No, actually, I remember reading an article linked to/. that compared Linux with Solaris, BSD and Win2k, probably more than 2 years ago though, that showed that BSD was 5 times slower on average at fork(). It's not POA, I just can't find it...
Well, the explanation for this is OSX may have a different forking/threading model than the latest stock FreeBSD. OSX may have started out with way older code than what you can find in FreeBSD today, as would be logical if you were trying to adapt the thing to Mach and didn't want to mess with patching the changes back in until you had something to release.
Some of the benchmarks in the article actually used OS9, by the way, so they were really running around the map with it. They seemed to be more interested in generating controversy than actually getting comparable results.
As some people have pointed out (but not completely), you should be comparing:
PPC vs. x86 on Linux, or
PPC vs. x86 on BSD, or
Linux vs. OSX on PPC, or
Linux vs. OSX on x86(!), or
OSX vs. Windohs on PPC, or
OSX vs. Windohs on x86
x86 vs. PPC for TPM/DRM BS
PPC Altivec vs. x86 SSE3 on Linux
Linux forks 5 times faster than BSD, but that's been known for years. You didn't need a new benchmark/ad for that. Finally, the article doesn't have a benchmark that uses Altivec to its full potential, so it might be a hack piece as well.
Electric motors are more efficient than their combustion counterparts, but when driven to their power handling limits, they do heat up. If driven at their redline for too long, they can overheat and fail just like anything else.
If cooling isn't taken into account then this isn't necessarily the great advance it is being touted as. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say very much.
In any case, this would work best in cooler climates where the motors can use air cooling most effectively, and where the batteries last longer.
If the vehicles are sold in a hybrid form, nothing actually needs to be drawn from the grid (yet). In the future, we may see hybrids with smaller combustion engines that do require charging from the grid, but it may be a sufficiently gradual process.
The foundries that melt the steel to produce new large, maintenance-prone fuel-burning engines may be using vast amounts of electric power from the grid. If so, then at least in those locations, there will be extra capacity for charging due to the longer life of electric motors (as long as they're not overheated).
Transmission of energy down a wire is still more efficient, less expensive and less polluting than trucking fuel to various places, so the total energy consumption is reduced, and less fuel is actually combusted into the air overall.
Not all power plants (need to) produce as much pollution as the collective exhaust of the equivalent in cars. The use of wind power continues to grow, and nuclear, for all of its disadvantages at least doesn't produce CO2.
Finally, given enough popularity of electrics, quick charging stations may pop up even on some road surfaces, reducing the need to carry lots of batteries. Eventually, batteries won't even be needed for city driving.
It will of course be framed according to the POV of the corporate reality distortion field.
Only a very naïve person could really enter the field to get through the interview stage. Likely their local equivalent of Darth Vader will sense you coming from a distance. He may yet leave you alone and bide his time in the hopes of turning you over to the dark side.
However, if you start to portray their products for what they really are, the Emperor might find out, so be ready to grasp your throat.
It doesn't matter that they're talking about British passports, and it doesn't particularly matter if the passports are compatible with our ReadID driver licenses (I suspect you have some reading to do).
What matters is that, without thinking about it, most people will show up to vote carrying their driver's license, and some people will be able to tell from this how you voted, even in states where it is not required. People who do not vote a certain way may be treated differently.
When you arrive at your assigned polling place, this will provide the convenience of not having to show your ID to the clerk. They could know your name and other vital statistics when you walk in. They won't have to look you up on a list, because your ID will say if you are a registered voter or not.
Think how convenient also when you finish voting and the black box voting system records your identity and vote at the same time, for use by the government to monitor anyone who is starting to fall out of line. So your right to the secret ballot has been taken away, no big deal, right?
If this helps create a situation where unlawful content drops into the noise in comparison with all of the lawful content, BT will be seen less and less as a tool for pirates, and it will be more obvious the value that (practically all of us here know) it provides.
I would say that if everyone just decided to start posting torrent links everywhere -- especially now that it can be done trackerless -- this is exactly what will happen.
So, my recommendation: post appropriate, well classified, well keyworded torrent links, and download only legal content, so that any of the usual poisoning attacks will fail.
...they built one that could sense the presence of a single virus -- about 1.5 femtograms. Now, with a refined technique, they have detected a single DNA molecule...
In the reported experiments, the change in mass of 1 attogram was enough to shift the frequency of vibration by 50 Hz or more, depending on the size of the oscillator.
Background: Molecules vibrate at distinctive frequencies as limited by their bonds and as decided by their atomic weights. The higher the temperature, however, the faster the frequency of vibration. Once the temperature goes high enough, the atoms are vibrating so energetically that they may separate from the molecule they are currently attached to, beginning a chemical reaction.
Their measurement technique appears to use the frequency shift of a laser of a known frequency passing (through?) the material being measured to an array of detectors that each detect a different frequency. The shift in frequency from the original as caused by the molecule then determines the weight.
So, is the measurement dependent on an exact lab controlled temperature, or can a measuring device work in environments where the temperature may vary?
Specifically, could the device already be implanted in the bloodstream to accurately detect specific viruses or cancer DNA by weight, or would it need more work to adjust for temperature variations?
Also, I might as well ask, is bombarding DNA with lasers harmful?
"We need better, sturdier-designed equipment if we are going to make a serious go at space exploration."
That's why space stations need large gardens full of plants that inhale CO2 and exhale O2.
Although a field of plants would seem to be heavier than their mechanical counterparts, the plants are self-reproducing: no manufacturing required. They can start out as tiny seedlings that grow on the ISS, and once you have a lot of them can be transplanted to an empty Mars mission spacecraft. You would need a lot of water and some nutrients, but those can survive just about any radiation and go on a much cheaper cargo launch.
As long as fairly generous environmental ranges are observed, plants are systems that are unlikely to fail -- they repair themselves from radiation damage. With a sufficiently-sized farm on board a Mars mission, it might actually be possible to extend the mission if a launch window is missed.
This attempt is placed under the
apache license, which is similar to the BSD license. I'm not a legal expert, but basically I gather that it means that the code can be reused and enhanced by commercial organizations without them having to offer the source code changes up for redistribution.
Thus, if you contribute under this license, MS (for example) can run off and add your code to.NET, distribute it as a binary, sell it, and not have to show you the changes (would it lead to a future patent that would come back to bite you?). Under the GPL, they would have to redistribute source, which would allow you to learn what, if anything, they changed. Requiring the source to be open would allow you adapt the changes back to an open standard if necessary.
Maybe releasing it under this license is the only way to get enough cooperation from Sun or other patent owners to get such a project to work?
And a related question -- what were Ballmer and McNealy smiling so much about? Well, I'll leave that exercise to the reader.
"And as soon as they raise the price we will accuse them of gouging
us..."
Nah. No one on slashdot would ever suggest that an
upstanding global monopoly would even think of gouging its customers,
purposely supply broken software, and then charge for the extra
support customers of broken software will need when they upgrade their
machines someday. Never happen.
In order to understand why I thought it could be dumping, here are
the issues I was thinking about:
The article claims the Edition is not aimed at "us" (I'm reasonably
guessing you are from the U.S. or another well-off country.) It is
aimed at countries with a lower average cost of living where a
home-grown OS industry could theoretically emerge if not for the low
prices. That's one of the potential concerns, that it might become a
trade issue.
The second is the ratcheted-up competition between MS and Apple. Apple has been
sapping some marketshare away from MS in various market sectors, and
while it has traditionally been associated with high end products, it
seems to be positioning itself for a "broadside" that comprises
everything from the server market to the handheld.
Possibly in response to the threat of a low-end Mac, doomful
predictions have been made about the iPod, namely that cell phones
will replace it. Thus, it's no longer reflexively true that Apple
will just cede the low end to MS. So, the idea of dumping may be more
than idle ranting but a valid concern for competitors.
I don't think there's any coincidence that the trial balloon of
porting Wind'ohs to the PPC had also been floated fairly recently.
Or at least it tried to float, but it sounds like it was
flushed back down in a storm of fecal ejecta, scathing ridicule and a
smattering of exorcisms.
...PC makers have to pay only $15 to $35 for each copy, according to various PC makers in these markets. Windows XP Home costs $70 to $80 per copy and the Professional Edition costs even more.
How will MS be able to recoup the expenses of researching IP related to expensive features like DRM and TC if they sell this so cheap?
You could argue that they saved money by leaving features out of the Stunted Edition, but actually it costs more to create a separate edition than to make identical copies of the same disks. Did they leave DRM out? I doubt it (CPUID support is in there...).
So, how low can the price go before someone claims that they are dumping?
I kept reading the other products at the site for the link that I gave and it sounds too good to be true. One of their other products is a magnet that goes over the fuel line that they claim improves fuel economy. Hiss...
Never mind.
I agree with your premise -- just creating the parts for a modern car takes a lot energy.
But, what if you could retrofit your existing car (or SUV) to operate like a hybrid, by adding a capacitor array to your existing engine as mentioned in this previous story?
Unfortunately, the related
article reads a lot like an ad (and has a somewhat suspicious floating banner) and may be vaporware for all I know... but, if it works at all it sounds like a better solution than for everyone to go out and buy hybrids.
The number of visits to the homepage may simply be a reflection of the amount of help the installers of a distro end up needing.:)
That would only measure short term traffic though. To stay popular in the long term the site (and the distro) must be consistently useful for people to return.
Thus, debian remains popular because it provides a valuable resource, whereas redhat drops off because it has become less useful.
The city with the most spammers in the world is Boca Raton
Unlike direct mail and telemarketing, e-mail is cheap, global and often untraceable.
So, if it's untraceable, how do they know it's coming from Boca Raton? If, on the other hand it is traceable and they know where it's all coming from then why haven't they cracked down on it? Maybe it's because they really don't know?
Inexperienced, understaffed investigators must feel an incredible temptation to stop following the red herring trail provided by a spammer as soon as they find something which they think fits a profile. But, for all they know, it could just as easily be a smokescreen set up for their viewing pleasure by a spam industry elsewhere that wants the domains of their competitors shut off.
Not enough information was given in the question, but it is possible that the application in mind is that of measuring the performance of webservers in real time. So the experimenter doesn't (or does?) want the tests to last the long time a good SPEC run would take. I was somewhat confused by the article text.
Then again, it's possible that the application could be used to measure the speed of web clients. In that case, a flash or javascript loop with whirling icons could do the trick, but it would take some work. Since it's possible that this may be used (either now or in the future) by marketers who want to measure the comparative speed of a computer (to use to categorize someone into a marketable demographic so they can "target" the right ads), maybe answering this question fully wouldn't be such a good idea.
"Attempting to regulate the content of job advertising, or of job descriptions, cannot work"
Maybe, but I think that something can be done.
Notice that many of the qualifications mentioned are for internal systems (that is, they exist only at that company by virtue of being given a unique name within that company, department, or even group.)
A similar (or even the exact same system) may exist somewhere else under a different name, but choosing a unique name for it effectively denies the opportunity to job candidates they did not already talk to.
For example, imagine MS Word as a requirement. Now call it "MWE" (MS Word Editing).
Job Posting: Only candidates with 5 years experience with MWE will be accepted.
Interviewer (to H1B candidate):...Internally we refer to this as MWE. Do you have that qualification (say yes)?
External candidate: *scratches head* What's this thing called MWE? *moves on*
How about a regulation that requires employers to provide a detailed and consistent description of each qualification upon request? If the qualifications are being created out of thin air, the practice stands a better chance of being caught and enforced by the job candidates themselves.
In general, no, we won't have hundreds of years. But there are likely some very very large asteroids out there that could cause mass extinction that could be warded off simply by acting early.
As a long term solution, we will need something like an automated foundry on the moon that continuously creates small iron cylinders and launches them on a solar-powered linear accelerator. Even if a mistake is made, such a system would allow plenty of opportunity to correct it.
Even if there were no cameras or other instruments on board, data would be generated because the comet's orbit should be perturbed very slightly, something that would show up in future orbits.
The data will be valuable if we are ever required to change a comet's orbit in a hurry, or even if we weren't in a hurry but knew that something would hit the earth in hundreds of years. Due to the long distances traveled, a slight change very early on expands into a much greater effect many years later. There wouldn't be a need to launch a megaton nuke against something as long as it can be prevented early on by touching it with a feather.
That being said, a camera image can plainly tell you if you hit the target at all, and answer critical questions such as: did the object go straight through the comet without transferring any momentum? How much material was displaced? What is the size, density and composition of the dust cloud? What is the shape of the crater?
Much of this data can analyzed later to improve the accuracy and dependability of future missions, to help decide how much more research is needed, and to improve our understanding of space debris in general.
Corporations are already comprised of individuals who have access to government (and free speech rights), but on top of that companies have an extra voice, that of the lobbyist. The voice of a company lobbyist is often much louder than that of an individual.
Even if lobbyists weren't a corrupting influence at all, they would be more effective than individuals because their whole time, experience, and resources is devoted to tracking the government activities that benefit their company. So, they enjoy the extra right of first-class citizen representation (due to the fact that a corporation is considered a "person.") This is to the detriment of other views that may be important.
The big question as I see it now is, if the company is based in an offshore tax haven as many are, why should this "person" be allowed to lobby in the U.S. with more rights than a U.S. citizen?
TC is more sinister than DRM. DRM attempts to prevent you from copying data, by "managing" your digital copying rights away from you. TC however, sets aside an area inside your computer that only trusted code has control over (and that certainly doesn't include YOU). Such a scheme may have some benefits but it also may become the perfect hotbed for unremovable viruses. If a trusted process cannot be affected by the user in any way (e.g. ignores all signals), vendor-sponsored malware will be able to reign supreme.
"At worst, if SuSE was to ship their distribution with TC and you didn't like this, then either switch distro or grab the kernel source."
Not all users are able to upgrade their kernel. You and I may be able to do that, but think about it. The average user will just have to swallow whatever the major distros put out. That's not very "optional."
Gathering steam, eventually TC may become required in order just to enable the most basic things, or at least things that the average user considers basic, such as acroread, for example. At some point even you and I may be stuck with it.
That being said, it's complex to determine which approach will work best. With no techie users helping to test it or submitting valid bug reports, hopefully the thing will never work right and will be dropped entirely. The hardware vendors can fund it all they want, but I'm just not going to purchase or support hardware capable of TC. Vendors can't just bribe me into it with lower prices. I don't want uncontrollable crap on my system at all, and if I were an ordinary user, I would be suspicious of anything that even smacks of it, and justifiably so.
Before I ever download this kernel, I first want to download only the TC module and read through it. Hopefully that is still possible? Does their CVS system still work, or is it a "trusted" CVS system now? I hope I'm really wrong about this, but until I read that code I won't be sure.
OK, if the accounting is too expensive, then maybe that part can be reduced or modified?
But, for blog's sake keep the whistleblower protections.
Thanks to S/O, a public company can no longer fire you simply for disclosing their illicit activities (note that a non-public company still can do so, although AFAIK this has not been tested in court yet). Otherwise Enrons and Worldcoms will happen all over again because people will be afraid to speak out, fully expecting that their employer with their army of lawyers will just figure out a way to put the blame on them. If the job picture gets really bleak then people will be speaking out nada.
Too bad that this very critical part of Sarbanes/Oxley is being mostly glossed over by most of the posts here. Whistleblower protections are needed more often than most people think, and they benefit more than just the whistleblower.
The public, the free market, and the individuals adversely affected by the illicit practices (not only accounting but also untraceable relaunderable illegal debt collection practices for instance... *ahem*) stand to benefit by someone who is willing to talk.
Maintaining public confidence might be worth some cost. I think it is worth the cost of rethinking, not denouncing Sarbanes/Oxley.
I'm not surprised if public companies would want to reduce their liability by trying to raise a firestorm over the accounting part of it. That would lift a giant sword of Damocles over their leadership. Some of their employees have to trudge along on menial tasks, but guess who benefits if the tasks are as menial and frustrating as possible? The same leadership that's assigning the tasks and very conspicuously labeling "Sarbanes/Oxley" all over them.
Slashdot Mirror
No, actually, I remember reading an article linked to /. that compared Linux with Solaris, BSD and Win2k, probably more than 2 years ago though, that showed that BSD was 5 times slower on average at fork(). It's not POA, I just can't find it...
Well, the explanation for this is OSX may have a different forking/threading model than the latest stock FreeBSD. OSX may have started out with way older code than what you can find in FreeBSD today, as would be logical if you were trying to adapt the thing to Mach and didn't want to mess with patching the changes back in until you had something to release.
Some of the benchmarks in the article actually used OS9, by the way, so they were really running around the map with it. They seemed to be more interested in generating controversy than actually getting comparable results.
As some people have pointed out (but not completely), you should be comparing:
Linux forks 5 times faster than BSD, but that's been known for years. You didn't need a new benchmark/ad for that. Finally, the article doesn't have a benchmark that uses Altivec to its full potential, so it might be a hack piece as well.
Electric motors are more efficient than their combustion counterparts, but when driven to their power handling limits, they do heat up. If driven at their redline for too long, they can overheat and fail just like anything else.
If cooling isn't taken into account then this isn't necessarily the great advance it is being touted as. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say very much.
In any case, this would work best in cooler climates where the motors can use air cooling most effectively, and where the batteries last longer.
Some counterpoints to your argument:
It will of course be framed according to the POV of the corporate reality distortion field.
Only a very naïve person could really enter the field to get through the interview stage. Likely their local equivalent of Darth Vader will sense you coming from a distance. He may yet leave you alone and bide his time in the hopes of turning you over to the dark side.
However, if you start to portray their products for what they really are, the Emperor might find out, so be ready to grasp your throat.
It doesn't matter that they're talking about British passports, and it doesn't particularly matter if the passports are compatible with our ReadID driver licenses (I suspect you have some reading to do).
What matters is that, without thinking about it, most people will show up to vote carrying their driver's license, and some people will be able to tell from this how you voted, even in states where it is not required. People who do not vote a certain way may be treated differently.
When you arrive at your assigned polling place, this will provide the convenience of not having to show your ID to the clerk. They could know your name and other vital statistics when you walk in. They won't have to look you up on a list, because your ID will say if you are a registered voter or not.
Think how convenient also when you finish voting and the black box voting system records your identity and vote at the same time, for use by the government to monitor anyone who is starting to fall out of line. So your right to the secret ballot has been taken away, no big deal, right?
If this helps create a situation where unlawful content drops into the noise in comparison with all of the lawful content, BT will be seen less and less as a tool for pirates, and it will be more obvious the value that (practically all of us here know) it provides.
I would say that if everyone just decided to start posting torrent links everywhere -- especially now that it can be done trackerless -- this is exactly what will happen.
So, my recommendation: post appropriate, well classified, well keyworded torrent links, and download only legal content, so that any of the usual poisoning attacks will fail.
Background: Molecules vibrate at distinctive frequencies as limited by their bonds and as decided by their atomic weights. The higher the temperature, however, the faster the frequency of vibration. Once the temperature goes high enough, the atoms are vibrating so energetically that they may separate from the molecule they are currently attached to, beginning a chemical reaction.
Their measurement technique appears to use the frequency shift of a laser of a known frequency passing (through?) the material being measured to an array of detectors that each detect a different frequency. The shift in frequency from the original as caused by the molecule then determines the weight.
So, is the measurement dependent on an exact lab controlled temperature, or can a measuring device work in environments where the temperature may vary?
Specifically, could the device already be implanted in the bloodstream to accurately detect specific viruses or cancer DNA by weight, or would it need more work to adjust for temperature variations?
Also, I might as well ask, is bombarding DNA with lasers harmful?
"We need better, sturdier-designed equipment if we are going to make a serious go at space exploration."
That's why space stations need large gardens full of plants that inhale CO2 and exhale O2.
Although a field of plants would seem to be heavier than their mechanical counterparts, the plants are self-reproducing: no manufacturing required. They can start out as tiny seedlings that grow on the ISS, and once you have a lot of them can be transplanted to an empty Mars mission spacecraft. You would need a lot of water and some nutrients, but those can survive just about any radiation and go on a much cheaper cargo launch.
As long as fairly generous environmental ranges are observed, plants are systems that are unlikely to fail -- they repair themselves from radiation damage. With a sufficiently-sized farm on board a Mars mission, it might actually be possible to extend the mission if a launch window is missed.
This attempt is placed under the apache license, which is similar to the BSD license. I'm not a legal expert, but basically I gather that it means that the code can be reused and enhanced by commercial organizations without them having to offer the source code changes up for redistribution.
Thus, if you contribute under this license, MS (for example) can run off and add your code to .NET, distribute it as a binary, sell it, and not have to show you the changes (would it lead to a future patent that would come back to bite you?). Under the GPL, they would have to redistribute source, which would allow you to learn what, if anything, they changed. Requiring the source to be open would allow you adapt the changes back to an open standard if necessary.
Maybe releasing it under this license is the only way to get enough cooperation from Sun or other patent owners to get such a project to work?
And a related question -- what were Ballmer and McNealy smiling so much about? Well, I'll leave that exercise to the reader.
"And as soon as they raise the price we will accuse them of gouging us..."
Nah. No one on slashdot would ever suggest that an upstanding global monopoly would even think of gouging its customers, purposely supply broken software, and then charge for the extra support customers of broken software will need when they upgrade their machines someday. Never happen.
In order to understand why I thought it could be dumping, here are the issues I was thinking about:
The article claims the Edition is not aimed at "us" (I'm reasonably guessing you are from the U.S. or another well-off country.) It is aimed at countries with a lower average cost of living where a home-grown OS industry could theoretically emerge if not for the low prices. That's one of the potential concerns, that it might become a trade issue.
The second is the ratcheted-up competition between MS and Apple. Apple has been sapping some marketshare away from MS in various market sectors, and while it has traditionally been associated with high end products, it seems to be positioning itself for a "broadside" that comprises everything from the server market to the handheld.
Possibly in response to the threat of a low-end Mac, doomful predictions have been made about the iPod, namely that cell phones will replace it. Thus, it's no longer reflexively true that Apple will just cede the low end to MS. So, the idea of dumping may be more than idle ranting but a valid concern for competitors.
I don't think there's any coincidence that the trial balloon of porting Wind'ohs to the PPC had also been floated fairly recently. Or at least it tried to float, but it sounds like it was flushed back down in a storm of fecal ejecta, scathing ridicule and a smattering of exorcisms.
How will MS be able to recoup the expenses of researching IP related to expensive features like DRM and TC if they sell this so cheap?
You could argue that they saved money by leaving features out of the Stunted Edition, but actually it costs more to create a separate edition than to make identical copies of the same disks. Did they leave DRM out? I doubt it (CPUID support is in there...).
So, how low can the price go before someone claims that they are dumping?
I kept reading the other products at the site for the link that I gave and it sounds too good to be true. One of their other products is a magnet that goes over the fuel line that they claim improves fuel economy. Hiss... Never mind.
I agree with your premise -- just creating the parts for a modern car takes a lot energy.
But, what if you could retrofit your existing car (or SUV) to operate like a hybrid, by adding a capacitor array to your existing engine as mentioned in this previous story?
Unfortunately, the related article reads a lot like an ad (and has a somewhat suspicious floating banner) and may be vaporware for all I know... but, if it works at all it sounds like a better solution than for everyone to go out and buy hybrids.
The number of visits to the homepage may simply be a reflection of the amount of help the installers of a distro end up needing. :)
That would only measure short term traffic though. To stay popular in the long term the site (and the distro) must be consistently useful for people to return.
Thus, debian remains popular because it provides a valuable resource, whereas redhat drops off because it has become less useful.
So, if it's untraceable, how do they know it's coming from Boca Raton? If, on the other hand it is traceable and they know where it's all coming from then why haven't they cracked down on it? Maybe it's because they really don't know?
Inexperienced, understaffed investigators must feel an incredible temptation to stop following the red herring trail provided by a spammer as soon as they find something which they think fits a profile. But, for all they know, it could just as easily be a smokescreen set up for their viewing pleasure by a spam industry elsewhere that wants the domains of their competitors shut off.
Not enough information was given in the question, but it is possible that the application in mind is that of measuring the performance of webservers in real time. So the experimenter doesn't (or does?) want the tests to last the long time a good SPEC run would take. I was somewhat confused by the article text.
Then again, it's possible that the application could be used to measure the speed of web clients. In that case, a flash or javascript loop with whirling icons could do the trick, but it would take some work. Since it's possible that this may be used (either now or in the future) by marketers who want to measure the comparative speed of a computer (to use to categorize someone into a marketable demographic so they can "target" the right ads), maybe answering this question fully wouldn't be such a good idea.
"Attempting to regulate the content of job advertising, or of job descriptions, cannot work"
...Internally we refer to this as MWE. Do you have that qualification (say yes)?
Maybe, but I think that something can be done.
Notice that many of the qualifications mentioned are for internal systems (that is, they exist only at that company by virtue of being given a unique name within that company, department, or even group.)
A similar (or even the exact same system) may exist somewhere else under a different name, but choosing a unique name for it effectively denies the opportunity to job candidates they did not already talk to.
For example, imagine MS Word as a requirement. Now call it "MWE" (MS Word Editing).
Job Posting: Only candidates with 5 years experience with MWE will be accepted.
Interviewer (to H1B candidate):
External candidate: *scratches head* What's this thing called MWE? *moves on*
How about a regulation that requires employers to provide a detailed and consistent description of each qualification upon request? If the qualifications are being created out of thin air, the practice stands a better chance of being caught and enforced by the job candidates themselves.
In general, no, we won't have hundreds of years. But there are likely some very very large asteroids out there that could cause mass extinction that could be warded off simply by acting early.
As a long term solution, we will need something like an automated foundry on the moon that continuously creates small iron cylinders and launches them on a solar-powered linear accelerator. Even if a mistake is made, such a system would allow plenty of opportunity to correct it.
Even if there were no cameras or other instruments on board, data would be generated because the comet's orbit should be perturbed very slightly, something that would show up in future orbits.
The data will be valuable if we are ever required to change a comet's orbit in a hurry, or even if we weren't in a hurry but knew that something would hit the earth in hundreds of years. Due to the long distances traveled, a slight change very early on expands into a much greater effect many years later. There wouldn't be a need to launch a megaton nuke against something as long as it can be prevented early on by touching it with a feather.
That being said, a camera image can plainly tell you if you hit the target at all, and answer critical questions such as: did the object go straight through the comet without transferring any momentum? How much material was displaced? What is the size, density and composition of the dust cloud? What is the shape of the crater?
Much of this data can analyzed later to improve the accuracy and dependability of future missions, to help decide how much more research is needed, and to improve our understanding of space debris in general.
Access to government.
Corporations are already comprised of individuals who have access to government (and free speech rights), but on top of that companies have an extra voice, that of the lobbyist. The voice of a company lobbyist is often much louder than that of an individual.
Even if lobbyists weren't a corrupting influence at all, they would be more effective than individuals because their whole time, experience, and resources is devoted to tracking the government activities that benefit their company. So, they enjoy the extra right of first-class citizen representation (due to the fact that a corporation is considered a "person.") This is to the detriment of other views that may be important.
The big question as I see it now is, if the company is based in an offshore tax haven as many are, why should this "person" be allowed to lobby in the U.S. with more rights than a U.S. citizen?
The only way this will happen with the 2.6.12 kernel is if you decide that you want to remove rights from yourself
*sigh* OK... what if I didn't know how to set kernel options and such? Wouldn't I be stuck with it?
A better solution then is just not to purchase TC hardware.
TC is more sinister than DRM. DRM attempts to prevent you from copying data, by "managing" your digital copying rights away from you. TC however, sets aside an area inside your computer that only trusted code has control over (and that certainly doesn't include YOU). Such a scheme may have some benefits but it also may become the perfect hotbed for unremovable viruses. If a trusted process cannot be affected by the user in any way (e.g. ignores all signals), vendor-sponsored malware will be able to reign supreme.
"At worst, if SuSE was to ship their distribution with TC and you didn't like this, then either switch distro or grab the kernel source."
Not all users are able to upgrade their kernel. You and I may be able to do that, but think about it. The average user will just have to swallow whatever the major distros put out. That's not very "optional."
Gathering steam, eventually TC may become required in order just to enable the most basic things, or at least things that the average user considers basic, such as acroread, for example. At some point even you and I may be stuck with it.
That being said, it's complex to determine which approach will work best. With no techie users helping to test it or submitting valid bug reports, hopefully the thing will never work right and will be dropped entirely. The hardware vendors can fund it all they want, but I'm just not going to purchase or support hardware capable of TC. Vendors can't just bribe me into it with lower prices. I don't want uncontrollable crap on my system at all, and if I were an ordinary user, I would be suspicious of anything that even smacks of it, and justifiably so.
Before I ever download this kernel, I first want to download only the TC module and read through it. Hopefully that is still possible? Does their CVS system still work, or is it a "trusted" CVS system now? I hope I'm really wrong about this, but until I read that code I won't be sure.
OK, if the accounting is too expensive, then maybe that part can be reduced or modified?
But, for blog's sake keep the whistleblower protections.
Thanks to S/O, a public company can no longer fire you simply for disclosing their illicit activities (note that a non-public company still can do so, although AFAIK this has not been tested in court yet). Otherwise Enrons and Worldcoms will happen all over again because people will be afraid to speak out, fully expecting that their employer with their army of lawyers will just figure out a way to put the blame on them. If the job picture gets really bleak then people will be speaking out nada.
Too bad that this very critical part of Sarbanes/Oxley is being mostly glossed over by most of the posts here. Whistleblower protections are needed more often than most people think, and they benefit more than just the whistleblower.
The public, the free market, and the individuals adversely affected by the illicit practices (not only accounting but also untraceable relaunderable illegal debt collection practices for instance... *ahem*) stand to benefit by someone who is willing to talk.
Maintaining public confidence might be worth some cost. I think it is worth the cost of rethinking, not denouncing Sarbanes/Oxley.
I'm not surprised if public companies would want to reduce their liability by trying to raise a firestorm over the accounting part of it. That would lift a giant sword of Damocles over their leadership. Some of their employees have to trudge along on menial tasks, but guess who benefits if the tasks are as menial and frustrating as possible? The same leadership that's assigning the tasks and very conspicuously labeling "Sarbanes/Oxley" all over them.