It's nice that you imply the person isn't human simply because you disagree.
The problem is that resources are limited. We 'could' have doctors spend lots of time keeping you alive, but that means we are going to have a ton of doctors, and not much else. The whole purpose of money is to distribute/use our resources in a somewhat sane way. With bailouts and built in inflation we may have deviated from the path a bit, but that's still what money at it's route is.
So you can say "do whatever it takes to keep people alive" and then have millions of living people without basic necessities... or you can realize that, in reality, you can't save everyone... and difficult choices need to be made. Putting a dollar value on a life is likely one of the most fair ways to do it.
It's unfortunate, but semi-secret laws are the norm.
Read through the US Government's Code of Federal Regulations. Just about any technical area will tell you to abide behind some document that is behind a paywall. ANSI/IEEE/ASME and some industry organizations all charge (often exorbitant) fees to read a copy of what has been made 'law'.
The government looking to industry to self-govern is an EXCELLENT idea... but it often puts people at risk because (outside of companies) they can't afford to purchase every spec they are legally obliged to follow. Hell, people have 'broken the law' by using an old/outdated version of a paywalled specification.
(Yes this is called 'code' and now 'law', but it still leads to fines and jailtime).
This might actually be an 'excellent' security model. Currently on Firefox I rely on noscript for security, whitelisting sites that I trust.... but this does nothing for JPG/GIF/whatever bugs.
I'd much rather have untrusted sites displayed as text only, with everything other than BR/line breaks filtered out in a more simple/stupid/secure renderer. Think Lynx in a browser.
I'm currently in Pueblo, CO at a test site 30 miles outside town. There's only one paved road to the facility and it's from Pueblo.
I usually fly into Denver, drove through the Springs, to Pueblo and then head out to the site. Simple trip, just get on 25-S and drive. Get off on exit 101A and drive ~30 miles.
Well, I wanted to test my new gps. It had me drive down to the Co Springs airport and then take a ~30 mile dirt road. Actually got me there quicker, but the facility keeps that gate locked:/
It's not a matter of how many of the possibilities have been explored, but a comparison of how many possibilites exist and how many the universe has randomly created.
There is a finite number of ways a group of atoms can join together. For 10^7 atoms there are 10^49 ways for them to join together (completely random number... depends on type of atoms, enviroment, etc). Of these 10^(49-?) combinitations are actually stable.
It's quite possible that the universe at large has run through most of those combinitations....
If correct, grey goo would already exist SOMEWHERE if it were possible. As the Mars rocks and meteors on Earth show, it wouldn't stay contained. If such a molecule as viral as grey goo was possible, it's likely that most of the universe would already be 'infected'.
This is idiotic. Two people under Chinese rules take their blogs down with messages that make it appear to be a government 'sponsored' takedown.
"unavoidable reasons known to all"
How exactly was this supposed to be fact checked? Calling the person who posted the lie to start with, to see if they'd change thier story?
Yeah, western media sucks and is driven by finances more than journalism... but this story doesn't apply. Two people hoaxed what has been happening and is not uncommon.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof... this is sadly not very extraordinary.
I also don't find their terminology as incorrect as Wang wants to claim. Sarcastism (in the west at least) is often considered being outspoken. You aren't often sarcastic and popular if you only say what everyone else is saying. Anything else is 'outspoken'.
Your company sounds to be going in the same direction as my own employeer went ~5 years ago. 'Corporate oversite' is not a very good solution.
Basically what happened with us... we had an under funded IT department of 6 people for several thousand in the company. Backups and the like were uncommon. A quartely meeting was conviened where all the regional (basically different areas of engineering) managers would meet with IT and decide what IT's priorities would be and decide what resources would be allocated.
Immediate results: IT got better funding. More staff for watching servers. Bloat. After the original problems where fixed, the quartely meeting became a wish list. The IT department gained more and more control of individual users.
Now, this may not be a big issue in your company. In mine, 80%+ of the employees are engineers who travel a lot. We need control of their own computers. From IT's perspective, it was cheaper to lock down everyones computer rather than the few bad actors.
From a company performance standpoint, this caused issues with clients. When you end up in some random office at a client's building and need to print a new document you can't install drivers. We couldn't install test equipment software without 'dialing home' so IT can VPN in. We couldn't cleanup our own registry when an install/uninstall goes bad without dialing in again. Overall, if cost us time and lost us clients.
Currently the control is now swinging back from IT to the users. If you work for a technology company I STRONGLY suggest that you spell out IT's responsibilities AND IT's limits. My vague suggestions follow.
Responsibilities: 1) e-mail 2) webroot servers 3) local network servers 4) inter-office network (if you have one) 5) Helpdesk functions.
'Limits': (you probably want to call this requirements) 1) employees in group 'X' must have admin access over their machines, subject to periodic software audits 2) office managers remain responsible for telephones and other items not directly computer related (IT should not control PA/lights/etc) 3) office managers (or equivalent) dictate (and pay for) equipment to be purchased 4) Managers dicate/pay for software to be installed. IT is still responsible for company licenses. 5) An individual in each office must have admin rights for people not in group 'X'. This employee need not be (and need not be) IT related.
95% of user IT issues can be handled easily (and often more quickly) within a group of technically competent people. The IT department should provide support for the other 5% (which includes maintaining servers and the like).
There is randomness in our universe (although probabalistic) that likely has created most molecular combinations of 10^9 atoms (out the arse number).
The thing with the 'grey goo' theory is that grey goo is by definition incredibly hardy and hungry. It would only need to develop in one place before it started 'reproducing' through the adjacent material.
Stage left: asteroid/comet impact. Millions of 'spores' from this big grey blob are now flying off into space.
What is incredibly more likely (and currently called life) is a molecule that breaks a small set of bonds and uses the atoms to reproduce. As we see everyday, such molecules are self limited due to random degradation, lack of materials and lack of energy.
This doesn't really make sense. It's silly to block Google because it lets you transfer data. There's thousands of other sites that allow the same thing. For a few bucks you can purchase a domain/server space and use that to copy the data.
If you don't want your data copied to the internet, don't connect the system.
Worst case they make it opt-in... with the opting in papers getting much better returns on traffic then they do now.
Re:Sounds good, but maybe not?
on
Wireless USB hubs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There is negligible transmission latency
And you know that how? It's not just the aount of time the radio waves take. It's also the encoding and decoding. Theoretically they could have a 1 second buffer in there, giving you a second of lag. (Not that they would)
The point is, there will be extra lag introduced because of this... and none of us can say how much unless we know exactly how this thing works.
Unfortunately, your link is completely non-encompasing. It is a federal REQUIREMENT to have DBE (disadvantage), WBE (women), and/or MBE (minority) content.
Now, there are good DBEs, and bad DBEs. We have inspector DBEs that are great businesses which just happen to be owned by minorities and who'd we use none the less. On the other hand, there are areas in which it's tough to find a good local DBE... but we are required to use one.
There have been situations were we have a DBE, can't get rid of them, and end up paying someone else to do the job. You can apply for exception if you prove that none of the available DBEs are competent... but this is easier said then done.
The sad fact is, if you REQUIRE that government contractors use minority/women businesses you are causing race/sexism. Businesses will do what it takes to make money. These rules make the path of least (and cheapest) resistance to hire contractors that are not necessarily the best, but the most likely to fill the quota.
Recently, quotas have been 'prohibited'. In effect that isn't quite true. If your DBE content is below a (know) level, you need to PROVE that you did everything possible to incorporate DBEs. The effect is tha tthe DBE quota is still aimed at.
Example: You are hiring a company to make whatcha-ma-things. Three apply, ones a DBE. You felt that one of the non-DBEs had a slightly better product. Normally you'd choose them, but would then have to prove that your decision was 'fair'.
All the "ID crowd" says is: There is evidence of design in nature. That's nice and all... really.
Unfortunately this 'evidence of design' doesn't actually exist. ID proponents consider anything that we don't currently understand as 'evidence of design.' That logic is about as flawed as possible.
Laws which are natural laws...such as the right to our own bodily integrety...can not be given away by an act of a government or the social contract. Thus murder, rape, and assault will always be crimes, because every person, no matter what the system, has a natural right to live and be free of unlawful physical contacts. If not, everyone could maime and kill at leisure, and society would probably fall apart.
However, even those laws are no more 'natural' than those involving copyright. We could both think of a dozen exceptions for the things you noted. They are laws because, as a society, we agree that it's not the type of world we want to live in.
The issue here, and with copyright laws, is that we have several ideas of 'rights' which sometimes conflict with each other. The fact that they conflict and there is no correct outcome is the perfect sign that they are not REALLY natural laws... just rules we made that are more important.
In theory - laws [should be] something akin to a collectively agreed to moral pact that benefits and protects
In practice - laws are our attempt to protect the current society
Yeah, well if you follow the road past this project, the organizations involved aren't very 'mainstream'. The majority of the projects supporters appear to be free energy advocates (pesky law of energy conservation).
This is scarily close to all the other slashtivements. The guy is looking for funding, doesn't really seem to have much in the way of scientific support, and is using a US Patent Officer (most intelligent people around) as his main public supporter.
You'll notice on the site, and the sites it links to, a lack of scientific information.
And no... I'm not usually this cynical.
You cant file a suit against a "jon doe" in many cases.
But again, that's a process to be handled by the courts. I rob your bank, but I'm stupid enough to right my demand on a note with my SSN# on it. You can't just call up and ask who the SSN# belongs too. (Sadly, this has happened)
Likewise, being able to call an ISP and asking who uses IP addy xxx.xxx... would be a Bad Thing(tm). An individual doesn't have the ability to obtain and abuse this information... neither should a corporation.
That's what courts are for. If ISPs shut down website because of legal action we'd be in trouble. The debacle with pennyarcade over the last few months is a good example. Political oriented blogs are another.
Just because I tell your ISP that netweasel is my copyrighted nickname, doesn't mean they should shutdown your site.
(Granted, ISPs need to use common sense... and currently seem to. REQUIRING them to shutdown a site prior to a court ruling is IMHO a very bad thing.)
What's more, it's not immediately clear to me why it would even be legal for an ISP to give out data about customers to a private company that asks for it, without (I presume) the customer's knowledge or consent.
RTFS. The story mentions that an exception was granted for data protection laws.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice that you imply the person isn't human simply because you disagree.
The problem is that resources are limited. We 'could' have doctors spend lots of time keeping you alive, but that means we are going to have a ton of doctors, and not much else. The whole purpose of money is to distribute/use our resources in a somewhat sane way. With bailouts and built in inflation we may have deviated from the path a bit, but that's still what money at it's route is.
So you can say "do whatever it takes to keep people alive" and then have millions of living people without basic necessities... or you can realize that, in reality, you can't save everyone... and difficult choices need to be made. Putting a dollar value on a life is likely one of the most fair ways to do it.
That's a GOOD thing. It's available to everyone, and privacy concerns are well known.
With it limited to only certain people, nobody knows quite the capabilities. It can be used against the public, but not by the public.
It's unfortunate, but semi-secret laws are the norm. Read through the US Government's Code of Federal Regulations. Just about any technical area will tell you to abide behind some document that is behind a paywall. ANSI/IEEE/ASME and some industry organizations all charge (often exorbitant) fees to read a copy of what has been made 'law'. The government looking to industry to self-govern is an EXCELLENT idea... but it often puts people at risk because (outside of companies) they can't afford to purchase every spec they are legally obliged to follow. Hell, people have 'broken the law' by using an old/outdated version of a paywalled specification. (Yes this is called 'code' and now 'law', but it still leads to fines and jailtime).
This might actually be an 'excellent' security model. Currently on Firefox I rely on noscript for security, whitelisting sites that I trust.... but this does nothing for JPG/GIF/whatever bugs.
I'd much rather have untrusted sites displayed as text only, with everything other than BR/line breaks filtered out in a more simple/stupid/secure renderer. Think Lynx in a browser.
Odd timing.
:/
I'm currently in Pueblo, CO at a test site 30 miles outside town. There's only one paved road to the facility and it's from Pueblo.
I usually fly into Denver, drove through the Springs, to Pueblo and then head out to the site. Simple trip, just get on 25-S and drive. Get off on exit 101A and drive ~30 miles.
Well, I wanted to test my new gps. It had me drive down to the Co Springs airport and then take a ~30 mile dirt road. Actually got me there quicker, but the facility keeps that gate locked
It's not a matter of how many of the possibilities have been explored, but a comparison of how many possibilites exist and how many the universe has randomly created. There is a finite number of ways a group of atoms can join together. For 10^7 atoms there are 10^49 ways for them to join together (completely random number... depends on type of atoms, enviroment, etc). Of these 10^(49-?) combinitations are actually stable. It's quite possible that the universe at large has run through most of those combinitations.... If correct, grey goo would already exist SOMEWHERE if it were possible. As the Mars rocks and meteors on Earth show, it wouldn't stay contained. If such a molecule as viral as grey goo was possible, it's likely that most of the universe would already be 'infected'.
This is idiotic. Two people under Chinese rules take their blogs down with messages that make it appear to be a government 'sponsored' takedown.
"unavoidable reasons known to all"
How exactly was this supposed to be fact checked? Calling the person who posted the lie to start with, to see if they'd change thier story?
Yeah, western media sucks and is driven by finances more than journalism... but this story doesn't apply. Two people hoaxed what has been happening and is not uncommon.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof... this is sadly not very extraordinary.
I also don't find their terminology as incorrect as Wang wants to claim. Sarcastism (in the west at least) is often considered being outspoken. You aren't often sarcastic and popular if you only say what everyone else is saying. Anything else is 'outspoken'.
Your company sounds to be going in the same direction as my own employeer went ~5 years ago. 'Corporate oversite' is not a very good solution.
Basically what happened with us... we had an under funded IT department of 6 people for several thousand in the company. Backups and the like were uncommon. A quartely meeting was conviened where all the regional (basically different areas of engineering) managers would meet with IT and decide what IT's priorities would be and decide what resources would be allocated.
Immediate results:
IT got better funding. More staff for watching servers.
Bloat. After the original problems where fixed, the quartely meeting became a wish list. The IT department gained more and more control of individual users.
Now, this may not be a big issue in your company. In mine, 80%+ of the employees are engineers who travel a lot. We need control of their own computers. From IT's perspective, it was cheaper to lock down everyones computer rather than the few bad actors.
From a company performance standpoint, this caused issues with clients. When you end up in some random office at a client's building and need to print a new document you can't install drivers. We couldn't install test equipment software without 'dialing home' so IT can VPN in. We couldn't cleanup our own registry when an install/uninstall goes bad without dialing in again. Overall, if cost us time and lost us clients.
Currently the control is now swinging back from IT to the users. If you work for a technology company I STRONGLY suggest that you spell out IT's responsibilities AND IT's limits. My vague suggestions follow.
Responsibilities:
1) e-mail
2) webroot servers
3) local network servers
4) inter-office network (if you have one)
5) Helpdesk functions.
'Limits': (you probably want to call this requirements)
1) employees in group 'X' must have admin access over their machines, subject to periodic software audits
2) office managers remain responsible for telephones and other items not directly computer related (IT should not control PA/lights/etc)
3) office managers (or equivalent) dictate (and pay for) equipment to be purchased
4) Managers dicate/pay for software to be installed. IT is still responsible for company licenses.
5) An individual in each office must have admin rights for people not in group 'X'. This employee need not be (and need not be) IT related.
95% of user IT issues can be handled easily (and often more quickly) within a group of technically competent people. The IT department should provide support for the other 5% (which includes maintaining servers and the like).
Well, not quite.
There is randomness in our universe (although probabalistic) that likely has created most molecular combinations of 10^9 atoms (out the arse number).
The thing with the 'grey goo' theory is that grey goo is by definition incredibly hardy and hungry. It would only need to develop in one place before it started 'reproducing' through the adjacent material.
Stage left: asteroid/comet impact. Millions of 'spores' from this big grey blob are now flying off into space.
What is incredibly more likely (and currently called life) is a molecule that breaks a small set of bonds and uses the atoms to reproduce. As we see everyday, such molecules are self limited due to random degradation, lack of materials and lack of energy.
This doesn't really make sense. It's silly to block Google because it lets you transfer data. There's thousands of other sites that allow the same thing. For a few bucks you can purchase a domain/server space and use that to copy the data.
If you don't want your data copied to the internet, don't connect the system.
But it's never going to be completely halted.
Worst case they make it opt-in... with the opting in papers getting much better returns on traffic then they do now.
There is negligible transmission latency
And you know that how? It's not just the aount of time the radio waves take. It's also the encoding and decoding. Theoretically they could have a 1 second buffer in there, giving you a second of lag. (Not that they would)
The point is, there will be extra lag introduced because of this... and none of us can say how much unless we know exactly how this thing works.
That's shortsighted. He'll spend more time explaining the difficulties/benefits of compatability than the benefits the company will get.
It's likely that the article writer understands the problem better then 'the business' (even though he is asking for feedback).
Dumb question... but can't they automate this process? It would seem easy to flag anything that isn't uniform/the right color/too big.
Unfortunately, your link is completely non-encompasing. It is a federal REQUIREMENT to have DBE (disadvantage), WBE (women), and/or MBE (minority) content.
Now, there are good DBEs, and bad DBEs. We have inspector DBEs that are great businesses which just happen to be owned by minorities and who'd we use none the less. On the other hand, there are areas in which it's tough to find a good local DBE... but we are required to use one.
There have been situations were we have a DBE, can't get rid of them, and end up paying someone else to do the job. You can apply for exception if you prove that none of the available DBEs are competent... but this is easier said then done.
The sad fact is, if you REQUIRE that government contractors use minority/women businesses you are causing race/sexism. Businesses will do what it takes to make money. These rules make the path of least (and cheapest) resistance to hire contractors that are not necessarily the best, but the most likely to fill the quota.
Recently, quotas have been 'prohibited'. In effect that isn't quite true. If your DBE content is below a (know) level, you need to PROVE that you did everything possible to incorporate DBEs. The effect is tha tthe DBE quota is still aimed at.
Example:
You are hiring a company to make whatcha-ma-things. Three apply, ones a DBE. You felt that one of the non-DBEs had a slightly better product. Normally you'd choose them, but would then have to prove that your decision was 'fair'.
All the "ID crowd" says is: There is evidence of design in nature.
That's nice and all... really.
Unfortunately this 'evidence of design' doesn't actually exist. ID proponents consider anything that we don't currently understand as 'evidence of design.' That logic is about as flawed as possible.
The issue here, and with copyright laws, is that we have several ideas of 'rights' which sometimes conflict with each other. The fact that they conflict and there is no correct outcome is the perfect sign that they are not REALLY natural laws... just rules we made that are more important.
In theory - laws [should be] something akin to a collectively agreed to moral pact that benefits and protects
In practice - laws are our attempt to protect the current society
When the tires aren't supporting the weight of the vehicle, we call it a plane.
Yeah, well if you follow the road past this project, the organizations involved aren't very 'mainstream'. The majority of the projects supporters appear to be free energy advocates (pesky law of energy conservation). This is scarily close to all the other slashtivements. The guy is looking for funding, doesn't really seem to have much in the way of scientific support, and is using a US Patent Officer (most intelligent people around) as his main public supporter. You'll notice on the site, and the sites it links to, a lack of scientific information. And no... I'm not usually this cynical.
And?
Nobody wants a coal plant in there back yard.
Nobody wants train tracks in there back yard.
Nobody wants a stadium in there back yard.
The only difference is that people tend to understand and trust the three things listed above. People protest them for very real and daily reasons.
People protest nuclear because NuclearIsBad(tm). Education is the only way to combat this.
You cant file a suit against a "jon doe" in many cases.
But again, that's a process to be handled by the courts. I rob your bank, but I'm stupid enough to right my demand on a note with my SSN# on it. You can't just call up and ask who the SSN# belongs too. (Sadly, this has happened)
Likewise, being able to call an ISP and asking who uses IP addy xxx.xxx... would be a Bad Thing(tm). An individual doesn't have the ability to obtain and abuse this information... neither should a corporation.
You need to point out however that the real problem here is a theft and bandwidth (which unlike copying, is a limited resource).
I'd have to point out the similarities to prohibition. Yes, selling alchohol was illegal. However, stealing and killing over it was wrong.
Alchohol (or filesharing) isn't the problem... it's prohibition that convinces people to do things they wouldn't usually do.
That's what courts are for. If ISPs shut down website because of legal action we'd be in trouble. The debacle with pennyarcade over the last few months is a good example. Political oriented blogs are another.
Just because I tell your ISP that netweasel is my copyrighted nickname, doesn't mean they should shutdown your site.
(Granted, ISPs need to use common sense... and currently seem to. REQUIRING them to shutdown a site prior to a court ruling is IMHO a very bad thing.)
What's more, it's not immediately clear to me why it would even be legal for an ISP to give out data about customers to a private company that asks for it, without (I presume) the customer's knowledge or consent.
RTFS. The story mentions that an exception was granted for data protection laws.
(-2)+(-3)=+1
I think you've hit the lower limit already....