In general your best bet would be to use an image quality metric that takes into account how the human visual system works. The 2D frequency response of the human eye looks something like a diamond, which means that we see vertical and horizontal frequencies better than diagonal ones.
In fact, most image compression techniques (including JPEG) take this into account, however, conventional ways of determining the noise in images (minimum mean squared error, peak signal to noise, root mean squares) don't factor in the human visual system.
Your best bet is to use something like the structural similarity method (SSIM) by Prof. Al Bovik of UT Austin and his student Prof. Zhou Wang (now at the University of Waterloo).
If you don't care about how it works, and just want to use it, you can get example code for ssim in matlab at that website and C floating around the net. The method is easy to use; essentially the ssim function takes two images and returns a number between 0 and 1 that describes how similar the images are. Given two compressed images and the original image, take the SSIM between each and the original. The compressed image with the higher SSIM value is the "best".
It sounds like for your problem you might NOT have the original uncompressed image. In that case you might try checking for minimal entropy or maximum contrast in your images.
Essentially entropy would be calculated as:
h = histogram(Image);
p = h./(number of pixels in image);
entropy = -sum(p./log2(p));
You will need to make sure you scale the image appropriately and don't divide by zero! Or better yet, you should be able to find code for image entropy and contrast on the web. Just try searching for entropy.m for a matlab version.
In real life, when overpopulated organisms are hit be disease they die off.
This doesn't kill them off. To stick with the organism paradigm, it just turns them into zombies. So, your big ecosystem view isn't quite valid.
I have a HTC Apache (branded as PPC6700) from Sprint. It's a fairly old (Dec 2005, 2+ years) windows mobile phone.
I surf the internet on it all the time. Websites load surprisingly fast and render nicely. I pay $10 a month for unlimited internet service, and I use it heavily. Mostly for rss feeds, direct push email, streaming video, and microsoft live search (which is completely awesome, and significantly better than googles mobile search offering). Oh, that and ssh via pocket putty. BUT, it does quite a nice job of surfing the web.
And, the newer models are much improved. Another nice feature is that you can a windows mobile phone up to be a wireless access point (in ad hoc mode) and surf the internet on another device (i.e. an Asus EEE PC).
Actually, the information is not deleted. Facebook clearly states that if you sign up again after deleting your account all your old info will be there for you, e.g., they don't delete your account, merely inactivate it.
You can criticize America's policy all you want. BUT, and this is a big one, you keep a unified front while you are oversees. We are a constitutional democratic republic, and our leaders were elected according to our laws, and you need to respect that when you are out of our soil and not say things that can weaken the country.
Again, it is appropriate to complain, protest, and work to change the system as much as you want within the system (and that also means, within the country).
This is nothing new. In fact, this concept is even codified within the "Logan Act" that was instituted by congress on the bequest of President John Adams.
To do so in a non-free country, and give that country fodder to continue to abuse human rights, is even worse.
People pirate cause they want to. People like free stuff.
Then they rationalize because we all rationalize our poor behavior, and the internet lets people rationalize anonymously and in groups. If enough people agree with you, it must be ok to pirate.
In reality you can hate microsoft and adobe and EA games and the entire industry, think their buisness practices are evil, but that doens't give you the right to take their software for free.
If you really believe that stuff put your money where your mouth is and only use GNU/BSD/freeware software.
This has to be the single most misued acronym on Slashdot. Now a link to.NET is fud?
I'm not looking for a link to MSDN. I'm looking for is a single concise statement about the technology.
First and foremost, if there was such a statement, it wouldn't be found on slashdot. People are too polarized for or against.NET.
Furthermore, I believe that any single concise statement is only useful if you know the target audiance. A single concise statement for management is going to be differant from what a engineering/software professional will want.
In this case is sounds like you are just to darn lazy to go figure it out for yourself. Which is OK, if you don't want to know about it no one is forcing you to. But... just maybe, if you really are too lazy to look it up yourself:
1. Don't participate in a.NET discussion on slashdot.
2. Don't comment on "What.NET is" when other people ask you that question, because you are clearly not qualified to answer, and are certianly not doing them any favors.
1 - I Run the GNU Operating System. Linux is just my kernel.
How much of what you run is actually released as a GNU product?
The list of software projects actually managed by the free software foundation is pretty small, smaller than the projects managed by other individuals who would rather have it called Linux.
So are you trying to say that it is more important to name the software you use based in idiology than on the desires of the individuals who wrote it? Or do you just not understand the percentage of contribution from various factions?
No, I'm not saying competition kills your profits.
I'm saying that a buisness will only pay for a product if it gives them a competitive edge. Ones that don't follow that rule quickly go under and new buisnesses take their place.
Look at it this way:
Car Company A pays $500,000 dollars to develops software that detects bad ball bearinsg in a wheel using a wavelet transform.
Car Company B pays $0 and takes the OSS code that Company A developed.
Car Company B sells its services for $100 less per customer, and Company A goes out of buisness.
See? (no, I'm sure you don't, but I'll try explaining it anyway) It isn't a matter of being mean, not caring for your competitors, or a matter of trying to be a bastard and maximize profits.
It is simply a matter of survival. And often it isn't a question of FOSS v. closed source software, rather it is a question of NO software v. closed source software.
As many people do, you are missing the point of free as in beer vs. free as in open source.
Yes, you can charge for open source software in theory. But in reality you can't.
So all of his points are valid. If he was writing an open source project the company that hired him wouldn't pay him, because then their competitors would be able to use it too.
The point is, why should a third party (the company he is doing work for) make money off his hard work and he not get anything? Or put another way, why should he do hard work if someone else (the end user) gets all the profit?
It is in the companies best interest to pay him as it is in his best interest to get paid. That is because without him getting paid he would not work. And the value of his time is worth less to him than the money which feeds his family, or he would not work. The value of the software to the company is worth more to them than the amount they pay him, or they would not pay him.
Both parties win. With FOSS, both parties are worse off, because the transaction does occur in the first place.
You can't wave your hands and say "the software would be free as in source but not beer" because it is just silly.
So how about instead of attacking his symantics attack his arguments. Quite frankly I get tired of
FOSS supporters choosing to define words in such a way that arguing against them is impossible. But really arguing against them is impossible anyway, so I suppose it doens't matter.
I was just wondering, how many times have you actually gone in and added a feature that was missing?
I personally have never found an open source project that was missing a feature that I was able to go into the source and add. Rather I have experianced the follwing:
1. I add the feature externally (i.e. write a perl script that implements that changes the imput to the program and calls it multiple times, etc). This of course works for both closed and open software.
2. The code is so bad that I might as well just write it myself from scratch. This obviously only applies to the smaller applications.
Mostly though I just have to live without the feature because the effort required to stick it in would be too great. Ironically the closed source projects that I have worked on are written well enough that, if they were open source, I could easily have added the features that I want. Most of the time the open source code stunk. Maybe it is just the projects that I have choosen to look at...
Yeah, I remember when people did that back in the 80s. I rememeber when they do it now.
Except it never was about "cool" sharewhare/freeware. It was "cool" pirated software. The "scene", and by that I mean pirating, was very big in the 80s.
-paridel
If I release it under BSD someone has the option of taking both my code and the modifications to it propritary at any time
No no no! The only thing that would now be proprietary is the changes that other person made. You code would still be free. No one could take that away.
In fact, you are better off with this commercial product that he released. Because instead of just having your code you have your code + ideas on how to make it better.
Please tell me how he has made your code less free, your contribution less valuable, or in any way hurt you by his changes?
I have a friend attending Ursinus. If I remember right the student body gets laptops, but they are "owned" by the universify. I imagine that number counts those laptops.
-paridel
Check the list of nuclear accidents. Troy had a large amount of nuclear fallout twice in 1953. I've seen several articles that state it is the most ever to fall on a US city but I can't find online copies.
The network is definetly not windows only. I'm a graduate so I haven't logged on since this spring, but my linux buddies there have.
And the dorms are typically covered with wireless, but that is provided by the students, not the school. For instance I brought two wireless AP to school.
Now the school does assist you in setting them up if you want or need help, or if you do something bad to the network.
One of the nice thoughts behind the Robolayer concept is that it would be us as a tech community solving the problem, not the government.
The problem I see with a government agency handeling something like this is the compancy profiting of the crap software could simply move overseas. Of course, then maybe the EULA wouldn't be valid, so I'm not really sure my first argument here holds water.
But I have another one;-) The other problem is that when has a government ever handled something like this well? People would spend a lot of time and money manipulating their program to meet government standards and still be bad for consumers.
A technical solution to the problem in any case is better. Especially if it could be enhanced to handle programs that don't comply with their own EULA.
Instead of a Robolawyer how about a program that detects EULA and then opens up a new brower page that is linked to a community run website (somelike like Wikipedia, but with more security so that malware writers can't get in there and change things)
This page would display dumbed down information about the EULA that you or I could understand.
I.e:
"Crockbot2004"
This EULA would like you to agree to the following:
I will allow "Crockbot 2004" to:
1. monitor my browing and send information about it periodically to a server. This transfer will not be sanitized to remove personal information
2. download ads and display them on my computer
3. execute abitrary code and utilize my network connection
So a human would do the decyphering, the Eula-robo would simply have to fetch the information.
And then I as a user could go "Woah, I don't want to download illegal mp3s that badly!" and cancel the install.
I re-read my post today and I think I digressed a little too much with my personal attack on you. I certainly could have kept my post a little more cival and I apologize for that.
My point here would be that even if you disagree with US Governmental issues that is a seperate issue than the US Military. The Military does not make the decisions about where to go and who to fight. They just follow orders.
I personally believe that the US has done good for the countries that it has gone into (and by extension the global community). I have visited several of the countries that the US has engaged in military action that you mention, most recently South Korea, and I have stood at the DMZ where 40k US troops (along with the ROK counterparts and a large number of mines) were preventing an invasion from the North.
There is a lot of Sys Admin stuff that has to go on in the world, and the US is the only country powerful enough to do it. Most of our allies simply don't have any real standing armys anymore. However just like the Sys Admins on the computers networks we use at work or school that power makes the US envied and to some extent dispised.
I think that the US is fair in that it pushes a minimal set of standards (don't do these things and you aren't bad) rather than a maximum (you have to do this to be good...).
But even if you believe that the US does not do these things for altruistic reasons it isn't the military who is getting rich from it. Especially the enlisted soldiers fighting out on the front lines.
You may argue that Congress and our President have alterier motives; but please keep in mind that is a differant issue from the professionalism of the US Military.
Typically I try to ignore posts dealing with Iraq and the military, especially from individuals like yourself, because quite frankly I have too much stress in my life already.
Your post really angered me and so I feel the need to respond, not to inform you (which is most probably impossible), nor to change anyone elses mind, as most people who read political discussions have their mind set. No, I need to respond to your post for my own gratification, in a small vain attempt counterbalance the dumb you just have added to the internet.
I find your title '"CYA" and other military culture explained.' rather ironic as you obviously have had no experiance with the military, you just saw an oppurtunity to take a cheap shot. A dislike ad hominem attacks, especially when against a group of individuals risking their lives to protect my way of life.
However maybe I can shed a little light on military culture. I spent the vast majority of my life living (and most recently working) on a military post. My father was carrier military, the majority of my friends are carrier military now, both officer and enlisted, and most of those that are not are involved in the defense industry in some way or another.
First CYA is not a "military" term. I've heard the most predominatly used in industry. True in the military you want a paper trail; but that is true anywhere where peoples lifes are at stake. I'm an engineering graduate student and you better believe that any project I work on has been extensively documented. In fact any Engineering Ethics class I've ever been in (which is quite a few) has "CYA" mentioned as the minimum standard for a project documentation.
It's a perfectly useful term to describe an activity that doesn't directly make anyone safer. You might need to do extra R&D that makes someone safer, but documenting that fact does nothing other than CYA. Does that mean you shouldn't do it? No, not at all. If it wasn't required than some unscrupulious individuals would cut corners, and so we all have to put up with the process.
Note however that for military officers "CYA" often doesn't cut it. Do you think the ongoing Abu Ghraid investigations in the miltary are trying to determine whether any brass knew about it? Few save conspiracy theorists believe that anymore. They are trying to determine what lead to a breakdown in command such that it could be allowed to happen. If it happens on your watch you are quite likely at fault. It doesn't matter if you didn't know about it.
When you serve with people in war your life rests in their hands. There is no way to have an effective Army (and I've never heard anyone sain claim that the US Army is not effective, no matter what their political stand) with the amount of backstabbing that you obviously feel is going on.
Obviously people that enjoy "escaping responsability" are a good match for the military. Because if they screw up and don't do their jobs nothing bad will come of it... you don't really need to be too concerned with your job when your life is on the line... and yes, the same holds true for general officers. They are also put in harms way. Take Gen Tommy Franks for example, during his time at 3rd Army US (right before he took over Centcom) intelligance had good evidance that he was Osama's #1 target. I certainly wouldn't have traided seats with him in a humvee.
"Anyone with a sense of idealism finds the military culture very bleak." Huh? Yeah, now that I think about it I'm sure that all of my friends that are overseas fighting for Iraqis freedom are moral relativists. They are just out for #1. I expect that most people won't join the military unless they ARE idealists. They think that the causes of freedom and liberty should be spread to the globe, and they think that doing so is worth their risking theirs lives to do it. If that isn't "idealism" I'm not sure what is.
As for us being there to "kill Iraqis" if we were there to kill Iraqis we would be having a much better time o
Assuming that Windows 2003 Server does allow the IT department to run with one server and less IT guys then it would create jobs.
Not nessisarly IT jobs, but it would make the company more productive. More money would be available to do things that make the company money (manufacturing, research and development, etc).
-paridel
Sure, it might be hard to change ingrained behaviors, but then again so is a lot of what is covered in college classes. It is actually something that I think has helped me personally a great deal. The companies I have worked for, as well as the military, IBM, Intel, etc, also seem to think it is worth while because these types of classes are mandatory or encouraged those and many other buisnesses. I think the things you mentioned (socializing, mentoring, etc) are also good ideas, but it doesn't hurt to attack a problem from multiple angles
Something that is covered is public speaking (breaking the room into quadrents and trying to scan through all area's regularly, making eye contact).
Another example: say you are in an argument with someone and it is going nowhere. How do you handle it? One way could be to try to summerize the argument of the other person and then ask if what you expressed is a fair representation of their arguement. This is a bit of an oversimplification of the technique we cover, but it has helped me personally several times. I've been in a number of arguments where it turns out that either I simply had a misconception of someone else's view or them of mine. Now that isn't going to happen all the time... but once you establish that you understand each other it is easier to move forward.
A third example is the Myer-Briggs personality test. This is something we cover in our intro to engineering design course as a design team and it actually helps us relate to each other. I have to admit that I first thought some of this stuff was a load of bunk, but (most) of it has really helped me.
Slashdot Mirror
In general your best bet would be to use an image quality metric that takes into account how the human visual system works. The 2D frequency response of the human eye looks something like a diamond, which means that we see vertical and horizontal frequencies better than diagonal ones.
In fact, most image compression techniques (including JPEG) take this into account, however, conventional ways of determining the noise in images (minimum mean squared error, peak signal to noise, root mean squares) don't factor in the human visual system.
Your best bet is to use something like the structural similarity method (SSIM) by Prof. Al Bovik of UT Austin and his student Prof. Zhou Wang (now at the University of Waterloo).
You can read all about SSIM and get example code here: http://www.ece.uwaterloo.ca/~z70wang/research/ssim/
Or read more about image quality assessment at Prof. Bovik's website: http://live.ece.utexas.edu/research/Quality/index.htm
If you don't care about how it works, and just want to use it, you can get example code for ssim in matlab at that website and C floating around the net. The method is easy to use; essentially the ssim function takes two images and returns a number between 0 and 1 that describes how similar the images are. Given two compressed images and the original image, take the SSIM between each and the original. The compressed image with the higher SSIM value is the "best".
It sounds like for your problem you might NOT have the original uncompressed image. In that case you might try checking for minimal entropy or maximum contrast in your images.
Essentially entropy would be calculated as:
h = histogram(Image);
p = h./(number of pixels in image);
entropy = -sum(p./log2(p));
You will need to make sure you scale the image appropriately and don't divide by zero! Or better yet, you should be able to find code for image entropy and contrast on the web. Just try searching for entropy.m for a matlab version.
Good luck!
In real life, when overpopulated organisms are hit be disease they die off. This doesn't kill them off. To stick with the organism paradigm, it just turns them into zombies. So, your big ecosystem view isn't quite valid.
-paridel
I have a HTC Apache (branded as PPC6700) from Sprint. It's a fairly old (Dec 2005, 2+ years) windows mobile phone.
I surf the internet on it all the time. Websites load surprisingly fast and render nicely. I pay $10 a month for unlimited internet service, and I use it heavily. Mostly for rss feeds, direct push email, streaming video, and microsoft live search (which is completely awesome, and significantly better than googles mobile search offering). Oh, that and ssh via pocket putty. BUT, it does quite a nice job of surfing the web.
And, the newer models are much improved. Another nice feature is that you can a windows mobile phone up to be a wireless access point (in ad hoc mode) and surf the internet on another device (i.e. an Asus EEE PC).
-paridel
Actually, the information is not deleted. Facebook clearly states that if you sign up again after deleting your account all your old info will be there for you, e.g., they don't delete your account, merely inactivate it.
-paridel
This computer uses VIA's new "carbon free" processor:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/resources/pressroom/2006_archive/pr060913VIAC7D.jsp
The 1.5 Ghz VIA C7 CPU consumes <20 Watts. So is seems there is a good reason to call it a "green pc"?
You can criticize America's policy all you want. BUT, and this is a big one, you keep a unified front while you are oversees. We are a constitutional democratic republic, and our leaders were elected according to our laws, and you need to respect that when you are out of our soil and not say things that can weaken the country.
Again, it is appropriate to complain, protest, and work to change the system as much as you want within the system (and that also means, within the country).
This is nothing new. In fact, this concept is even codified within the "Logan Act" that was instituted by congress on the bequest of President John Adams.
To do so in a non-free country, and give that country fodder to continue to abuse human rights, is even worse.
-paridel
Very well written and thought out parent post.
People pirate cause they want to. People like free stuff.
Then they rationalize because we all rationalize our poor behavior, and the internet lets people rationalize anonymously and in groups. If enough people agree with you, it must be ok to pirate.
In reality you can hate microsoft and adobe and EA games and the entire industry, think their buisness practices are evil, but that doens't give you the right to take their software for free.
If you really believe that stuff put your money where your mouth is and only use GNU/BSD/freeware software.
-paridel
Forget the FUD, what is .Net really?
.NET is fud?
.NET.
.NET discussion on slashdot.
.NET is" when other people ask you that question, because you are clearly not qualified to answer, and are certianly not doing them any favors.
This has to be the single most misued acronym on Slashdot. Now a link to
I'm not looking for a link to MSDN. I'm looking for is a single concise statement about the technology.
First and foremost, if there was such a statement, it wouldn't be found on slashdot. People are too polarized for or against
Furthermore, I believe that any single concise statement is only useful if you know the target audiance. A single concise statement for management is going to be differant from what a engineering/software professional will want.
In this case is sounds like you are just to darn lazy to go figure it out for yourself. Which is OK, if you don't want to know about it no one is forcing you to. But... just maybe, if you really are too lazy to look it up yourself:
1. Don't participate in a
2. Don't comment on "What
-paridel
1 - I Run the GNU Operating System. Linux is just my kernel.
How much of what you run is actually released as a GNU product?
The list of software projects actually managed by the free software foundation is pretty small, smaller than the projects managed by other individuals who would rather have it called Linux.
So are you trying to say that it is more important to name the software you use based in idiology than on the desires of the individuals who wrote it? Or do you just not understand the percentage of contribution from various factions?
-paridel
No, I'm not saying competition kills your profits.
I'm saying that a buisness will only pay for a product if it gives them a competitive edge. Ones that don't follow that rule quickly go under and new buisnesses take their place.
Look at it this way:
Car Company A pays $500,000 dollars to develops software that detects bad ball bearinsg in a wheel using a wavelet transform.
Car Company B pays $0 and takes the OSS code that Company A developed.
Car Company B sells its services for $100 less per customer, and Company A goes out of buisness.
See? (no, I'm sure you don't, but I'll try explaining it anyway) It isn't a matter of being mean, not caring for your competitors, or a matter of trying to be a bastard and maximize profits.
It is simply a matter of survival. And often it isn't a question of FOSS v. closed source software, rather it is a question of NO software v. closed source software.
-paridel
As many people do, you are missing the point of free as in beer vs. free as in open source.
Yes, you can charge for open source software in theory. But in reality you can't.
So all of his points are valid. If he was writing an open source project the company that hired him wouldn't pay him, because then their competitors would be able to use it too.
The point is, why should a third party (the company he is doing work for) make money off his hard work and he not get anything? Or put another way, why should he do hard work if someone else (the end user) gets all the profit?
It is in the companies best interest to pay him as it is in his best interest to get paid. That is because without him getting paid he would not work. And the value of his time is worth less to him than the money which feeds his family, or he would not work. The value of the software to the company is worth more to them than the amount they pay him, or they would not pay him.
Both parties win. With FOSS, both parties are worse off, because the transaction does occur in the first place.
You can't wave your hands and say "the software would be free as in source but not beer" because it is just silly.
So how about instead of attacking his symantics attack his arguments. Quite frankly I get tired of FOSS supporters choosing to define words in such a way that arguing against them is impossible. But really arguing against them is impossible anyway, so I suppose it doens't matter.
-paridel
I was just wondering, how many times have you actually gone in and added a feature that was missing?
I personally have never found an open source project that was missing a feature that I was able to go into the source and add. Rather I have experianced the follwing:
1. I add the feature externally (i.e. write a perl script that implements that changes the imput to the program and calls it multiple times, etc). This of course works for both closed and open software.
2. The code is so bad that I might as well just write it myself from scratch. This obviously only applies to the smaller applications.
Mostly though I just have to live without the feature because the effort required to stick it in would be too great. Ironically the closed source projects that I have worked on are written well enough that, if they were open source, I could easily have added the features that I want. Most of the time the open source code stunk. Maybe it is just the projects that I have choosen to look at...
-paridel
Yeah, I remember when people did that back in the 80s. I rememeber when they do it now. Except it never was about "cool" sharewhare/freeware. It was "cool" pirated software. The "scene", and by that I mean pirating, was very big in the 80s. -paridel
If I release it under BSD someone has the option of taking both my code and the modifications to it propritary at any time
No no no! The only thing that would now be proprietary is the changes that other person made. You code would still be free. No one could take that away.
In fact, you are better off with this commercial product that he released. Because instead of just having your code you have your code + ideas on how to make it better.
Please tell me how he has made your code less free, your contribution less valuable, or in any way hurt you by his changes?
-paridel
This is true... people throw the term FUD around way too much.
At RPI we tend to call them troilets.
Evidently that's been going on for a very very long time, cause even the oldest of the old alumni I've talked used the same phrase.
And we wonder why they don't like us?
-paridel
I have a friend attending Ursinus. If I remember right the student body gets laptops, but they are "owned" by the universify. I imagine that number counts those laptops. -paridel
Yes, as an RPI student I had to spend many cold lonely winters in Troy, NY.
The town looks like a Nuclear Bomb went off there? Well maybe there is a good reason!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_accidents
Check the list of nuclear accidents. Troy had a large amount of nuclear fallout twice in 1953. I've seen several articles that state it is the most ever to fall on a US city but I can't find online copies.
-paridel
The network is definetly not windows only. I'm a graduate so I haven't logged on since this spring, but my linux buddies there have.
And the dorms are typically covered with wireless, but that is provided by the students, not the school. For instance I brought two wireless AP to school.
Now the school does assist you in setting them up if you want or need help, or if you do something bad to the network.
-paridel
One of the nice thoughts behind the Robolayer concept is that it would be us as a tech community solving the problem, not the government.
;-) The other problem is that when has a government ever handled something like this well? People would spend a lot of time and money manipulating their program to meet government standards and still be bad for consumers.
The problem I see with a government agency handeling something like this is the compancy profiting of the crap software could simply move overseas. Of course, then maybe the EULA wouldn't be valid, so I'm not really sure my first argument here holds water.
But I have another one
A technical solution to the problem in any case is better. Especially if it could be enhanced to handle programs that don't comply with their own EULA.
-paridel
Instead of a Robolawyer how about a program that detects EULA and then opens up a new brower page that is linked to a community run website (somelike like Wikipedia, but with more security so that malware writers can't get in there and change things)
This page would display dumbed down information about the EULA that you or I could understand.
I.e:
"Crockbot2004"
This EULA would like you to agree to the following:
I will allow "Crockbot 2004" to:
1. monitor my browing and send information about it periodically to a server. This transfer will not be sanitized to remove personal information
2. download ads and display them on my computer
3. execute abitrary code and utilize my network connection
So a human would do the decyphering, the Eula-robo would simply have to fetch the information.
And then I as a user could go "Woah, I don't want to download illegal mp3s that badly!" and cancel the install.
-paridel
Futurepower,
I re-read my post today and I think I digressed a little too much with my personal attack on you. I certainly could have kept my post a little more cival and I apologize for that.
My point here would be that even if you disagree with US Governmental issues that is a seperate issue than the US Military. The Military does not make the decisions about where to go and who to fight. They just follow orders.
I personally believe that the US has done good for the countries that it has gone into (and by extension the global community). I have visited several of the countries that the US has engaged in military action that you mention, most recently South Korea, and I have stood at the DMZ where 40k US troops (along with the ROK counterparts and a large number of mines) were preventing an invasion from the North.
There is a lot of Sys Admin stuff that has to go on in the world, and the US is the only country powerful enough to do it. Most of our allies simply don't have any real standing armys anymore. However just like the Sys Admins on the computers networks we use at work or school that power makes the US envied and to some extent dispised.
I think that the US is fair in that it pushes a minimal set of standards (don't do these things and you aren't bad) rather than a maximum (you have to do this to be good...).
But even if you believe that the US does not do these things for altruistic reasons it isn't the military who is getting rich from it. Especially the enlisted soldiers fighting out on the front lines.
You may argue that Congress and our President have alterier motives; but please keep in mind that is a differant issue from the professionalism of the US Military.
Thanks!
-paridel
Typically I try to ignore posts dealing with Iraq and the military, especially from individuals like yourself, because quite frankly I have too much stress in my life already.
Your post really angered me and so I feel the need to respond, not to inform you (which is most probably impossible), nor to change anyone elses mind, as most people who read political discussions have their mind set. No, I need to respond to your post for my own gratification, in a small vain attempt counterbalance the dumb you just have added to the internet.
I find your title '"CYA" and other military culture explained.' rather ironic as you obviously have had no experiance with the military, you just saw an oppurtunity to take a cheap shot. A dislike ad hominem attacks, especially when against a group of individuals risking their lives to protect my way of life.
However maybe I can shed a little light on military culture. I spent the vast majority of my life living (and most recently working) on a military post. My father was carrier military, the majority of my friends are carrier military now, both officer and enlisted, and most of those that are not are involved in the defense industry in some way or another.
First CYA is not a "military" term. I've heard the most predominatly used in industry. True in the military you want a paper trail; but that is true anywhere where peoples lifes are at stake. I'm an engineering graduate student and you better believe that any project I work on has been extensively documented. In fact any Engineering Ethics class I've ever been in (which is quite a few) has "CYA" mentioned as the minimum standard for a project documentation.
It's a perfectly useful term to describe an activity that doesn't directly make anyone safer. You might need to do extra R&D that makes someone safer, but documenting that fact does nothing other than CYA. Does that mean you shouldn't do it? No, not at all. If it wasn't required than some unscrupulious individuals would cut corners, and so we all have to put up with the process.
Note however that for military officers "CYA" often doesn't cut it. Do you think the ongoing Abu Ghraid investigations in the miltary are trying to determine whether any brass knew about it? Few save conspiracy theorists believe that anymore. They are trying to determine what lead to a breakdown in command such that it could be allowed to happen. If it happens on your watch you are quite likely at fault. It doesn't matter if you didn't know about it.
When you serve with people in war your life rests in their hands. There is no way to have an effective Army (and I've never heard anyone sain claim that the US Army is not effective, no matter what their political stand) with the amount of backstabbing that you obviously feel is going on.
Obviously people that enjoy "escaping responsability" are a good match for the military. Because if they screw up and don't do their jobs nothing bad will come of it... you don't really need to be too concerned with your job when your life is on the line... and yes, the same holds true for general officers. They are also put in harms way. Take Gen Tommy Franks for example, during his time at 3rd Army US (right before he took over Centcom) intelligance had good evidance that he was Osama's #1 target. I certainly wouldn't have traided seats with him in a humvee.
"Anyone with a sense of idealism finds the military culture very bleak." Huh? Yeah, now that I think about it I'm sure that all of my friends that are overseas fighting for Iraqis freedom are moral relativists. They are just out for #1. I expect that most people won't join the military unless they ARE idealists. They think that the causes of freedom and liberty should be spread to the globe, and they think that doing so is worth their risking theirs lives to do it. If that isn't "idealism" I'm not sure what is.
As for us being there to "kill Iraqis" if we were there to kill Iraqis we would be having a much better time o
Assuming that Windows 2003 Server does allow the IT department to run with one server and less IT guys then it would create jobs. Not nessisarly IT jobs, but it would make the company more productive. More money would be available to do things that make the company money (manufacturing, research and development, etc). -paridel
Sure, it might be hard to change ingrained behaviors, but then again so is a lot of what is covered in college classes. It is actually something that I think has helped me personally a great deal. The companies I have worked for, as well as the military, IBM, Intel, etc, also seem to think it is worth while because these types of classes are mandatory or encouraged those and many other buisnesses. I think the things you mentioned (socializing, mentoring, etc) are also good ideas, but it doesn't hurt to attack a problem from multiple angles
Something that is covered is public speaking (breaking the room into quadrents and trying to scan through all area's regularly, making eye contact).
Another example: say you are in an argument with someone and it is going nowhere. How do you handle it? One way could be to try to summerize the argument of the other person and then ask if what you expressed is a fair representation of their arguement. This is a bit of an oversimplification of the technique we cover, but it has helped me personally several times. I've been in a number of arguments where it turns out that either I simply had a misconception of someone else's view or them of mine. Now that isn't going to happen all the time... but once you establish that you understand each other it is easier to move forward.
A third example is the Myer-Briggs personality test. This is something we cover in our intro to engineering design course as a design team and it actually helps us relate to each other. I have to admit that I first thought some of this stuff was a load of bunk, but (most) of it has really helped me.
-paridel