If all laws had a definite (and short term -- perhaps no more than five years) expiration date, the legislators would be so busy trying to repass existing laws that they wouldn't have time to inflict any additional mischief on us.
I think all laws passed should have two mandatory features: a list of clearly defined goals with deadlines, and a maximum cost. If any deadline passed without the goal being met, or if the maximum cost had been exceeded at any deadline, the law would immediately terminate. It could of course be repassed, but again only with the list of goals and costs.
However, I submit that expecting perfect decision-making 100% of the time from leaders is akin to expecting coders to write non-trivial code that works perfectly on first execution.
Good analogy. There is, however, a major difference: whcn a coder writes code with bugs, the bugs eventually get fixed. When legislators make laws, the bugs are almost never corrected. That is the greatest argument for requiring a hard expiration date on all laws.
Re:The alternative is MacOS or Linux
on
Is Windows Worth $45?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What there ought to be is a free OS that is as comfortable an environment as MacOS and supports as much software as Windows.
And free cars that are as fast as Ferraris and as rugged as Hummers and as luxurious as Bentleys and that get 200 mpg...
The original secure A/UX was developed by SecureWare under contract to Honeywell Federal Systems to satisfy a DoD contract. It was based on A/UX 1.1 but supported only SystemV FS, and never received any of the benefits of later point releases (1.1.1).
When A/UX 2.0 came out, Honeywell (or HFSI; don't remember when the name change occurred) did their own port working with SecureWare and based on the SecureWare code. The Apple A/UX gave you option of SysV file system or BSD FFS; the SecureWare 1.1 used only SysV FS, and the HFSI 2.0 used only BSD FFS. Again, the secure version was never updated to take advantage of Apple point releases, though there were bug fix releases of the secure 2.0 release.
The contract provisions were -- what can I say -- government provisions. I remember in particular the requirement that all output, including disk files, from the workstation had to be labelled with appropriate security markings. There was also a requirement that the system had to read and write DOS diskettes. Somehow DOS never supported security labels in its file system, but that didn't seem to bother anybody.
Apple bought the SecureWare code and did their own secure version of A/UX 3.0, but it was never completed by Apple. HFSI completed the release for Apple and distributed it. Once more the secure version stayed at 3.0 while Apple released at least 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 versions.
Since A/UX was never ported to PowerPC, I believe that HFSI did provide a few PowerMacs running System 7x at the end of their contract with DoD.
A much better idea would be to pay guards to walk around and blow away anyone who just might be stealing your car. A few years of this and the theft rate would go down remarkably -- along with the population.
I can't speak for the more recent editions of OS X Unleashed, but I bought the first edition and was not particularly impressed with its usefulness or its accuracy. Some of the errors were undoubtedly the result of simply not actually looking at the operating system before writing about it. In particular there was some confusion about the meaning of group ownership under BSD and OS X as opposed to SYSV or Linux.
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I think all laws passed should have two mandatory features: a list of clearly defined goals with deadlines, and a maximum cost. If any deadline passed without the goal being met, or if the maximum cost had been exceeded at any deadline, the law would immediately terminate. It could of course be repassed, but again only with the list of goals and costs.
And free cures for cancer...
And free trips to the moon...
And ...
You have a recrementitious space in your sig...
When A/UX 2.0 came out, Honeywell (or HFSI; don't remember when the name change occurred) did their own port working with SecureWare and based on the SecureWare code. The Apple A/UX gave you option of SysV file system or BSD FFS; the SecureWare 1.1 used only SysV FS, and the HFSI 2.0 used only BSD FFS. Again, the secure version was never updated to take advantage of Apple point releases, though there were bug fix releases of the secure 2.0 release.
The contract provisions were -- what can I say -- government provisions. I remember in particular the requirement that all output, including disk files, from the workstation had to be labelled with appropriate security markings. There was also a requirement that the system had to read and write DOS diskettes. Somehow DOS never supported security labels in its file system, but that didn't seem to bother anybody.
Apple bought the SecureWare code and did their own secure version of A/UX 3.0, but it was never completed by Apple. HFSI completed the release for Apple and distributed it. Once more the secure version stayed at 3.0 while Apple released at least 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 versions.
Since A/UX was never ported to PowerPC, I believe that HFSI did provide a few PowerMacs running System 7x at the end of their contract with DoD.
A much better idea would be to pay guards to walk around and blow away anyone who just might be stealing your car. A few years of this and the theft rate would go down remarkably -- along with the population.
Heartily concur.
I can't speak for the more recent editions of OS X Unleashed, but I bought the first edition and was not particularly impressed with its usefulness or its accuracy. Some of the errors were undoubtedly the result of simply not actually looking at the operating system before writing about it. In particular there was some confusion about the meaning of group ownership under BSD and OS X as opposed to SYSV or Linux.