My daughter and I went to see the movie without having seen the television series. We both thought the movie was easy to follow. There may have been some nuances we missed, but overall it was no chore to understand the plot, the relationship of the characters to each other, and the historical and political backdrop in which the movie was taking place.
What's to prevent a private company from getting into space travel now? It's not as if the company would have to be based in the US or launch from the US, so I don't see why if sending people into space could be done profitably by a private company it's not already being done.
A study mentioned in a NY Times article says it's worse than break even. According to the study it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. Some other biofuels come out with an even lower conversion efficiency.
If the government wants to make this easy on the ISPs, it could mandate some sort of surcharge, as is currently done with various utility bills. One month all ISP bills would be something like $2.50 higher. The explanation on the bill will be the 'Homeland Security Surcharge', or some such.
Where did anyone present this as a "Revolutionary technique"? I don't see that as being said or implied anywhere. It's a how to article for people who are new to Java, with a (nearly) complete end to end example. Should it have warranted an article in/.? Perhaps not, but your crticisms of IBM consulting services, based on a how to article for new Java developers, seems to be quite a leap.
Since most of the power being consumed by these vehicles is currently going to waste at night, when these vehicles will be recharging, the high number of miles per gallon do indeed reflect a more efficient use of energy, overall. Electric utilities run their generators 24 hours per day. No new electrical plants need be built, nor more coal burned, to produce most of the electricity that these vehicles will be using.
Depending on usage scenarios, this could result in considerably less pollution being produced. Electric companies must keep generators going 24 hours per day. For the most part, they have a large surplus of power at night. If that excess power is used to recharge vehicle batteries, energy that is now going to waste will be put to use transporting people. If these vehicles are used mostly for short range trips in the day, such as commuting to work, overall pollution will be reduced by using energy that is currently going to waste during the night.
I hope you covered your tracks to/. really well. At this point you've put up a big flashing sign for IBM:
SOMEONE HAS VIOLATED YOUR IP! SEND OUT THE LAWYERS!
IBM takes it's IP very seriously, and your posting here might set in motion a series of events that you'd rather not be involved with. What in the world drove you to mention them specifically?
Just think how many people spam employs. There's the people generating the spam, there's the people employed to increase IT capacity to deal with the spam, anti-spam activities employe a small army of people, it gives journalists something to write about, and then there's the attorneys who get paid to defend the spammers. And heaven only knows, the poor attorneys could use the work.
The figure of 3% overhead for Medicare is correct. Unlike most insurance programs Medicare doesn't pay for marketing and outrageous executive salaries, bonuses and perks. And yes, the SSA is considered a very efficient organization. Having worked with them as a consultant on an IT project, I found them to be as efficient as any large corporation that I've worked with. The problem with SS is due to demographics, not efficiency. The CBO produced a good
report on this. The problem that needs to be solved is long term in nature. The real problem doesn't come until mid-century. At the point, if nothing is done, benefits would have to be reduced by 20%, since all past surpluses would have been consumed. It never goes broke in the sense that most people think of it. It would be reduced to paying out what it brings in each year, which would be 80% of projected benefits. Increasing SS payroll taxes by 2% of income, taxing income above the upper cutoff, or a combination of the 2 would eliminate the shortfall.
They may not have had to put in that many hours per week to pull this off. Not a bad income for part time work. Also, consider the possibility that Walmart was only one of many places they plundered. They may also have been ripping off other chain stores. The same system would work at Target, Kmart, etc. $1.5M may just be the tip of the iceberg.
A standard ID system will save the taxpayer money. If all agencies are using the same system, security audits will be faster and more reliable. The taxpayer should get increased security at a lower cost. From an administrative perspective, standarization and centralization of processes usually lower overall costs.
I doubt that a standarized government ID is going to grant access to everything in the government. I work for a large global company. I have a standard company ID card. It does not grant me access to every location within the corporation. Sites at which I have not been previously authorized require me to sign in with security each time I enter. Once security at the site level is confident of my identity, my ID card is activated for the site. Access to secure areas within the site require that not only has my identity been verified at the site level, but that a person authorized to grant access to the secure area has authorized access. Obtaining a fake ID is the easy part. Getting through the authorization process for each site and secure area would be much more difficult.
I've done work for US government agencies that are security conscious, and they have a similar implementation. Just because I had the standard agency ID card did not mean I had access to everything. I still needed to obtain a separate authorization for each secure area I accessed.
I don't see how your scenario of paying one indvidual to obtain an ID card is going to grant access to all the secure areas that require local validaton and authorization. Even with a standard ID card, well implemented real world site security is like having safes within safes. Each safe must still be cracked separately.
Identification and authorization are two separate processes. Security professionals are aware of this. I suspect that it's government security professionals who are pushing for a single government ID.
The point of the law is to assist large corporations in protecting their IP. I say large corporations because I doubt that if indivicual authors, musicians, programmers, and other producers of content had tried to get this law passed that it would have happened. As unjust as the potential sentence is, I think it is entirely within the spirit of the law. So, yes, setting an example to scare others is one of the purposes of this law.
A NY Times article makes the point that an important factor in this deal was IBM's desire to better position itself in China. I thought it was kind of interesting that the chief executive of Lenovo will be Stephen M. Ward Jr., currently an I.B.M. senior vice president in charge of the PC business. Lenovo's current chief and president, Yang Yuanqing, will become Lenovo's chairman.
IBM already outsources the manufacture of it's PCs. Other companies manufacture them to IBM's spec. IBM does the distribution and marketing. I don't know whether they are currently manufactured in the US or Asia, or a combination of both.
Yes I do know how big it is. Having visited the Poughkeepsie and Rochester sites on business many times over the years, I have a very good idea just how big IBM's Systems & Technology Group is and what it produces. I know quite a few people in the hardware, software, and services organizations of that group.
As the sale of the PC division demonstrates, it's not how much revenue a division produces, but what it contributes is to the overall profit of IBM. How significant is the Systems & Technology group to IBM's bottom line? Any idea? The point is, can IBM sale that part of the company and use the proceeds to develop or acquire technologies and organizations that will align better with it's long term strategic goals?
Ask yourself, what is IBM's strategic vision? Does owning a mainframe manufacturing company fit into that better than, say, acquiring well established software and services companies in rapidly growing economies? Which will be worth more in 10 or 20 years? I think z series machines have wonderful technology. But I think we have to ask ourselves, in 10 years,will technology such as Linux clusters start to make mainframes look like the iseries of today? Reliable and powerful, but no growth.
Did you read the end of my post where I pointed out that IBM had a long hardware heritage?
I suppose at some point IBM will get out of hardware entirely, and then it can re-name itself International Business Services or something else more appropriate.
If you are ever near Endicott, NY (birth place of IBM), try to get into the IBM heritage center at IBM's former Endicott facility. It traces the long heritage of IBM as a provider of machines, computer and otherwise, to business. Lots of vintage equipment on display. A very nice exhibit.
But a great deal of what IBM has sealed has nothing to do with Linux. SCOG has been so broad in its discovery that IBM has been turning over internal information about it's AIX development process and organization. I really don't see where your being a Linux contributor gives you any right to have access to that information.
The big crisis in nursing is going to come in 5 to 10 years. There's a significant bubble of nurses in the 45 to 55 year age range who will be retiring. This retirement bubble, in conjunction with the aging US population, will likely lead to an even larger nursing shortage in the next decade.
My wife has been an RN for nearly 30 years, and has experience nursing in 5 states and 8 hospitals. She obtained her BS degree in nursing in 1975. She's worked in a range of hospitals. From advanced medical centers to small rural hospitals. Everything I know about nursing I learned from listening to her and her fellow nurses vent over the years. From my wife's perspective, nursing is a lot more stressful now than it used to be. A lot of this has to do with the increase in administrivia that RNs have to attend to. Some of it is driven by the legal climate surrounding health care in the US. I'm a software engineer, and I wonder how many of my colleagues would be willing to stay in the profession if they could be sued and prosecuted for decisions on the job. Especially when those decisions involve snap decisions in sudden and critical situations.
Aside from the original degree and license exam, my wife is required to periodically re-take and pass an extensive exam in her specialty. She is required to have a minimum amount of education every year. She has to be educated on all the new medications she administers. Like any other profession that deals with advanced technology, regular education is critical to staying competent.
The federal and state governments may want to consider taking steps to reduce the size of the shortage. Here are some possibilities.
Help colleges increase the number of available slots in nursing schools, especially community colleges. Associate degree nurses are every bit as qualified as BS degree nurses for the day-to-day things that most RNs have to do. They have to pass the same exams after school to get their licenses, and most Associate degree programs give just as much hands on training as BS degree programs. BS degree programs tend to be heavier on the theory side of nursing. This stuff is okay if you're going to be going into administration, but really doesn't matter much on the job. My wife's perception is that Associate degree nurses are more likely to be willing to 'get their hands dirty' from day one. Periodically, there's talk of requiring RNs to obtain BS degrees in order to be licensed as RNs. Bad idea. I suspect this gets pushed by advanced degree nurses who never spent much time on the floor nursing, having spent the majority of their careers in the hospital and state bureaucracies. These would be the PHBs of nursing and health care.
College loan deferment or forgiveness programs aimed at nursing students.
Better pay for nursing aides. One of the real hassles for RNs is the high turnover rate for aides. It's even higher than the turnover rate for RNs. This is in large part due to the abysmal pay of aides. Higher pay would attract better people, and act as an incentive for them to stay in their jobs. Good aides make a nurses job a lot easier. New and inexperienced aides require more attention from RNs, which leaves less time for the skilled tasks that the RN should be spending time on. Good aides frequently decide to go into nursing, so attracting more qualified and motivated people could help in more ways than one.
Help hospitals implement better IT systems. A good hospital IT system reduces the amount of time RNs have to spend doing paperwork, and increases the amount of time they spend with patients. It also indirectly reduces medication and other errors.
Medicare and medicaid are one of the largest funding channels for hospitals. Perhaps paying a higher rate to hospitals that meet certain minimum staffing criteria would encourage hospitals to find and implement creative solutions to recruit and retain nurses. I think better staffing would lead to better care, which would in turn lead to be
Eventually it will be too inconvenient not to have an RFID implant. When it reaches that point it will be necessary, but not required. And then there will be the argument that we should just implant them in children routinely. After all, they'll need them to function 'normally' in society. Which will mean that anyone who doesn't have an implant will not be viewed as normal, and subject to automatic suspicion.
It's an unnecessary and potentially abusive means of identifying and tracking people. All of the 9/11 conspirators that went down with those jets had legitmate IDs when they boarded. How do the people at the counters and gates know if your drivers license is legitimate anyways? Does an airline employee in Oregon really know what a valid NY state driver's license looks like? A marginally competent group of terrorists would have no trouble circumventing this process, so what's the point of it?
Where this is leading is required RFID implants. The requirement will initially start out with groups that most of us don't care about, like convicted felons. Next, maybe immigrants. Then it'll start creeping into other sectors of society. Eventually you'll see a wide range of jobs where this is required. Perhaps nursing, police and emergency workers. Then it will start to be required for normal activities. Like you won't be able to board an airline without an RFID implant. The initial selling point will be that it speeds up boarding. And then it'll be required for driver licenses. Can't be too secure after all. I think it's inevitable.
Slashdot Mirror
My daughter and I went to see the movie without having seen the television series. We both thought the movie was easy to follow. There may have been some nuances we missed, but overall it was no chore to understand the plot, the relationship of the characters to each other, and the historical and political backdrop in which the movie was taking place.
What's to prevent a private company from getting into space travel now? It's not as if the company would have to be based in the US or launch from the US, so I don't see why if sending people into space could be done profitably by a private company it's not already being done.
A study mentioned in a NY Times article says it's worse than break even. According to the study it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. Some other biofuels come out with an even lower conversion efficiency.
Interestingly, in Table 3, the most liberal news outlet is that bastion of capitalism, 'The Wall Street Journal'. Nothing else comes close.
If the government wants to make this easy on the ISPs, it could mandate some sort of surcharge, as is currently done with various utility bills. One month all ISP bills would be something like $2.50 higher. The explanation on the bill will be the 'Homeland Security Surcharge', or some such.
Where did anyone present this as a "Revolutionary technique"? I don't see that as being said or implied anywhere. It's a how to article for people who are new to Java, with a (nearly) complete end to end example. Should it have warranted an article in /.? Perhaps not, but your crticisms of IBM consulting services, based on a how to article for new Java developers, seems to be quite a leap.
Since most of the power being consumed by these vehicles is currently going to waste at night, when these vehicles will be recharging, the high number of miles per gallon do indeed reflect a more efficient use of energy, overall. Electric utilities run their generators 24 hours per day. No new electrical plants need be built, nor more coal burned, to produce most of the electricity that these vehicles will be using.
Depending on usage scenarios, this could result in considerably less pollution being produced. Electric companies must keep generators going 24 hours per day. For the most part, they have a large surplus of power at night. If that excess power is used to recharge vehicle batteries, energy that is now going to waste will be put to use transporting people. If these vehicles are used mostly for short range trips in the day, such as commuting to work, overall pollution will be reduced by using energy that is currently going to waste during the night.
SOMEONE HAS VIOLATED YOUR IP! SEND OUT THE LAWYERS!
IBM takes it's IP very seriously, and your posting here might set in motion a series of events that you'd rather not be involved with. What in the world drove you to mention them specifically?
Just think how many people spam employs. There's the people generating the spam, there's the people employed to increase IT capacity to deal with the spam, anti-spam activities employe a small army of people, it gives journalists something to write about, and then there's the attorneys who get paid to defend the spammers. And heaven only knows, the poor attorneys could use the work.
The figure of 3% overhead for Medicare is correct. Unlike most insurance programs Medicare doesn't pay for marketing and outrageous executive salaries, bonuses and perks. And yes, the SSA is considered a very efficient organization. Having worked with them as a consultant on an IT project, I found them to be as efficient as any large corporation that I've worked with. The problem with SS is due to demographics, not efficiency. The CBO produced a good report on this. The problem that needs to be solved is long term in nature. The real problem doesn't come until mid-century. At the point, if nothing is done, benefits would have to be reduced by 20%, since all past surpluses would have been consumed. It never goes broke in the sense that most people think of it. It would be reduced to paying out what it brings in each year, which would be 80% of projected benefits. Increasing SS payroll taxes by 2% of income, taxing income above the upper cutoff, or a combination of the 2 would eliminate the shortfall.
They may not have had to put in that many hours per week to pull this off. Not a bad income for part time work. Also, consider the possibility that Walmart was only one of many places they plundered. They may also have been ripping off other chain stores. The same system would work at Target, Kmart, etc. $1.5M may just be the tip of the iceberg.
A standard ID system will save the taxpayer money. If all agencies are using the same system, security audits will be faster and more reliable. The taxpayer should get increased security at a lower cost. From an administrative perspective, standarization and centralization of processes usually lower overall costs.
I doubt that a standarized government ID is going to grant access to everything in the government. I work for a large global company. I have a standard company ID card. It does not grant me access to every location within the corporation. Sites at which I have not been previously authorized require me to sign in with security each time I enter. Once security at the site level is confident of my identity, my ID card is activated for the site. Access to secure areas within the site require that not only has my identity been verified at the site level, but that a person authorized to grant access to the secure area has authorized access. Obtaining a fake ID is the easy part. Getting through the authorization process for each site and secure area would be much more difficult.
I've done work for US government agencies that are security conscious, and they have a similar implementation. Just because I had the standard agency ID card did not mean I had access to everything. I still needed to obtain a separate authorization for each secure area I accessed.
I don't see how your scenario of paying one indvidual to obtain an ID card is going to grant access to all the secure areas that require local validaton and authorization. Even with a standard ID card, well implemented real world site security is like having safes within safes. Each safe must still be cracked separately.
Identification and authorization are two separate processes. Security professionals are aware of this. I suspect that it's government security professionals who are pushing for a single government ID.
The point of the law is to assist large corporations in protecting their IP. I say large corporations because I doubt that if indivicual authors, musicians, programmers, and other producers of content had tried to get this law passed that it would have happened. As unjust as the potential sentence is, I think it is entirely within the spirit of the law. So, yes, setting an example to scare others is one of the purposes of this law.
A NY Times article makes the point that an important factor in this deal was IBM's desire to better position itself in China. I thought it was kind of interesting that the chief executive of Lenovo will be Stephen M. Ward Jr., currently an I.B.M. senior vice president in charge of the PC business. Lenovo's current chief and president, Yang Yuanqing, will become Lenovo's chairman.
IBM already outsources the manufacture of it's PCs. Other companies manufacture them to IBM's spec. IBM does the distribution and marketing. I don't know whether they are currently manufactured in the US or Asia, or a combination of both.
Yes I do know how big it is. Having visited the Poughkeepsie and Rochester sites on business many times over the years, I have a very good idea just how big IBM's Systems & Technology Group is and what it produces. I know quite a few people in the hardware, software, and services organizations of that group.
As the sale of the PC division demonstrates, it's not how much revenue a division produces, but what it contributes is to the overall profit of IBM. How significant is the Systems & Technology group to IBM's bottom line? Any idea? The point is, can IBM sale that part of the company and use the proceeds to develop or acquire technologies and organizations that will align better with it's long term strategic goals?
Ask yourself, what is IBM's strategic vision? Does owning a mainframe manufacturing company fit into that better than, say, acquiring well established software and services companies in rapidly growing economies? Which will be worth more in 10 or 20 years? I think z series machines have wonderful technology. But I think we have to ask ourselves, in 10 years,will technology such as Linux clusters start to make mainframes look like the iseries of today? Reliable and powerful, but no growth.
Did you read the end of my post where I pointed out that IBM had a long hardware heritage?
I suppose at some point IBM will get out of hardware entirely, and then it can re-name itself International Business Services or something else more appropriate.
If you are ever near Endicott, NY (birth place of IBM), try to get into the IBM heritage center at IBM's former Endicott facility. It traces the long heritage of IBM as a provider of machines, computer and otherwise, to business. Lots of vintage equipment on display. A very nice exhibit.
But a great deal of what IBM has sealed has nothing to do with Linux. SCOG has been so broad in its discovery that IBM has been turning over internal information about it's AIX development process and organization. I really don't see where your being a Linux contributor gives you any right to have access to that information.
I'm wondering how many of those licenses went to companies that are owned or controlled by the SCO's parent, the Canopy Group.
The big crisis in nursing is going to come in 5 to 10 years. There's a significant bubble of nurses in the 45 to 55 year age range who will be retiring. This retirement bubble, in conjunction with the aging US population, will likely lead to an even larger nursing shortage in the next decade.
My wife has been an RN for nearly 30 years, and has experience nursing in 5 states and 8 hospitals. She obtained her BS degree in nursing in 1975. She's worked in a range of hospitals. From advanced medical centers to small rural hospitals. Everything I know about nursing I learned from listening to her and her fellow nurses vent over the years. From my wife's perspective, nursing is a lot more stressful now than it used to be. A lot of this has to do with the increase in administrivia that RNs have to attend to. Some of it is driven by the legal climate surrounding health care in the US. I'm a software engineer, and I wonder how many of my colleagues would be willing to stay in the profession if they could be sued and prosecuted for decisions on the job. Especially when those decisions involve snap decisions in sudden and critical situations.
Aside from the original degree and license exam, my wife is required to periodically re-take and pass an extensive exam in her specialty. She is required to have a minimum amount of education every year. She has to be educated on all the new medications she administers. Like any other profession that deals with advanced technology, regular education is critical to staying competent.
The federal and state governments may want to consider taking steps to reduce the size of the shortage. Here are some possibilities.
Eventually it will be too inconvenient not to have an RFID implant. When it reaches that point it will be necessary, but not required. And then there will be the argument that we should just implant them in children routinely. After all, they'll need them to function 'normally' in society. Which will mean that anyone who doesn't have an implant will not be viewed as normal, and subject to automatic suspicion.
It's an unnecessary and potentially abusive means of identifying and tracking people. All of the 9/11 conspirators that went down with those jets had legitmate IDs when they boarded. How do the people at the counters and gates know if your drivers license is legitimate anyways? Does an airline employee in Oregon really know what a valid NY state driver's license looks like? A marginally competent group of terrorists would have no trouble circumventing this process, so what's the point of it?
Where this is leading is required RFID implants. The requirement will initially start out with groups that most of us don't care about, like convicted felons. Next, maybe immigrants. Then it'll start creeping into other sectors of society. Eventually you'll see a wide range of jobs where this is required. Perhaps nursing, police and emergency workers. Then it will start to be required for normal activities. Like you won't be able to board an airline without an RFID implant. The initial selling point will be that it speeds up boarding. And then it'll be required for driver licenses. Can't be too secure after all. I think it's inevitable.