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User: ultranova

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  1. Re:Tough project on Best Practices For Process Documentation? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My dog man, you're actually complaining about making a small business run more efficiently?

    I'm not complaining about anything. I'm pointing out that this project is impossible, and explaining why: it requires cooperation from the very people who are going to get screwed by it.

    More efficient means cost savings, means more job security in the long run, as the business saves money. Its quite simply a form of job insurance. If someone does get hit by a bus, all that knowledge is gone. You need to keep core working knowledge.

    If you are the one hit by the bus, the loss of knowledge won't harm you. Consequently, it is in your best interests that everyone else shares their knowledge but you won't. Of course everyone taking this attitude leads to long-term harm for everyone, but that doesn't change the fact that any single employee has nothing to gain by documenting his own work, and something to lose.

    It's simply another example of the tragedy of the commons.

  2. Re:Tough project on Best Practices For Process Documentation? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For most people, explaining what they do, how, etc, means to give away their value. I'm not saying it's true, it's just the way many people think, and this is why they refuse to cooperate as much as possible.

    Of course it is true. The whole reason to document, as given by the submitter, is to make people more easily replacable. Something that is easy to replace is less valuable than something that is hard to replace.

    It simply isn't in anyone's best interests to cooperate with this kind of project; that's why it's doomed from the start.

    So, your project is probably not to be about documenting everything, but probably about improving those processes as well, making life easier for everyone (and making it clear than that's the final goal), etc.

    Improving the process = making it more efficient = making it require less manpower = layoffs. Again, no incentive to cooperate, and every incentive to sabotage.

  3. Re:What a crock on U2's Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders · · Score: 1

    The alternative to downloading illegally is to purchase by chosing to do this you deprive the nominal owner of a sale.

    The alternative to downloading illegally is to not download, buy or otherwise acquire the entity in question. This also deprives the copyright holder of a sale. Does this make it theft ?

    There is no moral difference to lifting a CD from a record store.

    Of course there is: the store loses the CD, which means that the value of its inventory decreases - in other words, it has suffered a real and tangible loss. Downloading the contents of the CD, on the other hand, may or may not cause the copyright holder to not make as much money from his copyrights as he otherwise might had - in other words, it doesn't cause a loss, tangible or otherwise; in fact it is impossible to know if it has had any effect whatsoever.

  4. Re:Why not? on Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset? · · Score: 1

    Everything is black and white! True or false! 0 or 1! Every bit is either ON OR OFF!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DEATH TO AMERICA

    America, being a continent / geographical area rather than a living being, is quite unable to die. Therefore your sentiment is nonsensical, and therefore wrong.

  5. Re:is it April 1? on Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset? · · Score: 1

    Talk to a Mormon about gold plates and the Angel Moroni then... ...many religions have similar revelatory stuff.

    AFAIK Mormons aren't in the habit of killing people using said gold plates as an excuse. This means that they might be crazy, but harmless, and there is no reason why the rest of us couldn't share the world with them. I'm increasingly beginning to wonder, thought, if it is possible to live in the same world as muslims; Islam seems to be particularly effective at bringing out the worst in people.

  6. Re:Scam him! on Lawyer Puts $10k Bounty on Blogger's Identity · · Score: 1

    Find some random guy i thailand, cut a deal with him to admit it's him.
    Laugh at said lawyer.
    Untill he realises it and offers another 10k bounty for your identity.

    No worries, Thailand has plenty of people to keep the ball rolling. I think I smell a new form of outsourcing being born :)...

  7. Re:U2: Union Busters - ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! on U2's Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are you somehow required to hire overpriced union workers at whatever amount of money they decide to extort from you in order to show how much you really care?

    If refusing to work on a wage below X is extortion, then refusing to pay someone more than Y for that work is also extortion. Given this, you may wish to rethink your statement a little.

  8. Re:Vista XP is here! on Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones · · Score: 1

    But wouldn't it be great if it knows you tend to fire up Outlook around 9am and at 8:55 starts preloading the data so it's nice and speedy when you end up clicking that icon?

    How much of Outlook's launch time is spent reading the exe file, and how much reading the mailbox file ? I'd imagine that the latter might be a lot bigger in most cases.

    So, instead of tracking which application the user uses, track file usage and precache those files. It achieves the same effect, but is semantically simpler and better defined, and can be done entirely at filesystem level without any involvement from higher levels. On top of that, it is more efficient when dealing with programs like Outlook which deal with potentially huge datasets. It gets especially nice if you consider directories as simply special files: the computer can precache (and preferably preparse) the user's home directory five minutes before he logs in (which is at the same time each day, assuming a job computer) as well as any configuration files. The result is a very speedy login.

    So... Anyone care to implement this for Linux ?

  9. Re:Hmm on Telco Immunity Goes To Full Debate · · Score: 1

    If the absence of a negative outcome is proof to you, I'll be sending you a bill shortly for my hard work preventing you from getting cancer.

    As it happens, the effectiveness of intelligence against terrorists can be measured objectively by simply enumerating the terrorists caught, bombs or other means of terror confiscated, or nefarious schemes exposed using information gathered from said intelligence. So, anyone got any statistics on those ?

  10. Re:So long as said blogger is truthful.... on Lawyer Puts $10k Bounty on Blogger's Identity · · Score: 1

    Truth is a defense for libel.

    Assuming you can afford to hire a defense attorney, yes. Otherwise you're guilty by poorness and better STFU. Equality before the law belongs to those who can buy it - that's the American Way.

    Of course if you're rich or a corporation you could simply buy laws, but I digress...

  11. Re:warning labels on New 4100 Lumen Flashlight Can Set Things On Fire · · Score: 1

    I'm amazed at the number of people that will use two or three fifty footers, risking damage to their electrical equipment,

    Um, what risk ? Please explain why using long extension cords - in series if need be - should cause such a risk ? Sure, at some point the resistance will lower the voltage to the point where the equipment fails to function; but that seems unlikely to cause damage.

  12. Re:warning labels on New 4100 Lumen Flashlight Can Set Things On Fire · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying that it shouldn't, I'm saying that it shouldn't have to. It should be common sense not to put that many high-draw devices on a single, whimpy cord.

    The wimpy cord looks just the same as the cord which connects the house to the grid. Given this, how should Joe Average know that it is wimpier ? Especially since his house has circuit breakers / fuses which are supposed to disconnect the electric apparatus in the case of too much current.

    Besides, there is no way of simply looking at a cord and telling how much current it can carry, especially when the actual metal is invisible beneath insulation. You don't neccessarily even know the actual chemical composition of the wire; is it pure copper, or does it have impurities, and how do they affect the resistance ?

    So yes, cord should have mandatory labels for maximum load, both in ampers and watts (for normal household wall socket potential in the area it is to be used in).

  13. Re:RTFA on NYC Wants to Ban Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    Except, you really can't do that. Any fool can homebrew a geiger counter. They're little more than photomultiplier tubes connected to a speaker.

    So how can you ban them either, if any fool can just make them ? Besides, if the fool makes a false alarm based on his foolish contraptions mistaken readings, the fault lies with him, and you can simply send him the bill for damages.

  14. Re:RTFA on NYC Wants to Ban Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    Better yet, start an investigation into the faulty equipment, and make the *manufacturers* liable for the real-world consequences of their devices giving a false alarm.

    At which point they'll make devices which wouldn't give an alarm if submerged into a reactor core.

    The real solution is creating minimum acceptable quality standards for both false positives and negatives, and charging anyone caught selling devices which won't conform for fraud.

  15. Re:RTFA on NYC Wants to Ban Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    The title is very misleading, its actual a response to a possible panic caused by people using bad detectors. Imagine if hundreds of people buy shitty detectors that can be tripped by high NOX counts(A car emission). Suddenly on a hot afternoon during rush hour, 100+ counters register a large nuclear presence. Thats a big worry.

    So enforce the existing laws against fraud by demanding that something sold as a geiger counter won't mistake NOX as plutonium. Create minimum standards of accuracy such devices must pass and charge anyone who doesn't comply with fraud. That will get rid of the problem and avoid trampling anyone's rights.

  16. Re:Not Underground on Spies In the Phishing Underground · · Score: 1

    key sequence generators which use your initial pin to generate a new pin every few hours/mins/seconds

    So if you learn the original PIN, you can calculate the current PIN at any later point in time. Besides, how do you actually use this to identify anyone, short of telling the other party your original PIN ?

    challenge protocols, which ask an question and require an appropriate answer

    How does the other party know that the answer is correct ? Or are you talking about public-key cryptographic authentication ?

    broadcast / multi-path counter measure against man in the middle

    In the Internet there's no way to do this, since there's no way to enforce a given route for a packet; besides, it doesn't help any if the server or your machine is compromised.

  17. Re:RIAA on Internet Group Declares War on Scientology · · Score: 1

    I think it's quite safe to assume there is no such thing as a smart Neo-Nazi.

    Simply because someone is smart doesn't mean they can't be evil or just batshit insane.

  18. Re:And Appropriately on Work Progressing on Army's Future Combat Systems · · Score: 1

    Say the US had no military at all, but just the minimum required to maintain its nuclear arsenal, plus the various groups for protecting against the odd suicide bomber etc.

    In this situation, would the US be protected any less compared to having a mighty army?

    Actually, yes. If Joe Tyrant hires a group of mercenaries and takes over New York, what are you going to do ? Nuke it ?

    Military exists to back the authority of the government with force if needs be. When it is needed, it is usually desirable to use as little of that force as possible, to minimize the inevitable collateral damage. If the minimum force that can be used is a nuclear missile, then the collateral damage is going to be huge.

  19. Re:Giving weapons to the irresponsible on DoS Attacks on Estonia Were Launched by Student · · Score: 1

    The greatest risk to stable society is its young men.

    Young unmarried men. People who have a family to worry about are a lot less likely to do something stupid than the ones who don't, and of course it also helps to have an outlet for those surging hormones. That's one of the reasons why most ancient societies advocated marrying young, and why a married couple is sometimes still considered the basic building block of the society.

    The best way to keep people from doing stupid things is to make sure that they have a lot to lose; and that is only possible if they have a lot, period. That's one of the reasons why having a large middle class tends to stabilize society.

  20. Re:Great News... on Bill Gates Calls for a 'Kinder Capitalism' · · Score: 1

    So what your saying is that if Dracula were to suddenly change his ways and forgive all the people he had converted or bitten over the years, that he'd suddenly be a "good guy" you'd trust your kids with?

    Why would Dracula forgive the people he has wronged ? Did you perhaps mean apologize to ?

    Anyway, no, I wouldn't trust my kids with Dracula, no matter what he did; however, if he did make a commitment to change his ways and actually stuck to it, I'd stop trying to stake him. After all, he might never make up for his crimes, but merely trying to is sufficient to change one's classification from a bloodsucking fiend to a human being.

  21. Re:Fewest Admitters = Fewest Flaws on Microsoft Says Vista Has the Fewest Flaws · · Score: 1

    How many people are going to put a cracked version of XP into an emulator on a fast linux box?

    Why would they need to ?

  22. Re:IBM should really benefit from this move on IBM Responds to Overtime Lawsuits With 15% Salary Cut · · Score: 1

    Guess what, IBM is going to keep their hard working billing people. The guys willing to put in 50 - 60 hour weeks will love this.

    So every IBM product from now on is made by people suffering from severe sleep deprivation. Good to know.

    Seriously, what kind of monomaniacal nut works for 60 hours a week on a continuous basis ?

  23. Re:Life+70 is just obscene on ISP Filters & Copyright Extension Defeated In EU · · Score: 1

    Apparently this is a form of copy protection, one which I have no idea how to fix. I have paid for this game, admittedly, it was a few years ago, but I the only thing stopping me play this game is short sighted DRM.

    Short sighted ? Because of copy protection, you can't keep on playing the old game but must buy a new one if you want to keep playing. Putting it in for that purpose requires foresight and long-term planning and is the very antithesis of shortsightedness.

  24. Re:Life+70 is just obscene on ISP Filters & Copyright Extension Defeated In EU · · Score: 1

    After all I can read a document stored in the National Archive 500 years after it was written with little difficlty, but I cannot easily open and read that text document that I have on floppy disk from 1992

    In other words, with DRM the entertainment industry can sell you the same content in a new format every ten years, while with open formats once bought it's yours. I think that's the real purpose of DRM.

  25. Re:Anarchy is not opposed to spontaneous organizat on Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"? · · Score: 1

    Sure, people might complain at him and he may or may not be made to feel guilty, but there's no binding law making him do what he's told or providing for remedies for him not doing so. That's anarchy -- the lack of legal / community-imposed consequences for your actions; it's not some boneheaded, punk-rock poser obsession with telling everyone, "F--- off," who might tell you what would be a good idea to do.

    The basic problem with this concept is that there's no legal or community-imposed consequences for Joe Tyrant forcing others to obey at gunpoint either. That's why anarchism doesn't work: an anarchist society either gets conquered/massacred or abandons anarchy to fight back as soon as the first psycho comes around, so it could only work on a world composed of perfect people.