Run away. Fast.
And if you can't outrun him? I suppose it's morally superior to be raped and murdered than to shoot a rapist as a last resort? You can't possibly believe this!
Is the 80 year old man expected to fight off a 17 year-old attacker with his jujitsu skills?
He could avoid places where he might get mugged. Is he going to have a chance to shoot?
If you could accurately predict where you could be attacked, and if it was socially valuable to restrict the freedom of a responsible elderly citizen in order to promote his safety, this might wash. But it's obvious that you can't predict where you might be criminally attacked, and it's dubious to think that it's prefereable to incarcerate the elderly in impossible "safety zones". Are we going to impose curfews on senior citizens? Wouldn't it make better sense to permit their ability to defend themselves from criminals?
But if we proscribe that last option of firing a handgun at an attacker because posession of that handgun is banned, what have we effectively done?
Removed handguns from the the muggers?
Wonderful idea. As soon as you find a way to force criminals to obey the law, let me know.
The net effect of mandating "find another option" only increases the number of dead victims, provided permit holders comply with the law.
So we just have to make sure that permit holding muggers comply with the law.
Permit holders, who have in everywhere but Vermont been subject to a background investigation by law enforcement, have not been mugging people. The instance of permit holders committing crimes while armed is so
No... people are entitled to defend themselves. They shouldn't use offensive weapons to do so. They can find another way.
A "weapon", really a class of tool, is neither offensive nor defensive. The method of employment is. You can conduct an offense or a defense, but labeling a tool that can be used in a variety of ways as offensive or defensive is simply arbitrary. Law enforcement personnel are armed with handguns for the purpose of defending themselves. That same instrument in the hands of a law-abiding citizen doesn't suddenly change it's fundamental characteristics and change from a "defensive sidearm" to an "offensive weapon".
Finding another way (other than using a firearm) to deal with a situation where your life is in danger is a terribly difficult. That wheelchair-bound person doesn't have a whole lot of "other ways" to employ. Neither does the woman who is a hundred pounds lighter and ten inches shorter than her attacker have many "other ways" that are as effective and proven as legally employing a firearm. Is the 80 year old man expected to fight off a 17 year-old attacker with his jujitsu skills? Or can we even expect a reasonably fit adult male to "find another way" when confronted by several other reasonably fit adult males?
Any ethical concealed permit holder is certainly going to attempt every other possible way to deal with a situation before using his or her last resort of firing at a threat. That's what's taught in the NRA personal protection course, in Ayoob's LFI courses and every other mandated or optional training I've ever seen. And in practice, we generally see this is the case, because the law requires this behavior. But if we proscribe that last option of firing a handgun at an attacker because posession of that handgun is banned, what have we effectively done?
We've shown that "find another option" doesn't work. If that option had been available, deadly force would not have been used. The net effect of mandating "find another option" only increases the number of dead victims, provided permit holders comply with the law.
Rackmounts are great. My linux server/router is in a 2U rackmount enclosure, and I'm pleased with the form factor, the extra fans, and the huge amount of space available for hard drives. Since most network cards are half-height, it's no problem to put multiple ethernet cards in the box. What made this easier was that this case was something I got on eBay -- it had been a load balancer and had multiple RJ-45 connectors on the front. Rather handy for my purposes.
Rackmounts of the 1U and 2U variety are handy when you can get them with the connections in the places you need them. Most have connections in the back, which for a geek is a bit of a pain since it means moving stuff around a lot every time we need to change something. A few have some important connections (or all of them) in the front, which makes for supreme ugliness but really handy to work on. Other than that, you need to pay attention to the size of the expansion cards you plan on putting in, as a riser card (to allow full-size cards in a 1U or 2U case) can often be more expensive than the cards you're planning to install.
At 4U cases and larger, it's pretty much the same size of a regular case in a horizontal configuration and at a fair premium over a standard case. Rarely are there any additional features other than for cooling. Unless there's a need for hot-swappable drives or something like that, it's not terribly useful.
Remember that 1U and 2U cases tend to be a fair amount deeper than a standard case, which yields somewhat about the same case volume as a cheaper standard case. So unless you have depth available with how you want to set it up, it can case trouble. But if you need to stack things up, stuff someting next to ceiling joists, or have a dedicated 19-inch width area for electronics, you're not saving yourself much. When that's the case though, this is a really great solution.
And it looks cool too. My $400 linux server/router sitting in a box that says "Intel NetStructure Traffic Director", which probably cost ten times that much. I feel like someone who has a car kit where they turn a VW bug into something that looks like a street rod.
"Sync" is just a windows-oriented term for not supporting rsync, ssh, sftp and a host of other unix/linux utilities that perform the function of these hamstrung "sync" utilities. I have a 5600 and the windows desktop "sync" blows.
Now that I have my zaurus up with ssh and ftp, I can drop in all sorts of linux utilities and literally pull the whole thing (as opposed to "most" of it with the windows backup utility) down to my SuSE box, change what I want and either ftp or rsync back. Or at least that's what I'm hoping to make happen once I get networking to stop horking up so consistently.
I wish they'd include more out-of-the-box support for linux, but it's not that big a deal. And with four replacement OS's for this, if you don't like what you get at first you can flash the rom with any of the alternatives.
I would rather be able to sftp and ssh into the zaurus and use CLI utilities than deal with some KDE GUI app that supposedly does file transfer. Give me those, and there's nothing I can't make happen.
Now can anyone just clue me in about getting cardservices to allow an Netgear MA701 CF card to connect to a network? Dang thing won't associate with an AP no matter what I do! I'm about ready to flash it with Gentoo or OZ or something!
Why have a fixed rate per channel? I'd bet that some providers would be willing to offer their channels at a discount, and some would probably charge a premium. Let's say Animal Planet at $1.50 and TechTV at $.50. That lets providers choose whether they'll earn revenues from subscriptions, from advertizing, or a mixture of both. If people don't feel they're getting their money's worth, they drop the channel.
Cable/Sattelite providers could then get a percentage of whatever is charged (say 20% of the channel fee). This would end up creating incentives all over the place.
First, cable/sattelite providers would have a vested interest in ensuring a readily available volume of channels. The more valuable the services they provide and the more people want them, the more money they make. Content providers would have the option of investing to create high-subscription rate programming, or to try for high-volume lower investment channels. Niche providers would have the barrier for entry lowered since cable/sattelite providers would want to offer the largest menu possible.
It's really hard for content providers to get quality data about how consumers value their programming right now. Nielsen is far from a great provider of information to the industry, but it's the only game out there now. If this actually became a marketplace, the consumer feedback would be undeniable and of absolutely perfect quality. With better information about what consumers want, the chance of actually having it provided increases dramatically.
And best of all, those crapola channels that you don't want would either have to lower their subscription price to the floor to keep you as a customer, or fold, thus uncluttering the lineup. We could use a few less home shopping channels, eh?
I am not a fan of regulation, and have seen far too much of it develop unintended consequences that poison the expected benefits. Looking at this though, all I see is a win everywhere, even for the cable companies. I can't see a downside if this is done properly.
Our forefathers were concerned with freedom of political speech and would more likely be shocked that their Consitution is being used to protect indecency. How someone using the word "fuck" because he's too lazy or incapable of finding a non-profane expression deserves constitutional protection is beyond me. It's not like it's impossible in a language like english to find a nearly infinite array of expressions that say what you're feeling.
What ideas could we possibly be deprived of if we require that public speech have some degree of decency? You can still say whatever you want -- argue any horrible position or concept your heart desires, but you just have to do it in a manner that isn't patently indecent and profane. If the idea or argument has any merit whatsoever, it certinly is capable of being expressed decently.
Get concerned when unpopular ideas are banned. That's what is really being constitutionally protected. Nothing of the sort is happening here.
It's SO much easier to require physical contact instead of having a 10m range. I suppose this is why contact memory buttons are so much more prevalent than RFID tags.
Humans thrown into a boxing ring for the sole purpose of delivering injury on each other might warrant that label. Save the angst for something worthwhile.
Robotic combat gets people like teenager Lisa Winters (BattleBots seasons 1 & 2) to craft machines that try to solve a really difficult and dynamic engineering problem with pretty limited resources. Designing a rope-climber is a static and relatively simple problem, and it doesn't inspire in the way that only gourmet robotic destruction can. Who gets juiced about hopping machines and the like?
If you want to inspire kids into pursuing engineering careers, throw this mega-problem at them. We've seen extraordinary innovation (the real kind, not the marketing type) in this arena and the bots out there today are light years beyond the successful designs of only a few years ago. Before Comedy Central stopped showing BattleBots (huh?) the number of entrants exploded, and now there are robotic combat competitions all over the place. That'll continue unless the only broadcast of this remains that abysmal RoboWars disappointment.
The gladitorial nature of this is simply taking a potentially harmful human characteristic and channeling it into something that creates a positive outcome. If you try to supress this all you end up with is the more easily created gladatorial contests that actually take human lives. Robot fighting is far better than humans trying to tear body parts off of each other. And if the way you do it improves education, heck, the question then becomes why we're not subsidizing it or making attendance and particpation mandatory!
Sending email and instant messages from Groove are not what I'd call enterprise data integration. Try getting documents to export into Stellent or Autonomy without requiring manual import/export procedures. Integrate that IM traffic into a Tibco or MQS messaging system, or into some XML stream. Without each user manually performing some export process, data in Groove is securely locked within Groove.
Peer-to-peer communication is nearly irrelevant to homeland security and intelligence functions. Getting data from the field and into the analysis/decision support process is the exact issue these guys are having trouble with. Groove doesn't address that.
But bravo for writing some code capable of sending data from Groove to anything else. That's actually a pretty rare accomplishment from what I've seen.
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Cruise missles isolate humans from the actual act of killing in war. Before that, ballistic missiles isolated humans from this awful task. Before that it was strategic bombing, and before that it was long range artillery, and before that it was the machine gun, and before that the rifle, which came after the cannon, the trebuchet, the arrow, the rock, and everything that wasn't some sort of cutting weapon weilded in close combat. This is a recurring whine, and little more than that.
The real concern is the number of human lives lost in stopping these recurring acts of idiocy. The actual effect of technological advancement has been to steadily reduce the number of combatant and noncombatant casualties as technology improved. Modern technology makes it possible to confront agression with less cost in human lives over shorter periods of time.
But if it assauges your sense of moral rectitude, we can go back to the days of sword-weilding armies and the concomitant casualty rates of 20-40% of entire populations during wars. We wouldn't be isolated at all from the act of killing -- a large plurality of us would have a constant connection with death, rather than our 1-2% or so who have intimate experience with it now.
If you think more experience with death promotes peace, talk to a Bosinan, or a Croat. They'll set you straight.
Well NMCI (the Navy/Marine Corps Internet) boondoggle awarded to EDS is a disaster for both the Navy and EDS. NAVSUP and SPAWAR, which I have contacts in are both furious at EDS and the needlessly restrictive policies that require them to use outdated (and vulnerable) software. For example, of the three mobile devices available on CLIN 0023, one of them is a Palm 3xe. Another is the Palm M505. They're livid they can't deploy anything remotely useful because they're limited to hardware that was obsolete three years ago.
But EDS isn't faring too well on this. You'd think that $60/month for every network connection, without any OS support or server storage would be a cash bonanza, but somehow EDS has managed to screw this up and is actually losing money on the contract. Yep, that's right -- being an ISP charging double what AOL charges for internet access for a million or so customers, and they're losing money. They've proven unable to manage the contract and had to bring in subcontractors charging rates far above what they can recover from the Navy. It's a complete mess that noone these days bothers to defend.
Now USAF has uniquely been able to keep it's head out of it's butt on a lot of IT stuff, and I can't believe they're going to go this route (presumably on the NETCENTS contract). I can imagine a few people at some of the NETCENTS awardees (as well as a lot of USAF IT guys and gals) would be mighty unhappy if this came to pass, so given the history of NMCI and the traditional buck-the-trend attitude of the USAF, don't think for a moment that this will be as bad as you think.
But the fact that they existed and served a useful (if rarely employed) military purpose contradicts the conclusion in Miller that it had no relation to the 2nd Amendment. If it is employed as a military firearm, it is by definition consistent with a "well regulated militia". The point is that the SCOTUS ruling in Miller is based on a faulty conclusion not supported by the evidence. It shouldn't be cited as an authoritative source for understanding the 2nd amendment, and is ripe for being overturned if only the facts could be presented.
It's hard to believe that Miller has become some sort of precedent when one party wasn't able to present arguments to the court. One side argued, and the case was decided -- predictably -- based on the arguments of that one side. It's weak.
The "absence of any evidence" wasn't because the opposition could not bring arguments to bear, but because there was no opposition to point out that in fact shotguns with barrels shorter than 18 inches were in fact employed as military arms in both WWI and WWII. Clearing fortifications with a shortened shotgun is far easier than using a longer arm. Unfortunately, no one was present to provide this insight. So while the opinion of the court may be factually accurate, it only relates to evidence presented by the parties present (one side), not the evidence that could be presented. That's the way court procedure works, and while the decision is correct in terms of the evidence at trial, it's a really bad precedent to cite since the court never considered competing arguments from both sides beyond the initial briefs.
Another point is that "well regulated" (as in 'a well regulated militia') had a different meaning in the time the amendment was drafted than we might understand it to be now. In those days, "well regulated" was a reference to how proficient the unit was and what level of discipline was evident in the military formation. Even today, giving a firearm to a gunsmith "for regulation" refers to ensuring that the firearm operates correctly and that the parts conform to the mechanical specifications of the firearm's design. To assign "well regulated" a meaning that involves the application of laws and executive policy is to entirely misunderstand the intent and in fact the actual word of the amendment as it was understood at the time of it's drafting.
Having said all that, this idea of remotely shooting game via the internet is ludicrous.
This to me sort of explains why there's so much of a disconnect between those who'd like to see Kerry win and those who hope Bush will be re-elected. If you think it's an utterly laughable premise that it's remotely possible to sit Osama bin-Laden down at a table and negotiate a solution, you're going to want Bush. If you think that Russia missed an opportunity to negotiate in Breslan and avoid several hundred deaths, you're going to be rooting for Kerry.
We in the U.S. (as well as quite a few other countries) have had just a little experience with this question. Carter: negotiating for the release of American hostages in Iran - result: 444 days of captivity. Reagan: threatening to do something about it - result: captives released within minutes of his inauguration. Right or wrong, experiences like this shape our approach to dealing with terrorism.
If there really is another, more effective way to deal with terrorism, perhaps some other country can step up to the plate and show us how it's done, by negotiating a solution to it's hostages in Iraq, or some other related issue. So far, there's not one example out there that I can see of a successful approach to dealing with terrorists other than aggressive confrontation and pursuing victory.
But if there's a proven alternative that's less expensive in human and dollar figure terms, I'm all ears, and would advocate changing the U.S. approach immediately. This wasn't what we wanted to do with these fine military people and all that money!
Look at battlebots. The designs changed rapidly, and evolved to deal with new competitive designs, and the capability of the "robots" really advanced quickly. It's an unambiguous meritocracy you would have a hard time finding anywhere else, and it's generated an enourmous interest in engineering amongst the younger set, led in no small part by that awesome young woman Lisa Winters.
[Lisa, If you're reading this, you will inspire my daughter and I will be forever grateful. Thanks!]
This is a first step in developing designs that can handle complex and dynamic requirements, and it's one that generates interest and excitement. Don't judge the future of this based on it's first steps, no more that we should have judged the first railroads by the fact they were powered by horses.
If you allow developers to access database structures directly, every time you change your database structure they have to change every program that depends on that structure. Stored procedures allow you to provide logical interfaces to (generally speaking) physical data structures that can withstand maintenance
efforts.
Try letting your developers deal with transactional and logical units of work, particularly in the OO web applications environment, and you'll find your data severely screwed up. The J2EE methods of dealing with data are not at all the way that relational databases expect interaction. Provide a compatibility layer of stored procedures, and your data won't get hosed and your application developers will appreciate the convenience of not having to deal with transactional logic.
It's a great way for DBA's to enforce logical constraints that affect data management. It also allows them to employ the tweaks and tricks that modern RDBMS's provide. The end result is that those who have the strongest ability to execute well in a particular portion of a project can assume the authority to do what they know best. That can't be a bad thing.
You mean, unlike the electoral college system of electing presidents?
And why would this be the case? Because it has been proven that oil comes from dead dinosaurs or something? That might not be the case. Maybe it's time to revisit these periodical cries of "we're going to run out of oil!" that I've been hearing since the Carter Administration. Mr. Carter's 20 years are up, and we have more oil available now than we did then.
There's a lot of conventional wisdom we've collected that really isn't worth it's inclusion in your list of "obvious truths". Global warming, a theory based entirely on computer models, is likely flawed as well. Wasn't it as late as ten years ago when the prevailing theory was that we were going to suffer an ice age due to human activity? It's hard to accept this type of "science" at face value, at least without more evidence of higher quality.
It's worth it to be skeptical when extraordinary theories are presented. That's good scientific method, and while your friend might not be right, his approach is far from foolish.
In regards to criminal violence, it kind of goes without saying that criminals are the ones committing the crimes, not the law-abiding, some of whom may own firearms. There are obviously societal differences between countries that impact how this criminal element decides to act, and perhaps there are some lessons to be learned that could help out. Some of this I suspect is simply due to demographic differences that are much harder to change. I haven't seen too many massive , ethnically diverse, low income urban areas in Norway that rival South L.A., the Bronx, South Chicago or Southwest D.C., and those are the places that experience the highest violent crime rates.
I'd suspect that if swords and daggers were the only weapons available to criminals, the U.S. would still have a higher crime rate than places like Norway, the only difference would be the nature of the wounds. That, and probably a higher mortality rate, since daggers don't need to be aimed and urban criminals are notoriously poor shots with handguns.
Heck, if I thought it possible that banning firearms would absolutely put an end to violence, I'd be first in line to turn 'em in. Really. As it is, it's my sole real means to confront it, and I'd rather have the choice about employing an effective means of resistance than to unilaterally disarm and put myself at the mercy of criminals.
Firearms ownership is a cultural legacy in the US that can't be wiped out. And in a real world where bad guys are armed regardless of the law, that legacy is actually useful to society. It permits citizens to be personally responsible for their own safety if they so choose. Additionally, and probably more importantly, it allows citizens to have the means to resist the sort of tyrants that in the past have made a large number of countries into horror shows of citizens being abused and murdered by their own governments. Law-abiding citizens who own firearms have caused nothing near the mayhem that governments have historically wrought on their own peoples. So the man who legally carries a firearm and has never harmed anyone isn't the bane of society.
Those of us in the world who have entrusted our governments with the sole power of lethal force are in far more danger than those places where good citizens are trusted to have the ability to defend themselves and their families. History is pretty clear on this.
What seems to us as now unfathomable in that time and that place may have well have been seen as entirely reasonable. Doesn't make it right by any stretch of the imagination, but that's just the way it was. Hopefully there's a lesson learned there, somewhere.
Of course I knew that this agency had a public records facility that would copy these applications, but that was a manual process outside of my control. There also was a feature in another system that would allow all of the applicants (and others who may be interested) to download everyone's application. Guess what field's logic wasn't checked -- you guessed it. Nobody thought of this new logic requiring a change in the download application, and suddenly companies bylaws, financial statements, special ownership disclosures, you name it -- all of them were falling into their competitor's hands despite the promise of the federal government to keep this information confidential. In about a day the firestorm was unbelievable.
Ever since then I preach "NO INTELLIGENCE IN PRIMARY KEYS, EVER!" and others don't know why I get why I get nuts about this. I guess they never had to deal with someone whining about a lost opportunity in the billion-dollar range!
Too bad you weren't working on a system that had the ability to back off transactions from the transaction log. I've done this innumerable times, but the RDBMS has always been able to recover from my momentary lapses, or I've been fortunate enough to work in an environment where autocommit is NOT on. Makes no sense in a development environment.
Now maybe there are some firmware versions out there that have these vulnerabilities, but I haven't been able to confirm either report and am beginning to wonder whether any of these stories are true. Of course, my standard practice of getting the latest firmware when I buy some equipment may have shielded me from these problems, and there are probably plenty (fools?) out there that don't do this and may have opened themselves up. But to see two vulnerability reports I cannot confirm makes me wonder whether this is some sort of disinformation campaign.
I look at the comments on this thread and am amazed that the supposedly technically competent can rush to judgement so quickly and with so little evidence. Were this to hit the mainstream media, can you imagine how this could change the marketplace, even if the report isn't true?
Maybe I should be buying some Cisco stock...
If you don't immediately check for upgrades when you open a box and haven't with this hardware, though, perhaps you deserve to get 0wn3d?
Then let's talk "individual with criminal intent" instead of confusingly labelling an inanimate object with an intent. It would raise the quality of this discussion tremendously.
The baton is intended for defence. The gun is there for protection perhaps, but is still an offensive weapon.
No, both the baton and the sidearm are for the officer to use in defending himself and are employed in a "continum of force" policy. Since it is against virtually every police department's policy to use a firearm in non-life threatening circumstances, the baton can be employed for a threat that falls below this critical level. This nearly universal policy is widely documented, and I would urge you to google this so you can better understand what the public servants who act in your behalf do in your name. I'm surprised you weren't aware of this.
Using a firearm to deal with a situation where your life is in danger is also difficult. Is the attacker going to wait for you to get it out?
It certainly is, and is the reason that responsible permit holders practice safe and rapid unholstering frequently. It's far from impossible to be caught unaware, and you're certinly right that access to a firearm doesn't guarantee one's ability to use it. It doesn't in any way guarantee that it should be used in all circumstances either.
That wheelchair-bound person doesn't have a whole lot of "other ways" to employ.
Nope. He's at a great disadvantage. a gun isn't going to help much either.
I have talked to permit holders who have concealed carry permits, and their experience is that it is a tremendous help. They've told me that their disability usually makes them a rather inviting target for criminals and having a firearm has made a huge difference in their quality of life. The only permit holder that I know who has ever had to point a firearm at an attacker was confined to a wheelchair. So I'd say he'd disagree with you.
Neither does the woman who is a hundred pounds lighter and ten inches shorter than her attacker have many "other ways" that are as effective and proven as legally employing a firearm.
Run away. Fast.
And if you can't outrun him? I suppose it's morally superior to be raped and murdered than to shoot a rapist as a last resort? You can't possibly believe this!
Is the 80 year old man expected to fight off a 17 year-old attacker with his jujitsu skills?
He could avoid places where he might get mugged. Is he going to have a chance to shoot?
If you could accurately predict where you could be attacked, and if it was socially valuable to restrict the freedom of a responsible elderly citizen in order to promote his safety, this might wash. But it's obvious that you can't predict where you might be criminally attacked, and it's dubious to think that it's prefereable to incarcerate the elderly in impossible "safety zones". Are we going to impose curfews on senior citizens? Wouldn't it make better sense to permit their ability to defend themselves from criminals?
But if we proscribe that last option of firing a handgun at an attacker because posession of that handgun is banned, what have we effectively done?
Removed handguns from the the muggers?
Wonderful idea. As soon as you find a way to force criminals to obey the law, let me know.
The net effect of mandating "find another option" only increases the number of dead victims, provided permit holders comply with the law.
So we just have to make sure that permit holding muggers comply with the law.
Permit holders, who have in everywhere but Vermont been subject to a background investigation by law enforcement, have not been mugging people. The instance of permit holders committing crimes while armed is so
A "weapon", really a class of tool, is neither offensive nor defensive. The method of employment is. You can conduct an offense or a defense, but labeling a tool that can be used in a variety of ways as offensive or defensive is simply arbitrary. Law enforcement personnel are armed with handguns for the purpose of defending themselves. That same instrument in the hands of a law-abiding citizen doesn't suddenly change it's fundamental characteristics and change from a "defensive sidearm" to an "offensive weapon".
Finding another way (other than using a firearm) to deal with a situation where your life is in danger is a terribly difficult. That wheelchair-bound person doesn't have a whole lot of "other ways" to employ. Neither does the woman who is a hundred pounds lighter and ten inches shorter than her attacker have many "other ways" that are as effective and proven as legally employing a firearm. Is the 80 year old man expected to fight off a 17 year-old attacker with his jujitsu skills? Or can we even expect a reasonably fit adult male to "find another way" when confronted by several other reasonably fit adult males?
Any ethical concealed permit holder is certainly going to attempt every other possible way to deal with a situation before using his or her last resort of firing at a threat. That's what's taught in the NRA personal protection course, in Ayoob's LFI courses and every other mandated or optional training I've ever seen. And in practice, we generally see this is the case, because the law requires this behavior. But if we proscribe that last option of firing a handgun at an attacker because posession of that handgun is banned, what have we effectively done?
We've shown that "find another option" doesn't work. If that option had been available, deadly force would not have been used. The net effect of mandating "find another option" only increases the number of dead victims, provided permit holders comply with the law.
Rackmounts of the 1U and 2U variety are handy when you can get them with the connections in the places you need them. Most have connections in the back, which for a geek is a bit of a pain since it means moving stuff around a lot every time we need to change something. A few have some important connections (or all of them) in the front, which makes for supreme ugliness but really handy to work on. Other than that, you need to pay attention to the size of the expansion cards you plan on putting in, as a riser card (to allow full-size cards in a 1U or 2U case) can often be more expensive than the cards you're planning to install.
At 4U cases and larger, it's pretty much the same size of a regular case in a horizontal configuration and at a fair premium over a standard case. Rarely are there any additional features other than for cooling. Unless there's a need for hot-swappable drives or something like that, it's not terribly useful.
Remember that 1U and 2U cases tend to be a fair amount deeper than a standard case, which yields somewhat about the same case volume as a cheaper standard case. So unless you have depth available with how you want to set it up, it can case trouble. But if you need to stack things up, stuff someting next to ceiling joists, or have a dedicated 19-inch width area for electronics, you're not saving yourself much. When that's the case though, this is a really great solution.
And it looks cool too. My $400 linux server/router sitting in a box that says "Intel NetStructure Traffic Director", which probably cost ten times that much. I feel like someone who has a car kit where they turn a VW bug into something that looks like a street rod.
Now that I have my zaurus up with ssh and ftp, I can drop in all sorts of linux utilities and literally pull the whole thing (as opposed to "most" of it with the windows backup utility) down to my SuSE box, change what I want and either ftp or rsync back. Or at least that's what I'm hoping to make happen once I get networking to stop horking up so consistently.
I wish they'd include more out-of-the-box support for linux, but it's not that big a deal. And with four replacement OS's for this, if you don't like what you get at first you can flash the rom with any of the alternatives.
I would rather be able to sftp and ssh into the zaurus and use CLI utilities than deal with some KDE GUI app that supposedly does file transfer. Give me those, and there's nothing I can't make happen.
Now can anyone just clue me in about getting cardservices to allow an Netgear MA701 CF card to connect to a network? Dang thing won't associate with an AP no matter what I do! I'm about ready to flash it with Gentoo or OZ or something!
Cable/Sattelite providers could then get a percentage of whatever is charged (say 20% of the channel fee). This would end up creating incentives all over the place.
First, cable/sattelite providers would have a vested interest in ensuring a readily available volume of channels. The more valuable the services they provide and the more people want them, the more money they make. Content providers would have the option of investing to create high-subscription rate programming, or to try for high-volume lower investment channels. Niche providers would have the barrier for entry lowered since cable/sattelite providers would want to offer the largest menu possible.
It's really hard for content providers to get quality data about how consumers value their programming right now. Nielsen is far from a great provider of information to the industry, but it's the only game out there now. If this actually became a marketplace, the consumer feedback would be undeniable and of absolutely perfect quality. With better information about what consumers want, the chance of actually having it provided increases dramatically.
And best of all, those crapola channels that you don't want would either have to lower their subscription price to the floor to keep you as a customer, or fold, thus uncluttering the lineup. We could use a few less home shopping channels, eh?
I am not a fan of regulation, and have seen far too much of it develop unintended consequences that poison the expected benefits. Looking at this though, all I see is a win everywhere, even for the cable companies. I can't see a downside if this is done properly.
What ideas could we possibly be deprived of if we require that public speech have some degree of decency? You can still say whatever you want -- argue any horrible position or concept your heart desires, but you just have to do it in a manner that isn't patently indecent and profane. If the idea or argument has any merit whatsoever, it certinly is capable of being expressed decently.
Get concerned when unpopular ideas are banned. That's what is really being constitutionally protected. Nothing of the sort is happening here.
It's SO much easier to require physical contact instead of having a 10m range. I suppose this is why contact memory buttons are so much more prevalent than RFID tags.
Another solution in search of a problem.
Disturbing? C'mon!
Humans thrown into a boxing ring for the sole purpose of delivering injury on each other might warrant that label. Save the angst for something worthwhile.
Robotic combat gets people like teenager Lisa Winters (BattleBots seasons 1 & 2) to craft machines that try to solve a really difficult and dynamic engineering problem with pretty limited resources. Designing a rope-climber is a static and relatively simple problem, and it doesn't inspire in the way that only gourmet robotic destruction can. Who gets juiced about hopping machines and the like?
If you want to inspire kids into pursuing engineering careers, throw this mega-problem at them. We've seen extraordinary innovation (the real kind, not the marketing type) in this arena and the bots out there today are light years beyond the successful designs of only a few years ago. Before Comedy Central stopped showing BattleBots (huh?) the number of entrants exploded, and now there are robotic combat competitions all over the place. That'll continue unless the only broadcast of this remains that abysmal RoboWars disappointment.
The gladitorial nature of this is simply taking a potentially harmful human characteristic and channeling it into something that creates a positive outcome. If you try to supress this all you end up with is the more easily created gladatorial contests that actually take human lives. Robot fighting is far better than humans trying to tear body parts off of each other. And if the way you do it improves education, heck, the question then becomes why we're not subsidizing it or making attendance and particpation mandatory!
Sending email and instant messages from Groove are not what I'd call enterprise data integration. Try getting documents to export into Stellent or Autonomy without requiring manual import/export procedures. Integrate that IM traffic into a Tibco or MQS messaging system, or into some XML stream. Without each user manually performing some export process, data in Groove is securely locked within Groove.
Peer-to-peer communication is nearly irrelevant to homeland security and intelligence functions. Getting data from the field and into the analysis/decision support process is the exact issue these guys are having trouble with. Groove doesn't address that.
But bravo for writing some code capable of sending data from Groove to anything else. That's actually a pretty rare accomplishment from what I've seen.