Not just Microsoft. Speaking as a regular road-tester who approaches every software/hardware package as knowing nothing, all of the big players, whether corporate or larger F/OSS development teams, do this. All the larger firms are able to hire anthropologists, psychologists, and others who study human behavior as part of their development and testing teams. The first thing I did when I started a project was to go to the line and learn the current process, what people liked doing and their pain points. Then I'd go off and do the heavy lifting in terms of architecture, engineering, and management buy-in. After everything was good to go, then I'd go back and do the implementation and further tweaks, again with the people working on the line. If they don't like it, they either won't use it or will drag their feet which makes the whole exercise worthless in my opinion. And I used standard anthropological ethnographic techniques learned from my mother when she went out into the field. Frankly, if I were to suggest one area to add under anyone's IT belt, a bit of cultural anthropology is highly suggested. Sociology of Organizations is also highly useful.
As for intuitiveness, well they are all equally non-intuitive here We could have a hell of a discussion thread here just on which components belong in the File, View, Edit, Tools and Help menus. That doesn't even count application specific menus. The last time I met something intuitive, especially on the programming side, it was called an Amiga. [I was highly involved in the design of Scripit and FinalCalc, both by Khalid Aldoseri, with literally hundreds of hours of time spent in conferencing back when it cost serious bucks.] So far as I'm concerned, no machine has come even close since. I'm not holding my breath expecting this to change. Hell, I'll be long planted and mowed regularly at government expense.
Frankly I have zero familiarity with NT in any version prior to Windows 2000 Advanced Server. That ran for years with the only reboots required when the power went down or with a Microsoft Update, and in one case, a motherboard failure. The same has been true of the various incarnations of Windows Server since WS 2003 Enterprise Edition. Similarly, more recent incarnations of SLES and RH have definitely worthy of the Enterprise grade designation. I have both here as well as many other flavors of Linux and Unix. Remember I talked about my wild and crazy experiments? I was about to add Open Solaris and NexentaStor to the mix here to experiment in the database engineering and business intelligence (actually general analytics as business is just one problem domain in a wide array of fields where I have applied analytics) arena on a server of my own design. I not only do software engineering but about every other kind of engineering out there except chemical, aerospace, and space. Those I rely on subject matter experts for which the internet is wonderful;-). It keeps me busy in my long retirement (started at age 30). It also keeps me in toys to play with from the industry players, big and small.
As an observation, one or a few bad products, or iterations of products, does not automagically render a firm forever tainted in my book. I go and get an evaluation copy if I'm not already involved in the beta (which is frequently) and make my own decisions. After thirty years, I've seen a lot of turkeys come by. Hell, Win'Me was so bad I refused to support it. MS screws up and by my standards given the number of bugs and security problems I see in software and, often, hardware, so does the rest of the industry. But that's a subject that is pointless to discuss.
Oh, it exists in theory if you bother to read the writings of Madison and Jefferson and especially the various acts passed by the states when they adopted the Constitution. The federal government was designed and constrained to operate within the bounds of the Constitution using powers delegated it by the States in the aforementioned Constitution. I'm very familiar with systems with constraints having been a professional engineer and having degrees in economics, among other things. Both those fields are pretty much entirely about operating in systems of constraints usually with an eye towards optimization. In 1861, when the Federal government made war on the States seceding from the Union they violated both the spirit and the law found within the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation and its successor document the Constitution of the United States. BTW, check your references as the several States of the North also included the right of secession as a duty of the States to prevent an all powerful central government.
I have become somewhat of an expert on the subject by a sense of duty, not as much by desire. When I swore an oath "to protect and defend the Constitution of the United State against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the lawful orders of those officers appointed above me..." I, obviously, had a duty to go out and educate myself on just what the heck I was swearing to at my young age (17). It wasn't until a few years later that some of my self-training was incorporated into official military training during the Reagan years, a most welcome addition in my not so humble opinion.
Obviously the right of secession is counter to 'established fact' (history) as presented by our current system of government which goes to the topic here. What is presented to the people by the education establishment (who must be accredited which violates the Declaration of Independence's "right to... [the] pursuit of happiness [job of your satisfaction]) and by the media whether state (federally) or corporately owned, run, or controlled.
BTW, Thomas Jefferson in his own writings not only specifically addressed that rebellion/revolution was a right of the people ("The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson) but figured that it should be done about every twenty years or so. Seems about right to me, especially of late (the last twenty, not few, years). Speaking from a political-economic and power-conflict view of history, our elites are playing a very dangerous game. Whenever we have historically had an expanding middle-class and they suffered a severe reversal of fortune, and declining membership, especially in the face of felt disenfranchisement, they have had the annoying habit of killing the current elites and creating/appointing a new set of elites. I'm am not limiting my view of history to just the last few centuries, I look at recorded history in its entirety. China is another example of a set of elites playing fire (although talking with an Undersecretary of State on that topic did give some valuable insights about who was going to absorb whom when China absorbed Hong Kong as they, the Chinese elites, are finding out to their chagrin).
The fascinating thing about what is occurring now is that technology is proving to be an enabler for self-education provided you keep suitable bull-shit detectors (filters) in place and exercise due regard in to checking facts and sources. To borrow from James P. Hogan, in one of his prefaces, I have three rules when it comes to 'statements of facts': Who said it? What did they say? How do they know? Thankfully with the world wide web (and liberal use of reverse DNS to make sure you are going to the real places) it's getting easier to satisfy those questions. Not perfect by a long shot, but better than living in the library. I've been there, done that, and burned the T-shirt.
AC, actually there are a few such beasts depending on whether you are talking text or video and your choice of algorithms, standard or modified rankings with or without clustering. In this case, if you are searching text for, say, the last 24 hours in the news wires or sites, or in the social media space, a good place to go is Google Realtime.
That depends on the end user (how big their Microsoft licensing fees are) and/or their willingness to pay for an incident. Personally, I only use enterprise grade operating systems and application software for my machines and I'm not talking XP, Vista, or 7. I noticed a long time ago that that's about the only version where it just works unless there is a hardware failure or Microsoft does something wrong with an update. Am I paying a lot for that peace of mind and a higher level of support from MS (and others)? Yep. For me, it's worth it especially given the wild and crazy experiments I conduct here which turn out to be not so wild and crazy ten or more years later.
Aside from Microsoft making somewhat nice with the F/OSS community, which is their own self-interest given that large firms are not monolithic MS, I've noticed that getting technical support for a hybrid set of systems does not automatically get a response that places the blame on the non-MS pieces of your IT setup. If I had to guess, MS may be eyeing the market niche that IBM pretty much dominates (IMNSHO) while still making hardware and creating software; services that mix and match across whatever has in place and make it work. I've seen the first steps in this direction with their various systems management tools, especially for virtualization. The Office cash cow won't last forever and I think they are getting that. Finally.
Does this portend a kinder, gentler Microsoft? Not on your life. They are just continuing with embrace and extend while looking like a 'nice' Microsoft. Yeah, right.
Try saying that to the kin of those who got killed in a terrorist attack which could have been foiled if the cops had access to the data you want to deny them
Since everyone of my kin has served in the military and have an avid interest in a circumscribed government as per Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, you won't get any complaints from them if I should get killed in a terrorist attack. In all actuality, given our various skill sets courtesy of self-same service, connections, and myriad (to say the least) favor owed, the terrorists will have their hands full dealing with the clan actively hunting them down, thank you very much. That doesn't even take into account good friends of the clan. ['Friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies.']
Ben had it right: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." As well as, seemingly despite attribution to Richard Jackson, the more telling point in this whole discussion: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Actually that's more than a bit simplistic. Anticipated valuation and effects on the price system will appear first in the futures market, and related/dependent (manufacturing mostly) derivatives. This will, as the day of delivery (FOB) approaches have an effect on the markets (stock and bond valuations). Eventually, your condition would become reality but it would be a wild and crazy ride in the beginning. Personally speaking as, among other things, an econometrician, I would love to watch how the markets behave over that period.
BTW, the Japanese have had as the goal of their space program going out and bringing back at least some of the Earth-Mars asteroids. I'd be willing to bet that the asteroids are their eventual goal
The original purpose here was to to give 'hacking' (actually cracking to use the correct term) the (AD, DNS, whatever) server limited viability. Once a cracked server was identified, simply restore from an earlier snapshot that predates the crack, patch or otherwise mitigate the vulnerability, and 'drive on'. This would have been especially useful during the days of DNS exploit of the week not so long ago and still seems attractive with the 'China syndrome' we're seeing now (which the press still doesn't report on correctly {sigh}.
Now the far better approach is to use virtual appliances on a low attack-surface host OS/bare-metal hyper-visor. Sure, browser appliances are great and I used to use them to cruise the underground for years to keep an eye on what was out there.
I love to experiment beyond the 'bleeding edge' here. It has given me much pleasure over the last couple of decades. It also has the nice effect of keeping me buried in free enterprise grade toys. I do like free;-).
About the only original quote I have ever come up with (at least I think it is original) is: "Never give entropy a chance!"
Agreed on all three points especially point number two which is not an original design at all. It's a state machine with yet another name attached to it (again, sigh), something I've been using as a design technique for over a quarter century now (just over half my life!). That was a major point of irritation here, acting as if it was something new. The minor nit, made almost major by repetition was the use of indexes, where indices is the proper term, however I've become resigned to that of late in academia. I'm not perfect in the use of terminology, but still....
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" definitely seems applicable here. I don't think they have this one solved yet, especially without a provably correct TPM which remains level one of the guardians. Too bad. I started using VM's as a defensive tactic back in 2000 via the snapshot capability and golden images kept in encrypted images (the very early days of VMWare, which I must in the interests of plausible deniability reveal myself as an oft beta-tester;-). Gee was I presciently paranoid or what?
BTW, I love the sig. Don Knuth is something of a minor deity here (usually as revealed through the prophet Robert Sedgewick {grin}) as I've used his algorithms and data structures, and especially proofs of correctness and suitability to problem domains, in my work over the decades.
Actually we've seen this before where a company tried to slide their patented technology into the standards system and then turn around and profit from it. Remember RAMBUS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus)? I see this as exactly the same situation.
I also have real questions about whether one can patent a mathematical function which is the fundamental basis of a codec. Or are we patenting the utility of that function to suit a particular purpose? If the latter, can I go through The Art of Computure Programming, find novel use cases for what is described therein (and combinations, oh yes, combinations!) and patent those? (In truth I have encountered patent claims which were straight out of those volumes.) Where do you draw the line. The codec is simple. The implementation may be difficult especially in the face of a multiplicity of operating environments that it must deal with. Frankly this situation is one that the patent system is not equipped to deal with, IMNSHO.
"I'd rather die a slave than sentence another human to die for my freedom."
Then either you do not understand the sig (which speaks to conscription) or you are yet another poltroon who would conscript the service of other free men and women to provide for your liberty. I find the latter notion extremely abhorrent. Every man and woman in my family, since time out of mind, has always served whether called for or not. We do not call for others to defend our, or your, liberty. That is the decision of each free person. Instead, I question whether a State should stand when others are given the right to demand such service of members of that State. I am quite sure that the Founders would agree that it should not. As for us, we are, and were, already there.
And no, we do not serve blindly , as my collection of literature on the Constitution here will attest. If one would take oath, it would serve well to know, and understand completely, what one takes oath to protect defend. That is something that our so-called "servant's" have apparently forgotten.
Mod Off-Topic [and far too flowery!] as you will. That matter of comment shall not stand abide in my passing.
While I was in uniform, I couldn't afford to do anything less than perfect software. When the potential cost of an error on my part was the loss of life or limb by an individual, or group of individuals, and the penalty for it was a sentence to Ft. Leavenworth, Ks., being guarded by pissed-off US Marines, or possibly even death, that concentrates the mind wonderfully [to mangle a quote]. I think this is a major difference between in approaches that I see throughout this discussion. To wit, penalties.
Not once in the ten years that I was coding for the military nor in the two decades following (and yes, the software is still in use, typical of the military, and works just fine despite OS changes) was an error ever found. Therefore, it is possible to write (at the least near-) perfect software. However, this isn't just about just the penalties.
None of this was easy although it actually took me and my team far less time to successfully complete our projects than is typical of other teams and projects that I've seen over the years. That is almost entirely due to the fact that we did engineering rather than ego-driven 'development', i.e. we took already existing, provably (mathematically) correct algorithms and data-structures with a heavy dose of built-in error checking in the form of state-machines, what I took to calling design by contract (strictly constrained, enumerated, and validated inputs & outputs), and extensive inline documentation especially for compiler or OS bugs of which we found more than a few for which fixes had to be encapsulated (hopefully for later removal).
I specifically bring up the time savings since, at first, it didn't seem that way as we easily spent three times longer in the actual design phase (architecture, data-structure definition, algorithm selection, language(s) and tooling selection, etc.) yet the actual coding phase was just a few days and testing also only took days to identify the previously mentioned OS and compiler errors. This allowed more time to be spent on requirements collection (at least a week of hands on, anthropological interview style with the potential users) and user training during the installation and turn-over phase. The total project time was just a few weeks, at most, and these were neither unambitious nor small projects. It did take demonstrated, markedly positive (multi-million dollar ROI), results to convince 'management' that having people staring into space, scratching on legal pads, with stacks of books, and tapping the CompuServe fora (these were the pre-web days) was a good thing. Furthermore, we could often restructure a work-flow or the entire application in a few hours and they were doing exactly that with one app I had created just a few weeks before the door hit my ass as I was being (medically) discharged from the service. All my work yet the modifications (a total reversal of work-flow) was happening in mere hours and they were having fun (yes, fun) doing it.
However, I find it highly unlikely that we'll ever see these efforts in the 'real' world given a culture of (barely) 'good-enough', and no liability for fitness let alone correctness {RTF License/User Agreement}.
As with you I'm usually the first responder when the malware problems really get out of control for someone and it's not just family. Given that level of experience it should be no surprise that every type of active scripting/content (j/javascript, java, activex, flash, etc. ad nauseum), display of any 'off-site' content, and the like is disabled here by default. My web-proxy rewrites the html code to disable it all, among other things, since this has long been a threat vector well before extensions to disable it came along. There are additional layers of defenses {firewalls, multiple os's, IDS/IPS, extensions, again etc. ad nauseum).
Now, if I should need to enable/display such sites, well, I've been using virtual machines (with secure golden images for backup) for browser appliances since software first appeared on the PC (I was one of VMWare's first testers and long time user of VM's on other platforms). True, this is a bit over-the-top for many people but, basically, I don't trust anyone or anything [by default] and I'm wired up here with extensive monitoring to make sure that I live malware free since it wouldnt do at all to infect a client even though I do this kind of work for free. Hell, I've had to live this way for decades since I used to be responsible for keeping whole fora (libraries) of software and other content malware free on Compu$erve;-).
I wouldn't be surprised though, in the near future, to see operating systems and other verndors begin to take advantage of the bare-metal hypervisor and application virtualization/streaming capabilities in conjunction with golden images as a primary layer of security. It would also help with running corporate applications/content on personal devices, and vice-versa, as well as the never-ending stream of patches and installation thereof. Short of using (non-rewritable/programmable) ROM, it doesn't get much more secure than that, IMNSHO, and I do love secure.
Supposedly it does support ActiveSync (although more than one link asserts it doesn't). Color me confused, but I'm not an Apple (or anyone's) fanboy, so that's typical.
When you say a 'reactor breaks' you are assuming that it is exposing the fuel elements in some way. There are more than a few classes of reactor accidents and since the article doesn't give a damn thing on the reactor design aside from that it is a liquid metal design, I can't tell exactly how safe it is. I do know that type of reactor, they had one running on liquid sodium where I learned the 'real world' side of nuclear engineering. Yes, there are particular hazards with that design, but without seeing the blueprints, who knows? NASA, I would hope. I will say that the most hazardous accident that you could have in a liquid metal design is exposure of the coolant to atmosphere which results in a pretty violent fire. Not a hazard on the moon, but it would definitely give me pause on Mars (oxygen and liquid sodium do not play well with each other). That could result in a complete loss of coolant accident, but in that particular type of reactor, it just shuts itself down, which is also what happens with newer pressurized water designs, by the way. Heck, if they used ceramic fuel elements, I seriously doubt you could even breach a fuel cell due to thermal stress, since a meltdown is impossible.
Position the facilities far enough away and everything should be fine. Do have a standby, if needed, should an accident happen. When/if it does, bury it, hopefully in something similar to tons of concrete. Actually far easier to handle than decomissioning a civilian fission and, when we get it, fusion plant.
I'm going to tack this on here since I'm sure some anti-nuke 'person' will raise the issue. NASA already knows how to get the reactor 'on-site' safely. The long range probes carry plutonium 'batteries' (roughly 10 kW design as I recall) already and while we've never lost one in a launch accident, those babies are designed to cope with a total explosion, fall from geo-synchronous orbit (~25,200 miles up) AND hit the ground doing 25,000 mph+. They won't crack or leak plutonium fuel in that instance. So the getting it on-site part of the mission is a no brainer. Site operations is where it could get interesting. Micro-meteorites, moon-dust effects, etc.
I wish I were healthy enough to go. 'Twould be interesting.
No surprise here. Just as criminals, terrorists, et. al., can (mis-)use other modern technology such as disposable cell phones, modern transport systems, and even Google Earth, it should not surprise anyone that they can turn an open, un-metered web-service to their ends. We won't ever solve the misuse problem, not without changing the 'net to something that might prevent this, and I can't see any of us (/.) asking for it anyway.
Which just so happens to be occupying quite a bit of my thought processes today. What I'm interested in is at least one SSD array with in-line de-duplication for the VM image files. While most shops are heterogenous in their collection of image files, there is still quite a bit of overlap. SSD's very nicely take care of the IOPS and streaming bottlenecks.
Simply put, just because something is there does not necessarily mean it should be used. I have Flash, Java, and numerous server-side and/or client-side tools here. Some of them are mighty obscure due to the fact that I started coding back in the early '70's. I can use them, and for many I even have code generators that create nicely formatted, validated, compact code. I'd dare even say I might be more productive. However that does not mean that they are the right tool for a particular task.
The examples brought out as evidence so far would be far more efficiently coded using CSS and templates. That they are stupidly coded in JS is just as silly as using C# or Java to generate static content. Templates are more efficient and why Include was created in the first place! You are utilizing a dynamic language to implement a static output which is absolutely silly and it is highly likely to flummox both the search spiders and the intelligence {if any} in your web server. You do know how to code for higher efficiency on your web server, don't you?
"Try connecting to your dialup provider and connecting to imdb.com."
Is there something supposed to be there (imdb.com)? Big blank in the page area although I do see related links present. And that's with everything non-filtered.
I've been racking my brains to recall imdb.com and you finally brought back my ancient (in interent time) memory.
I don't think you wasted your time as I quite agree that each party (server & content reader) has a right to only provide/accept according to their wishes. That is the defining characteristic of the Internet, not just the web. A great example is NNTP which is currently under fire as well since the puditocracy and politickians just don't get it.
More to the point, as you've noticed, there is a definite lack of capability in the realm of critical thinking in the US, and it seems to be spreading. It wasn't even a requirement in our state's education system here unless you went to college and even then, judging from the papers turned in, the students still didn't get it. Not good. The ability to think critically is fundamental to being more than just another industrial society wage-slave. Furthermore, the Constitution was predicated on the notion that the voters would have that capability as well. I can hear a collective "whoops!" from the founding fathers, although I wouldn't be surprised that the political class likes the current status-quo. I don't see the situation changes short of revolution and that's about as likely as an asteroid stirke, perhaps less.
Actually it is more than likely much higher than 1% by a close order of magnitude. I have two layers of JavaScript white-listing here. The first layer applies to all content coming into the system as my proxy-server dynamically rewrites the HTML code as it is received. [It does much more than this.] Then each browser has its own settings that apply since I have role-specific settings.
For any site that tries to maintain stats on my systems, unless you are white-listed (and you don't get white-listed unless I like your code in the first place) I look like JS disabled. However once white-listed then I look like JS-enabled. I don't believe that I'm the only conditional JS user out there by a long shot. Same with Flash or any other active content (blinking text, cookie setting, sounds, etc. ad nauseum. So, how can you do a population survey that is actually meaningful? Simply put, you can't. Ergo, the assertion that web coders won't serve that segment means they are potentinally hurting their own market.
Excuse me? I don't know why anyone would want to do it, unless they couldn't scrape up enough bucks for at least a PCI (old-style) or PCIx1 (new-style) SATA-RAID card, but I have been able to run software RAID on my Windows Server 2003 (R1) since RTM way back when. Highest version I have here is WS2003 Enterprise. Wouldn't want Datacenter anyway. Let's keep this factual.
Frankly, I find wading through this topic-type extremely tedious, but I do it anyway. And please don't take this personally. A pox on all three (???) camps.
{Snort} Got it. SysV would be just fine as I have a ton of sysadmin and other documentation for it as well and I've met kin in the past and dealt with it with no training or documentation for that matter at the time. ZFS does seem to sound a bit like what some 'softie zealots shout about the fabled sql-based FS we'll get Real Soon Now.
I'll evaluate my options when I have some more hardware to play with back online. Even bare metal hypervisors don't give a true picture of reality, although I wish they did. Sometimes the HV can mask real-world issues, or create contention (I/O for instance) of their own.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just Microsoft. Speaking as a regular road-tester who approaches every software/hardware package as knowing nothing, all of the big players, whether corporate or larger F/OSS development teams, do this. All the larger firms are able to hire anthropologists, psychologists, and others who study human behavior as part of their development and testing teams. The first thing I did when I started a project was to go to the line and learn the current process, what people liked doing and their pain points. Then I'd go off and do the heavy lifting in terms of architecture, engineering, and management buy-in. After everything was good to go, then I'd go back and do the implementation and further tweaks, again with the people working on the line. If they don't like it, they either won't use it or will drag their feet which makes the whole exercise worthless in my opinion. And I used standard anthropological ethnographic techniques learned from my mother when she went out into the field. Frankly, if I were to suggest one area to add under anyone's IT belt, a bit of cultural anthropology is highly suggested. Sociology of Organizations is also highly useful.
As for intuitiveness, well they are all equally non-intuitive here We could have a hell of a discussion thread here just on which components belong in the File, View, Edit, Tools and Help menus. That doesn't even count application specific menus. The last time I met something intuitive, especially on the programming side, it was called an Amiga. [I was highly involved in the design of Scripit and FinalCalc, both by Khalid Aldoseri, with literally hundreds of hours of time spent in conferencing back when it cost serious bucks.] So far as I'm concerned, no machine has come even close since. I'm not holding my breath expecting this to change. Hell, I'll be long planted and mowed regularly at government expense.
Frankly I have zero familiarity with NT in any version prior to Windows 2000 Advanced Server. That ran for years with the only reboots required when the power went down or with a Microsoft Update, and in one case, a motherboard failure. The same has been true of the various incarnations of Windows Server since WS 2003 Enterprise Edition. Similarly, more recent incarnations of SLES and RH have definitely worthy of the Enterprise grade designation. I have both here as well as many other flavors of Linux and Unix. Remember I talked about my wild and crazy experiments? I was about to add Open Solaris and NexentaStor to the mix here to experiment in the database engineering and business intelligence (actually general analytics as business is just one problem domain in a wide array of fields where I have applied analytics) arena on a server of my own design. I not only do software engineering but about every other kind of engineering out there except chemical, aerospace, and space. Those I rely on subject matter experts for which the internet is wonderful ;-). It keeps me busy in my long retirement (started at age 30). It also keeps me in toys to play with from the industry players, big and small.
As an observation, one or a few bad products, or iterations of products, does not automagically render a firm forever tainted in my book. I go and get an evaluation copy if I'm not already involved in the beta (which is frequently) and make my own decisions. After thirty years, I've seen a lot of turkeys come by. Hell, Win'Me was so bad I refused to support it. MS screws up and by my standards given the number of bugs and security problems I see in software and, often, hardware, so does the rest of the industry. But that's a subject that is pointless to discuss.
Oh, it exists in theory if you bother to read the writings of Madison and Jefferson and especially the various acts passed by the states when they adopted the Constitution. The federal government was designed and constrained to operate within the bounds of the Constitution using powers delegated it by the States in the aforementioned Constitution. I'm very familiar with systems with constraints having been a professional engineer and having degrees in economics, among other things. Both those fields are pretty much entirely about operating in systems of constraints usually with an eye towards optimization. In 1861, when the Federal government made war on the States seceding from the Union they violated both the spirit and the law found within the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation and its successor document the Constitution of the United States. BTW, check your references as the several States of the North also included the right of secession as a duty of the States to prevent an all powerful central government.
I have become somewhat of an expert on the subject by a sense of duty, not as much by desire. When I swore an oath "to protect and defend the Constitution of the United State against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the lawful orders of those officers appointed above me..." I, obviously, had a duty to go out and educate myself on just what the heck I was swearing to at my young age (17). It wasn't until a few years later that some of my self-training was incorporated into official military training during the Reagan years, a most welcome addition in my not so humble opinion.
Obviously the right of secession is counter to 'established fact' (history) as presented by our current system of government which goes to the topic here. What is presented to the people by the education establishment (who must be accredited which violates the Declaration of Independence's "right to... [the] pursuit of happiness [job of your satisfaction]) and by the media whether state (federally) or corporately owned, run, or controlled.
BTW, Thomas Jefferson in his own writings not only specifically addressed that rebellion/revolution was a right of the people ("The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson) but figured that it should be done about every twenty years or so. Seems about right to me, especially of late (the last twenty, not few, years). Speaking from a political-economic and power-conflict view of history, our elites are playing a very dangerous game. Whenever we have historically had an expanding middle-class and they suffered a severe reversal of fortune, and declining membership, especially in the face of felt disenfranchisement, they have had the annoying habit of killing the current elites and creating/appointing a new set of elites. I'm am not limiting my view of history to just the last few centuries, I look at recorded history in its entirety. China is another example of a set of elites playing fire (although talking with an Undersecretary of State on that topic did give some valuable insights about who was going to absorb whom when China absorbed Hong Kong as they, the Chinese elites, are finding out to their chagrin).
The fascinating thing about what is occurring now is that technology is proving to be an enabler for self-education provided you keep suitable bull-shit detectors (filters) in place and exercise due regard in to checking facts and sources. To borrow from James P. Hogan, in one of his prefaces, I have three rules when it comes to 'statements of facts': Who said it? What did they say? How do they know? Thankfully with the world wide web (and liberal use of reverse DNS to make sure you are going to the real places) it's getting easier to satisfy those questions. Not perfect by a long shot, but better than living in the library. I've been there, done that, and burned the T-shirt.
AC, actually there are a few such beasts depending on whether you are talking text or video and your choice of algorithms, standard or modified rankings with or without clustering. In this case, if you are searching text for, say, the last 24 hours in the news wires or sites, or in the social media space, a good place to go is Google Realtime.
That depends on the end user (how big their Microsoft licensing fees are) and/or their willingness to pay for an incident. Personally, I only use enterprise grade operating systems and application software for my machines and I'm not talking XP, Vista, or 7. I noticed a long time ago that that's about the only version where it just works unless there is a hardware failure or Microsoft does something wrong with an update. Am I paying a lot for that peace of mind and a higher level of support from MS (and others)? Yep. For me, it's worth it especially given the wild and crazy experiments I conduct here which turn out to be not so wild and crazy ten or more years later.
Aside from Microsoft making somewhat nice with the F/OSS community, which is their own self-interest given that large firms are not monolithic MS, I've noticed that getting technical support for a hybrid set of systems does not automatically get a response that places the blame on the non-MS pieces of your IT setup. If I had to guess, MS may be eyeing the market niche that IBM pretty much dominates (IMNSHO) while still making hardware and creating software; services that mix and match across whatever has in place and make it work. I've seen the first steps in this direction with their various systems management tools, especially for virtualization. The Office cash cow won't last forever and I think they are getting that. Finally.
Does this portend a kinder, gentler Microsoft? Not on your life. They are just continuing with embrace and extend while looking like a 'nice' Microsoft. Yeah, right.
Try saying that to the kin of those who got killed in a terrorist attack which could have been foiled if the cops had access to the data you want to deny them
Since everyone of my kin has served in the military and have an avid interest in a circumscribed government as per Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, you won't get any complaints from them if I should get killed in a terrorist attack. In all actuality, given our various skill sets courtesy of self-same service, connections, and myriad (to say the least) favor owed, the terrorists will have their hands full dealing with the clan actively hunting them down, thank you very much. That doesn't even take into account good friends of the clan. ['Friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies.']
Ben had it right: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." As well as, seemingly despite attribution to Richard Jackson, the more telling point in this whole discussion: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Actually that's more than a bit simplistic. Anticipated valuation and effects on the price system will appear first in the futures market, and related/dependent (manufacturing mostly) derivatives. This will, as the day of delivery (FOB) approaches have an effect on the markets (stock and bond valuations). Eventually, your condition would become reality but it would be a wild and crazy ride in the beginning. Personally speaking as, among other things, an econometrician, I would love to watch how the markets behave over that period.
BTW, the Japanese have had as the goal of their space program going out and bringing back at least some of the Earth-Mars asteroids. I'd be willing to bet that the asteroids are their eventual goal
The original purpose here was to to give 'hacking' (actually cracking to use the correct term) the (AD, DNS, whatever) server limited viability. Once a cracked server was identified, simply restore from an earlier snapshot that predates the crack, patch or otherwise mitigate the vulnerability, and 'drive on'. This would have been especially useful during the days of DNS exploit of the week not so long ago and still seems attractive with the 'China syndrome' we're seeing now (which the press still doesn't report on correctly {sigh}. Now the far better approach is to use virtual appliances on a low attack-surface host OS/bare-metal hyper-visor. Sure, browser appliances are great and I used to use them to cruise the underground for years to keep an eye on what was out there.
;-).
I love to experiment beyond the 'bleeding edge' here. It has given me much pleasure over the last couple of decades. It also has the nice effect of keeping me buried in free enterprise grade toys. I do like free
About the only original quote I have ever come up with (at least I think it is original) is: "Never give entropy a chance!"
Agreed on all three points especially point number two which is not an original design at all. It's a state machine with yet another name attached to it (again, sigh), something I've been using as a design technique for over a quarter century now (just over half my life!). That was a major point of irritation here, acting as if it was something new. The minor nit, made almost major by repetition was the use of indexes, where indices is the proper term, however I've become resigned to that of late in academia. I'm not perfect in the use of terminology, but still....
;-). Gee was I presciently paranoid or what?
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" definitely seems applicable here. I don't think they have this one solved yet, especially without a provably correct TPM which remains level one of the guardians. Too bad. I started using VM's as a defensive tactic back in 2000 via the snapshot capability and golden images kept in encrypted images (the very early days of VMWare, which I must in the interests of plausible deniability reveal myself as an oft beta-tester
BTW, I love the sig. Don Knuth is something of a minor deity here (usually as revealed through the prophet Robert Sedgewick {grin}) as I've used his algorithms and data structures, and especially proofs of correctness and suitability to problem domains, in my work over the decades.
Actually we've seen this before where a company tried to slide their patented technology into the standards system and then turn around and profit from it. Remember RAMBUS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus)? I see this as exactly the same situation.
I also have real questions about whether one can patent a mathematical function which is the fundamental basis of a codec. Or are we patenting the utility of that function to suit a particular purpose? If the latter, can I go through The Art of Computure Programming, find novel use cases for what is described therein (and combinations, oh yes, combinations!) and patent those? (In truth I have encountered patent claims which were straight out of those volumes.) Where do you draw the line. The codec is simple. The implementation may be difficult especially in the face of a multiplicity of operating environments that it must deal with. Frankly this situation is one that the patent system is not equipped to deal with, IMNSHO.
Then either you do not understand the sig (which speaks to conscription) or you are yet another poltroon who would conscript the service of other free men and women to provide for your liberty. I find the latter notion extremely abhorrent. Every man and woman in my family, since time out of mind, has always served whether called for or not. We do not call for others to defend our, or your, liberty. That is the decision of each free person. Instead, I question whether a State should stand when others are given the right to demand such service of members of that State. I am quite sure that the Founders would agree that it should not. As for us, we are, and were, already there.
And no, we do not serve blindly , as my collection of literature on the Constitution here will attest. If one would take oath, it would serve well to know, and understand completely, what one takes oath to protect defend. That is something that our so-called "servant's" have apparently forgotten.
Mod Off-Topic [and far too flowery!] as you will. That matter of comment shall not stand abide in my passing.
While I was in uniform, I couldn't afford to do anything less than perfect software. When the potential cost of an error on my part was the loss of life or limb by an individual, or group of individuals, and the penalty for it was a sentence to Ft. Leavenworth, Ks., being guarded by pissed-off US Marines, or possibly even death, that concentrates the mind wonderfully [to mangle a quote]. I think this is a major difference between in approaches that I see throughout this discussion. To wit, penalties.
Not once in the ten years that I was coding for the military nor in the two decades following (and yes, the software is still in use, typical of the military, and works just fine despite OS changes) was an error ever found. Therefore, it is possible to write (at the least near-) perfect software. However, this isn't just about just the penalties.
None of this was easy although it actually took me and my team far less time to successfully complete our projects than is typical of other teams and projects that I've seen over the years. That is almost entirely due to the fact that we did engineering rather than ego-driven 'development', i.e. we took already existing, provably (mathematically) correct algorithms and data-structures with a heavy dose of built-in error checking in the form of state-machines, what I took to calling design by contract (strictly constrained, enumerated, and validated inputs & outputs), and extensive inline documentation especially for compiler or OS bugs of which we found more than a few for which fixes had to be encapsulated (hopefully for later removal).
I specifically bring up the time savings since, at first, it didn't seem that way as we easily spent three times longer in the actual design phase (architecture, data-structure definition, algorithm selection, language(s) and tooling selection, etc.) yet the actual coding phase was just a few days and testing also only took days to identify the previously mentioned OS and compiler errors. This allowed more time to be spent on requirements collection (at least a week of hands on, anthropological interview style with the potential users) and user training during the installation and turn-over phase. The total project time was just a few weeks, at most, and these were neither unambitious nor small projects. It did take demonstrated, markedly positive (multi-million dollar ROI), results to convince 'management' that having people staring into space, scratching on legal pads, with stacks of books, and tapping the CompuServe fora (these were the pre-web days) was a good thing. Furthermore, we could often restructure a work-flow or the entire application in a few hours and they were doing exactly that with one app I had created just a few weeks before the door hit my ass as I was being (medically) discharged from the service. All my work yet the modifications (a total reversal of work-flow) was happening in mere hours and they were having fun (yes, fun) doing it.
However, I find it highly unlikely that we'll ever see these efforts in the 'real' world given a culture of (barely) 'good-enough', and no liability for fitness let alone correctness {RTF License/User Agreement}.
As with you I'm usually the first responder when the malware problems really get out of control for someone and it's not just family. Given that level of experience it should be no surprise that every type of active scripting/content (j/javascript, java, activex, flash, etc. ad nauseum), display of any 'off-site' content, and the like is disabled here by default. My web-proxy rewrites the html code to disable it all, among other things, since this has long been a threat vector well before extensions to disable it came along. There are additional layers of defenses {firewalls, multiple os's, IDS/IPS, extensions, again etc. ad nauseum).
;-).
Now, if I should need to enable/display such sites, well, I've been using virtual machines (with secure golden images for backup) for browser appliances since software first appeared on the PC (I was one of VMWare's first testers and long time user of VM's on other platforms). True, this is a bit over-the-top for many people but, basically, I don't trust anyone or anything [by default] and I'm wired up here with extensive monitoring to make sure that I live malware free since it wouldnt do at all to infect a client even though I do this kind of work for free. Hell, I've had to live this way for decades since I used to be responsible for keeping whole fora (libraries) of software and other content malware free on Compu$erve
I wouldn't be surprised though, in the near future, to see operating systems and other verndors begin to take advantage of the bare-metal hypervisor and application virtualization/streaming capabilities in conjunction with golden images as a primary layer of security. It would also help with running corporate applications/content on personal devices, and vice-versa, as well as the never-ending stream of patches and installation thereof. Short of using (non-rewritable/programmable) ROM, it doesn't get much more secure than that, IMNSHO, and I do love secure.
Supposedly it does support ActiveSync (although more than one link asserts it doesn't). Color me confused, but I'm not an Apple (or anyone's) fanboy, so that's typical.
Position the facilities far enough away and everything should be fine. Do have a standby, if needed, should an accident happen. When/if it does, bury it, hopefully in something similar to tons of concrete. Actually far easier to handle than decomissioning a civilian fission and, when we get it, fusion plant.
I'm going to tack this on here since I'm sure some anti-nuke 'person' will raise the issue. NASA already knows how to get the reactor 'on-site' safely. The long range probes carry plutonium 'batteries' (roughly 10 kW design as I recall) already and while we've never lost one in a launch accident, those babies are designed to cope with a total explosion, fall from geo-synchronous orbit (~25,200 miles up) AND hit the ground doing 25,000 mph+. They won't crack or leak plutonium fuel in that instance. So the getting it on-site part of the mission is a no brainer. Site operations is where it could get interesting. Micro-meteorites, moon-dust effects, etc.
I wish I were healthy enough to go. 'Twould be interesting.
No surprise here. Just as criminals, terrorists, et. al., can (mis-)use other modern technology such as disposable cell phones, modern transport systems, and even Google Earth, it should not surprise anyone that they can turn an open, un-metered web-service to their ends. We won't ever solve the misuse problem, not without changing the 'net to something that might prevent this, and I can't see any of us (/.) asking for it anyway.
Which just so happens to be occupying quite a bit of my thought processes today. What I'm interested in is at least one SSD array with in-line de-duplication for the VM image files. While most shops are heterogenous in their collection of image files, there is still quite a bit of overlap. SSD's very nicely take care of the IOPS and streaming bottlenecks.
Actually I was being dead serious. I have useless links down the right side and bottom, nothing where there should be content. Weird.
Simply put, just because something is there does not necessarily mean it should be used. I have Flash, Java, and numerous server-side and/or client-side tools here. Some of them are mighty obscure due to the fact that I started coding back in the early '70's. I can use them, and for many I even have code generators that create nicely formatted, validated, compact code. I'd dare even say I might be more productive. However that does not mean that they are the right tool for a particular task.
The examples brought out as evidence so far would be far more efficiently coded using CSS and templates. That they are stupidly coded in JS is just as silly as using C# or Java to generate static content. Templates are more efficient and why Include was created in the first place! You are utilizing a dynamic language to implement a static output which is absolutely silly and it is highly likely to flummox both the search spiders and the intelligence {if any} in your web server. You do know how to code for higher efficiency on your web server, don't you?
Is there something supposed to be there (imdb.com)? Big blank in the page area although I do see related links present. And that's with everything non-filtered.
I've been racking my brains to recall imdb.com and you finally brought back my ancient (in interent time) memory.
I don't think you wasted your time as I quite agree that each party (server & content reader) has a right to only provide/accept according to their wishes. That is the defining characteristic of the Internet, not just the web. A great example is NNTP which is currently under fire as well since the puditocracy and politickians just don't get it.
More to the point, as you've noticed, there is a definite lack of capability in the realm of critical thinking in the US, and it seems to be spreading. It wasn't even a requirement in our state's education system here unless you went to college and even then, judging from the papers turned in, the students still didn't get it. Not good. The ability to think critically is fundamental to being more than just another industrial society wage-slave. Furthermore, the Constitution was predicated on the notion that the voters would have that capability as well. I can hear a collective "whoops!" from the founding fathers, although I wouldn't be surprised that the political class likes the current status-quo. I don't see the situation changes short of revolution and that's about as likely as an asteroid stirke, perhaps less.
Actually it is more than likely much higher than 1% by a close order of magnitude. I have two layers of JavaScript white-listing here. The first layer applies to all content coming into the system as my proxy-server dynamically rewrites the HTML code as it is received. [It does much more than this.] Then each browser has its own settings that apply since I have role-specific settings.
For any site that tries to maintain stats on my systems, unless you are white-listed (and you don't get white-listed unless I like your code in the first place) I look like JS disabled. However once white-listed then I look like JS-enabled. I don't believe that I'm the only conditional JS user out there by a long shot. Same with Flash or any other active content (blinking text, cookie setting, sounds, etc. ad nauseum. So, how can you do a population survey that is actually meaningful? Simply put, you can't. Ergo, the assertion that web coders won't serve that segment means they are potentinally hurting their own market.
Just my $.02
Never forget (you are welcome to scream along): "What's old is new again." {sigh}
Excuse me? I don't know why anyone would want to do it, unless they couldn't scrape up enough bucks for at least a PCI (old-style) or PCIx1 (new-style) SATA-RAID card, but I have been able to run software RAID on my Windows Server 2003 (R1) since RTM way back when. Highest version I have here is WS2003 Enterprise. Wouldn't want Datacenter anyway. Let's keep this factual.
Frankly, I find wading through this topic-type extremely tedious, but I do it anyway. And please don't take this personally. A pox on all three (???) camps.
{Snort} Got it. SysV would be just fine as I have a ton of sysadmin and other documentation for it as well and I've met kin in the past and dealt with it with no training or documentation for that matter at the time. ZFS does seem to sound a bit like what some 'softie zealots shout about the fabled sql-based FS we'll get Real Soon Now.
I'll evaluate my options when I have some more hardware to play with back online. Even bare metal hypervisors don't give a true picture of reality, although I wish they did. Sometimes the HV can mask real-world issues, or create contention (I/O for instance) of their own.