A deadman switch. A sleeper. A mole. A lurker. A slashdotter.
One little process , silently floating in the background. Every 3 - 5 days it pops up a window and innocently asks "OK?" for a few minutes. After the third non-response, it sends mail to the Admin that created it. If the mail bounces "undeliverable", it starts the 10 day countdown...
The admin, having recently been married and gone off on a dream one month honeymoon to a remote island with no connection to the outside world, gets an inkling that something at work was forgotten. No matter, someone at the office with catch it while I'm gone...
The Air Force has the PRP - Personell Reliability Program. It started back in the days when men were men, nukes were cool, and Commies were everywhere. It basically ran like this: trust nobody, check everything. Anyone doing a critical technical job was never left alone at work. Anything odd in their personal lives could get them removed from the nuclear access list if it indicated unreliability. And it didn't even have to be in a crime, just "odd enough" behavior that it was outside the norm limits. Overdrawn at the bank, public arguments with the wife, speeding tickets, (too) drunk at the bar, late payments at Sears. If it was a clue that you might be cracking, or that you might be vulnerable to a "social engineering" attack, you were sidelined immediately.
Of course, these people were dealing with nuclear weapons on a hair trigger and political brinksmanship, so you can understand some paranoia. But the same sort of watchfulness might be a good idea for a compnay trying to protect its Data and Network infrasturture, not to mention minimizing the time and efforts of the employees trying to clean up the mess of a saboteur. The company doesn't need to be as hyper-sensitive as "nuke 'em back to the stone age" Curtis LeMay, but it shouldn't just let weird behavior go unnoticed either.
" but this is the first time I've heard of flight code being changed so close to the wire"
There is a good reason for that.
I realize/.er are the miracle-working exception, but the vast majority of us don't write flawless code. We don't write it well or fast while under pressure and running on lack of sleep, without testing, for a critcal payload, after a last minute change in hardware and performance requirements. That might be considered "high risk" so typically we try to avoid doing it.
I am very happy this thing worked out for these guys, but I would have expected the whole unit to die about 10 minutes into the flight and be unrecoverable.
There is a reason they call all that stuff "Best Practices". I realize this was a fun excecise, not a life and death struggle to save the Universe, but still, you gotta admit they got lucky.
It is a marketing decision, but it comes straight from Machiavelli's little book, the Prince.
If a Prince is going to distribute benefits, be sure they are annoucned singly and prominently, no matter how trivial, to maximize their seeming importance. If a Prince will announce taxes or bad news, be sure to collect them into groups and hit the people al at once, so that each has lessend overall impact.
MS has no trouble telling you about new products and features, no matter what day or week of the month. But they save the bug fixes and announcements for one day a month, no matter how critical.
They are following the advice. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out who the Prince might be.
This delay scheme is done as a "service" to all those poor admins out there, who have so many patches to keep up with. MS only tells you how wide open you are once a month. Thanks.
No, I was going to say manager, but I know that is considered a dirty word around here. I didn't get masterful leadership vibes from him, but he was clearly in strong command of the resources available to him.
Picard was only an OK strategist, certainly better than Kirk, but we never really saw enough of his results to know if things consistently worked out better for him than Kirk's attempts, though it seems obvious they would have.
Yes there is a difference between being a good manager and being a good leader. Part of that is the charaismatic aspect of a personality. A good manager knows what to do and does it. Intellectually that is fine, but it may be lacking at the emotional "gut" level. A good leader can convince (or inspire) the troops that the course of action is correct, even when faced with contradictory or non-existent evidence. People MAY follow a good manager, but they'll be doubting him all the way, even to assured victory. People WILL follow a good leader, and be shocked when his plans fall to defeat, even when it should have been obvious from the first.
Ideally you get both in the same package and the problem never arises.
No, you aren't doing anything wrong, its just that people don't leave their torrents running for long enough. My policy is to try to uplaod at least as much as I download. Usually 2 to 1 or more. Most folks get the download they want then bail out ASAP, stranding anyone else that might not be as far along as they are.
It is the ultimate confluence of pop culture and jungle behavior: get in there, grab what is popular today, and move on before you get orphaned.
I think the truth is in between. Kirk was the better tactician, but Picard was the better overall leader. I got the impression Picard really did know what was happening, or should have been happening, on his ship and he could make executive decision based on that. Kirk was the kind of guy that was good in a crisis and could quickly figure his way out of individual problems, but set himself up for another crisis down the road.
Don't panic. From the preview I saw, you'll get the idea of who is chasing whom and why. I never felt I was missing anything after the first few minutes. Whedon is a good storyteller.
I'm assuming the comic books are going to be detail and texture filler. Good to have read, but not necessary to enjoying the film.
I've seen it and lead projects that did it. As far as I know the code is still running.
Red Hat is an approved distribution (I've seen a CFD cluster running it). The NSA contributes to SELinux.
The big problem of the government using OSS is that often the goverment needs to distribute black box code and the distribution clauses of the GPL et alia get to be bothersome. So then you get to have fun with what the term "distribute" means, in context of the government and it's subcomponents, it's contractors, THEIR subcomponents and subcontractors, etc. "If you are my agent or employee, acting in my interests at my direction, and I give you something, is that a distribution within the meaning of the GPL provisions? (please say "No") What if I give it to a sister agency?"
And plenty of people inside the government run on a budget. They just tend to be huge when compared to industry. But it is still a budget that has to be managed cost effectively.
I basically agree, being able to view and edit the source is a huge asset in terms of damage control after the fact.
But Open source, and especially closed source, can't really be evaluated up front for patent infringement without an encyclopedic knowledge of all exisiting software patents. It would be like trying to guess which car in a lot was stolen, while having no access to the Motor Vehicles database. At best you might make an educated guess, but truly you don't have a clue.
Unless you have the truly unique case of the patent thief leaving the headers and comments of the stolen code in place. That would make it nice, but most thieves know enough to file off the serial numbers!
The cattle industry solved this years ago. Its called ear tags. Name, rank, serial number, bull, cow, etc. Its all on there.
Unfortunately humans have appropriated ears for decorative earrings. So I guess we'll just have to use permanent neckrings (like in south Asia) and permanent colored tags. Red for violence, Green for money crimes, Orange for theives, etc.
"saying the first steps Microsoft could do are to open their file formats and support open standards."
MS does support open standards. They can read and write to them just fine. They just like to "enhance" them, and "innovate" to add functionality that, sadly, leaves open software hopelessly out of date and incompatible.
If you want full featured software, come over to the dar..., uh, our side of the street.
If only mp3.com hadn't sold out*, things would be a lot better for indies now. They had name recognition, a good cross section of music, and a willing audience. The combination of BitTorrent (for full "album" distribution) and mp3.com (for mini-homepages and downloading sample songs) would have been awesome.
* actually the sequence is Got Greedy, got stupid, screwed up, sold out, folded. But it didn't want to get technical.
Developer B is OK with the GPL, if only technically. But is lax, perhaps negligent, by not explicitly telling Company A that encumbered software was included in the delivery. That would be true for any licensing. The fact that is it GPL just raises the stakes a bit.
Company A, in turn, is negligent for not asking explicitly about what licensing is included in the delivery from B. Then, by packaging legitimate proprietary information with GPL code, Company A put itself at risk when it was marketed. Though a part of that liability could be alid off to Developer B, still A has duty to be sure it is doing the right thing when it does anything.
Let us say Company A hires Developer B to come up with some data manipulation software, WidgetWare, for use inside Company A. If it works out, perhaps it will be repackaged and marketed.
Developer B immediately realizes WidgetWare is very similar to an abandoned GPL'd project from 3 years ago. Developer B, without Company A's knowledge, grabs the GPL'd code, makes lots of updates, then hands it over to Company A. Naturally the source is included, as it would be in a work for hire situation AND a GPL one.
Company A likes WidegetWare, so proceeds to re-market WidgetWare (perhaps as part of another, larger SuperWidgetWare2005 package) to the general public as proprietary code. No source included.
Who, if anyone, is at fault here? Who, if anyone, should do something?
Does Company A get itself sued, and have its legitimate proprietary code exposed, over the GPL being entrained in the released code?
Yes, Information wants to be free, but Information has a wife, kids, car payments and a mortgage, not to mention an ex- and lawyer's fees. Information has responsibilities and must charge reasonable rates to cover them.
Enforcement of the law is generally a good thing, even when the law is kinda stupid. Forces you to either live with it, or fix it.
According to email from Hauppauge sales, the 500MCE is just a dual 150MCE. And according to the Hauppauge web site, the 150MCE is just a 250MCE in a "New low cost design. Same video quality as the WinTV-PVR-250MCE at a lower cost. With RCA jacks for audio input."http://www.hauppauge.com/Pages/compare_pvr.html
That tells me that the 150MCE, 250MCE, and 500MCE should be about the same for setup and functionality. The "new low cost design" aspect scares me some, but even the 500MCE is only $147 at pricewatch. We've all taken worse baths than that.
Slashdot Mirror
That is why we left the 80's behind. Too expensive.
A deadman switch. A sleeper. A mole. A lurker. A slashdotter.
One little process , silently floating in the background. Every 3 - 5 days it pops up a window and innocently asks "OK?" for a few minutes. After the third non-response, it sends mail to the Admin that created it. If the mail bounces "undeliverable", it starts the 10 day countdown...
The admin, having recently been married and gone off on a dream one month honeymoon to a remote island with no connection to the outside world, gets an inkling that something at work was forgotten. No matter, someone at the office with catch it while I'm gone...
The Air Force has the PRP - Personell Reliability Program. It started back in the days when men were men, nukes were cool, and Commies were everywhere. It basically ran like this: trust nobody, check everything. Anyone doing a critical technical job was never left alone at work. Anything odd in their personal lives could get them removed from the nuclear access list if it indicated unreliability. And it didn't even have to be in a crime, just "odd enough" behavior that it was outside the norm limits. Overdrawn at the bank, public arguments with the wife, speeding tickets, (too) drunk at the bar, late payments at Sears. If it was a clue that you might be cracking, or that you might be vulnerable to a "social engineering" attack, you were sidelined immediately.
Of course, these people were dealing with nuclear weapons on a hair trigger and political brinksmanship, so you can understand some paranoia. But the same sort of watchfulness might be a good idea for a compnay trying to protect its Data and Network infrasturture, not to mention minimizing the time and efforts of the employees trying to clean up the mess of a saboteur. The company doesn't need to be as hyper-sensitive as "nuke 'em back to the stone age" Curtis LeMay, but it shouldn't just let weird behavior go unnoticed either.
" but this is the first time I've heard of flight code being changed so close to the wire"
/.er are the miracle-working exception, but the vast majority of us don't write flawless code. We don't write it well or fast while under pressure and running on lack of sleep, without testing, for a critcal payload, after a last minute change in hardware and performance requirements. That might be considered "high risk" so typically we try to avoid doing it.
There is a good reason for that.
I realize
I am very happy this thing worked out for these guys, but I would have expected the whole unit to die about 10 minutes into the flight and be unrecoverable.
There is a reason they call all that stuff "Best Practices". I realize this was a fun excecise, not a life and death struggle to save the Universe, but still, you gotta admit they got lucky.
It is a marketing decision, but it comes straight from Machiavelli's little book, the Prince.
If a Prince is going to distribute benefits, be sure they are annoucned singly and prominently, no matter how trivial, to maximize their seeming importance. If a Prince will announce taxes or bad news, be sure to collect them into groups and hit the people al at once, so that each has lessend overall impact.
MS has no trouble telling you about new products and features, no matter what day or week of the month. But they save the bug fixes and announcements for one day a month, no matter how critical.
They are following the advice. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out who the Prince might be.
This delay scheme is done as a "service" to all those poor admins out there, who have so many patches to keep up with. MS only tells you how wide open you are once a month. Thanks.
"Was that the word you're looking for?"
No, I was going to say manager, but I know that is considered a dirty word around here. I didn't get masterful leadership vibes from him, but he was clearly in strong command of the resources available to him.
Picard was only an OK strategist, certainly better than Kirk, but we never really saw enough of his results to know if things consistently worked out better for him than Kirk's attempts, though it seems obvious they would have.
Yes there is a difference between being a good manager and being a good leader. Part of that is the charaismatic aspect of a personality. A good manager knows what to do and does it. Intellectually that is fine, but it may be lacking at the emotional "gut" level. A good leader can convince (or inspire) the troops that the course of action is correct, even when faced with contradictory or non-existent evidence. People MAY follow a good manager, but they'll be doubting him all the way, even to assured victory. People WILL follow a good leader, and be shocked when his plans fall to defeat, even when it should have been obvious from the first.
Ideally you get both in the same package and the problem never arises.
No, you aren't doing anything wrong, its just that people don't leave their torrents running for long enough. My policy is to try to uplaod at least as much as I download. Usually 2 to 1 or more. Most folks get the download they want then bail out ASAP, stranding anyone else that might not be as far along as they are.
It is the ultimate confluence of pop culture and jungle behavior: get in there, grab what is popular today, and move on before you get orphaned.
I think the truth is in between. Kirk was the better tactician, but Picard was the better overall leader. I got the impression Picard really did know what was happening, or should have been happening, on his ship and he could make executive decision based on that. Kirk was the kind of guy that was good in a crisis and could quickly figure his way out of individual problems, but set himself up for another crisis down the road.
Makes sense. The film is due out on 30 Sep, so a July - Aug - Sep run for the comic would be perfect pacing.
Don't panic. From the preview I saw, you'll get the idea of who is chasing whom and why. I never felt I was missing anything after the first few minutes. Whedon is a good storyteller.
I'm assuming the comic books are going to be detail and texture filler. Good to have read, but not necessary to enjoying the film.
Go Browncoats!
Red Hat is an approved distribution (I've seen a CFD cluster running it). The NSA contributes to SELinux.
The big problem of the government using OSS is that often the goverment needs to distribute black box code and the distribution clauses of the GPL et alia get to be bothersome. So then you get to have fun with what the term "distribute" means, in context of the government and it's subcomponents, it's contractors, THEIR subcomponents and subcontractors, etc. "If you are my agent or employee, acting in my interests at my direction, and I give you something, is that a distribution within the meaning of the GPL provisions? (please say "No") What if I give it to a sister agency?"
And plenty of people inside the government run on a budget. They just tend to be huge when compared to industry. But it is still a budget that has to be managed cost effectively.
I basically agree, being able to view and edit the source is a huge asset in terms of damage control after the fact.
But Open source, and especially closed source, can't really be evaluated up front for patent infringement without an encyclopedic knowledge of all exisiting software patents. It would be like trying to guess which car in a lot was stolen, while having no access to the Motor Vehicles database. At best you might make an educated guess, but truly you don't have a clue.
Unless you have the truly unique case of the patent thief leaving the headers and comments of the stolen code in place. That would make it nice, but most thieves know enough to file off the serial numbers!
"officially licensed Star Trek (tm) phaser."
Should have read "officially licensed Star Trek (tm) phaser in mint condition."
"their DVD box sets of TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise"
Should have read "their collectible DVD box sets of TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise in pristine wrappings"
The Times regrets the omissions.
It is crazy, but it just might work!
Of course you have to implant it in their body somewhere, or you will just end up locating a bunch of dismembered arms and legs.
A shaker of salt, a light touch*, and emptying the magazine would do it. At least enough that the results would be ambiguous.
Of course, tool marks and fingerprints on the spent cases are a little harder to deal with.
* a heavy touch will likely leave you one handed.
Unfortunately humans have appropriated ears for decorative earrings. So I guess we'll just have to use permanent neckrings (like in south Asia) and permanent colored tags. Red for violence, Green for money crimes, Orange for theives, etc.
A GPS receiver and a small explosive charge might be helpful too http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103239/
MS does support open standards. They can read and write to them just fine. They just like to "enhance" them, and "innovate" to add functionality that, sadly, leaves open software hopelessly out of date and incompatible.
If you want full featured software, come over to the dar..., uh, our side of the street.
Because we choose to go to the moon ?
No, no I have it: Because they are easy, and we are hard.
No? Well, its something like that. I'll get it...
They're nuclear scientists, not rocket scientists, dammit. Give'em a break!
If only mp3.com hadn't sold out*, things would be a lot better for indies now. They had name recognition, a good cross section of music, and a willing audience. The combination of BitTorrent (for full "album" distribution) and mp3.com (for mini-homepages and downloading sample songs) would have been awesome.
* actually the sequence is Got Greedy, got stupid, screwed up, sold out, folded. But it didn't want to get technical.
The way I was seeing this was more like this:
Developer B is OK with the GPL, if only technically. But is lax, perhaps negligent, by not explicitly telling Company A that encumbered software was included in the delivery. That would be true for any licensing. The fact that is it GPL just raises the stakes a bit.
Company A, in turn, is negligent for not asking explicitly about what licensing is included in the delivery from B. Then, by packaging legitimate proprietary information with GPL code, Company A put itself at risk when it was marketed. Though a part of that liability could be alid off to Developer B, still A has duty to be sure it is doing the right thing when it does anything.
Interesting.
Let us say Company A hires Developer B to come up with some data manipulation software, WidgetWare, for use inside Company A. If it works out, perhaps it will be repackaged and marketed.
Developer B immediately realizes WidgetWare is very similar to an abandoned GPL'd project from 3 years ago. Developer B, without Company A's knowledge, grabs the GPL'd code, makes lots of updates, then hands it over to Company A. Naturally the source is included, as it would be in a work for hire situation AND a GPL one.
Company A likes WidegetWare, so proceeds to re-market WidgetWare (perhaps as part of another, larger SuperWidgetWare2005 package) to the general public as proprietary code. No source included.
Who, if anyone, is at fault here?
Who, if anyone, should do something?
Does Company A get itself sued, and have its legitimate proprietary code exposed, over the GPL being entrained in the released code?
"Information wants to be Free!"
Yes, Information wants to be free, but Information has a wife, kids, car payments and a mortgage, not to mention an ex- and lawyer's fees. Information has responsibilities and must charge reasonable rates to cover them.
Enforcement of the law is generally a good thing, even when the law is kinda stupid. Forces you to either live with it, or fix it.
That tells me that the 150MCE, 250MCE, and 500MCE should be about the same for setup and functionality. The "new low cost design" aspect scares me some, but even the 500MCE is only $147 at pricewatch. We've all taken worse baths than that.
(those of us that bathe, anyway)
Agreed. How does that saying about Idiotproof go ...?