It's the TSA that's doing the searching, and they have to abide by the constitution (or what little of it is left). If it was a private company, then all they'd have to do is make you agree to be searched, but as it stands, you have a legal right to walk through an airport without anyone so much as touching your hand. The airline's a private company. They have a perfect right to refuse to let anyone who's not been searched on the plane.
In fact, there's a strong chance that the airport itself is owned by a private company. In which case, they can decide who is allowed into various parts of the building - and they could easily argue that submitting to a search is a condition of entry to being allowed airside.
For example, cars are just getting into gas electric hybrids, but the railroads have been running diesel electric hybrids now for decades. The locomotives are now into a new generation of hybrid technology. They're not hybrids in the same sense of the word. A diesel electric train is basically a dirty great diesel electricity generator which powers an electric motor. There's no drive between diesel engine and wheels.
IF [anything seems fucked up] THEN SHUT DOWN REACTOR
Friend of mine used to work in a nuclear power plant and that was basically how everything was set up. The staff were essentially there to prevent the reactor shutting itself down.
With all the updates that came out for VAX/Unix in the last four years?!? Deciding whether or not to apply patches is a cost/benefit risk analysis.
Potential cost: Only that the business-critical system they're controlling stops working. Nothing important, y'know.
Potential benefit: Well, if they're on a very isolated network and access to the systems is already very tightly restricted, that's a good question. A lot of Vax systems never even had TCP/IP installed - you use a serial console to connect, which by definition restricts how easy it is to get to the system in the first place.
Because it's like, FUCKING DESSERT. Well, you know, running railway lines through several hundred miles of apple pie and ice-cream can't be that easy. I'd imagine they'd likely sink into the pie, and I can't imagine how you'd keep the ice-cream frozen.
Tom Harris, the Rail Minister, said: "The argument that high-speed rail travel is a 'green option' does not necessarily stand up to close inspection. Increasing the maximum speed of a train from 200kph [125mph - the current maximum speed of domestic trains] to 350kph leads to a 90 per cent increase in energy consumption." So instead everyone who can flies, which is so much better for the environment.
At least until you wind up addicted and so far out of your mind you'll mug little old ladies to get your next fix.
Then I go to jail for mugging little old ladies. Problem solved. This solves the problem of you mugging little old ladies, but not the fundamental problem of what made you mug little old ladies in the first place.
The little old ladies don't like being mugged, and they tend to vote.
For the rest of your stupid argument - yes. Kiddie porn is already made, and drugs fall under "my body, my right." At least until you wind up addicted and so far out of your mind you'll mug little old ladies to get your next fix.
Anyone who believes all these things should be legalised should live with a drug addict for 6 months. Believe me, it's not pretty.
"I know how to get by on Windows out of sheer necessity."
And one of the solutions is: go buy the next version of w2k server?
Weve had this console thingie for a while in Linux. Why did windows wait until now?
We can all especulate on that. It's a variation on something I saw written in a final year project in University:
"Page 1: I am familiar with windows so I'm going to use that as my development environment. Page 2: However, Windows doesn't offer me the tools I need to get the job done, so the first thing I'm going to do is install Cygwin to try and make it a bit more like Linux".
[sarcasm]Yes, of course I missed the part about the printer.[/sarcasm]
What I did miss was their explanation in the article on exactly what they did to get the printer implicated. Clue: It's in the paper the article references.
Some issues are worth getting thrown out of the party come next election for, this is one of them. They're politicians.
Certainly in the UK, it's likely to be all they've ever done since leaving university. And they very likely studied something with little practical application in the real world.
The upshot is that what they do versus what they say they'll do may or may not help them get re-elected (probably won't make much odds, voter apathy being what it is). But not towing the party line on a regular basis is a fantastically good way to find yourself thrown out of the party - which in turn is a fantastically good way to find yourself out of a job with little other prospects open to you.
Spot the obvious problem here. If the governing parties have such a strong hold on their members, then all you do when you vote is decide which (hopefully relatively benign) dictator you want in.
It logically follows that if politicians are representing their own interests to the point whereby they ignore the issues that bother the people, a party based on populist politics (ie. base your policies on whatever crazed radical steps would be needed to fix the top 5 things appearing in the more hysterical tabloids - immigration, education, that sort of stuff - consequences be damned) is in with a strong chance of winning serious numbers of votes. And so we have the BNP gaining ground.
While I agree that it's better design, and for users who actual read it makes the dialogs much less ambiguous, the clueless folk will still get by without reading anything as the "affirmative" button is always on the right, so their habit would be to click whatever is on the right, as opposed to clicking the yes button. the problem is a human one, and no amount of good design can fix it You ever used the trial version of Winzip for any length of time? That switches around the position of the "Continue trial" and "Register" buttons - or at least it certainly used to a few years ago.
Mind you, I think I'd find that behaviour infuriating in most apps.
95% (a figured pulled from my butt) of computer users DO NOT READ the messages that pop up in front of them. I'm completely amazed by the number of people I've encountered studying computer science that could have a dialog box pop up that says "click yes to reformat your hard drive and kill everyone you've ever cared about, or click no for a blow job" who would not read the fucking thing and click yes to get it out of their way. That's partly because Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, engineered dialogue boxes so developers don't have to rewrite the buttons for different languages. Hence, a box which says "Yes/No" (and, for that matter, "Yes/No/Cancel") is part of the API and the "Yes/No" automagically becomes "Oui/Non" in a French installation of Windows.
This doesn't really help localisation that greatly, because the text within the dialogue box still needs to be translated. Unfortunately, because it's part of the API which has been there since time immemorial, it's not something which can be removed from the next release of Windows.
Mac OS, OTOH, encourages the developer puts sensible text on all the buttons, so the buttons themselves say "Reformat hard drive and kill everyone I've ever cared for/Blowjob". Amongst other things, this effectively stops the end user from being immunised to actually reading the dialogue box because the buttons aren't always the same.
Most of what you're describing has more to do with Microsoft's attempts to maintain backward compatability over 25 years than anything else. You can still run DOS applications from that age (with some caveats) on XP.
(ohh.. and just for kicks.. 90% of the worst students are pakestani.. while they make up about 3-4% of Oslo in total..trying to teach them anything is basically a crash-course in becoming a racist) It's racist when you discriminate against someone for no reason other than their race.
It's racist when you massage the numbers to make it look like 90% of the worst students are Pakistani.
However, if that genuinely is the case then IMO it's not racist at all. There may be underlying reasons for it that are racist in origin, but if you refuse to acknowledge the problem you're never going to find those underlying reasons.
In my experience, it's often the people at the top that I wouldn't trust with an etch-a-sketch.
Old joke. But my experience suggests that the people at the top don't want their computer broken and don't have time to mess around waiting for IT to fix. So they seldom screw with it that bad when it's working.
Those in the middle, however, who have enough power over their own PC to be dangerous, enough time to wait for IT to fix it but not enough knowledge to avoid breaking it are the ones you really want to look out for.
Generally, educational software falls into one of two categories:
1. Written by IT professionals. The user interface is consistent with everything else on the platform, there's a nice easy way to roll it out to everything, it doesn't stamp crap all over the system, it doesn't do something silly like want admin rights to run.
It's the IT admins dream, with only one minor disadvantage: It tends to be very bad at actually getting information across.
2. Written by teachers and other educational folks. This tends to be hacked together, with a user interface which defies belief in every way. Think the worst nightmare software you've ever used and multiply by 5. It's shipped with instructions saying "Go to every PC in turn and double-click on the setup icon" - and it is not uncommon to find the setup procedure is actively hostile to any attempts to automate it. Despite being generally relatively simple, it only works on a few specific versions of Windows and tends to break very easily. It makes assumptions like "The application will always have its CD available and it will be on a disk in a CD-ROM drive at D:" (even if you've explicitly paid for a version to run over a network) or "We can write wherever we like in C:". It's licensed on a per-machine basis and the idea that you might want to license or indeed work with more than about 5 copies honestly never occurred to the developer.
It's the kind of thing that most admins thought died (or at least had the worst stupidities ironed out) a long time ago. But once you get it working, it's generally very good at getting information across.
Guess which one teachers prefer?
Multiply that by every single subject taught at every single level for which a suitable piece of software exists and you have a rough idea of how much fun educational IT is.
Regarding the actual issue of the kindergarten app which is IE-only - thinking about it, this doesn't surprise me. I've worked in a school and I found that the idea of any software which isn't entirely available off the shelf was absolutely terrifying to the Powers that Be - even though in this case paying for the relevant migration would almost certainly have been a lot cheaper.
If the way things work in Croatia is any clue, money has Changed Hands in order for things to resolve this way. Corruption is common, but IMHO incompetence is far more prevalent. Agreed.
My guess is that the schools looked at the applications they needed, found one that didn't work as intended and didn't think to contact the manufacturer to say "Before we drop 8 million euros on Windows, can you speed up engineering your product to run in Linux for, say, 1 million euros?"
Especially for â8M. They spent â8M because of ONE application that only worked in IE for Kindergarteners? If I was that company I would have said, sure "We can make it work for linux, it'll only cost â4M, look at that savings".
If I was that government I would have paid some High School students to write a website for a passing grade in one of their classes. I strongly doubt that is the real reason.
This is a kindergarten-level language application - it's hardly "the entire science syllabus for 18 year olds taking their final school exams complete with diagrams, animations and interactive help".
They're prepared to pay â8 million to migrate to Vista, and I strongly doubt it would have cost anything like that to rewrite the web application even if it was pure ActiveX. Either the management didn't think to contact the developers and say "Would âseveral million change your mind?" (This is possible. Don't discount the stupidity of public servants anywhere in the world) or there's something else going on.
(Oh, and on an unrelated note to/. admins: The Euro as a currency has existed since 1999, and became the official currency of much of Europe in 2002. Any chance you could, I dunno, update the website to support the symbol?)
Cant you taste the problem with those 2 statements? Second one negates the first one on Linux point. Linux can and does work well in a corporate environment. Centrally managing huge server farms, pushing updates and son on and so forth... Can be done with Linux. On Windows, it is fairly easy to define different groups of people and say something like:
Group A get this desktop when they log in, it's very locked down - they can't even right-click - and there's only one application there to run. They may only log into a subset of PCs. (Think of the sales staff in a call centre - they may well have a PC set up like this)
Group B get this desktop when they log in. It's rather less locked down, and there are three applications. They may log into any PC they wish.
Group C get this third desktop when they log in. It's not locked down at all and they can run anything they have there, but they can't install their own software.
Lather rinse and repeat until you've set up groups which deal with the people lowest in the corporate hierarchy (who you wouldn't trust with an etch-a-sketch, let alone a PC) right the way up to the top.
Now, while this level of control may not be necessary (or even desirable) in smaller organisations or places where all the staff can reasonably be expected to have a certain amount of computer literacy, there are lots of businesses where it is.
I accept you could script all this without too much trouble in Linux - but AFAIK no current desktop manager has the facility to be configured centrally on a per-group basis out of the box. You'd spend just as long hacking the desktop manager to work as you would defining the policies themselves.
I keep seeing a bunch of Google backlash because of their size, but perhaps we should judge them by their actual record instead. I appreciate what you're driving at, and I accept that Google have got where they are through being good at what they do. And right now, things aren't looking too bad.
I just don't have a lot of optimism that this will continue should Google significantly increase their market share.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, there's a strong chance that the airport itself is owned by a private company. In which case, they can decide who is allowed into various parts of the building - and they could easily argue that submitting to a search is a condition of entry to being allowed airside.
In other words, a series hybrid.
Effectively, yes, but many diesel trains don't have a battery or capacitor to store electricity.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel-electric_locomotive#Diesel-electric
Fine. Then use the existing land. It's not like anyone will notice another 5 years disruption to rail services on a major line while it gets upgraded.
IF [anything seems fucked up] THEN SHUT DOWN REACTOR
Friend of mine used to work in a nuclear power plant and that was basically how everything was set up. The staff were essentially there to prevent the reactor shutting itself down.Potential cost: Only that the business-critical system they're controlling stops working. Nothing important, y'know.
Potential benefit: Well, if they're on a very isolated network and access to the systems is already very tightly restricted, that's a good question. A lot of Vax systems never even had TCP/IP installed - you use a serial console to connect, which by definition restricts how easy it is to get to the system in the first place.
And this man's the Rail Minister? Sweet Jesus.
At least until you wind up addicted and so far out of your mind you'll mug little old ladies to get your next fix.
Then I go to jail for mugging little old ladies. Problem solved. This solves the problem of you mugging little old ladies, but not the fundamental problem of what made you mug little old ladies in the first place.
The little old ladies don't like being mugged, and they tend to vote.
Anyone who believes all these things should be legalised should live with a drug addict for 6 months. Believe me, it's not pretty.
Ken Thompson worked on the very early development of Unix.
And one of the solutions is: go buy the next version of w2k server?
Weve had this console thingie for a while in Linux. Why did windows wait until now?
We can all especulate on that. It's a variation on something I saw written in a final year project in University:
"Page 1: I am familiar with windows so I'm going to use that as my development environment.
Page 2: However, Windows doesn't offer me the tools I need to get the job done, so the first thing I'm going to do is install Cygwin to try and make it a bit more like Linux".
What I did miss was their explanation in the article on exactly what they did to get the printer implicated. Clue: It's in the paper the article references.
Certainly in the UK, it's likely to be all they've ever done since leaving university. And they very likely studied something with little practical application in the real world.
The upshot is that what they do versus what they say they'll do may or may not help them get re-elected (probably won't make much odds, voter apathy being what it is). But not towing the party line on a regular basis is a fantastically good way to find yourself thrown out of the party - which in turn is a fantastically good way to find yourself out of a job with little other prospects open to you.
Spot the obvious problem here. If the governing parties have such a strong hold on their members, then all you do when you vote is decide which (hopefully relatively benign) dictator you want in.
It logically follows that if politicians are representing their own interests to the point whereby they ignore the issues that bother the people, a party based on populist politics (ie. base your policies on whatever crazed radical steps would be needed to fix the top 5 things appearing in the more hysterical tabloids - immigration, education, that sort of stuff - consequences be damned) is in with a strong chance of winning serious numbers of votes. And so we have the BNP gaining ground.
Mind you, I think I'd find that behaviour infuriating in most apps.
This doesn't really help localisation that greatly, because the text within the dialogue box still needs to be translated. Unfortunately, because it's part of the API which has been there since time immemorial, it's not something which can be removed from the next release of Windows.
Mac OS, OTOH, encourages the developer puts sensible text on all the buttons, so the buttons themselves say "Reformat hard drive and kill everyone I've ever cared for/Blowjob". Amongst other things, this effectively stops the end user from being immunised to actually reading the dialogue box because the buttons aren't always the same.
Most of what you're describing has more to do with Microsoft's attempts to maintain backward compatability over 25 years than anything else. You can still run DOS applications from that age (with some caveats) on XP.
It's racist when you massage the numbers to make it look like 90% of the worst students are Pakistani.
However, if that genuinely is the case then IMO it's not racist at all. There may be underlying reasons for it that are racist in origin, but if you refuse to acknowledge the problem you're never going to find those underlying reasons.
In my experience, it's often the people at the top that I wouldn't trust with an etch-a-sketch.
Old joke. But my experience suggests that the people at the top don't want their computer broken and don't have time to mess around waiting for IT to fix. So they seldom screw with it that bad when it's working.Those in the middle, however, who have enough power over their own PC to be dangerous, enough time to wait for IT to fix it but not enough knowledge to avoid breaking it are the ones you really want to look out for.
But I do know about it in the UK.
Generally, educational software falls into one of two categories:
1. Written by IT professionals. The user interface is consistent with everything else on the platform, there's a nice easy way to roll it out to everything, it doesn't stamp crap all over the system, it doesn't do something silly like want admin rights to run.
It's the IT admins dream, with only one minor disadvantage: It tends to be very bad at actually getting information across.
2. Written by teachers and other educational folks. This tends to be hacked together, with a user interface which defies belief in every way. Think the worst nightmare software you've ever used and multiply by 5. It's shipped with instructions saying "Go to every PC in turn and double-click on the setup icon" - and it is not uncommon to find the setup procedure is actively hostile to any attempts to automate it. Despite being generally relatively simple, it only works on a few specific versions of Windows and tends to break very easily. It makes assumptions like "The application will always have its CD available and it will be on a disk in a CD-ROM drive at D:" (even if you've explicitly paid for a version to run over a network) or "We can write wherever we like in C:". It's licensed on a per-machine basis and the idea that you might want to license or indeed work with more than about 5 copies honestly never occurred to the developer.
It's the kind of thing that most admins thought died (or at least had the worst stupidities ironed out) a long time ago. But once you get it working, it's generally very good at getting information across.
Guess which one teachers prefer?
Multiply that by every single subject taught at every single level for which a suitable piece of software exists and you have a rough idea of how much fun educational IT is.
Regarding the actual issue of the kindergarten app which is IE-only - thinking about it, this doesn't surprise me. I've worked in a school and I found that the idea of any software which isn't entirely available off the shelf was absolutely terrifying to the Powers that Be - even though in this case paying for the relevant migration would almost certainly have been a lot cheaper.
My guess is that the schools looked at the applications they needed, found one that didn't work as intended and didn't think to contact the manufacturer to say "Before we drop 8 million euros on Windows, can you speed up engineering your product to run in Linux for, say, 1 million euros?"
If I was that government I would have paid some High School students to write a website for a passing grade in one of their classes. I strongly doubt that is the real reason.
This is a kindergarten-level language application - it's hardly "the entire science syllabus for 18 year olds taking their final school exams complete with diagrams, animations and interactive help".
They're prepared to pay â8 million to migrate to Vista, and I strongly doubt it would have cost anything like that to rewrite the web application even if it was pure ActiveX. Either the management didn't think to contact the developers and say "Would âseveral million change your mind?" (This is possible. Don't discount the stupidity of public servants anywhere in the world) or there's something else going on.
(Oh, and on an unrelated note to
Linux can and does work well in a corporate environment. Centrally managing huge server farms, pushing updates and son on and so forth... Can be done with Linux. On Windows, it is fairly easy to define different groups of people and say something like:
Group A get this desktop when they log in, it's very locked down - they can't even right-click - and there's only one application there to run. They may only log into a subset of PCs. (Think of the sales staff in a call centre - they may well have a PC set up like this)
Group B get this desktop when they log in. It's rather less locked down, and there are three applications. They may log into any PC they wish.
Group C get this third desktop when they log in. It's not locked down at all and they can run anything they have there, but they can't install their own software.
Lather rinse and repeat until you've set up groups which deal with the people lowest in the corporate hierarchy (who you wouldn't trust with an etch-a-sketch, let alone a PC) right the way up to the top.
Now, while this level of control may not be necessary (or even desirable) in smaller organisations or places where all the staff can reasonably be expected to have a certain amount of computer literacy, there are lots of businesses where it is.
I accept you could script all this without too much trouble in Linux - but AFAIK no current desktop manager has the facility to be configured centrally on a per-group basis out of the box. You'd spend just as long hacking the desktop manager to work as you would defining the policies themselves.
I just don't have a lot of optimism that this will continue should Google significantly increase their market share.