I think some of these case mods are really nifty, and I've even ordered my new machine with a few glowing cables and other non-utilitarian visual stuff.
But there is one concern when people are doing this: RF Interference. Modern computers generate a lot of radio frequency interference. If not properly contained (and any computer sold must meet FCC Part 15 emissions rules), that radiation can cause problems ranging from a nuisance to a hazard.
It can interfere with your AM radio, your FM radio, your TV, your satellite, MY HAM RADIO, etc. If it has a small amount of power on 121.5MHz, 243 MHz or 406 MHZ it can literally interfere with search and rescure, because the satellites that pick up emergency beacons are very sensitive (as those of us in Civil Air Patrol who track them down can testify - we have found computers interfering with SAR satellites in the past). It can interfere with police radio repeaters,and imagine the fun you will have when they show up at your door if you are jamming their system! Same if you show up on an operational military frequency!
So I would suggest that case modders keep all this in mind. The best approach for RFI would be to put the real computer in a conventional case (maybe a shuttle or other little bitty one) and then put the art on the outside.
In any case, if you find you can't listen to your favorite radio station any more, look around for a neighborhood kid with a case mod!
In the same light, the US has never created a weapon it has not used.
This is absolutely not true. The US created many chemical weapons which it did not use (I don't know if we used chem weapons in WW-I, but we enver used them since then).
The US has NEVER used biological weapons (even the recorded use of smallpox against Indians was done by the British before the American Revolution).
Have you forgotten Apple? It was a consumer system, and there were a number of vendors selling software on it - Visicalc is one software title I used on the Apple II. My daughter learned arithmetic on a software title sold on the Atari-800, another end user machine.
Microsoft merely extended a completely obvious trend. And remember, they bought their operating system from someone who was already selling it.
Microsoft made their big hit, not by opening up a consumer market, but by winning the IBM contract for the OS for the IBM PC. Before that, Microsoft was selling only to hobbyists also! Because the PC *hardware* design was open (just as Apple was transitioning to a closed design), and IBM commanded so many corporate desktops, whoever won that contract was pre-ordained to end up with the desktop monopoly, and the open hardware design guaranteed the extension of the PC platform into every place one could use a computer of that power.
So I'm sorry, but Microsoft did *nothing* creative for a long time. They ported Basic (invented while Bill was in grade school) to get their company started. The bought MS-DOS, which itself is a conceptual rip-off of CPM which was a conceptual rip-off of several DEC operating systems.
Their true ability for a long time was in their shrewd and sometimes unethical business practices, which allowed them to leverage, extend and maintain their PC OS monopoly. They were brilliant at that.
When it came to technology creativity, I saw little from Microsoft until Visual Basic, and probably someone else had a visual IDE before that, I just didn't see it.
Microsoft for a long time had the same attitude as Stephenson - if it didn't happen in the PC world, it didn't happen. Hence for many years they proclaimed the invention of various things that us old fogies had used on big machines 20 years before - such as virtual memory (I first used it in 1967 on Stanfords Wylbur system on a 360/67. That machine also had a total VMM on it).
They kept "inventing" stuff that us more experienced people had been wanting for a long time, since we had it previously, and had to step down in functionality and computer science conceptual levels to use PC's - long after they had the hardware capability to do this stuff.
And they stole ideas right and left. Remember when there were companies with file system compression? Microsoft subsequently "invented" that. Remember the original MacIntosh? Microsoft had to "invent" windows. But the Mac itself was a ripoff of a Xerox product, and it's intellectual ancestor was the Xerox PARC Dynabook project!
Furthermore, they rejected some very important ideas, such as the Unix approach of command line or shell scripting using primitive commands and the Unix approach of keeping all configuration information in human readable files.
This has cost their users immensely, probably cost Microsoft a lot, and was simply unnecessary. GUI vs Command Line is *not* either-or. I am using a GUI (Win2K/IE) to write this, but I also use Cygwin (which has its own warts to do much of my work. Cygwin gives me scripting, and very quickly executed commands with hands on the keyboard. But Windows configuration, done through GUI windows, is much easier for the non-expert than Linux configuration done through command files (although the various X tools are improving there), and I have been runing Unixes at home since 1983.
At some point in the '90s, Microsoft realized that there really people outside their world who might know something they didn't know. They started bringing in experts (although their choice for NT architecture, and hence probably NT architect was a mistake, which is why NT has so much trouble in SMP configurations - configurations which I first worked with in 1970!). Hence when they needed a good database, they stole much of Informix's crew (but still, had it run on their deficient NT Win32 kernel).
And real, real men are doing semiconductor quantum physics.
It is a huge conceptual hierarchy. My deepest education in this is quantum physics for engineers, which is nothing compared to what my physicist friends took.
To be a good programmer, you don't even need to know anything about chips or electronics, unless you are doing embedded systems or test and measurement or a few other specialties!
To be a good programmer for most coding done today, you don't even need assembler language.
To be a good architect, you should know the principles of and have an intuition for operating system internals, language concepts (i.e. not how to write in a language but how a language creator thinks), and a bunch of other stuff.
To write application code, if performance isn't an issue, you need know nothing but the current environment you are in, the requirements of the application, and the basics of programming.
I also write software for embedded systems, and could (and have) designed computers from hand (including PC layout and soldering in the parts). Next to my desk I have a Tektronix scope, a digital mixed signal analyzer (2 analog, 8 digital channels), JTAG interface, 8 serial ports, signal generator, freq counter, DVM, soldering iron, solder sucker, various in circuit emulators and all the other goodies that an embedded systems lab should have (this is all in my home, btw).
But the users of the resulting devices shouldn't know any of this! And even those who want to know how to program a computer IN DEPTH don't need any of this. Just give them raw silicon and the manuals and some help and tell them to build an RTOS and a simple App, and they will learn what *they* need.
We are specialists and need to know this. But just like we don't need to know how to spay a dog in order to own one, others shouldn't need to know how all this other stuff!
It's unfortunate tyhat Stephenson, in that essay, seems to believe that Gates and Allen invented the idea of selling software. It is so typical of the PC generation that people imagine that if the first person to use an idea on a PC invented it.
A relative of mine was selling software in the early '60s. I worked for a company selling software in 1971. I wrote a command line interface for a teletype in 1969, and first used one in 1967.
Likewise, I first used saw a hyperlinked GUI presentation at a FJCC in 1967 or 1968.
As far as the article that started this thread, it is idiotic. It was either done by someone who has no clue about software engineering, or who suffers from recto-cranial insertion. Probably both!
People have been trying for a very long time to figure out how to KEEP folks from having to know all the dirty little details of computers.
By the logic of the article, we should also all become logic engineers, and then solid state physicists, and finally wave Shroedinger equations around to understand how the computer REALLY works. Those of us who have done all of that still end up specialists who don't do more than a tiny bit, and those who are not specialists in that area don't need to know it, or even know that it exists.
I tell folks who really want to know how a computer works to learn assembly language, and then study the internals of an OS. Then they at least understand what a computer *does*. But they still don't know how to build one, nor should they!
Personally, I use command line for most of my work - cygwin on Win2K for most, Linux for some. But I would NOT want my wife to have to use it, nor my daughter the neuroscientist!
Keep in mind that a lot of that road construction money goes into providing intercity commerce. The Interstate Highway system was created as a matter of national defense by Eisenhower, and it eats up a lot of spending. Also, remember that a chunk of that gasoline tax goes to the feds.
Without those roads, it would be pretty hard to get groceries to a city, or move goods throughout the country. The automobile and the road network freed the country from the geographic limits of the rail network.
In Europe, the population density is much higher, making mass transit possible. Furthermore, the government charges exorbitant gasoline taxes, encouraging people to drive itty bitty cars with corresponding lack of safety.
But regarding suburbs... people *want* suburbs. Whether they pay for it through one kind of tax or another, that is how they choose to live. And there are substantial taxes on gasoline which fund road building. It is not at all clear to me that government subsidies have substantially affected the creation of suburbs. They certainly didn't here in Arizona, where we paid for our freeways by a special tax. And yet, we have a very low population density.
So in that sense, they evolved freely. People wanted them, people paid for them, and people live in them.
Another way to look at it is that the newer the city, the lower the density (except in areas of already very high propery values, like Silicon Valley, but even there it is all suburban living except in San Francisco). This is because people want to live in suburbs, and automobile technology enabled it. That same technology did not exist when the big, high density eastern US and European cities were built).
Actually, the recommended traffic engineering practice is to set the speed limit at the 85th percentile of measured traffic when the speed limit is higher. This is modified by unusual road conditions where they may be inadequate clues for normal drivers to go at a safe speed (such as a hidden crossroads or curve or something).
That's the theory.
The practice is to use speed limits as a political football. Remember, we used to have a nationwide 55mph speed limit, even on roads designed for 80mph (like the Kansas Turnpike, who had an 80 speed limit until that stupid law).
Paradise Valley, AZ (which I have to drive through to get anywhere) was the first municipality in the country to use speed radar, and it also sets it's speed limits 5mph less than adjoining Phoenix even on the same roads with no change in road conditions. These are four lane divided roads (but not limited access). The obvious safe speed is about 50, and in fact that is the normal traffic flow, which results in considerable revenue to PV.
In other words, speed limits are often well below the reasonable and safe speed. Thus if you drive at the reasonable and safe speed, and get in an accident that is not your fault, the little black box will show that you were (gasp) violating the (wrongly set) speed limit and thus you will share or be at fault!
This is the problem with those little boxes. They will be abused the same way that photo radar is abused.
I would like to see a law that makes the information in the boxes unusable in court, and only available to those who can use the information to improve safety, which is their purpose!
We have suburbs because people CHOOSE suburbs. They want the lower density. Automobiles have enabled suburbs, which is why the trend towards high density reversed when autos became readily available.
The people who don't want lower density live in big cities, vote democratic, and have paranoid thoughts like you do about what is or is not good for Bush!
Another word for an automobile is personal freedom. A word for those who would make us all live in high density cities is coercion.
Take your pick.
I live in a suburb. In fact, I live on a large lot on the side of a desert mountain.
And I drive an SUV.
And I like it.
If you want to understand the real issues of alternative fuels, you first have to drop your paranoia and conspiracy theories. In general (there have been a few exceptions like the LA trolley cars), the system *evolved* through the *free* acts of *free* humans and corporations.
Good technology to replace what we have will not happen just because it suits somebodies political views. It is a matter of engineering and physics and chemistry, and there are some hard laws there that you don't get around. Gasoline is a good carrier of energy, it is easy to transport, and can be produced very inexpensively. THAT's why we have a system based on it.
Biofuel has this little problem: to produce enough to power America would take more land than America has farmland. And guess what altered the environment of America more than any other action! Agriculture!
Given the uncertainties of climate projection, and the long time frames, I wouldn't get so hung up on global warming (which is the real reason people imagine that hydrogen is clean - because it adds no net carbon to the atmostphere).
There are bunches of technologies coming along, but some of the best ones produce more hydrocarbons. The US and Canada have a big enough supply of hydrocarbons (in coal, oil sands, and natural gas) to run for hundreds of years!
So I hope folks come up with good stuff. It would be nice to see a solution that didn't add CO2, since there is a possibility that it might be damaging (there is also a possibility that it might be beneficial, of course). But let's not try to push a rope and get ahead of the technology.
But keep in mind that Motor Voter not only helps the lazy to vote (more often Democrat), but it also helps illegal aliens to vote (which is another reason the Democrats are so in favor of it).
Furthermore, going to the polling place is a reaffirmation of democracy, an important ritual and a community experience. It should be required under the conditions you specified. Furthermore, you should be required to show hard-to-forge ID (yeah, I know, Schneier would claim that this adds no security, but *he is wrong*).
As far as voting accuracy, the system has always been vulnerable. The current squawk about punch cards vs other systems is simply a leftover of Democrat resentment over the Florida vote, and at best is an uninformed desire for perfection in a system that can never be perfect.
But if you really want to have something to worry about, consider internet voting! Think of the ways it could be screwed up. And imagine the chaos if it worked, and it led to instant plebiscites (ideal democracy). Under those conditions, our freedoms would last about the same time as our economy... which would be not very long!
You must be a Democrat who realizes that many of your constituency are too lazy to vote if it involves any effort, just like they are too lazy to get a job!
One way they are doing this is by posting "link spam" to blog comment sections. I have found a bunch of these on my blog recently.
They find a blog that allows comments with links, and put in a meaningless comment that happens to contain a bunch of links to different sites.
Every one I have found so far has come from non-US IP's. I put in a minor trick to fool the more simple-minded automated ones and the frequency dropped dramatically, but in one case I saw (on the logs) a spammer come in, try an automated tool, and after it failed, a couple of minutes later post manually (or with a patched automated tool).
These people may end up destroying an important part of the blog world (and maybe Google) the same way they ruined Usenet.
I suspect Google will catch on to this and the result will be the devaluing of blog comment links, which would be a real shame.
Here is an example (with the links broken so I'm not helping the turkey):
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So apparently it becomes the government's job to solve your problem off getting information, by ordering the manufacturers to do so.
The fact that they have done so in other cases does not make it right. For example, the "made in" labels are actually there as a form of protectionism - so the consumers can choose to boycott foreign products. They were not put there with any noble purpose of informing consumers, but because labor unions bribed the politicians into doing so.
Just out of curiosity, do you have any limits on what information the government should force to be provided? When I move into a house, as an informed consumer of a very expensive thing, should the government require the seller to collect all the favorable and unfavorable information possible about my potential neighbors - say, their political views, personal habits, previous convictions, financial stability, favorite colors, ages, health, litigiousness? After all, if I am going to make a very expensive investment, some of this information would be important for me to make a fully informed choice!
The refrigerator labeling is predicated on the government's (presumed) interest in reducing national energy usage, not on making consumers happy. The same is true of your other examples except for motorcycle helmets, and there the issue is public safety.
And you are simply presuming that there are no negative effects of the labelling. But I'll bet there are. For example, perhaps more people choose to ride helmetless because the cost of helmets is higher due to the testing requirements needed for labelling. Probably not many, but hey, how much is one life worth? Does that mean the labelling is wrong? I don't know - I don't have that information and I doubt you do either.
I don't like the printer manufacturer's behavior any more than you do, btw. But I also don't like the heavy hand of government called in every time the market doesn't produce the results that people think it should. OTOH I do like being able to buy a color printer for damn near nothing, because I don't print a lot of color pictures.
Furthermore, you make the assumption that many advocates of government meddling do: that consumers are stupid. We aren't.
I have never had trouble finding out what cartridges cost for printers. I always check before buying the printers.
I used to work in a consulting company that helped Pharmaceutical Companies deal with the FDA. The FDA regulators didn't understand statistics or experimental design, so they made ludicrous requirements. For example, one had to periodically certify that an autoclave was sterilizing properly. We are talking industrial autoclaves which sterilize thousands of culture dishes at once. So they required each test require putting the full capacity of culture dishes in the autoclave, and then growing out each one.
It isn't anti-government lunacy. Its the government actually works.
Of course, as a consumer, you never see this. You may die because it makes a drug too expensive to develop, or the FDA delays its introduction for too long, but what the heck... anything else is just anti-government lunacy, right?
The thing you forget is that bureaucracies operate for their own purposes, not yours. You are also totally ignoring the Law of Unintended Consequences.
For example, what do you do about manufacturers that cheat? How do you find out that they are cheating?
Have YOU ever dealt with FCC certification? I have developed products for it. It is something that is important and needed, but it costs a bunch and requires a bureaucracy to enforce.
There is a place for government regulation, including sticker requirements. For example, food labelling helps consumers protect their health, which is a truly important issue.
Let's see... so the FTC creates a Bureau of Printer Sticker regulation. Then it creates a National Laboratory for Printer Sticker Testing. This is placed in the district of the congressman who creates it.
Then, when you come up with a nifty new printer, you can't sell it until you send it to the Bureau and they test it for a year to measure the usage. Or alternatively, you can put the sticker on after your own certification, and if they get around to checking, you pay a fine. Of course, being a bureaucracy, they will spend all their time in training and never actually check your certificate - besides they won't have the budget to buy the ink and printer.
This is gonna be great! Maybe you should apply for the job.
Or maybe you should start a web site where people can write their own experience. Or perhaps folks should pressure the industry reviewers to publish the information.
Although it represents a danger to US forces, it is not particularly ominous that Europe is building this system, because Europe itself is not likely to be involved in a conflict with the US. The danger comes if potential enemies (North Korea, Iran come to mind) develop precision positioning capabilities knowing that the US will not be able to disable them by turning off or degrading the GPS unencrypted signals.
But when China is added to the equation, things change significantly. The US guarantees Taiwan's freedom, and other nations should favor it, as Taiwan is a healthy democracy, unlike China. China has as its primary strategic goal the conqueruest of Taiwan, with a secondary goal of dominating the South China sea. Furthermore, China is an expansionist power that has no qualms with using utterly ruthless means (ask the Tibetans). Europe is not this way. The US is not. Hence giving China a say on such a system is giving a dangerous fascist dictatorship significant power.
Those who do not see the danger that China represents to the world have not been paying attention. Everyone is focused on the fact that the US has taken out a couple of nasty dictatorships, while ignoring China's record of aggression and conquest, of killing millions of its own citizens, of continued extreme human rights abuses (there is no organ shortage for transplantation if you are chinese elite - they now have roving execution vans with facilities for rapidly harvesting organs for transplants).
China may ultimate become democratic. Certainly it has more information flowing into it than other totalitarian states like North Korea or Cuba. But China right now most closely resembles a fascist state - with the largest ownership of commerce being the People's Liberation Army; with a powerful secret police; with significant political interference with industry, and bribes a way of life; with a corrupt but brutal leadership (their kids are called "little princes"); with a racist and strongly nationalist view of the world; with expansionist desires; with the largest army in the world.
Letting them into Galileo is a shortsighted and dangerous move.
What a bunch of pap! The economy is only dependent on the military in the sense that we need protection against those who would invade us and steal our goodies. The fact that government spending on basic research benefits the economy is a no-brainer, and is one (of many ) reason that America is so successful.
The economy does, however, benefit from military research.
Chomsky, of course, is a complete fool when it comes to issues political or economic. The example above shows that he has no concept of "value added." He makes the common mistake (more common because too many people listen to Chomsky) that a business which takes the fruits of basic research, invests in commercializing it (and typically greatly extending it) is somehow stealing it. It is hardly corporate welfare, since we all pay for it and WE ALL BENEFIT FROM IT. Would you rather that the government hadn't funded the early development of computers? And keep in mind that the government just gets things started, and then private enterprise makes massive investment (Intel, for example, does huge amounts of engineering and basic research) to advance the state of the art towards consumer and industrial products.
Things are far more complex than Chomsky makes them out to be, but that's because he normally is talking to the converted who are not going to apply any critical thinking.
Don't forget that many inventions in computer science were funded by NSA, including the first real mainframes and supercomputers. The integrated circuit was invented for the Minuteman Missile guidance system. A lot of AI research has been funded by DARPA.
My father is a retired university professor who did NASA and DOD sponsored research almost his entire career. That research has led to improved monitoring of the environment, among other things.
Furthermore, except for people who are a bit clueless about the need for a military to protect their right to not support the military, most scientists and engineers have no moral objection to doing work for the military.
No, Al Gore invented the internet. He told us so himself! That system I saw at UCLA in 1973 that let computers talk back and forth, and was funded by ARPA, must have been something else!
I have worked on weapons systems that have since been used. I have also operated weapons systems when a volunteer in the military during the Vietnam War.
I would be proud to do either again, where appropriate.
Sigh. To equate North Korea and Iraq to the US and Israel is to totally ignore the vast differences.
The US has nuclear weapons because we invented them. That we have them only for self defense is obvious. Can you say the same for Iraq or North Korea?
Israel is the same way. Since its founding (as a result of both League of Nations and UN mandates, btw), Israel has been attacked a number of times. It has never attacked anyone. It has never used its nuclear weapons. As a democratic nation, it wants nothing other than to live in peace so it can prosper. And yet there are many countries, larger than it, that have been claiming for 55 years that Israel should be wiped out, even though Israel with its vast nuclear power has never tried to wipe out any nation or people. I'd say they have a damned good reason to have nukes!
Sometimes it pays to apply something a little more sophisticated than the "Tommy's mother bought him a toy so I should have one too!"
North Korea has no valid need for nuclear weapons, because nobody has any reason to attack them, UNLESS they endanger other countries. On the other hand, one would hope you might be a little worried about the possession of these weapons by a country that is starving for cash due to its insane economic system, that is led by a ruthless, hedonistic tyrant, and has announced its willingness to sell those weapons to terrorists.
But then, maybe YOU don't live near any possible target and you just don't care about anyone else.
RANT MODE ON
The level of simplistic reasoning on Slashdot about international issues is just pathetic. Its seems like most posters on the subject are children or at least have never learned any history.
Slashdot Mirror
I think some of these case mods are really nifty, and I've even ordered my new machine with a few glowing cables and other non-utilitarian visual stuff.
,and imagine the fun you will have when they show up at your door if you are jamming their system! Same if you show up on an operational military frequency!
But there is one concern when people are doing this: RF Interference. Modern computers generate a lot of radio frequency interference. If not properly contained (and any computer sold must meet FCC Part 15 emissions rules), that radiation can cause problems ranging from a nuisance to a hazard.
It can interfere with your AM radio, your FM radio, your TV, your satellite, MY HAM RADIO, etc. If it has a small amount of power on 121.5MHz, 243 MHz or 406 MHZ it can literally interfere with search and rescure, because the satellites that pick up emergency beacons are very sensitive (as those of us in Civil Air Patrol who track them down can testify - we have found computers interfering with SAR satellites in the past). It can interfere with police radio repeaters
So I would suggest that case modders keep all this in mind. The best approach for RFI would be to put the real computer in a conventional case (maybe a shuttle or other little bitty one) and then put the art on the outside.
In any case, if you find you can't listen to your favorite radio station any more, look around for a neighborhood kid with a case mod!
In the same light, the US has never created a weapon it has not used.
This is absolutely not true. The US created many chemical weapons which it did not use (I don't know if we used chem weapons in WW-I, but we enver used them since then).
The US has NEVER used biological weapons (even the recorded use of smallpox against Indians was done by the British before the American Revolution).
The US has never used a hydrogen bomb.
Have you forgotten Apple? It was a consumer system, and there were a number of vendors selling software on it - Visicalc is one software title I used on the Apple II. My daughter learned arithmetic on a software title sold on the Atari-800, another end user machine.
Microsoft merely extended a completely obvious trend. And remember, they bought their operating system from someone who was already selling it.
Microsoft made their big hit, not by opening up a consumer market, but by winning the IBM contract for the OS for the IBM PC. Before that, Microsoft was selling only to hobbyists also! Because the PC *hardware* design was open (just as Apple was transitioning to a closed design), and IBM commanded so many corporate desktops, whoever won that contract was pre-ordained to end up with the desktop monopoly, and the open hardware design guaranteed the extension of the PC platform into every place one could use a computer of that power.
So I'm sorry, but Microsoft did *nothing* creative for a long time. They ported Basic (invented while Bill was in grade school) to get their company started. The bought MS-DOS, which itself is a conceptual rip-off of CPM which was a conceptual rip-off of several DEC operating systems.
Their true ability for a long time was in their shrewd and sometimes unethical business practices, which allowed them to leverage, extend and maintain their PC OS monopoly. They were brilliant at that.
When it came to technology creativity, I saw little from Microsoft until Visual Basic, and probably someone else had a visual IDE before that, I just didn't see it.
Microsoft for a long time had the same attitude as Stephenson - if it didn't happen in the PC world, it didn't happen. Hence for many years they proclaimed the invention of various things that us old fogies had used on big machines 20 years before - such as virtual memory (I first used it in 1967 on Stanfords Wylbur system on a 360/67. That machine also had a total VMM on it).
They kept "inventing" stuff that us more experienced people had been wanting for a long time, since we had it previously, and had to step down in functionality and computer science conceptual levels to use PC's - long after they had the hardware capability to do this stuff.
And they stole ideas right and left. Remember when there were companies with file system compression? Microsoft subsequently "invented" that. Remember the original MacIntosh? Microsoft had to "invent" windows. But the Mac itself was a ripoff of a Xerox product, and it's intellectual ancestor was the Xerox PARC Dynabook project!
Furthermore, they rejected some very important ideas, such as the Unix approach of command line or shell scripting using primitive commands and the Unix approach of keeping all configuration information in human readable files.
This has cost their users immensely, probably cost Microsoft a lot, and was simply unnecessary. GUI vs Command Line is *not* either-or. I am using a GUI (Win2K/IE) to write this, but I also use Cygwin (which has its own warts to do much of my work. Cygwin gives me scripting, and very quickly executed commands with hands on the keyboard. But Windows configuration, done through GUI windows, is much easier for the non-expert than Linux configuration done through command files (although the various X tools are improving there), and I have been runing Unixes at home since 1983.
At some point in the '90s, Microsoft realized that there really people outside their world who might know something they didn't know. They started bringing in experts (although their choice for NT architecture, and hence probably NT architect was a mistake, which is why NT has so much trouble in SMP configurations - configurations which I first worked with in 1970!). Hence when they needed a good database, they stole much of Informix's crew (but still, had it run on their deficient NT Win32 kernel).
Now they have lots of serious pe
We could go further.
Real men get dirty with verilog.
And real, real men are doing semiconductor quantum physics.
It is a huge conceptual hierarchy. My deepest education in this is quantum physics for engineers, which is nothing compared to what my physicist friends took.
To be a good programmer, you don't even need to know anything about chips or electronics, unless you are doing embedded systems or test and measurement or a few other specialties!
To be a good programmer for most coding done today, you don't even need assembler language.
To be a good architect, you should know the principles of and have an intuition for operating system internals, language concepts (i.e. not how to write in a language but how a language creator thinks), and a bunch of other stuff.
To write application code, if performance isn't an issue, you need know nothing but the current environment you are in, the requirements of the application, and the basics of programming.
a: sorta
b: yes (I'm not ancient enough for that to be false)
c: yes
But we aren't talking about you!
I also write software for embedded systems, and could (and have) designed computers from hand (including PC layout and soldering in the parts). Next to my desk I have a Tektronix scope, a digital mixed signal analyzer (2 analog, 8 digital channels), JTAG interface, 8 serial ports, signal generator, freq counter, DVM, soldering iron, solder sucker, various in circuit emulators and all the other goodies that an embedded systems lab should have (this is all in my home, btw).
But the users of the resulting devices shouldn't know any of this! And even those who want to know how to program a computer IN DEPTH don't need any of this. Just give them raw silicon and the manuals and some help and tell them to build an RTOS and a simple App, and they will learn what *they* need.
We are specialists and need to know this. But just like we don't need to know how to spay a dog in order to own one, others shouldn't need to know how all this other stuff!
It's unfortunate tyhat Stephenson, in that essay, seems to believe that Gates and Allen invented the idea of selling software. It is so typical of the PC generation that people imagine that if the first person to use an idea on a PC invented it.
A relative of mine was selling software in the early '60s. I worked for a company selling software in 1971. I wrote a command line interface for a teletype in 1969, and first used one in 1967.
Likewise, I first used saw a hyperlinked GUI presentation at a FJCC in 1967 or 1968.
As far as the article that started this thread, it is idiotic. It was either done by someone who has no clue about software engineering, or who suffers from recto-cranial insertion. Probably both!
People have been trying for a very long time to figure out how to KEEP folks from having to know all the dirty little details of computers.
By the logic of the article, we should also all become logic engineers, and then solid state physicists, and finally wave Shroedinger equations around to understand how the computer REALLY works. Those of us who have done all of that still end up specialists who don't do more than a tiny bit, and those who are not specialists in that area don't need to know it, or even know that it exists.
I tell folks who really want to know how a computer works to learn assembly language, and then study the internals of an OS. Then they at least understand what a computer *does*. But they still don't know how to build one, nor should they!
Personally, I use command line for most of my work - cygwin on Win2K for most, Linux for some. But I would NOT want my wife to have to use it, nor my daughter the neuroscientist!
Worked every time, just like this.
Keep in mind that a lot of that road construction money goes into providing intercity commerce. The Interstate Highway system was created as a matter of national defense by Eisenhower, and it eats up a lot of spending. Also, remember that a chunk of that gasoline tax goes to the feds.
Without those roads, it would be pretty hard to get groceries to a city, or move goods throughout the country. The automobile and the road network freed the country from the geographic limits of the rail network.
In Europe, the population density is much higher, making mass transit possible. Furthermore, the government charges exorbitant gasoline taxes, encouraging people to drive itty bitty cars with corresponding lack of safety.
But regarding suburbs... people *want* suburbs. Whether they pay for it through one kind of tax or another, that is how they choose to live. And there are substantial taxes on gasoline which fund road building. It is not at all clear to me that government subsidies have substantially affected the creation of suburbs. They certainly didn't here in Arizona, where we paid for our freeways by a special tax. And yet, we have a very low population density.
So in that sense, they evolved freely. People wanted them, people paid for them, and people live in them.
Another way to look at it is that the newer the city, the lower the density (except in areas of already very high propery values, like Silicon Valley, but even there it is all suburban living except in San Francisco). This is because people want to live in suburbs, and automobile technology enabled it. That same technology did not exist when the big, high density eastern US and European cities were built).
Actually, the recommended traffic engineering practice is to set the speed limit at the 85th percentile of measured traffic when the speed limit is higher. This is modified by unusual road conditions where they may be inadequate clues for normal drivers to go at a safe speed (such as a hidden crossroads or curve or something).
That's the theory.
The practice is to use speed limits as a political football. Remember, we used to have a nationwide 55mph speed limit, even on roads designed for 80mph (like the Kansas Turnpike, who had an 80 speed limit until that stupid law).
Paradise Valley, AZ (which I have to drive through to get anywhere) was the first municipality in the country to use speed radar, and it also sets it's speed limits 5mph less than adjoining Phoenix even on the same roads with no change in road conditions. These are four lane divided roads (but not limited access). The obvious safe speed is about 50, and in fact that is the normal traffic flow, which results in considerable revenue to PV.
In other words, speed limits are often well below the reasonable and safe speed. Thus if you drive at the reasonable and safe speed, and get in an accident that is not your fault, the little black box will show that you were (gasp) violating the (wrongly set) speed limit and thus you will share or be at fault!
This is the problem with those little boxes. They will be abused the same way that photo radar is abused.
I would like to see a law that makes the information in the boxes unusable in court, and only available to those who can use the information to improve safety, which is their purpose!
We have suburbs because people CHOOSE suburbs. They want the lower density. Automobiles have enabled suburbs, which is why the trend towards high density reversed when autos became readily available.
The people who don't want lower density live in big cities, vote democratic, and have paranoid thoughts like you do about what is or is not good for Bush!
Another word for an automobile is personal freedom. A word for those who would make us all live in high density cities is coercion.
Take your pick.
I live in a suburb. In fact, I live on a large lot on the side of a desert mountain.
And I drive an SUV.
And I like it.
If you want to understand the real issues of alternative fuels, you first have to drop your paranoia and conspiracy theories. In general (there have been a few exceptions like the LA trolley cars), the system *evolved* through the *free* acts of *free* humans and corporations.
Good technology to replace what we have will not happen just because it suits somebodies political views. It is a matter of engineering and physics and chemistry, and there are some hard laws there that you don't get around. Gasoline is a good carrier of energy, it is easy to transport, and can be produced very inexpensively. THAT's why we have a system based on it.
Biofuel has this little problem: to produce enough to power America would take more land than America has farmland. And guess what altered the environment of America more than any other action! Agriculture!
Given the uncertainties of climate projection, and the long time frames, I wouldn't get so hung up on global warming (which is the real reason people imagine that hydrogen is clean - because it adds no net carbon to the atmostphere).
There are bunches of technologies coming along, but some of the best ones produce more hydrocarbons. The US and Canada have a big enough supply of hydrocarbons (in coal, oil sands, and natural gas) to run for hundreds of years!
So I hope folks come up with good stuff. It would be nice to see a solution that didn't add CO2, since there is a possibility that it might be damaging (there is also a possibility that it might be beneficial, of course). But let's not try to push a rope and get ahead of the technology.
I totally agree!
But keep in mind that Motor Voter not only helps the lazy to vote (more often Democrat), but it also helps illegal aliens to vote (which is another reason the Democrats are so in favor of it).
Furthermore, going to the polling place is a reaffirmation of democracy, an important ritual and a community experience. It should be required under the conditions you specified. Furthermore, you should be required to show hard-to-forge ID (yeah, I know, Schneier would claim that this adds no security, but *he is wrong*).
As far as voting accuracy, the system has always been vulnerable. The current squawk about punch cards vs other systems is simply a leftover of Democrat resentment over the Florida vote, and at best is an uninformed desire for perfection in a system that can never be perfect.
But if you really want to have something to worry about, consider internet voting! Think of the ways it could be screwed up. And imagine the chaos if it worked, and it led to instant plebiscites (ideal democracy). Under those conditions, our freedoms would last about the same time as our economy... which would be not very long!
You must be a Democrat who realizes that many of your constituency are too lazy to vote if it involves any effort, just like they are too lazy to get a job!
One way they are doing this is by posting "link spam" to blog comment sections. I have found a bunch of these on my blog recently.
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They find a blog that allows comments with links, and put in a meaningless comment that happens to contain a bunch of links to different sites.
Every one I have found so far has come from non-US IP's. I put in a minor trick to fool the more simple-minded automated ones and the frequency dropped dramatically, but in one case I saw (on the logs) a spammer come in, try an automated tool, and after it failed, a couple of minutes later post manually (or with a patched automated tool).
These people may end up destroying an important part of the blog world (and maybe Google) the same way they ruined Usenet.
I suspect Google will catch on to this and the result will be the devaluing of blog comment links, which would be a real shame.
Here is an example (with the links broken so I'm not helping the turkey):
I have a blogging good web site all about [a href="http://www.cheap-phentermine-online.spam/"]
So apparently it becomes the government's job to solve your problem off getting information, by ordering the manufacturers to do so.
The fact that they have done so in other cases does not make it right. For example, the "made in" labels are actually there as a form of protectionism - so the consumers can choose to boycott foreign products. They were not put there with any noble purpose of informing consumers, but because labor unions bribed the politicians into doing so.
Just out of curiosity, do you have any limits on what information the government should force to be provided? When I move into a house, as an informed consumer of a very expensive thing, should the government require the seller to collect all the favorable and unfavorable information possible about my potential neighbors - say, their political views, personal habits, previous convictions, financial stability, favorite colors, ages, health, litigiousness? After all, if I am going to make a very expensive investment, some of this information would be important for me to make a fully informed choice!
The refrigerator labeling is predicated on the government's (presumed) interest in reducing national energy usage, not on making consumers happy. The same is true of your other examples except for motorcycle helmets, and there the issue is public safety.
And you are simply presuming that there are no negative effects of the labelling. But I'll bet there are. For example, perhaps more people choose to ride helmetless because the cost of helmets is higher due to the testing requirements needed for labelling. Probably not many, but hey, how much is one life worth? Does that mean the labelling is wrong? I don't know - I don't have that information and I doubt you do either.
I don't like the printer manufacturer's behavior any more than you do, btw. But I also don't like the heavy hand of government called in every time the market doesn't produce the results that people think it should. OTOH I do like being able to buy a color printer for damn near nothing, because I don't print a lot of color pictures.
Furthermore, you make the assumption that many advocates of government meddling do: that consumers are stupid. We aren't.
I have never had trouble finding out what cartridges cost for printers. I always check before buying the printers.
Don't you?
So what's the problem?
Here is my answer!
Lunacy?
I used to work in a consulting company that helped Pharmaceutical Companies deal with the FDA. The FDA regulators didn't understand statistics or experimental design, so they made ludicrous requirements. For example, one had to periodically certify that an autoclave was sterilizing properly. We are talking industrial autoclaves which sterilize thousands of culture dishes at once. So they required each test require putting the full capacity of culture dishes in the autoclave, and then growing out each one.
It isn't anti-government lunacy. Its the government actually works.
Of course, as a consumer, you never see this. You may die because it makes a drug too expensive to develop, or the FDA delays its introduction for too long, but what the heck... anything else is just anti-government lunacy, right?
The thing you forget is that bureaucracies operate for their own purposes, not yours. You are also totally ignoring the Law of Unintended Consequences.
For example, what do you do about manufacturers that cheat? How do you find out that they are cheating?
Have YOU ever dealt with FCC certification? I have developed products for it. It is something that is important and needed, but it costs a bunch and requires a bureaucracy to enforce.
There is a place for government regulation, including sticker requirements. For example, food labelling helps consumers protect their health, which is a truly important issue.
But printer cost of ownership labelling?
Sorry, but I don't think that meets the test.
Let's see... so the FTC creates a Bureau of Printer Sticker regulation. Then it creates a National Laboratory for Printer Sticker Testing. This is placed in the district of the congressman who creates it.
Then, when you come up with a nifty new printer, you can't sell it until you send it to the Bureau and they test it for a year to measure the usage. Or alternatively, you can put the sticker on after your own certification, and if they get around to checking, you pay a fine. Of course, being a bureaucracy, they will spend all their time in training and never actually check your certificate - besides they won't have the budget to buy the ink and printer.
This is gonna be great! Maybe you should apply for the job.
Or maybe you should start a web site where people can write their own experience. Or perhaps folks should pressure the industry reviewers to publish the information.
Although it represents a danger to US forces, it is not particularly ominous that Europe is building this system, because Europe itself is not likely to be involved in a conflict with the US. The danger comes if potential enemies (North Korea, Iran come to mind) develop precision positioning capabilities knowing that the US will not be able to disable them by turning off or degrading the GPS unencrypted signals.
But when China is added to the equation, things change significantly. The US guarantees Taiwan's freedom, and other nations should favor it, as Taiwan is a healthy democracy, unlike China. China has as its primary strategic goal the conqueruest of Taiwan, with a secondary goal of dominating the South China sea. Furthermore, China is an expansionist power that has no qualms with using utterly ruthless means (ask the Tibetans). Europe is not this way. The US is not. Hence giving China a say on such a system is giving a dangerous fascist dictatorship significant power.
Those who do not see the danger that China represents to the world have not been paying attention. Everyone is focused on the fact that the US has taken out a couple of nasty dictatorships, while ignoring China's record of aggression and conquest, of killing millions of its own citizens, of continued extreme human rights abuses (there is no organ shortage for transplantation if you are chinese elite - they now have roving execution vans with facilities for rapidly harvesting organs for transplants).
China may ultimate become democratic. Certainly it has more information flowing into it than other totalitarian states like North Korea or Cuba. But China right now most closely resembles a fascist state - with the largest ownership of commerce being the People's Liberation Army; with a powerful secret police; with significant political interference with industry, and bribes a way of life; with a corrupt but brutal leadership (their kids are called "little princes"); with a racist and strongly nationalist view of the world; with expansionist desires; with the largest army in the world.
Letting them into Galileo is a shortsighted and dangerous move.
What a bunch of pap! The economy is only dependent on the military in the sense that we need protection against those who would invade us and steal our goodies. The fact that government spending on basic research benefits the economy is a no-brainer, and is one (of many ) reason that America is so successful.
The economy does, however, benefit from military research.
Chomsky, of course, is a complete fool when it comes to issues political or economic. The example above shows that he has no concept of "value added." He makes the common mistake (more common because too many people listen to Chomsky) that a business which takes the fruits of basic research, invests in commercializing it (and typically greatly extending it) is somehow stealing it. It is hardly corporate welfare, since we all pay for it and WE ALL BENEFIT FROM IT. Would you rather that the government hadn't funded the early development of computers? And keep in mind that the government just gets things started, and then private enterprise makes massive investment (Intel, for example, does huge amounts of engineering and basic research) to advance the state of the art towards consumer and industrial products.
Things are far more complex than Chomsky makes them out to be, but that's because he normally is talking to the converted who are not going to apply any critical thinking.
Don't forget that many inventions in computer science were funded by NSA, including the first real mainframes and supercomputers. The integrated circuit was invented for the Minuteman Missile guidance system. A lot of AI research has been funded by DARPA.
My father is a retired university professor who did NASA and DOD sponsored research almost his entire career. That research has led to improved monitoring of the environment, among other things.
Furthermore, except for people who are a bit clueless about the need for a military to protect their right to not support the military, most scientists and engineers have no moral objection to doing work for the military.
No, Al Gore invented the internet. He told us so himself! That system I saw at UCLA in 1973 that let computers talk back and forth, and was funded by ARPA, must have been something else!
I have worked on weapons systems that have since been used. I have also operated weapons systems when a volunteer in the military during the Vietnam War.
I would be proud to do either again, where appropriate.
Sigh. To equate North Korea and Iraq to the US and Israel is to totally ignore the vast differences.
The US has nuclear weapons because we invented them. That we have them only for self defense is obvious. Can you say the same for Iraq or North Korea?
Israel is the same way. Since its founding (as a result of both League of Nations and UN mandates, btw), Israel has been attacked a number of times. It has never attacked anyone. It has never used its nuclear weapons. As a democratic nation, it wants nothing other than to live in peace so it can prosper. And yet there are many countries, larger than it, that have been claiming for 55 years that Israel should be wiped out, even though Israel with its vast nuclear power has never tried to wipe out any nation or people. I'd say they have a damned good reason to have nukes!
Sometimes it pays to apply something a little more sophisticated than the "Tommy's mother bought him a toy so I should have one too!"
North Korea has no valid need for nuclear weapons, because nobody has any reason to attack them, UNLESS they endanger other countries. On the other hand, one would hope you might be a little worried about the possession of these weapons by a country that is starving for cash due to its insane economic system, that is led by a ruthless, hedonistic tyrant, and has announced its willingness to sell those weapons to terrorists.
But then, maybe YOU don't live near any possible target and you just don't care about anyone else.
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The level of simplistic reasoning on Slashdot about international issues is just pathetic. Its seems like most posters on the subject are children or at least have never learned any history.
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